Dynamic Dialogue with Danny Matranga - 222: The Mental and Emotional Side of Fat-Loss

Episode Date: September 19, 2022

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Hey, everybody, welcome in to another episode of the Dynamic Dialogue podcast. As always, I'm your host, Danny Matranga. And in this episode, we are going to be discussing fat loss, body composition change, how you might overhaul the way your physique looks, whether you're a trainer, you're a client, you're new to this whole thing, but we're specifically talking about the brain or the neurobiology and the emotional component of how it is we must manage our food intake, our nutrient availability, while simultaneously managing the fact that we are emotional, highly evolved organisms with a variety of different systems in our brain and in our body that dictate our relationship with food. What I mean by this is simple. It's very, very hard for most people to eat less and move more linearly without having any slip-ups in a way that leads to reliable, long-term body fat reduction without any mistakes, slip-ups in a way that leads to reliable long-term body fat reduction without any mistakes, slip-ups, falling on their face, needing to reverse course, make changes. And the

reason for this, in my opinion, is simple. It's because of our brain. I was talking to my friend Brandon DeCruz, who's a really good coach and a really great science communicator, somebody who contributes a lot to the fitness evidence-based community or evidence-based fitness community, however you want to word that. And he said something that just totally clicked for me the other day. He said, calories in versus calories out or eat less, move more is truthful, but it isn't useful. And that really clicked with me because early on in my coaching career, I used to tell everybody fat loss is very simple. You need to

eat less and you need to move more. You need to consume less energy. You need to expend more energy, thus creating an energy deficit or a calorie deficit. Don't overcomplicate it. But what I didn't realize was that creating an energy deficit and eating less is substantially, substantially more challenging than just hearing it and doing it. And that's because of our neurobiology. That's because of how our brains work. That's because of how food is positioned culturally and societally in a way that makes it a very easy and accessible coping tool. And so what we're going to talk about today is we're going to talk about hunger. We're going to talk about cravings. We're going to talk about the food

environment. And specifically, we're going to look at four things that have to do or four things that are related to your mind and emotions as it pertains to body fat reduction. And I'm hoping for those of you who either have the goal of actively losing body fat, who have clients who want to lose body fat, maybe you're planning on reducing body fat in the future. My goal for this podcast is for you to get a little bit of extra ammunition about the non-physics side of weight loss. We want to go deeper than energy balance, okay? You know that you need to eat less and move more, or your clients know that they need to eat less and move more, but it's a little bit more challenging than that in practice because of some of these mechanisms. So I'm really excited to talk about those today and unpack those. But before we

do, I want to take the time to read a few reviews that you guys were kind enough to leave on the podcast. So this one comes from Mommy Lars. And Mommy Lars says, Danny's podcast is absolutely my favorite health and fitness-related podcast. The information he presents is so well thought out and authentic. He does not sugarcoat anything or give false information. I always look forward to the new episodes. Thanks for that review. You know, I do my best. I try to provide a positive, authentic spin on what I believe to be practical and very easy to implement fitness information, but I'm not perfect. And while I don't ever intend to give false information, I've said things on episodes before that my opinion has changed on

over time and that I need to correct. So thank you for seeing only the positives and thank you for being a subscriber. And for those of you who are leaving these reviews, they are such a huge difference maker for me. They help the podcast grow tremendously, tremendously. And so as you listen today, if you're driving, please don't do this. But if you're listening in the house or you're taking your dog for a walk, just scroll down in the show, find where you can leave a rating or review. This is most easily done on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. And leave me a five-star rating and review. It will help me connect with more people using this medium so that I can better translate the information

I've used for a decade helping people lose weight to the masses. It's a big ask. I know you've got a lot of content that you could be consuming, but you choose to be here. And I'm hoping it's because this is valuable to you. And maybe you can help me by helping more people see that same value. This review comes from at butterfly underscore fit underscore with underscore Viv. And they say the episode on birth control and hormone cycles is so very, very informative. Good job, Danny. Thank you for that. I do try my best to incorporate some stuff specifically for the ladies. I find that much of the fitness community is still centered largely around helping men, although it is certainly expanding to include

more women. And I think we all win when everybody feels like they are included and represented. And I think we all win when everybody feels like they are included and represented. And this last review, I really like this one. This one comes from Jen.L.K. And Jen says, Danny does such a great job of giving really practical, useful advice. He covers so many topics that are so important to just living a healthy life. Love listening to this podcast. It's great information that is accessible to everyone.

