Dynamic Dialogue with Danny Matranga - 139: Food Addiction + Dopamine Nation

Episode Date: November 17, 2021

This episode stands as an opportunity to take a stab at having a nuanced discussion about food addiction. Danny is not a doctor, psychological professional, or dietitian. This podcast and discussion are not intended to diagnose or treat disease(s) of any kind.---Thanks For Listening!---Grab the new Female Physique Advanced HERE!---RESOURCES/COACHING: I am all about education and that is not limited to this podcast! Feel free to grab a FREE guide (Nutrition, Training, Macros, Etc!) HERE! Interested in Working With Coach Danny and His One-On-One Coaching Team? Click HERE!Want Coach Danny to Fix Your S*** (training, nutrition, lifestyle, etc) fill the form HERE for a chance to have your current approach reviewed live on the show. Want To Have YOUR Question Answered On an Upcoming Episode of DYNAMIC DIALOGUE? You Can Submit It HERE!Want to Support The Podcast AND Get in Better Shape? Grab a Program HERE!----SOCIAL LINKS:Sign up for the trainer mentorship HEREFollow Coach Danny on INSTAGRAMFollow Coach Danny on TwitterFollow Coach Danny on FacebookGet More In-Depth Articles Written By Yours’ Truly HERE!Support the Show.

Hey everybody, welcome in to another episode of the Dynamic Dialogue podcast. I am your host Danny Matranga, and in today's episode we're going to unpack what I think is, without a doubt, one of the more perhaps loaded, sensitive, and dichotomous topics that I've ever touched on. And what I'd like to talk about today is food addiction, some of the things that I've learned from a recent book that I've read, kind of taking a look at a more nuanced, practical approach to what I think a lot of people may very well be suffering with, which is a dependence or reliance on using food as an available coping tool. Now, before I get into any of that, I need to make it abundantly clear to anybody who is listening. First and foremost, I am not a psychologist.

I am not a psychiatrist. I'm not a doctor. I am not a dietician. This conversation serves exclusively as an opportunity to discuss what I think is a very, very real problem we are facing societally right now, which is that at a national level, we have over 70%, at least here in the United States. I understand that not all of my listeners are in the United States. Many of you are from other countries, which is phenomenal, and I still can't believe, but that's not the point. The point is that over 70% of American citizens, adults are overweight and we're closing in quite quickly on a 50% obesity threshold. Now, one in every five Americans struggles with their mental health and only one or two in 10, one in five Americans meet standard exercise guidelines.

So 70% of Americans are overweight, 50% or so are obese. Again, that data last I checked was hovering around 48.6, but this is data from 2018 prior to the pandemic. So if I'm going to make an inference here, I would go so far as to say that over 50% of Americans are now obese because the pandemic didn't exactly trim anybody's waistline. Mental health is at what I would call a tipping point or a kind of threat level midnight critical point right now societally. We're seeing things like anxiety, depression, and suicide reaching all-time highs.

And I think that it's important to create space for discussions about mental health, but only in a way that I'm qualified to talk about. So I want to talk a little bit about a book I've been reading from Dr. Anna Lemke of Stanford called Dopamine Nation. I want to talk a little bit about food addiction in a way that might be valuable for those of us who are in the fitness space, whether we're fitness fanatics looking to encourage our family and friends to make better food decisions, whether we're coaches looking to be more empathetic in how we practice, or whether we're people like myself who occasionally struggle with binging or sticking to your diet. I mean, there's a lot to unpack here, so sit back and enjoy. Before we get into

the main part of our discussion today, I want to highlight my brand partner, Legion Athletics. Legion is one of the most integrous and high quality supplement companies in a space that quite honestly is full with nothing but bullshit. And while it is one of my goals to bring you free, zero cost information, fitness, supplementation, nutrition, and wellness information i do have bills to pay and sponsors like legion help me do just that legion is phenomenal at creating transparent easy to read easy to understand supplement formulas that actually work every single ingredient in every single product has been empirically proven to work in multiple different clinical trials. Additionally, all of the doses of those clinically proven ingredients

