Mind Pump: Raw Fitness Truth - 1797: The 5 Step Strategy to Defeat Cravings

Episode Date: April 21, 2022

In this episode Sal, Adam & Justin cover five steps that help eliminate food cravings. Why there is so much more to food than being robotic about it. (2:22) How language shapes the way you feel about certain things. (4:14) Label the feeling and master the action. (6:02) Change the relationship you have with the craving. (13:58) The 5 Step Strategy to Defeat Cravings.  #1 – Become aware. (16:25) #2 – Create space between the feeling and the impulse. (25:13) #3 – Eat in ways that lower cravings. (31:25) #4 – Drink a lot of water. (38:06) #5 – Practice fasting. (41:22) Related Links/Products Mentioned Visit PRx Performance for an exclusive offer for Mind Pump listeners! Special Promotion: Intermittent Fasting Guide 50% off! **Code IF50 at checkout** April Promotion: Get MAPS Anywhere, MAPS Prime and Prime Pro all for $99.99! Brené Brown: Atlas of the Heart | HBO Max Originals Mind Pump #1792: The Secrets Of Happy People With Arthur C. Brooks Why do we Need Protein? - Mind Pump Blog Visit Drink LMNT for an exclusive offer for Mind Pump listeners! Is Fasting Effective? - Mind Pump Blog Mind Pump Podcast – YouTube Mind Pump Free Resources People Mentioned Brené Brown (@brenebrown)  Instagram Arthur Brooks (@arthurcbrooks)  Instagram

If you want to pump your body and expand your mind, there's only one place to go. Mind, hop, mind, hop with your hosts. Salda Stefano, Adam Schaefer, and Justin Andrews. You just found the world's number one fitness health and entertainment podcast. This is Mind Pump Rain. In today's episode, we talk about the five-step strategy to defeat cravings and these steps are very effective. This is what we found to be effective for our clients

over the last two and a half decades that we train people so you know it works. Now this episode is brought to you by our sponsor PRX. PRX makes home gym equipment that is commercial quality, also designed to give you maximum space. For example, they have a rack, right, where you can put your barbell on, and do squats and bench presses and whatever,

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Oh yeah, and real quick, before I forget, you hear us talking a lot about the practice of fasting in this episode. So here's what we did. We have a fasting guide that can kind of teach you how to do it properly and the mentality and the ideas around it. You can get our fasting guide right now for 50% off because of this episode, right? So if you go to mapsfitinistproducts.com, go to the intermittent fasting guide and then use the code IF50 and get 50% off. Also, all month long, we're running a promotion on a three workout program bundle.

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to those very popular programs. If you're interested, head over to mapsaperal.com. What's one of the hardest things that you guys think your clients tell you when it comes to diet, nutrition, you know, why they, why it's so hard for them to eat in a particular way. But the one thing that comes up, they're addiction to food. Yeah. Cravings.

Yeah. The word cravings, right? Giving up certain types of foods. Yeah. A lot of times. Right. It's really tough. And when I first became a trainer, I'd love you guys' opinion on this too since you guys are also fitness fanatics.

I remember thinking totally wrong about this because I was a fitness fanatic. I used to think, well, just do it. You know, I can do it. Why can't you do it? You know? And that's because I was so obsessed and passionate about fitness that I assumed everybody was a fanatic as well And it prevented me from really figuring this out for to be able to help other people Because I thought it was just a matter of willpower

But later on I learned that there's so much more To food than just Being robotic about it, you know and avoiding some foods and eating other foods. There's so much more to it. And if we don't talk about that, people are gonna get stuck in this, you know, this self-defeating hamster wheel of, you know, away from the cravings,

oh no, the cravings take over and I give up. And then I'm back on the track again and then it's just like this circular. Yeah, it's not the whole story. And I think, yeah, we were young and thought for sure it was that simple. It was, you know, it's just math. Yeah, that's where it's like the whole thing

with the calories in and out. And it's like, it's so simple you guys, like you just gotta cut this out and then life's gonna move on, everything's gonna be great. But there's just so many other factors to what's going on in like so many associations, emotional ties, connections with people and food plays a vital role in our everyday lives.