And it's also super entertaining. Well, that is exactly what I'm going for. And I promise guys, I don't sugar coat or cherry pick the reviews. If there's ever a bad one in there, I'll share it. You guys are nice enough to leave almost exclusively five-star reviews. And so thank you all again for that. Please, if you haven't yet, take the time to do that. Help me grow this podcast. We're getting close to 300 reviews. And my goal is to one day hopefully get to 1,000. The podcast has done almost a half a million downloads, which is insane to me and insane that this ever happened because I didn't think it was ever possible

that a half a million people would ever want to listen to me talk about fitness. But, you know, things change. You build a little bit of an audience. You build a little bit of an audience. You build a little bit of expertise. You connect with people. And all of this is possible thanks to listeners like you. So diving in to fat loss and your brain and how it is that your brain regulates body fatness and how it is that your brain regulates appetite, it's important to understand that as a species, what sets humans apart from every other organism, including our most closest relatives, chimpanzees, is the development of our brain. The prefrontal cortex, the operating system, if you will, the kind of super computer

that drives human thinking is unlike that of any other animal. It's really, really incredible. It's what allows us to understand that eating less and moving more creates a deficit of energy at the level of the physical atom. We quite literally create a deficit in energy that is so, so granular at such a low, low level that it affects us at a cellular microscopic level and ultimately will lead to a reduction in body fat. This incredible prefrontal cortex over 200,000 years developed to be so robust that we understand the physics of how we change our shape and size. It's insane. We put rockets into space. We figured out how calculus works, which my brain didn't, but we have figured out some of the most incredible things with this prefrontal,

more recently developed part of the human brain. But that's not the part of the human brain that makes it hard to lose body fat. It's the reptilian brain or the portion of the brain that is most consistent amongst all animals, right? And most animals have a brain that includes these parts, but it doesn't have that robust operating center the way that the human brain does. But we still have a lot of those animalistic or reptilian brain components that regulate our appetite, that regulate our desire to eat. And that's my first point of the day, which is that your brain, specifically your hypothalamus, plays a huge role in eating behavior and overconsumption. Hunger comes mostly from your

brain and the signals that come in and out of your brain. Much of the appetite that you experience when you're hungry is regulated entirely by subconscious components of the brain. It's your biology and all of our biology is different. Cravings are driven by different centers in the brain that differ a lot person to person. And the systems that regulate our energy consumption are disrupted heavily, heavily by the foods in our modern food environment. So for 200,000 years as a species, we were eating mostly unprocessed, single-ingredient foods and being rewarded by our brains for eating them. Our brains were saying, hey, food is hard to come by. We're trying to survive. If you find something energy-dense like

honey or energy-dense like a fatty piece of meat from an animal that the tribe was lucky enough to kill, our brain centers would erupt with pleasure and erupt with reward hormones. So as to say, good job, do more of that because you do not know where that next meal is coming from. And you see this fairly universally amongst most animals. If you have a dog, you'll know exactly what I'm talking about. Dogs tend to have a very high food reward, and wolves have an even higher food reward because they have evolved substantially less food security

in a way that domesticated dogs have more food security due to several generations of being raised with, not captivity, but human collaboration or symbiosis, symbiotic relationship with human beings. But I would ask you this, would you rather be trapped in a cage with a hungry wolf or a hungry dog? And the reason I say that is because if you look at the evolved elements of the brains of wolf and dog, they're not dissimilar at that most foundational level. But it would appear that the hard wiring and food drive for a wild animal or a wild dog

like a wolf would be higher. And all of us as human beings have that wiring in place still. And it's our modern food environment that makes it hard for that conscious, more recently evolved brain region that will tell you, do not eat that food. It's hyperpalatable. It's high in calories. Do not eat that food. It goes against your diet.