match the clinically effective dose shown in the research, meaning you are not going to be suffering from pixie dusting, which is such a commonplace bullshit thing in the supplement space. It's infuriating. What is pixie dusting, you might ask? It's pretty simple. Pixie dusting is when somebody or some company, some entity that manufactures supplements catches wind that a product is now proven or shown to be effective, whether that be something like beta alanine, citrulline, caffeine, you name it. There are plenty of supplements, plenty of ingredients that have a clinically effective dose that is shown to improve performance, longevity,

well-being in some capacity. And somebody at this supplement manufacturer, whether it be in their board meetings, whether it be in their production meetings, they make the conscious decision to go, hey, let's take that ingredient that's proven to work at, say, six grams, and let's put one gram in there, but tell people it's on there and on the label. And then when they turn the label to see how much, we'll hide behind a proprietary blend. Because if we tell them it's in there, but we don't pay the big bucks to actually put the amount of product that's effective, we only put enough so it doesn't hurt our bottom line, but they think they're taking it. We can rake in some more profits and it's fucking annoying. And I very rarely swear on this podcast, but it is one of the most dubious, nasty,

and frustrating things we see in the fitness space. And it's why I have been so hesitant for a very long time as somebody who does take quite a bit of supplements to optimize my performance relative to the average person to partner with a brand because more brands than not are not integrous. But Legion really takes the cake here because I think they do a phenomenal job. All of their labeling is transparent. You can check all of the products on their various web pages and actually see the clinical trials that prove these products to be effective in the dosages that are in the products. And I think that that level of transparency is critical when you're spending your hard-earned money on things to improve your supplements, to improve your health,

and to improve your wellness. You don't want to be throwing your money away or flushing it down the toilet. And more importantly, I don't think you should be giving it to people who aren't shooting you straight. Whether that be coaches, whether that be fitness influencers, whether that be supplement companies, whoever. I think your money is always better spent going towards people who are honest, ethical, and trying to do right by you.

The products I take every single day from Legion is that whey protein isolate powder. I love the chocolate. I take the Genesis greens primarily because I don't always get my vegetables and I love the micronutrient profile. But the big thing is the three grams of reishi mushroom. I am a huge reishi mushroom advocate. If you've followed me for a long time, you'll know I'm a huge fan of chaga, reishi, lion's mane, shiitake, mitake, cordyceps, the various different super shrooms that can, you know, be used to modulate our biology in positive ways. I love them. But Legion provides a whopping three grams of reishi mushroom in their

genesis greens. I take 1.5 grams of omega-3 every day, which I get from Legion's Triton fish oil. And last but not least, my favorite supplement of all, Recharge, which is creatine monohydrate, something I take every day for my performance, neuroprotective abilities, cognitive abilities. I want to take good care of my brain and my body, but Recharge not only includes a five gram dose of creatine monohydrate in the best form, it also includes L-carnitine tartrate,

which can help with reducing muscle soreness. So if you want to support the show, you can check the show notes, click through the link, and shop for all of your supplement needs at legion.com, or just check out using the promo code DANNY to save 20% on your first order, earned double points moving forward from there, and you'd be supporting this show. So without further ado, let's talk a little bit about dopamine, pleasure, food addiction, what may or may not be worth bringing to the table for a discussion like this, and see if we can elevate where we're at with regards to looking at food as something that we use to cope as a drug. Maybe we can just have a better discussion than the one we've been having. So first and foremost,

I want to go over my rules for the road. Number one, remember, I'm not a psychologist, not a doctor, not a psychiatrist, not a mental health professional. I'm not a dietician. This is purely opinion. This is non-medical advice. Number two, I do not believe that any single ingredient has properties that are dopaminergic or likely to spike dopamine enough to be hyper addictive in the way we look at things like heroin or cocaine. And that includes sugar. And I think that one of the more destructive kind of lazily thrown around anecdotes is that sugar is 10 times as addictive as cocaine. And the reason I don't really like this analogy is because I don't think it paints a very scientific approach or it doesn't paint food in a very scientific way. We're not looking at sugar

properly and we're making a pretty strange false equivalency here comparing cocaine to sugar. And I can tell you what, I have worked with a lot of addicts over the years, including people who have struggled with cocaine addiction. And it's a very different experience than sugar. And I don't think that sugar is 10 times as addictive as cocaine. So rule number one is I'm not going to be talking about single ingredients here, like sugar, like fat, like salt, like carbohydrate. I don't think that's elevating the discussion. And I think that much of when we talk about, oh, this or that could be addictive in food, we just end up running around in circles about sugar. And I don't think it's particularly helpful. Rule for the road,