So I used to think that hunger and cravings were the same thing. Yeah, that's very good. I really just thought it was like, if I was craving food, oh, I must be hungry. I've gotta be hungry right now and my body's telling me I need to eat. And it really was, for me, it was a long time before this really kind of came full circle or my paradigm was shattered and that was the

introduction to fasting. And, and started to read like all the research around that and that, you know, I always thought like, oh, one, you hungry and cravings are the same thing. Two, if I didn't eat a certain amount of time, muscle was gonna fall off my body. And so the whole concept around fasting and refraining from food completely, like, shattered my parents. So good. In fact, I think it's very important to label

what you're feeling properly. You know, language shapes, how we feel about certain things. I'll give you an example. I was watching this talk, I think it was Bernie Brown. She was talking on Netflix. I think it's Netflix or no, it's Bill Max. And she's, she's, she's an expert on this. And she talks about language shapes, our feelings. And here's one example. If we were to measure physiological responses to anxiety and compare it to the physiological responses to excitement. They're almost identical. The difference is the perception.

I'm anxious versus I'm excited. And one feels fun. The other one feels totally terrible, right? So craving and hunger are two completely different things. Hunger is a signal that happens when you lack nutrients, you lack calories, you actually need those things. Cravings are an uncomfortable feeling that happens when you lack nutrients, you lack calories, you actually need those things. Cravings are an uncomfortable feeling that happens that usually comes from feelings

that you maybe want to avoid or maybe want to feed, no pun intended. So it's two completely different things and that's a good place to start, it's to say, am I hungry or is this just the craving? Because hunger, you need to answer. Craving is totally different. Well, do you, I mean, where do you stand now?

Do you, do you believe that anybody who lives in the United States ever is truly hungry? No, I mean, now that's what kind of really shattered my paradigm was that it's like, you know, not only am I not hungry, but I could probably make the case that very few, if any, people in the United States have ever truly experienced what true hunger feels like, and 99.9% of all the things that we feel

with our attraction towards food has everything to do with cravings. Well, this is why I got so attracted to the idea of fasting when I first went through it, because it was just so eye-opening to me. It was like I didn't really stay in that feeling for that long before of not having access to food It was just so eye-opening to me. It was like I didn't really stay in that feeling for that long before of not having access to food

and just what my body was going through. And what I really needed versus, what my cravings were leading me towards. And again, it's just like that self-reflection, that introspection that you can sit through that. It's really difficult for people to do that. A lot of clients come in and have like never even done that. So that was eye-opening for me.

Totally. Well, even when your body burns off the fuel that you say you consumed earlier in that day, or even the day before, and so you tap out all that, like this idea that you now have no more fuel and the body's not to start to break down muscle and you're going to lose that is so not true. I think Salyu shared this before.

I don't know if you know the number off your top head, but how many calories in reserve does your body? Oh my God. Well, in carbohydrates alone, I believe it's something like 7,000 or so. Most of it being stored in the liver and some in the muscle. And then our fat stores, the even a lean ripped athlete has got some of the two in a 50,000 calories stored in body fat.

And a hunger, real hunger doesn't kick in for a long time. So if you miss lunch, it's not hunger that kicks in. If you miss breakfast, it's not hunger that kicks in. It's usually when you don't eat for two or three days, which back to your point, Adam, most people living in modern societies have never gone. Yeah. One day, we got a lot of discipline to do that.

Yes, totally. So here's an example of a craving. I just ate a big dinner. I'm full. Oh my God, I'm totally full. Oh my God, they're bringing out the dessert. I really want that. That's not hunger.

That's craving. I'm using the extreme example to illustrate the point here, but it's very important that you label what you have as a craving or hunger because then you can address it and kind of figure out what's going on. I mentioned earlier that cravings are triggered by feelings. The most common one for me, and I'll speak personally, is boredom. If I'm bored, I tend to want to eat. So if I'm at home, nothing going on, I'll open the pantry. What do we got? Let me see if there's any snacks or whatever.

If I go to my parents house or my grandparents house for some reason that triggers cravings for me, probably because they always feed me when I go there. So I'll open the cupboards and see what's going on. But other common ones are sadness. Because if you feel sad, nobody wants to sit in the feeling of sadness, just like I don't like to sit in the feeling of boredom. So what they'll do is they'll distract themselves

by eating and eating is pleasurable. This is why the foods that you crave tend to be pleasurable foods. We almost never crave foods that are, I don't know, for lack of a better term in the healthy category. It's like you don't crave broccoli or vegetables or a whole natural food.

It's usually something that's hyper palatable, and that's because it's a very, very good distraction. Sadness is a common one, anxiety or stress or another one people tend to eat with stress or anxiety. There's a lot of different feelings that we wanna run away from or avoid or feed through eating and that is what fuels these great. Well, it's a form of medicating yourself.

The same way that alcohol uses alcohol or somebody who abuses drugs, totally normal drugs. And you mentioned that, addiction to food. Yeah. And I think we're heading down the same path. That's where I think most of our clients, where they struggle with, and the root cause is not anything really to do with the food.

