Good Life Project - The ARC of Happiness. You Are WHEN You Eat.

Episode Date: August 31, 2017

Good Life Riff: We've talked about happiness before, and it's relationships to a good life. And, we've done a pretty fierce deep-dive into the surprising relationship between money and happiness in a past episode. But, there's something else we've never shared. A little called the ARC of Happiness. Those three letters, A - R - C, are an acronym for three words that will dramatically enhance the happiness and fulfillment you experience in life. What are they? Listen and find out.Good Life Science: And, in our Good Life Science segment, we're diving into a fascinating bit of research about how it's not just what you eat that controls whether you lose weight, and how much you lose, but also the time of day. The results of this study were, well, how do we put this, rather jaw-dropping. We explore the details in today's Good Life Science Update. And, as always, for those want to go to the source, here's a link to the full study.Rockstar Sponsors: Wondering what's for dinner? Blue Apron is the #1 fresh ingredient and recipe delivery service in the country, whose mission is to make incredible home cooking accessible to everyone. Check out this week’s Blue Apron menu and get your first THREE meals FREE—WITH FREE SHIPPING—by going to blueapron.com/goodlife.Are you hiring? Do you know where to post your job to find the best candidates? Unlike other job sites, ZipRecruiter doesn’t depend on candidates finding you; it finds them. And right now, my listeners can post jobs on ZipRecruiter for FREE, That’s right. FREE! Just go to ZipRecruiter.com/good.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hey there, it's Jonathan with this week's Good Life Project update, where we dive into a riff on a particular idea and topic and a bit of good life science, good life science update coming after the break. And probably in the not too distant future, we'll be experimenting with a few other segments as well. What are we talking about today? Today, we're going to be diving into something called the ARC of happiness. And ARC, A-R-C, is actually an acronym for three things that you're going to want to know about. We are also talking about some really fascinating research around time of day, what you eat, and weight loss.

Stuff that actually, had you asked me five or 10 years ago, I would have kind of said, nah, that's all bunk. But it's really interesting. There is a very major tie-in that we're going to dive into. On to our show. I am Jonathan Fields, and this is Good Life Project. The Apple Watch Series 10 is here. It has the biggest display ever.

It's also the thinnest Apple Watch ever, making it even more comfortable on your wrist, whether you're running, swimming, or sleeping. And it's the fastest-charging Apple Watch, getting you 8 hours of charge in just 15 minutes. The Apple Watch Series 10. Available for the first time in glossy jet black aluminum. Compared to previous generations, iPhone XS or later required. Charge time and actual results will vary. So as I sit here talking with you today, I'm actually coming off of the better part of four days of what we call a substance-free

love bomb contact high, also known as Camp GLP. Some 420 stunning humans with giant hearts and open souls gathered about an hour and a half north of New York. And we hung out, we learned, we played, we grew, we explored, we revealed parts of ourselves that nobody else do before. And it was kind of magical. This is the largest that we've done before. And the first time we've actually ever sold it out months in advance. And we also, we did some interesting things. We put a huge amount of energy into really designing the experience, engineering the experience from the smallest social interactions to some large-scale collaborative creative projects. And as I kind of settle in, recording this a few days later and reflecting on this really powerful experience, so many people have shared how it has moved them, changed them. And as people come back year after year, we see these profound changes in their lives and a sense of sort of sustained joy. I've thought for a while, you know, what is happiness? And you know, I've shared about that, I've written on it. We aired a pretty extensive in-depth update earlier this year about the truth

about money and happiness. And you guys can check that out if you want a real deep dive into the relationship between money and happiness. And I've been thinking about the idea of happiness and contentment, you know, fulfillment. What does it mean to experience a really a lasting, deep sense of satisfaction and joy in the life we live? And when I think about it, my experience has been that there is what I call the arc of happiness, A-R-C of happiness. And those three letters, A-R-C, are actually an acronym. They're shorthand for something. And I thought, you know, as I kind of reflect on this deeply moving experience, and I've seen so many people benefit from it. This arc of happiness kept coming into my mind. So I thought I would share it with you because I'd never actually

spoken about it before. It's something that has just been a bit of an evolving guidepost for the way that I live my life. And it's really integrating three things into any particular experience. And the arc, the A-R-C, those letters represent these three different words. The A represents the word anticipate. Anticipate. And what's kind of interesting is that we live in a culture now where everything is instant. Everything is now. Our expectations are getting set for instant. If I buy something, even if it's online, even if it has to be delivered, it should be at my doorstep, preferably by the end of the day.