number three, I definitely think that some foods have the ability to impact the regions of the brain that are responsible for producing pleasure, responsible for producing dopamine, more so than some. And I do think that most of those foods tend to be hyperpalatable in nature. And so hyperpalatable food, for example, hyperpalatable foods are foods that usually hit on a few different pleasurable positions. They usually have textures that we enjoy. Maybe they're crunchy. Maybe they're chewy. Maybe they start off crunchy and become chewy. They usually have multiple flavor profiles. They can be sweet and tart. They can be tart and bitter. They can be umami and savory, usually multifactorial in nature. We're talking about type of food that in its perhaps original form isn't as easy to overconsume as it is in its hyperpalatable form.

So I'll give you an example. A boiled potato usually has one consistency, squishy, and one taste, bland. But a potato chip is very crispy when you put it in your mouth and crunchy, but it becomes soft. It's also very, very salty. But the presence of fats and oils make those things come together in such a way that you could eat much more of a potato chip than you could of a potato. So I think that hyperpalatable, easily accessed foods that are often referred to as junk foods are very pleasurable, can influence our physiology, and might be something that in the long run could become addictive, or at least could be available for coping. We'll

talk more about that as we go. Fourth rule for the road. I think that food is immensely available and I think it is our most socially acceptable coping tool. We can use food as a buffer for stress. We can use food as a buffer for depression. We can use food as a buffer or even to highlight things that are already positive. You know, we might have food available to us as a reward. We might have food available to us to cope. But because it's so accessible, and because I've seen these obesity rates climbing, I have to question whether or not the relationship that we have with food is one that may or may not be addictive. And I'm one who tends to err on the side of, hey, I don't think it's fair to make these comparisons. So

again, we'll get into that discussion, but these rules for the road are critical. Number five, this is the final one. Okay. So number one, not a psychologist, not a doctor. Number two, I don't think that any singular ingredient on its own is likely to be as addictive as number three, these hyper palatable foods have a tendency to cause stuff like addiction or perhaps hyper pleasurable responses in the body. Uh, or I think food is immensely available as a coping tool and that probably springboards its ability to become something that's addictive. Um, accessibility really matters here. And number five, uh, we have to acknowledge that willpower isn't infinite, and human beings don't have unlimited amounts of willpower. The more you use it, the more tired

you will get. So the more you're exerting willpower across your day, the harder it is to kind of abstain from habits that might not be ideal. And so in understanding that, we can be sensitive as we talk about people who struggle with various forms of addiction and what those might look like. And it's never as simple as just work harder, just be tougher. Any kind of addiction is challenging to work with. It's challenging to work through. And it's never, ever, if on very rare occasions, as simple as just working harder and having willpower. as simple as just working harder and having willpower. So with that stuff out of the way,

I think we can move forward to this greater discussion about if in fact food has the ability to be addictive, how can we move forward? How can we work with this? What can we do? And so I would go so far as to say, I think, first and foremost, every single one of us has the ability to be an addict. And this is something, again, that I got from this phenomenal book by Dr. Anna Lemke called Dopamine Nation. There was a quote in there that particularly stuck out to me early on in the book. And this quote comes from Kent Dunnington. And he wrote, persons with severe addictions are among those contemporary prophets that we ignore to our own demise, for they show us who we really are.

And what I mean by this is that I think we all have the machinery and the mechanics in our brain to become addicts in some capacity. Maybe not addicts who are addicted to hard drugs or the kinds of addicts that you see or hear about or even talk poorly about. I think what this quote really captures

is that we're all organisms with a very, very easy-to-hijack pain-pleasure pathway that food fits into. And for many people, food is a socially acceptable means of spiking these dopamine pathways and feeling pleasure in increasingly chaotic, increasingly stressful lives and worlds. Some of us maintain it with porn. Some of us maintain it with nicotine. Some of us maintain it with exercise. Some of us maintain it with caffeine.