There's something else that's underlying. And I think that was, again, something that took a long time as a trainer for me to learn how to unpack that and help my client figure out. Like, this isn't a macro calories in, calories out issue. Right now, there's something underlining that you are either running from or you want to avoid or that you want to keep yourself busy and what you're choosing is food as your way to keep yourself busy.

What do you guys as triggers when it comes to cravings? For me, it's boredom. That's like the biggest one. If I had nothing to do, that's one of the things. Boredoms the same thing for me. I sleep for me for sure. Oh, that kicks up big time when I'm craving all kinds of junk. When you're tired? I'm really tired, never tired.

You want that serotonin, right? And that dopamine in the spotlight. Yeah, but then it's never a good choice. Yeah, the other one is, you know, and I don't know how you would categorize this, but even just habits, right? So I think I've talked about this on the show before where when I was competing, I had to eat so many calories and I trained myself to eat so frequently in such massive meals that even to this day,

and it wasn't that long ago that I hadn't broken the habit of, if I ordered five guys, it would be two of these double chains. And back when I had a 5,000 calories, I needed that. I would power right through that in order for me to maintain, but I'm the one near that. But I still have this habit of, I trained myself for so many years consistently of I ordered this meal, it was this big.

And it's like, I don't even really want that, but I think I do. Here's another one with habits, it's lunchtime. Oh, I got a craving for food, or oh, I wake up, I have a craving for food, or it's dinner time, I have a craving for food. It's funny, right? People, I used to get, I got a craving for food or oh, I wake up. I have a craving for food or it's dinner time. I have a craving for food It's funny, right people I used to get I used to think that I was hungry and if I missed lunch I would get irritable the reality is as I was not feeding my craving or satisfying the craving and what made me irritable was the uncomfortable feeling

Yeah, it wasn't that I was hungry You allowed yourself to be in that state of mind. Yes Yeah, it wasn't that I was hungry. You allowed yourself to be in that state of mind. Yes You you you associated that so strongly that you just decided this is how I'm gonna behave well We've even given it labels to justify it. You're I'm hangry. Yeah, I'm hangry It's like to justify that you are uncomfortable in that situation or people I just being a dick or what about low blood sugar Oh, my blood sugar goes down unless Unless you're diabetic, that doesn't happen. That's not true, you're right, unless you're diabetic. This is an important fact here,

or something to take note of. Cravings, we could kind of loosely label it as a feeling. And what you don't want to do, it's stifle or mute or avoid feelings. It's like trying to stifle anger or sadness or any other feeling. What you wanna do is master the actions because if you stifle a feeling

or you run away from a feeling, that's what pushes you towards these types of habits. If I'm afraid of feeling cravings, I'm gonna avoid the feeling of craving as much as possible, so you need me to feeding myself every time I have a damn craving or replacing it with some other addictive, you know, tool or thing, right? So I can have the feeling. It's okay to feel the craving, the feeling of craving. It's the action that I master and it

just like anger. Like I'll tell you what, as a man, and a lot of men can relate to this, you, when you're a boy, your testosterone levels are nothing. You don't have high testosterone at all. All of a sudden you go through puberty and you have all these feelings, okay? One of them being anger. I remember as a young boy, you know, young boys can be angry too. But man, when you're a teenage boy and your testosterone goes from zero to the highest it's ever going to be, all of a sudden you feel this crazy, overwhelming emotion.

And you have to learn to master your actions. A grown man can't go around punching holes in the wall and hitting people. So you have to learn to master your actions. But the anger, the feeling's still there. And it actually loses some of its potency because the action doesn't have to follow. What you're talking about is the main thing

that I believe all three of us would agree is the real true value of fasting. Yeah. Is learning how to control those impulses, those actions. So be with them through. Yes. To sit in them, to be diso- I've already committed. I'm not eating all day long today. And now I've got all these feelings and emotions.

And you've got to sit in them. I've already committed. I'm not going to give in. I'm going to do that. And you're training it like a muscle. The same way that you go to the gym and you lift weights to get stronger, right? The same thing that you're doing with your discipline here and your relationship with food.

That's where the real value of fasting. Now, the way it's marketed to everybody is fat loss and reduction of calories and mental clarity and then the growth hormone production. I mean, they've attached all kinds of great science. Which by the way, all those things are attached to lower calorie diets regardless of your fast. Right, right. And this is where I agree with Lang, because Lane loves to pick a

part shit like this and be like, listen, the same thing if you're just in a low calorie. But from day one, we've never presented that to our audience as the real value in it. This is the real value. You're training something where people have a really hard time controlling. And it's really your relationship with food that we're trying to improve by detaching from it and sitting in those feelings. So you can always act or react and one is going to lead you you know in a more negative path versus the other. So it's learning how to make those decisions when you're in that really uncomfortable state. Yes, it's proactive versus reactive. So when you train yourself to be reactive, it becomes a habit.