If not, then tomorrow at the latest. The idea of waiting for something is bizarre. If I invest in something, it should manifest tomorrow. If I get a new job, then the next level, my progress, my growth in it, my move up the quote ladder, well, that should happen pretty quickly. I should advance in my career. If I start on a Monday, then by the following Monday, I should have an offer for my next position. And we have this mad expectation of now for everything.

And it's actually being satisfied in certain parts of our lives, especially on the consumption part of things, in that we're being trained to expect rewards immediately. And with technology, we pretty much always get rewards really, really fast. But here's the thing. There is a deep joy, a deep happiness that exists only in the window between when you make a decision to buy, to invest in, or participate in something, and the moment that you actually receive or participate in that something. So a great example, if you, well, let's kind of reflect on what I was just talking about. So we do Camp GLP once a year.

This is not an ad for it, by the way. It just ended and it's going to be a whole year until it happens again. So what happens if you sign up? So if you are going to register to grab your spot between the time that you register for an event like Camp GLP or a trip if you're going on a trip or a conference that you really, really want to attend or maybe it's a concert your favorite person is coming around. Between the moment that you register, that you commit to participating in this experience. And the moment the experience actually happens, there will be this, what starts as kind of like a low-lying, a low-level sense of anticipation.

And then as you get closer and closer to the event, that anticipation starts to become realer and realer and starts to build and build and build. And here's the cool thing. What we know now in the research is that anticipation actually can give us equal, if not even greater sense of joy and happiness as the event or item itself. Anticipation lights up the same parts of our brain. And it is as joyful, sometimes more joyful than the actual experience or event or product or service. So what we're doing when we buy something or invest in something or sign up for something, and we don't do it until the very last minute, or we do it and then we choose the option that has us be able to get it as close to instantly as possible. As we're eliminating the window for anticipation. And we're killing the ability to extend the amount of time that we get to just play in that space of of joyful anticipation and wake up and kind of close our eyes and visualize how it's going to feel and taste and smell and move and fill us up.

And when we do that, then when we close that window and we shorten it, we lose a huge part of what gives us joy. And that is the anticipation phase after we've made a commitment, but before it actually happens. So the A in the arc of happiness is anticipate. So think about if there's something you want to do or buy or invest in or a place you want to go, instead of waiting until the very last minute, especially if you kind of know you're going to do it anyway, do it now. Do it as soon as you can because then you create the greatest window

of anticipatory experience, which is also experiences joy and happiness along the way. So you effectively increase the value of that thing by allowing yourself to be in that space where you anticipate it. What about the R in the arc of happiness? The R stands for relish, stands for relish. So when you actually participate in experience, we'll use camp again, right? Or use a concert, you know, maybe you're going to a favorite musician or band. I happen to be a big fan of U2 and Bruce Springsteen and was super fortunate to have seen both in concert in the last year. And, you know, when you actually just show up,

you let go of expectations, you shut down your technology, and you commit to being completely and utterly present in the moment. You give yourself the gift of relishing. Another word for that could be savoring, relishing or savoring, right? And when you do this, everything gets better. Because instead of sitting there and distracting yourself by, oh, I wonder what else is going on outside of this moment, and mixing in FOMO, fear of missing out, and mixing in distraction, and missing in all these things that would in some way diminish the deep DNA level, cellular level of joy that comes from being completely and utterly present in the momish, it kills your ability to relish while you're there.