Some of us maintain it with alcohol. Some of us maybe even maintain it with things like food, where we are using these substances to spike our dopamine, feel good, and feel that pleasure response that we want to buttress and buffer against all of the crazy stress coming at us in all of these different ways. And you think about it, we're always having some input put into this pathway, whether it's a buzz on our smartphone, whether it's a snack here or there, like these dopamine pathways are primed and we're always looking to put something in them now more than ever. But I can speak from my own experience working with clients that I'd say at least 50%

of the general population clients I've worked with for weight loss, for muscle gain, for pain management, have had or actively have an addiction problem that may be related to cigarettes, some type of drug, alcohol, gambling, maybe even it is managing their food. I certainly have some clients who come to me and articulate that they have a food addiction or a compulsive desire to overeat that even though they don't want to, they have a hard time shutting that off, particularly when they are stressed. And, you know, for a very long time as a trainer, I would always say, I don't think you can necessarily be addicted to food or I don't think X food is addictive, particularly sugar. I would always say like, I don't think sugar is addictive. If you put sugar in front of somebody who's quote unquote

addicted to sugar, you just put a big sugar bowl in front of them. They're not going to snort it up like it's cocaine. They're just going to let it sit there. But what that client might be articulating when they say I am addicted to sugar what they might really mean Is I have a tendency to over consume foods that are sweet that are also hyper palatable, right? Like i'm not eating sugar out of a bowl I'm eating a chocolate chip cookie that is sweet a little bit salty very chewy, but it's crunchy on the outside hyper palatable, right? Or I love to stop on my way home and get a McDonald's apple pie because it's crispy on the outside, but gooey and sweet in the middle. Like these are things that

might be articulated as, oh, I am addicted to sugar. When in fact, what my clients I think often have meant is, oh, I really like using sweeter hyperpalatable foods to cope with stress and get that dopamine response. And so I think that's very real. And I've seen it in person that a lot more people than you think are struggling with some type of compulsive overuse issue. And I do think people can have food addictions. But in the classical sense, I think these experiences are massively unique and really nuanced.

And it's immensely unfair to compare these addictions to any other drugs or any other addiction. I don't necessarily even think it's particularly fair after reading this book for us to compare two people who might be addicted to the same substance, because the root cause and the way out, bar be it for me to make absolutely any diagnoses or absolutely any treatment plans for people, because again, I'm not a psychologist, but I think that how you treat and handle addiction or how you treat and handle desires to cope using what may or may not be addictive substances has to be unique and highly individualized.

But I would go so far as to say that I think right now we have more people who are addicted to something, who are using some substance to spike this dopamine pain pleasure reward pathway constantly than we ever have. And I think the availability and abundance of hyperpalatable high calorie foods is making it one of, if not the most accessible ways to kind of spike this pathway. And I do think over time that can become addicted. Hey guys, just wanted to take a quick second to say thanks so much for listening to the podcast. And if you're finding value, it would mean the world to me if you would share it on your social media. Simply screenshot whatever platform you're listening to and share the episode to your Instagram story or share it to Facebook. But be sure to tag me so I can say thanks and we can

chat it up about what you liked and how I can continue to improve. Thanks so much for supporting the podcast and enjoy the rest of the episode. I'd like to cite some research from Anna Lemke's book, Dopamine Nation, that I thought was fascinating. And she says that one in four recipients of a gastric bypass surgery actually develop a problem with alcohol addiction. And what this showed me was that people who had at some point in their life eaten enough food to gain enough weight, that a gastric bypass surgery was a reasonable intervention for them. This means that you've probably gotten to a body fat level that is quite high. You're well past a low threshold for obesity. You're probably in the morbid obesity range if you're getting a gastric bypass surgery, or you're very heavy at bare minimum. But for 25% of people who receive the surgery to then go on

to have an alcohol dependency issue, highlighted to me that perhaps there's something here mechanistically with this pleasure reward pathway, that if you take away one thing, will just gravitate to the next. And I think we've seen this a lot. One thing I know for sure, having spent so many times or so much time in the gym, is a lot of people who are addicted to exercise, who go seven days a week, they just can't stop. Many of them are former or recovering addicts in their own right. I have several clients who are recovered alcoholics, recovered methamphetamine addicts, recovered heroin addicts. And I know a lot of people are like, wait a minute, how do you train so many people who are addicts? I've been training for 10 years. And a lot of these people have really communicated to me that getting over their

relationship, the negative relationship that they have with food has challenged them in every single way that the drug addiction challenged them. It was hard, maybe harder in some instances. So that was another key thing for me to notice with people is going like, wow, so you mean to tell me you have a harder time managing food than you did managing your relationship with methamphetamine? Well, not necessarily harder, but it's different. But because food's so available, you know, it's challenging.