Craving, satisfy the craving. Craving is uncomfortable, gotta go eat something. So what you have to do is you have to train a new feeling around it. You literally, and you just mentioned this Adam, change the relationship you have with the feeling of cravings, which then will result in impulsive actions being erased or at the very least

you become aware of your impulsive actions. So you're no longer reactive. You're like, oh, there's that feeling again but here's how I'm going to act versus there's that feeling react, right? You whatever you do a lot of you end up training. This is this is an important thing to understand. So if you are right now listening and cravings are really challenging to you, we're gonna go through some steps on how you can retrain yourself. But just like any kind of training, it's gonna take time.

So nothing that we're gonna say today, in what we're talking about today, is gonna fix or solve this problem. Or not working on it, but it's gonna take a lot of discipline to really develop this. We'll practice. And the first part, or the first really develop this. It's a practice. Yes.

And the first part, or the first step to this practice, is becoming aware. That's it. Is you got to first become aware before we work on or fix anything? Yes. One of the best ways to become aware of anything is to change how you think. What does that mean? Okay. People don't realize this, but writing is a form of thinking.

And there's a lot of therapists and counselors and psychologists that encourage people to write their feelings down. And when I was, I remember when I was younger and someone encouraged me, if you said that. Now it's real. Well, I just thought that was dumb. Oh, right, what's the difference?

I think it, I write it. Very big difference. Because when you write things out, you think differently, you see what you wrote. It's an exercise. And it's an exercise. So one of my favorite awareness practices around cravings is identify that it's a craving versus

hunger. I have that craving right down how you feel. How do I feel right now? How does the craving feel right now? What's going on? Now this doesn't necessarily mean you don't have to react on the craving just yet. Remember I said it's going to take some time. At the very least, write down how you feel.

If you're like, I'm not ready to not give into this craving, go ahead and give into the craving. But then right down, how did I feel during while I was eating this particular food and how do I feel afterwards? And what this does is it brings what you're doing is you're an Arthur Brooks talks about this a lot. In fact, our recent episode he talks about this practice with other things, but what you're doing is you're moving these reactions from the reactive part of the brain to the prefrontal cortex, which is the, essentially the part of the brain that makes us human. So it makes us think logically and act in ways that are beneficial, not necessarily reactive.

So when you're becoming aware, you're taking this reactive circle that's happening or cycle that's happening in other parts of your brain, you're moving into the front side part of your brain, which then allows you to process it. Over time, this practice then moves that back to the reactive part of your brain, which then allows you to process it. Over time, this practice then moves that back to the reactive part of your brain. So then your reaction changes from giving into the craving

or avoiding the craving to understanding it, and there's a feeling, and I don't have to react on. First, it's a conscious thought, then it becomes a subconscious thought. It goes from conscious incompetence, the conscious competence to unconscious. It's such conscious incompetence to unconscious. It's such a powerful exercise for self awareness. Because the clients and the people that I've had do this, they always learn something about

themselves. They'll come back to you and they'll say something like, you know what, I had no idea, but after consistently doing this, every time I go and reach for the chips or these snacks, something happened earlier in my day, where either at work, because I can't stand my boss and we had an interaction, or my husband who never picks up his stuff behind him when I, in the morning time, or they always find out that holy shit, there's something else that's going on in my life that I'm kind of suppressing and then eating to medicate, and I don't even realize that I'm doing it because it's not like tragic

You know like your husband leaving his underwear on the floor not putting it in the hamper It's not like the end of the world But it's enough to bother you to inside be festering and be thinking about it and then causes you to go do that to try and get that That dopamine hit that you want through those I'll never forget I had a client who we went through this practice and she was very, she was like, okay, I'll give it a shot. And she realized something that blew her mind where she's like, I never realized I did this.

This is how unaware it was. When I go to the grocery store, I snack on, you know that they have the bins where you could grab like the chocolates or the candies or the nuts. She's like, I eat those things, and I never track them. I never write them down. And I think I was purposely unconscious about it. Yeah, like she was purposely, like we wanna be unconscious of some of these actions

because they service in some way, right? They distract us. And she's like, as soon as they started becoming aware, so I said, wait a minute, I keep reaching in. Every time I walk by the bin with the chocolate covered almonds or whatever, I grab a handful, I keep reaching, and every time I walk by the bin with the chocolate covered almonds or whatever, I grab a handful, she became aware of it, and she realized that, oh, I have these feelings

when I'm in the grocery store that I want to avoid, and so I reach in and I do it. Now I'm aware, wow, there's an extra 500 calories worth of chocolates or chocolate covered nuts that I end up eating. So becoming aware is very interesting. It's also uncomfortable, I wanna warn people. Oh yeah.