Do not eat that food. It's not consistent with the goals that you verbalized recently about wanting to be leaner. You can have these high-functioning operative elements of your brain telling you not to do something, but the pull towards making the quote-unquote wrong decision or the tasty decision is very, very deeply ingrained in our neurobiology. And it has a lot to do with the fact that for about 200,000 years as a species, food was hard to come by. And after the industrial and agricultural revolutions, we see a wild uptick in food availability and food processing. And these modern foods that are quite high in calories and quite easy to overconsume are particularly dubious, in my opinion, because they have the ability to hyper-stimulate these reward pathways while bringing with them little to no satiety.

A lot of the single-ingredient foods that we ate ancestrally, and I hate to even say this because it plays into this bullshit naturalistic fallacy that just because we did it 100,000 years ago means it's better. That's not what I'm saying. But if you look at the foods we've eaten over the course of our time on this planet as a species that are single ingredient foods, such as fruits, vegetables, seeds, nuts, meat, those foods tend to be more filling on a gram per gram basis and more satiating on a gram per gram basis than hyperpalatable, highly processed foods that are in some ways designed by food manufacturers to trick these components of our deepest neurological wiring to want to consume more so that we buy

more of their products. Not because they want us to be fat and die. I understand that many people are skeptical of the capitalistic intentions of food companies and pharmaceutical companies. But remember that killing the people consuming the food is not ideal, and I'm not going to pin that on anybody. But certainly designing hyperpalatable, heavily engineered foods to be easily consumed by humans and override those centers of our brain that have watched the documentaries on Netflix about why these foods are bad, that have heard the personal trainers describe to us why we should eat less of these foods and more of these foods, these foods that are designed to bypass these systems exist everywhere in our modern environment. And so it's very important if you want to lose body fat, it's very important that you are aware that your brain is in a state of constant stimulation from food, from food environments, from food smells, from food packaging that makes it substantially more challenging than just knowing you need to eat less and move more.

So the first thing you have to know when it comes to body fat reduction, and your brain is that your brain is working all day long to kind of bypass these inputs to consume. And it's a battle between your more recently evolved brain, brain, brain, neural regions, and your more reptilian ancient brain reason region. So there's a constant back and forth tennis match there. And if you struggle with managing your weight, if you struggle with your appetite, just like there's some dogs that have extremely high food drive, and there's some dogs that have extremely low food drive, one of the reasons you might struggle is because you have reward pathways in your brain that are particularly stimulated by food. These are some of the genetic variations that exist person to person that make

weight management more challenging. When you hear people blame their weight on genetics, they're maybe doing so in a misinformed way, but genetics do matter, but maybe not in the way that you think. Genetics might not play a huge difference in maybe the weight that you're born at or the childhood weight that you're at in the same way that what your parents feed you will, but genetics might pass down reward pathways that are more inclined to enjoy food and perhaps reward pathways that are less inclined to enjoy movement. Things like lifestyle and where you're born and your socioeconomic status

obviously play a huge, huge role in this. But one of the genetic differentials person to person is what do these reward centers look like? And did we maybe get reward centers from our parents that made food that much more rewarding and made it more rewarding in high dosages? So knowing that your brain is unique and knowing that your brain plays a role here is really important in how you go about managing your expectations, setting your food environment, what you bring in the house, what you don't bring in the house, and the that you have because a lack of willpower as it's often interpreted

can many times just be a reward pathway that's really robust and really strong and framing it as a wiring uniquity or something unique in how you're wired rather than some deficit in your ability might make it easier to in the long run overcome, overcome it. If you say, hey, I seem to have a really high level of food reward and I need to be careful with that. I need to be mindful of that and I need to set myself up for success with that versus, oh, my genetics are just always going to make me fat. Oh, my genetics are terrible. Oh, I have crappy willpower. Sure, all of these things could be true in some capacity. What's going on, guys? Coach Danny here, taking a break from the episode to tell you about my coaching company, Core Coaching Method, and more specifically, our

one-on-one, fully tailored online coaching program. My online coaching program has kind of been the flagship for Core Coaching Method for a while. Of course, we do have PDF programming and we have app-based programming. But if you want a truly tailored one-on-one experience with a coach like myself or a member of my coaching team, someone who is certified, somebody who has multiple years of experience working with clients in person online, somebody who is licensed to provide a macro nutrition plan, somebody who is actually good at communicating with clients because they've done it for years, whether that be via phone call, email, text, right? This one-on-one coaching program is really designed to give you all the support you need. With custom training designed for you,