And relishing is this beautiful part of happiness when we allow it to happen. So the first two letters, A and R, anticipate and relish. What about that letter C? What about the C? Well, the C stands for contemplate. So we anticipate, you know, if we commit to something, then we have this window between when we actually commit and when it happens to anticipate. And that cultivates joy.

When we are present during the moment or the experience or using the product or service or event, then we give ourselves the ability to relish it, to savor it and really drink in the joy and the happiness comes with it. And then once it's over, you know, most of us will walk away and never think about it again. But if on the back end of the experience, you also set aside a moment or a bit of time, a window of time to contemplate and just think about, wow, what just happened? What just happened with me? What just happened to me? What just happened for me? What just happened around me? How did I feel when I was in it? Let me close my eyes and really bring myself back there. How did it move me? What is it leaving me thinking about? How did it change me in some meaningful way? What can I discover or learn about myself having now participated in it? And how can that inform my life moving forward? It's the contemplation or the contemplative phase.

So these are the three different phases, right? Anticipation, relishing, and contemplation, the arc, the ARC of happiness. And when you allow yourselves, when you really acknowledge the importance of all three of those windows, and you allow yourself to participate fully in them, something amazing happens. The depth and the duration of the happiness and the joy that you experience in your life expands dramatically. And when that happens, your ability to live a good life expands along with it. So that's what I'm thinking about.

That's what I'm thinking about on this day, the arc of happiness. Play with it a little bit in your life. And maybe my invitation this week is, think about something that you want to do, or buy, or participate in, or commit to. And maybe commit a little bit earlier so that you can give yourself the gift of anticipation. And then when you're there, really allow yourself to turn off all the things outside and relish

the moment. And then afterwards, be intentional and contemplate. Ask all those questions. You'll find yourself experiencing it in a really different way. Hope you found that useful. As always, fun sharing these ideas with you. When we come back after the break, I'm super excited to share with you some really fascinating research on how the time of day that we eat affects our health, our well-being, and has a really dramatic effect on weight management and weight loss, which is kind of surprising. Back with you after the break.

The Apple Watch Series 10 is here. It has the biggest display ever. It's also the thinnest Apple Watch ever, making it even more comfortable on your wrist, whether you're running, swimming, or sleeping. And it's the fastest-charging Apple Watch, getting you eight hours of charge in just 15 minutes. The Apple Watch Series X, available for the first time in glossy jet black aluminum. Compared to previous generations, iPhone XS or later required, charge time and actual results will vary.

Mayday, mayday. We've been compromised. The pilot's a hitman. I knew you were going to be fun. On January 24th. Tell me how to fly this thing. Mark Wahlberg. You know what's the difference between me and you? You're going to die.

Don't shoot him, we need him. Y'all need a pilot? Flight risk. And welcome, welcome, welcome back for our Good Life Science update of the day. So today I want to dive into an interesting study. The actual title of the study is High Caloric Intake at Breakfast vs. Dinner Differentially Influences Weight Loss of Overweight and Obese Women. experientially influences weight loss of overweight and obese women. The study was led by Daniela Jakubowicz, Mayan Barnea, Julia Weinstein, and Oren Froy. We will, as always, include a link to the full study report for those who are similar science geeks like me and would love to dive into the actual detail of the research.

But my job today is to just kind of like break it down and share the big idea from it. So this was a really fascinating study because what it explored was something that I've heard over a period of decades about the world of weight management, weight loss. And as you, I'm sure, know, a million people have tried a million different things and gotten radically different results. There is no one size fits all approach to nutrition or diet. We all come at different points in our lives with different backgrounds, different genetic and epigenetic states, different lifestyles, different abilities and limitations and constraints. So I'm not one who's ever embraced the there's one diet or one nutritional approach that fits all approach to anything, whether it be weight loss, fueling your

body for health, for disease prevention, for reducing inflammation. There are certainly some sort of overall things that tend to be pretty good for all people, but I don't believe in a one-size-fits-all on any kind of granular specific level. Some of the things that I've heard kicked around in the world of weight management over a period of years, And I've been in and out of this industry in different ways for, I guess, a better part of 20 years now. In a very past life, I held a wide variety of fitness and health certifications. I owned a high-end private training facility where I employed many different trainers, athletic trainers, nutritionists, and worked with a lot of different people on different health outcomes. And what I can tell you is in the industry, hands down the single biggest desired