When you do this, this, again, I keep saying this is a practice and it's gonna cover some shit. You don't wanna come in. Yeah, it's a good thing. Whatever feeling was uncomfortable that leads you to react to these cravings is now gonna surface.

Okay, so that means you're gonna have to kind of deal with the feeling a little bit. So this is not a comfortable process, just like the first time you work out and you'll start squatting, it's not a comfortable process, you suck at it, it's hard, you shake it, I'm a little sore, wow, whatever, there's some acceptance going on, I guess I'm not good at this exercise. But as you continue practice, what ends up happening with your relationship with exercise,

it still hurts, but now the hurt feels different and I enjoy it and I start to enjoy the process. So that's what's gonna happen when you do this first step. Sometimes the awareness too is just you become aware of just habits that you've created too. It doesn't always have to be something. I brought up the thing with like the husband and it always has to be this like negative thing. Either it could just be a habit that you've created.

I remember when I figured this out with, why do I have this habit of if I have ice cream or candy or some sort of a dessert in my house that I have to crush the whole fucking back? That was so weird to me back. I remember you're talking about that. Yeah, and it took a long time for me to figure out, you know what this is from. This goes all the way back from when I was a kid and I lived in a house with, you know, six people. Yes, I was competing with my siblings. It was very rare that we got these treats or desserts. You have a lot of money, so it's like, we got one thing I shouldn't do.

So we got it, it was like, you had to get it, and you had to crush as much as you could because you're not coming, no one gets seconds. So you want to get as much as you possibly can. And I had trained myself for so long to eat that way when it came to desserts and treats. That even as an adult who can afford to have as many cans of candy and ice cream that he wants, I still would do this.

And so I had to, and it was exercises like this that allowed me to kind of unpack and go, oh shit, like it's not, I can't go have one. I had a conversation with my kids about that because we rarely have dessert. And we'd be out at a restaurant and you know, dessert would come and their spoons are ready to go.

And they're trying to like get their steak as much as possible. Because we don't know when dad's gonna let's do it. Not even caring about like what it tastes like. It's how much they can get in before, you know, because we would always share it. Get it was like one of those things because the portions are ridiculous, right?

Especially for kids. And so we just, we've had multiple conversations about this, about actually tasting it, taking a few minutes in between to breathe. Like, I'm not gonna jump back in, and this isn't a competitive thing. This is like an enjoyment, it's a treat. It's not something that's, we need to hoard it in really fast. Yeah, you know, one for me was, that I used to do this,

and I still sometimes do this, although I'm aware of it. If I'm gonna, if I have a strong craving and I know I'm gonna eat something that's not gonna serve me, right? I'll bring someone in with me. Because for some reason, I'm gonna eat you kids, that's like a misery-loved company.

It's just, if I'm gonna be bad, I'm gonna make sure someone else is bad. Yeah, I, anybody else? Yeah, I just, it's like, I'm not gonna feel, it makes me feel better that, oh, my buddy, is doing the same thing with me. We're both gonna, you know, eat this terrible thing that's not gonna make us feel very good

So I'd be like hey you want to go get you know you want to go get some cookies? You know I mean cuz I want some company in order to do this you know To what we do that we do that to each other all the time. Oh, yeah I know you know what's funny so you mentioned you how you eat ice cream and stuff like you guys have seen I don't know if you guys ever seen me eat a popsicle or a lollipop or whatever. I just crunch it. I just crunch it.

I just crunch it. I look away. I see you watch. So you know what it is. So when I get a popsicle, popsicles you're supposed to enjoy for, you know, how we're long and I eat it. I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I,

and it's gone. And I was thinking about this the other day because I was, I got a popsicle and I was sharing it with my, with my young son and he's like super, he's so funny, he sits on my lap, he's so happy, cause I never give him stuff like that. So he's all of a sudden a super obedient, like I'll do whatever you want that.