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relatively small so that we can make sure you get the best support possible. But you can apply today by going over to corecoachingmethod.com, selecting the online coaching option, and if we have spots available, we'll definitely reach out to you to see if you're a good candidate. And if we have spots available, we'll definitely reach out to you to see if you're a good candidate. And if we don't put you on a waiting list, but we'll be sure to give you the best shot at the best coaching in the industry. So head over to corecoachingmethod.com and apply for one-on-one coaching with me and my team today. Taking a little break from the action here to tell you about our amazing partner, Seed. Seed makes the best

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help with things like atopic dermatitis. So there you go. Not to mention the plethora of strains for the health of your gut. If you're looking to take your gut health to the next level, you can go to seed.com. Subscribe for their daily symbiotic. You can take one or two a day. You can share it with a partner sometimes. You can do that. But it goes a long way. It's the best probiotic supplement on the market. I absolutely love it. And you can use the code DANNY15 to save. Back to the show. What's going on, guys? Taking a break from the show to tell you about our amazing partners over at Elemental Labs. Elemental Labs makes a flagship electrolyte product known as LMNT Recharge. Recharge is

amazing. It's got bioavailable forms of sodium, potassium, and magnesium, which can really help you train, contract your tissues, and get hydrated. I love having it in the morning before my fasted training because oftentimes I wake up without an appetite, but I want something in my stomach so I'm not flat, I can get a pump, and I can get hydrated in the gym and still perform my best. I also love to sip on my recharge when I'm on the golf course or especially when I'm in the sauna. The more you sweat, the more likely it is that you will need to replace valuable electrolytes like sodium, magnesium, and potassium. And while if you have high blood pressure, you might not necessarily be a candidate for

electrolyte supplementation, many athletes and active adults need more salt and more electrolytes in their diet than they currently get, especially if they sweat, live in warm climates or humid climates. I found a bunch of different ways to use my recharge, but like I said, I love using it before and during my training, whenever I do something active outside or my sweat rate increases, or when I'm in the sauna. And you can actually try it completely for free. All their best flavors that are totally free of sugar have only 10 calories. They're sweetened naturally and they come in amazing flavors like raspberry salt, orange salt, citrus salt. My favorite is the

mango habanero or mango chili and the leban habanero, which I take in the sauna. There's flavors for everybody and you can check them out by going to drink element tea slash coach Danny. They'll send you every single flavor in an individual packet. You can try them out completely free. Just pay shipping drink DrinkLMNT.com slash Coach Danny. Get your sample pack today completely for free. Just pay shipping. Back to the show. But knowing that our brains are different and highly involved in the food decision-making process is something that does not get talked about enough. Too many trainers say you need to eat less and move more, and they don't give much context beyond that.

Obviously, it's great to eat a lot of satiating single-ingredient foods like proteins and vegetables, just like we ate over many, many years, because most people tend to be universally satiated by these foods. There's not a lot of people that can just eat unlimited amounts of protein and unlimited amounts of vegetables. foods. There's not a lot of people that can just eat unlimited amounts of protein and unlimited amounts of vegetables. Those seem to be universally appealing when it comes to ticking the satiety boxes in the brain, meaning telling the brain you're full. Those seem to do that universally. Hyper-palatable foods, on the other hand, for some folks might cause those same regions to crave more and more reward, and for other people, they might shut off more quickly. I talked to Dr. Spencer Nadolsky recently about this, and he discussed his daughter

and one of his daughter's friends, both of whom are, I'm guessing, to be quite young, and one of them eating a half a donut and being very much full, satiated, and satisfied, and the other child eating a full donut and wanting more. It's the same amount of energy consumed, but one child had a much more substantial response to that reward, and they reached a point of getting enough, whereas the other child did not. And for all intents and purposes, we might assume that this is because the other child has slightly different reward mechanisms baked into their brain. And so that's something to be aware of, to pay attention to. A quote from Dr. Stephan Guillenet, who's probably the world's premier researcher when it comes to the neurobiology