Like these are discussions that I've really had. And that's what one of the things that opened my eyes here, but getting back to the gastric bypass thing, uh, you have to acknowledge that when you make the stomach smaller, you increase the ability for alcohol uptake and you can actually become dependent more quickly because you absorb things more quickly this way. But it shows me that you have this dopamine pathway primed, looking for some form of expression. You're looking to get that spike. And when you limit how much food you can eat because of a gastric bypass, 25% of these people pivoted to another substance.

So there's definitely something going on here. Something that has worked really well for Dr. Lemke that I thought was fascinating and we're sharing for the coaches who are listening is reflecting on the trajectory of a client's entire life when trying to encourage them to make better decisions. So she actually had a client, and I won't spoil this because I really do want you guys to purchase this book and read this book. I think you'll find it phenomenally helpful. And in fact, if you've gotten this far in the podcast and you don't yet have this book written down, I encourage you to actually

pause the podcast right now, go buy it on Amazon, go buy it at your local bookstore, download it on Audible, Dopamine Nation, phenomenal book, can't recommend it enough. It's the inspiration for this entire podcast because it's really highlighted something that I think is important that we discuss, and that is the ways in which our hormones, most importantly, these neurotransmitters impact some of our decisions. But she tells the story of a client who was younger and heavily abusing a particular substance. And she asked this person, in 10 years, do you want to be using this substance the way you're using it now? And the client said, no. She said, well, what about in five? And the client said, no. And she said, well, what about

next year? And the client said, no. And I thought that this was a phenomenal way of communicating to people that we might care about, to people who we might want to see make better decisions with their movement, with their food, right, around their health, right, just people that we want to be healthier. I get the question all the time, how do I convince my so-and-so, my wife, my son, my daughter, my cousin, my co-worker to take their health seriously? And I love reflecting on the trajectory of whole life rather than just the present moment. I think that can be a really powerful tool. And this is something that I've learned from this book. And so something that I will continue to use moving forward is looking at whole life trajectory and asking clients, future clients,

potential clients, do you want to be where you're currently at in 10 years, five years, one year? Do you want to have the problems, the struggles that you have in 10 years, five years, or even one year? If not, then let's take these baby steps. Because I think when you pull people away from that short term, that immediacy thinking, that scarcity mindset, that, you know, what's happening right in front of me is all that matters. And you go, hey, you know, if we zoom out in 10 years, are you going to like where you're at? If you're not physically active, if you're not nourishing your body with the right foods, if you're overeating foods that are high in calories, but low in nutrition, do you want to see where this gets you in 10 years? I think a lot of people go, no, I don't. And I don't really think about where I'm going to be in 10 years

because I'm just like everybody else. I'm thinking about the next thing I'm focused on. You know, what am I going to go do right now? Or what am I going to go do today or tomorrow or next week? I'm not thinking about 10 years from now. Most people aren't thinking about 10 years from now, right? I know I'm hardly thinking about 10 years from now. My vision only goes out about five years. I don't think about 36-year-old Danny very often. I don't think about 31-year-old Danny very often. I mostly just think about 26-year-old Danny and when the Rams are going to play again and get the fucking shit old Danny very often. I don't think about 31 year old Danny very often. I mostly just think about 26 year old Danny and when the Rams are going to play again and get the fucking shit kicked out of him by the 49ers so I can complain about it all week. Like I am very immediate in my thinking,

as are most of us. So I love this notion of reflecting on whole life when we're looking to either inspire change in other people or just promote good dialogue around habits. And I think that that's something that trainers are probably very qualified to discuss with their clients inspire change in other people or just promote good dialogue around habits. And I think that that's something that trainers are probably very qualified to discuss with their clients and that fitness enthusiasts are more than qualified to talk about with people who come to them for advice to say, hey, look, you know, look at your habits, look where they're taking you. Do you like the trajectory of where your habits are? If you look forward 10 years, five years, even one year. I think