So he's licking it. And I'm biting it, you know, just cause like it's gone in three minutes. Like why do you eat it that way? I'm like, you know what, when I was a kid, remember the ice cream man would come by and you'd hear the music and I'd run to my dad, you know, give me, can I have a dollar, please, and we have a dollar and everyone and I'd run to my dad, you know, give me,

can I have a dollar, please, let me have a dollar and everyone's wanting my dad to be like, all right, here's a dollar, but you gotta come back and let me have some, all right. So I go get a popsicle and come back and my dad would always do this. He grabbed the popsicle, he'd bite half of it off. Literally, like, oh, it's a good house. So it's a dad thing to do.

Yeah, so I really, I think you do too. You get you about taxes, son. Yeah, I call it the dad tax. It's a bad thing to do. Yeah, so I'm really, I think you do too. I teach you about taxes, so. Yeah, I call that tax. It's a dad tax. So it made me do that too for some reason, which is pretty funny, but there's all awareness, right? So as you become aware, you're able to make better, logical, calculated, or choices at the very least

that serve you better, rather than serve the craving. If you always serve your cravings, you're not serving yourself. If you want to consider that, that's an important thing to understand. Yeah, you have to accept it and admit it before you even make steps to fix it. 100%. You can't fix what you're not aware of. That's all.

Here's the second thing, and this was by far my favorite strategy, and you have to do the first one that we said before we can do this one, because if you're not aware, you can't fix it. But once you're aware, I love this strategy right here, which is create space between the feeling and the impulse. Okay, I have the feeling of the craving. How do I create space between that and the impulse? One of my favorite strategies is this one right here. So I've identified there's certain foods for me,

which are really, really strong triggers. The number one for me is potato chips. 100%. Lays potato chips in particular. And I'm not quite sure why. I think it's just hyper-palatable for me for some reason. For engineers, the commercial. The commercial got you.

I'm a salt person, right? So if I have chips around me, it's a constant battle. Oh, no, don't get, oh, you know, and I end up eating a whole bag and I feel terrible and all that stuff, you know, physically, just doesn't feel good. So what I've done is I've said, I'll eat them, it's not like I can't eat them, they're just not gonna be in the house. If I want chips, I gotta drive a mile and a half

to the grocery store and I'll get myself a single serving of chips. Now, of all the times I have a craving for chips, how many times you guys think I actually act on that impulse because I have to get in the car, drive over there, walk in there, grab the bag, get in line and pay for it, right? Probably one out of every 20 or 30 times. Why is it the hassle?

Kinda, but it's not really the hassle, it's the space. Because by the time it takes me to get my pants on, get in the car, I'm gonna add only one. It's not something I really, by the time I make- They really have a drive-through one yet, I'm gonna add and really want it. It's not something I really want. I mean, they really have a drive-through one yet where you don't have to put pants in. Or door dash. I mean, this works for things other than,

I mean, I share just recently in the podcast to how I do this with purchasing stuff. Yes. That I don't necessarily need, just like you don't need the chips. I love this strategy by that. But I want it and simply putting it in my shopping cart online and waiting a night and just saying,

hey, I'm not gonna say I can't have it. I'm gonna say I can't have my chips. But if I really want it, I gotta go drive to do it. If I really want to buy that, I gotta wait till tomorrow morning to go through the shopping cart. And 90% of the time I don't do it. Delete.

You just gave me an idea. So the convenience apps that we have have really made this much harder. And I predict that obesity is gonna rise even faster because now I can impulsively order food. Whereas before I had to get in the car and drive somewhere. And you just maybe think of something Adam.

When you go on DoorDash, you have the option to order it right now. Or schedule it. Or schedule it. Yeah, yeah. So I think what might be a good strategy, and I've never communicated this with clients because DoorDash came out after I stopped training clients.

But if I had clients today, I think what I would say is use DoorDash, but give yourself a three hour window. So schedule it for three hours later. And that way you have some space between you and the impulse. And within that three hour period, you might say, you know what? I really don't want that. Maybe I don't want to. I don't know if you would count this in the same category because it's similar, but it's also not being like distracted, right. So the TV and the phone thing is a big one for me with clients. It does create space because what does TV do? That's right. There's no space. I'm distracted. So I have that impulsive reaction going on. So Doni in front of

the TV, Doni, studies are clear on this by the way. If you want to cut your calories by 10 to 15%, the most effective thing you could do is not eat in front of the TV or with your phone or any type of distraction. Just eat. It's really, it's swear to God, it's very consistent. 10 to 15% less calories. Well, I mean, thinking old school

about like really designating meals throughout your day, right? Like, that you share with other people. Like, so it's really important for me, especially dinner, obviously, to connect with my kids and my wife. This is the meal. This is the meal. We're not eating outside of that really. Just trying to stick with certain types of meal.