of food decision-making, hunger, satiety, and of course obesity, is our brain's reward systems are being pushed too hard, too often by extremely seductive foods. And so oftentimes people quit because they believe they don't have the willpower required to be successful. And many times you just don't have the ability to bypass these reward systems that are triggered by the seductive food environment. And so changing your food around in the home, having less of the stuff you're likely to overconsume, more of the stuff that fills you up, not driving by the fast food restaurant you always want to stop at, not going through the aisle with the chips in it at the store, small habit-based decisions that position you better

because you know that it's in large part due to food reward mechanisms in the brain and not some intrinsic lack of willpower is a lot more empowering, in my opinion, than what a lot of people do, which is write themselves off as failures. Okay, so the number two thing, we're going to expand upon this

and how your brain essentially is playing a big role here and you need to learn how to manage it. And this has a lot to do with environment design. So the number one tip for weight loss as it pertains to understanding your brain and the non-caloric components of weight loss is obviously, hey, we've got these regions in the brain, the hypothalamus that can regulate weight, that plays a big role in appetite. And then we have these reward pathways. And for many people, those reward pathways are substantially more triggered by food. Some people, it's drugs. Some people, it's certain drugs. Some people who

have parents who have a proclivity to abuse and misuse certain drugs have the same proclivity themselves. And so it's not unreasonable to think that perhaps these proclivities might exist for food and these variations exist for food. So knowing that is huge. And I hinted at the most, or I should say second most important thing to understand when it comes to your brain and losing body fat, and that is actually your environment. And so your environment is really, really important for a multitude of different reasons. If you live in a community where you don't have access to a lot of minimally processed single ingredient foods, If you don't have an income that affords you the ability to buy a lot of food that might be minimally processed and single ingredient,

if you live in a household where somebody else does the purchasing of the food or the preparation of the food, so this is many minors, this can sometimes be many caretakers. This can often be a situation with roommates, right? These are all things that can influence the decisions you make about food. And so our environment, our socioeconomic status, our culture plays a really big role in how we gain or lose body fat or how we change our body composition. So when you hear a trainer say, eat less, move more, you need to maintain that, okay, yes, that is true. The physics of that are true, but how do we blend that and how do we work into this, the brain, And how do we work into this, the brain, my proclivity for food, my socioeconomic status,

how much do I make, how much can I afford to purchase, can I get the stuff that's the best, do I need to make concessions, do I need to find a nice middle ground? We need to take into account the food, the home environment. Do you have the right setup here? Are you living with roommates who are running a donut baking operation in the kitchen? Do you have little kids running around who you have to cook for? So understanding your situation is huge. And a big mistake people make is thinking that they need to do what other people do. They need to do the best thing they see on the internet. They need to do the routine that the person with the best physique

has. And a lot of times this is going to totally set you up for failure. When instead what you need to do is you need to really take into account your environment. The same way you take into account your proclivity for food or your reward mechanisms with regards to food. You need to say, I know I need to eat more protein. I know I need to eat more protein. I know I need to go on more walks and be more active. What does that look like for me? Well, if you're a multimillionaire living in Calabasas, maybe that looks like every day you wake up and you walk to the juice shop and have a greens juice and a protein shake, and then you go to your personal training appointment, and then you walk to the beach to lower your stress, and you have the perfect, easiest pathway. But for somebody

who's maybe living in an income situation that doesn't afford them the ability to do some of that stuff, or maybe they're really busy and working multiple jobs and they don't have the time to make those, they can't carve out as much time for movement, or they maybe can't afford a personal trainer. You need to do the best you can with your situation. And so being very, very honest about your environment and optimizing for your environment is huge, huge, huge, huge when it comes to weight loss. Obviously, the neurobiology is unique to each person. You can't really change that.

You can't necessarily optimize for that. You can be kind about that. You can't necessarily optimize for that. You can be kind about it. You can avoid certain things. You can set yourself up for success. But with your environment, we tend to have a little bit more control. So no matter where you're at, body fat reduction is important to you. You want to optimize for protein consumption. Does it have to be grass-fed, rib-eye, perfect sirloin, Atlantic wild-caught salmon from the jaws of a grizzly? No, it doesn't. Does it have to be homemade, air-fried sweet potato fries made with avocado oil and pink Himalayan salt? No, it doesn't. It could be chicken tenders and French fries. Is that ideal? Hell no. Is that hyper palatable? Yes. But does it have protein? Yes.