that's a big deal. Something else that I learned in the book is that poverty is actually a risk factor for addiction. And I think that's really interesting because poverty is also a risk factor for obesity. And I'm not saying that addiction and obesity are inextricably connected. I think there are plenty of people who are obese but don't suffer from this hijacked dopamine reward pathway with food as their primary input. But I do think some people do use food as their primary pleasure input. And one of the things that Dr. Lemke highlights is that those who grow up in resource-poor environments are primed with mortality cues more likely to value immediate rewards over those that are delayed. And I thought that that was pretty fascinating because if poverty puts you in a position where you're in a resource-poor environment and you're primed with mortality cues, more likely to value immediate rewards over those that are delayed,

that is almost exactly what is happening mechanistically when you are making the decision to eat a food that you know is not good for you, that you know is not going to nourish you in the way you want to be nourished, but you're choosing to eat it anyway. And this is something that I see a lot of my clients struggle with. So I knew that poverty was a risk factor for obesity. I did not know that poverty was a risk factor for addiction. But in knowing that many people have grown up in resource-poor environments where they're primed with mortality cues to want to have immediate gratification over delayed gratification, that should give you guys the impetus to be a little bit more gentle when you're making content about nutrition, when you're

discussing exercise habits, when you're, you know, whatever you're doing, you don't really know where somebody's coming from. And to simply just say, oh, you have to work harder, you have to do better, it's not necessarily a super nuanced approach. So I think knowing that class, race, where you're from, we already know that obesity is multifactorial. People don't want to talk about it, but we know that. We do. This only highlights that that much more. It only underscores it that much more. And the last thing I kind of

want to touch on is the notion, and this is another thing that I learned from the book, of categorical self-binding. And so there are different forms of self-binding. I won't spoil what they all are, but one of them is categorical self-binding. And self-binding refers to barriers or things that we put in place to keep us from doing something. Self-binding. We are binding ourself from doing this behavior. And diets actually fall into the category of being categorical self-binding tools. And that what you're doing is you're saying, I can only eat these foods. I can only follow this plan. And decreasing access to large categories of food can help with consumption. And that's why so many of these very restrictive diets, like the keto diet,

the vegan diet, the paleo diet, etc., are indirectly effective at helping people lose weight because they are binding themselves to only being able to eat in very narrow categories, which can in the long run lead to binging and spin out and burnout and, you know, not really getting where you want to get. A lot of people would argue that restriction doesn't particularly help, but I found that it was kind of fascinating in that diets are a form of categorical self-binding, and self-binding has been used to treat addiction for a very long time. There are multiple forms of self-binding that are used to treat addiction, and I'm not an addiction specialist, so I don't even want

to unpack this. Again, I just want to encourage you guys to read this book and dive into this stuff yourself. But it's interesting to me that diets, which are a form of self-binding, are effective at managing our impulses around food. So there's a lot to unpack here with regards to food addiction. And I think it's a nuanced conversation that 30, 35 minutes just isn't going to do enough justice. But I will leave you with this. I think that food addiction, in a sense, is very much real. I don't believe that individual ingredients like sugar, salt, carbohydrates, fats, you name it, should be compared to hard drugs like cocaine, heroin, or methamphetamine. I think it's insensitive and I think it's unscientific. But I also think I've made the mistake over the years of glossing over

the very real possibility that why some people struggle so much with their weight is because it's really fucking hard to overcome some of these neurotransmitter pathways, these pain, pleasure, reward pathways that keep us going. It's hard, and it's particularly hard when our lives are stressed, when our worlds are chaotic. And so one thing this book has absolutely taught me is to be more empathetic. And I think this book is absolutely worth reading, especially if you're a coach or a trainer, not so that you can make advanced or high-level psychological assumptions or diagnostic things for your clients. Far from it. You should never touch that shit. But it's a great read because it will really prime you to be more empathetic, to understand why people are struggling, to understand why just telling people to work

harder and stop failing and stop fucking up isn't that easy because the machinery in their brain is the stuff that's kind of driving everything, the captain of the ship, if you will, is influenced by whatever a trainer might say or whatever somebody who's communicating how weight loss works might say, because these dopamine pathways are quite strong. And it takes time. It takes patience. It takes practice. It might take self-binding. It might take reflecting over the trajectory from whole life instead of what's right in front of you, right? All the things we talked about today. There's a lot of nuance in behavioral change and this book really, really helps. And so I think that if you can point your

clients in the right direction, if you are suspecting substance abuse, like I, for one, have had clients that I was suspecting were abusing alcohol. I had a client for many years who would come to sessions. This is when I was working at 24 Hour Fitness. I remember it very well. She would come to sessions at around 12 or 1 in the afternoon, clearly drunk, not tipsy, drunk, smelling of alcohol, very much unable to complete any of the complex motor stuff. Almost everything had to be seated or on the TRX so she would not fall and I remember being like, you know This is really not a good look for me and i'm concerned that you might have an alcohol problem And i'm not somebody who's inclined to you know