goal when somebody comes into either a nutritionist or a health club or any kind of fitness coach, and we're talking sort of like general population, not elite athletes, it's weight loss. Something like 85, 90% of people who join gyms, their primary goal is weight loss. And there's a lot of mythology, a lot of terrible information around this. And there are battles that go on between the major medical sort of trade organizations,

the major health industry, fitness industry, nutrition organizations, and researchers. And now sort of an emerging field of citizen researchers who are crowdsourcing, who are committing to different protocols and to the tune of millions of ends of one or like experiments of one person sharing results that are really raising eyebrows. This particular study, though, was done in the context of rigorously controlled academic environment. And it asked a question that I have thought about for a long time and never gotten a clear answer on. And that question is this.

What if you took a group of people and who all were categorized as obese or overweight and had that manifesting in some sort of very real measurable negative effects in their body. And you were able to control an experiment where some of them, where they all ate about the same total number of calories, the same macronutrients and you know, and things like that. But the only variable that was changed was the time of day that the food was eaten. And this is exactly what this study has done. The study was done on women who were classified as either clinically overweight or obese, and who had metabolic syndrome. And they were split into two groups. There was the before breakfast group. And in that group, they would have 700 calories for breakfast,

500 for lunch, and 200 for dinner, meaning most of the calories they ate were front loaded. They happened in the very early part of the day. And the other half of the group, the dinner group, was given only 200 calories for breakfast, 500 calories for lunch, and 700 calories for dinner. So it's the exact opposite. The vast majority of the calories happened later in the day with the biggest number of calories at dinner. So total calories for both groups was about 1,400 calories a day. The only difference was that one group had the majority of the calories very early in the day and the other group had the majority of the calories very late in the day. And this experiment then ran for 12 weeks or about three months. And the only question was, would simply shifting the time of day that the bulk of the calories were eaten make any difference in the weight loss and also in various markers for health, wellness, sort of hunger, satiety. And would this one thing make a difference? Literally, same food, same total calories.

The only difference is the time of day that the food was eaten. The results were kind of mind-blowing. So the short of it is this. From a weight loss standpoint, the group that was the before, the earlier group, the group that ate most of the calories in the early part of the day, lost two and a half times the amount of weight that the group who ate later in the day lost. So both lost weight because it was a reduced calorie program. It's 1400 calories, which is pretty reduced, especially if you're overweight or obese, that is a pretty low level of calories. But the group that ate most of the calories earlier in the day lost two and a half times the amount of weight as the group compared to the group that ate most of the food later in the day. Reading from the actual study report, I'm quoting,

our results demonstrate that high calorie breakfast shows increased compliance and is more beneficial than a high calorie dinner for weight loss, insulin sensitivity, and hunger suppression. Our study indicates that avoidance of large meals in the evening may be particularly beneficial in improving glucose and lipid profiles and may lead to reduced risk of type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular diseases. End quote. That is huge. I mean, that is a tremendous finding because what it tells us is that we have certain natural rhythms

and natural hormonal cycles that happen in our body that lead us to actually... The Apple Watch Series 10 is here. It has the biggest display ever. It's also the thinnest Apple Watch Series 10 is here. It has the biggest display ever. It's also the thinnest Apple Watch ever, making it even more comfortable on your wrist, whether you're running, swimming, or sleeping. And it's the fastest-charging Apple Watch,

getting you eight hours of charge in just 15 minutes. The Apple Watch Series 10. Available for the first time in glossy jet black aluminum. Compared to previous generations, iPhone XS or later required. Charge time and actual results will vary. Mayday, mayday. We've been compromised. The pilot's

a hitman. I knew you were gonna be fun. January 24th. Tell me how to fly this thing. Mark Wahlberg. You know what the difference between me and you is? You're gonna die. Don't shoot him, we need him. Y'all need a pilot. Flight risk. Take in the same number of calories and have different things happen in our body based largely on the time of day. So a lot more of those calories are converted into weight in our body when it happens later in the day.