Does it contain potatoes and starches that can fuel you? Yes. I would never say that's optimal, right? But we are going to be in situations each and every day where we need to make the most of our environment. So regardless of your socioeconomic status, regardless of your accessibility to certain foods or certain health-promoting behaviors like working out, going on walks, getting lots of sleep, there are some things that you can do. The most important of which is to

focus on managing your energy intake or calorie intake, to focus on eating a variety of plants and a good amount of protein. All of those things will help you with body fat reduction. So in your environment, you want to have less hyper-processed foods. You want to have more single ingredient satiating foods. You want to have less chips, sodas, and candies. You want to have more yogurts, fruits, and vegetables, right? sodas and candies. You want to have more yogurts, fruits, and vegetables, right? This is not rocket science, but you can tell that that goes a lot further than just saying, eat less, move more. I'm saying, yes, eat less calories, move more frequently, but I'm also saying address your neurobiology, pay attention to your cravings, know what to watch out for. Surround yourself with foods that suit your goals.

Like I said, it doesn't have to be a grass-fed ribeye steak. It can be ground beef or ground chicken or ground turkey. What you can afford that has protein. It doesn't have to be seasonal dragon fruit picked from the highest tree of the peak of the most active volcano in Hawaii. picked from the highest tree of the peak of the most active volcano in Hawaii. It can be canned peaches. It's fruit. It's better than not having fruit. Vegetables, same thing. It could be local, organic, non-GMO, or it can be totally non-organic, totally GMO. I'm not saying that you should optimize and pick these foods more often than you pick the other stuff, but I'm saying just because you don't have a perfect situation doesn't mean you can't do something about it. There's ways to succeed in every environment,

in every food environment, in every work environment, in every housing situation. It's just going to be harder and you might need to work with it depending on your status. But if you're aware of the neurobiology and you're aware of the environmental impact, you can set yourself up a lot more for success than if you just say, every time I fail, I just don't want this bad enough. I just don't want this, or I'm not cut out for this, or I don't have the willpower for this. No, you need to work with where you're at. You need to be patient and you need to do the best you can with what you have. And the third piece of this, third component of, let's call it non-caloric body composition change.

Talked about the brain, specifically the neurobiology and the reward pathways. We talked about our environment, socioeconomics, accessibility, but this one's really big and it's emotions. And this obviously could fall into the brain category big time because most of the emotions we feel are dictated almost exclusively by the brain. I mean, even the pituitary glands, which release adrenaline and noradrenaline, pituitary glands, which release adrenaline and noradrenaline, those hormones act on the brain. And so emotions are unique. Emotions are multifactorial, they're deep-seated, and they're highly influential. And food has a really unique role in augmenting our emotions. When we are stressed, many people will turn to food because it's an available coping tool.

It can actually reduce cortisol by raising insulin. Now, I don't know if there's a direct mechanism that drives consumption of insulinemic foods when people are stressed, but I know a lot of people that crave food when they're stressed. When you're depressed, you may want to eat. You may not want to eat at all. If I ever deal with depression or anxiety, I have a very hard time eating because those two unique emotions, which are in many ways influenced by our neurobiology, right? Those emotions, when I feel those emotions, they are such a powerful regulator of my appetite. If I'm depressed for a week, I will lose a substantial amount of weight. If I'm anxious for a week, I will lose a substantial amount of weight. If I'm anxious for a week, I will lose a substantial amount of weight. Somebody with a

different neurobiological profile and a different emotional wiring might do the opposite. When they're depressed, they might overeat. When they're anxious, they might overeat. Food is really unique in how it interfaces with our emotions. And every single client I've ever worked with had an emotional relationship with food that had an influence on the way they looked, moved, and felt. For many of the general population clients that I work with, it shouldn't surprise you to hear that most of them had an emotional relationship with food that led them to eating more. Meaning when they were dysregulated emotionally, they weren't at peace and they weren't happy, they would turn to food