So I'm not snacking, I guess, in a sense, where it's a constant thing that I could just interrupt that with a bad decision. Totally. Here's another one. I had a client once tell me this. Now, they they had the wrong idea behind it, but it was super effective anyway. And then I figured out later what it was. And what he said, and he was like, Adam at about this, he says, when I have a craving, I got to do 10 push-ups and I gotta do 10 body weight squats. And his rationale was, I'll burn some calories and then eat the food. And I remember as a trainer being like,

bro, you're burning 30 calories. And the food you're about to eat is like, whatever. But it worked and he would get leaner and then I figured out what it was. Because he had to do 10 push-ups in 10 squats, it created space between him and the impulse. And what ended up happening was he often didn't act on the impulse because he just created space.

You could do this with a walk. When you have a craving, say, okay, I'll have that food after I do a 10 minute walk. And that 10 minute period of time gives you time again, to move that action into the prefrontal cortex into something that is much more of a conscious decision. Now when you come back from your walk, you have permission to eat it, but what you may find is you actually don't.

This was a huge strategy for me when I was competing. When you're competing, you're like hungry, or you feel hungry all the time, cravings. No, you're more hungry because you're in a deficit for 12 weeks or so. So I definitely feel this way a lot. And so at this time, I used to have a treadmill in my house. And if I had that really strong feeling,

I'd get up off the couch or whatever it was I was doing, and I'd just go on the treadmill, and just go for a walk for 30 minutes. And again, telling myself, no, it's not that I can't have that, but giving myself that space to kind of work it out. Am I really that hungry? Am I okay?

I didn't even want to walk at you. Well, what do I really want? I could eat this, I could eat that. Before you know it, after the 30 minutes of walking on there, it's past and I'm okay. And then now I want to walk at you. Well, what do I really want? I could eat this, I could eat that. Before you know it, after the 30 minutes of walking on there, it's past and I'm okay. And then now I'm even closer to the next meal time. So, well, I'll just wait.

It's only another half hour or hour till I eat again. So, I'll just wait till my next meal. I love that. Yeah, I love creating space by either an obstacle or another action that you have to, you make a rule with yourself. You say, I have to do this action before and taking action on this particular craving,

like the pushups, the sit-ups, the walk. And I picked, I'm talking walk and pushups, sit-ups, squats and stuff. Just to healthy distractions, right? Because another distraction, you can go outside and smoke a cigarette. Don't necessarily think that's a good choice, or trade, although people used to do that back in the day.

All right, so the first two steps really center around awareness. Now we can start to talk about just strategies. And this is where people focus. What we're about to talk to now is where people tend to go first. But if you go here first without going through one and two, you're not going to succeed because you don't develop the relationship that you want. Instead, what you develop are relationships with the ways you lower cravings like we're about to talk to.

The impulse will still be there. The impulse, yes, that's still going to be there. But so if you do one and two, then you can move to three, which is eating in ways that actually lower cravings. Now we have some food strategies. One of them, and Adam, you brought this up on recent podcasts, is eating small meals throughout the day, right? Frequent meals. So instead of having breakfast, lunch, and dinner, you take breakfast, you split it in half, so you go breakfast, snack, lunch,

snack, dinner, snacks. And now you're eating six small meals, which means you're going to have less time to sit around and not be able to eat or whatever. I really like talking about this one now because we know that the six-small meals thing as a metabolism booster has been debunked and there's no value in it for that point, but it's just like the fasting thing. Sometimes the fitness space gets so hung up on the science of things and we forget about the behavioral side. This is just something that would help my clients is if they had a prepared meal already set up to where every two to three hours, it made it so much easier when those cravings would set in.

Well, I just, I already have a meal. It's made for me and it's in the fridge, and I just got to go reheat it for me to have it versus me going and doing some fast food or making a poor choice. It just made it easier for them to adhere to the diet because they had it scheduled out throughout the day. Yeah. Because you have something there. Yeah. so it's not going to burn fat faster. It's not a it's not a hack like that, but it is a hack to help somebody what's, you know, live with these cravings and not feel like, oh, because I tell you,

when you have a craving like that, I still today struggle with this. If I have a craving hit me, and I have, and it's been four or five hours since I've ate, and I'm like, head driving home, and there's nothing at all. There are options. Yeah, there's no other options. It's really easy to swing in and get fast and justified. Right. Very easy to justify it at that point. And so having them broken up and prepared for the day is just a great strategy to help someone with that. Another craving killer is also something that just overall increases satiety or is a very satiety promoting nutrient,

which is protein. Protein will stifle your appetite big time. You talk to anybody who goes for meeting average amounts of protein to eating a high amount of protein, and the complaint will be, I don't know if I can eat this much. I would have clients that would come in and we're trying to lose weight. So typically you'd have to cut their calories.