And apparently also when you eat earlier in the day, there's much higher compliance and hunger suppression. And that all makes sense. So I thought it was really fascinating, especially in the context of something that's gotten really popular these days, and that is intermittent fasting. There's been this like really big craze around intermittent fasting over the last couple of years, especially in some of the communities like paleo community. And what intermittent fasting generally is, it means that instead of just straight up fasting for, you know, like a whole 24 hour window, it generally means that you reduce your calories

or you don't eat for a certain part of that 24-hour window. One of the common approaches is to, let's say, eat all of your calories within an eight-hour window during the day, and then to not eat, no snacking, no nothing for the remaining 16 hours. And we know that that intermittent fasting can have all sorts of benefits in terms of reducing inflammation and health markers and epigenetics and potentially disease prevention and cancer prevention also. But what this is really interesting is the relationship between intermittent fasting and time of day is fascinating because what a lot of people who are doing intermittent fasting are doing is they're having lunch and dinner within

an eight-hour window, and then they're intermittent fasting from dinner through lunch the next day. So meaning they're actually, they're using their fast window to eat all of the calories in the later part of the day. That is directly against what this is saying. Because what this is saying is, if you want the benefits of both intermittent fasting, all the really amazing potential benefits of intermittent fasting. And you want to potentially set yourself up for a higher compliance, less hunger, more satisfaction, and accelerated weight loss. And you're interested in intermittent fasting too. It may make sense to, in fact, switch it

so that you're having a really hearty breakfast and lunch. And then the fasting might be the later part of the day and through the evening. So again, I am not a physician or a nutritionist. And this is something where if you're considering these things, you always want to work with a qualified healthcare professional. But this is really fascinating information. And I look forward to seeing where research like this leads. And I look forward to seeing more expectations. I hope you found that interesting and useful. I'm always on the hunt for fascinating research and studies that might affect our health, our well-being, that might help us fill our contribution, connection, and vitality buckets. If you know of something, feel free to

reach out to me in any of our social channels. And for today, I want to give a final shout out to our awesome sponsors and supporters. Right now, you can post a job on ZipRecruiter for free. That's right, for free. Just go to ZipRecruiter.com slash good. Be sure to check out Blue Apron and get your first three meals free with free shipping by going to BlueAprron.com slash goodlife. Thanks so much for listening to today's episode. If the stories and ideas in any way moved you,

I would so appreciate if you would take just a few extra seconds for two quick things. One, if it's touched you in some way, if there's some idea or moment in the story or in the conversation that you really feel like you would share with somebody else, that it would make a difference in somebody else's lives, take a moment and whatever app you're using, just share this episode with somebody who you think it'll make a difference for. Email it if that's the easiest thing, whatever is easiest for you. And then of course,

if you're compelled, subscribe so that you can stay a part of this continuing experience. My greatest hope with this podcast is not just to produce moments and share stories and ideas that impact one person listening, but to let it create a conversation, to let it serve as a catalyst for the elevation of all of us together collectively, because that's how we rise. When stories and ideas become conversations that lead to action, that's when real change happens. And I would love to invite you to participate on that level. Thank you so much as always for your intention, for your attention, for your heart. And I wish you only the best. I'm Jonathan compromised. The pilot's a hitman. I knew you were going to be fun. On January 24th.

Tell me how to fly this thing. Mark Wahlberg. You know what the difference between me and you is? You're going to die. Don't shoot him, we need him. Y'all need a pilot? Flight risk. The Apple Watch Series 10 is here.

It has the biggest display ever. It's also the thinnest Apple Watch ever, making it even more comfortable on your wrist, whether you're running, swimming, or sleeping. And it's the fastest-charging Apple Watch, getting you eight hours of charge in just 15 minutes. The Apple Watch Series X. Available for the first time in glossy jet black aluminum.

Compared to previous generations, iPhone Xs are later required. Charge time and actual results will vary.