At this point I was 19 and this woman Who I actually still work with today. She's a phenomenal client. She's one of the best clients i've ever had We have a tremendous relationship But this woman was she's 66 now. So this woman was 60 years old. And I told her at 20, like 1920, Hey, I think you've got a drinking problem. And just hearing that made her go get help. And she's been basically sober ever since. I think she's had maybe one or two drinks. She's like, I always feel terrible after now she uses cannabis instead, which I think is a better alternative. But also you don't necessarily want to replace one substance abuse with another.

Again, I'm not qualified to make that call. But I do think if you are in a coaching relationship with a client and you're like, man, I don't think we can help you with your fitness goals because you have like a substance abuse thing going on. That's very clear. Um, it might be worth communicating to your clients respectfully. Hey, you know, I'm wondering if your consumption habits around this drug, around this substance, whether it's alcohol, it's probably more than likely going to be alcohol. I wonder if these are tendencies that could be classified as addictive. And if they are, I would encourage you to seek professional help because my ability to help you with your fitness goals is going to be very limited by the battle you have with addiction to this substance. And if in fact that substance was food, well, you better believe it might be hard to help somebody with

something like fat loss. So I want to leave you guys with this quote, because to me, this really, really stood out as just being a kind of phenomenal take home point from the book that we can all run with in our own lives. And she says, Dr. Lemke says, in more than 20 years as a psychiatrist, listening to tens of thousands of patient stories, patients who tell stories in which they are frequently the victim, seldom bearing responsibility for bad outcomes, are often unwell and remain unwell. They are too busy blaming others to get down to the business of their own recovery. By contrast, when my patients start telling stories that accurately portray their responsibility, I know they're getting better. And so this isn't

my way of saying just accept personal responsibility, rah-rah, make your bed, Jordan Peterson, blah. This is not that. I actually found that quote to be extremely inspiring because I think that every single one of us has challenges and things that we are looking to overcome in our life, whether they are professional, whether they're related to our performance, our physique, our body composition, our romance, you name it. We are all looking to be better in many different ways. And I love the notion that getting away from casting blame and starting to be honest in our portrayals of what we are responsible for, I think that can be beneficial to us in so many ways. And there's a lot in this book about honesty. Again, please pick up a copy of Dopamine Nation. Phenomenal read. Can't recommend it enough

after this. But just being honest about your situation, taking inventory, acknowledging when you need help, acknowledging when a relationship with a substance or a behavior could be neurotic, obsessive, addictive. That is the first step in, I think, changing the behavior. And again, I'm not qualified to really tell you to act on any of this. Just closing again, not a doctor, not a psychiatrist, not a dietician. But I do believe that food addiction or compulsive food tendencies are extremely common. And being empathetic and maybe perhaps understanding the stuff a little bit better is the direction

that we need to go from here. And I'm not saying that we need to be super soft, that we need to be unbelievably cushioned in how we bring these things up, because it is quickly getting out of control. And tough love can be the recipe sometimes. But I do think understanding the machinery that makes our brain work, these pleasure and pain centers, is unbelievably important for regulating your own life and finding happiness amongst the scattered, chaotic world that we live in. So I wish you the best of luck in all that you do. I thank you so much for listening to the podcast. If you have not yet left me a review, please leave me a five-star rating and written review on iTunes or Spotify.

Every review that you leave makes a massive difference. And please go to your local bookstore if possible, buy a copy of Anna Lemke's Dopamine Nation. It will be quite possibly the best book you have read this year. And if you have not read a book this year, you have 45 days left before 2022. What better resolution to have than to read a little more? I think that's something we could all do, myself included. So go pick up this book. It's phenomenal. I cannot recommend it enough. Be well. I will see you on the next episode.