because it's a highly available coping tool. The same way a lot of people turn to drugs or turn to alcohol, turn to pornography, turn to cannabis when they're dealing with emotions that they don't know how to regulate. And so that's why over the course of many years in coaching and many years going to therapy myself, I realized that I'm in a position where I don't have a huge reward pathway baked into my brain. I don't have a hard time saying no to certain foods and practicing discipline. And I have a lot of control over my environment, but my emotions seem to have a really big influence on how I eat and what I eat. And I see it every day with my clients. And so something that I started to recommend more to clients that would really help, and it will probably be very helpful

to many of you who are trying to lose weight, or maybe you're a coach who works with clients, and that is encouraging people who have a emotional relationship with food or a relationship with food that is very much influenced by their emotions to seek professional counseling so as to learn how to better cope with those emotions without turning to food. If you have an ambitious goal and you want to change the way you look, whether it's building muscle or gaining, you know, losing body fat, gaining muscle, I should say, whether it's moving more, feeling better, being able to tackle the gym without gym anxiety, being able to get through the depression so that you can get moving and break that cycle. A lot of times professional

help, working on your emotional state, doing things for your mental health, not just making nutritional changes, not just making changes to your exercise habits, can really help in the long run. In fact, one of the biggest reasons people fall off their diet is because of a huge emotional fluctuation. I've had a lot of clients who were doing really, really well and something unfortunate happened in their life and they needed to take a huge break or they had a huge backslide or they had a huge regression because when our emotions are dysregulated or disrupted heavily, it changes our relationship with food and it can influence us to seek pleasure and seek reward in other areas. And we might turn to consumption habits that are far from ideal when it comes to body fat reduction. So knowing how important

calories in, calories out is, is helpful. But it's not as helpful as you might think if you don't understand the more nuanced components of how our brain, environment, and emotions dictate food decision. And so just a discussion for you guys today to really kind of unpack that, help you have a little bit of an opportunity to think more deeply about this. Hopefully encourage you to be kinder to yourself when it comes to making decisions around food or when you do slip up to maybe examine, hey, did I slip up because my environment was set up poorly? Did I slip up because I was really, really craving something pleasurable and my cravings were going nuts? And I know I have these cravings. I know I have a proclivity for food cravings. So I need to be

doing a more mindful job of eating more protein and more filling vegetables throughout the day. Maybe you've slipped up before and fallen back on your diet or fitness routine because of an emotional backslide or something that popped up and you felt like you failed. These kinds of discussions can be really helpful. They can help you get back on track. They can help you feel better. They can help you feel more normal because in 10 years of helping people lose weight and working with them to build better physiques, physiques that feel better and move better, I've yet to meet a person who didn't have a unique brain, a unique environment, and a unique emotional situation. And so know that yours is unique and that you shouldn't have expectations

that aren't consistent with your situation. But also know that that's not an excuse. You can always do the best you can with what you have. That's one thing that we all have access to. And that's the ability to try our best, even if you're busy, even if you have other responsibilities. What might be an A plus for some person might be a D plus for somebody else. But depending on where you're at, you do the best you can. And that's what I want to encourage you guys to do is to acknowledge, hey, listen, maybe you've struggled with this or hey, maybe you know somebody who's struggling with this or maybe you want to help somebody better manage their weight. Don't just come at them with the eat less, move more.

You probably understand the physics of fat loss. You know you have to create an energy deficit. You know it's good to exercise, lift weights, do cardio. You know it's good to eat more protein, eat more vegetables, eat less processed food. But now you know how those things can influence your brain. They can be influenced by your environment and they can be modulated by your emotions. So hopefully you can take this with you. Continue to do a better job of treating yourself fairly throughout the dieting process, the weight loss process, the body composition process, the habit formation process. If you're a coach, hopefully you can be more empathetic to your clients. These things can be really helpful, but only if we start to talk about them. So with that, I want to thank you all for listening. I want to encourage you to share

this, to leave me a five-star rating and review. If you know somebody who's struggling with their weight loss despite trying a bunch of different stuff, share this with them. If you know somebody who thinks they're a lost cause or they just can't do it, or they're not genetically ever going to have a shot at this, share this with them. Nobody deserves to feel trapped. We all deserve to have solutions. So thanks so much for tuning in and I'll catch you on the next one.