If I got them to eat their protein targets, that's okay. It actually happens. Oh, I'd be like, all right, Mrs. Johnson, you know, I need you to 100 grams of protein a day. Oh, I already had a high protein diet. Well, no, no, we're going to track and that's about 35 grams or 33 grams for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Here's what it looks like with chicken, here's what it looks like with steak or whatever.

And they'd come to me and be like, I can't eat that much protein. I start to, it's like too much. Protein is very, very, it's very satisfying. It kills hunger. It's heavy in there and I like that. Yeah. It's something substantial.

Yeah, this is a great stretch. I wish honestly, I leaned in that direction earlier in my career. That would have been so helpful for me personally, even just trying to stay lean, but like for clients too, because you just get into that where you look at what types of carbohydrates are out there and what types of foods tend to follow as a pattern after eating like a higher amount of carbohydrates. It's just human behavior. It's like it starts to kind of spice up this like sort of novel interest in other foods

that tend to lean more towards the process side of things. It's just protein is just so satisfying and hearty. Well, most clients under-consuming. And unless you're a fitness fanatic, which very small percentage of your clients are those people, you under-consume protein and you over-consume carbohydrates. And it's just a great strategy for coaches

to play that kind of like psychological game with your client. I'm not gonna tell you, you can't have any of those things that you're reading for. All I want you to do is focus on and make sure you get enough protein. The calories drop. And the calories naturally just naturally drop.

They're fuller, they end up replacing what was a bag of chips or a bunch of carbohydrates. Now they're eating the steak. You know, that's four, five hundred calories and 40, 50 grams of protein. And they just end up exchanging that. So they're having the seven hundred calories of snacks. They're now have this hearty meal.

And then you add in the fact that now they have the building blocks to actually build muscle, which then also is going to speed our metabolism. So it's like central nutrient all the way around. And I never had to tell this client who is here for fat loss that, hey, cut this out, less of this, that's that. I'm telling them, hey, have a look. I would get complaints from people who normally overeat,

and they would come and be like, I can't eat this. At the end of the night, I start to gag because I can't eat any more protein. And I used to laugh. And here's somebody that always overeats, but now all of a sudden they can't eat enough because on the extreme case, if you ever talk to anybody who's followed a carnivore diet,

I've had people DM me who followed carnivore. I know you did for a second, Justin has more of an elimination diet. But the complaint was always, I can't get enough calories. I just don't want to. Definitely. Definitely. Yeah. It's really difficult to eat that much meat,

to stack up to the amount of calories you could easily do with carbohydrates. Yeah, it's funny. Another strategy too is to use these low calorie foods to keep your mouth busy. You're notorious for this. You almost always are carrying your little thing of rice cakes with your something that's a little busy mouth. Yeah, thanks, but you know,

eating something that one of those things, 30, 40 calories or something, like that they're hardly anything. You know what my favorite is pickles. Pickles are the best. They're salty. The salt for some reason, actually I know why.

Salt, you'll get cravings if your salt is low as well. But the saltiness, they're crispy, it's a cucumber, right? It's just a pickled cucumber. So I'm getting vegetables. How many calories are in one pickle? Like five? Not much.

You know, hold jar of them and you've got, what do you eat? 50 calories. I mean, it's one of my favorite foods to eat. If I feel a strong craving and I'm having a tough time with it or dealing with it, I'll just eat like two or three pickles. It's not a big deal.

Carrots is not a Doug does that all the time, right? He'll eat, he snacks on carrots. That's another good one. So there's definitely foods that you can snack on. Olives is another one. Now, olive oil's high in calories. Olives are not. You can get a jar of olives and your calories

are still pretty damn low. Does it make that big of a difference? You know? All right, the next one, another trainer trick that we used to play on our clients is to have them drink a lot of water. Yeah. You get somebody to aim for a gallon of water a day and they tend to eat less calories.

It's really funny. But it's because being hydrated often does blunt the craving signals that we tend to get when we're feeling anxious or sad or whatever. In fact, I used to tell clients is an awareness strategy. When you feel a craving, drink two glasses of water and wait five minutes.

And that would work like clock working. About 50% of people that would try. Well, I remember when I figured this out, I had read something and maybe you remember, Sal, like it talks about how much, how many people over consumed calories through liquid drinks. Oh, it's a lot.

Yeah, it's a high percentage. And I remember seeing that going, oh my God, if I could just get, if this is this percentage of people that are overweight or obese, or it's because they're drinking so many calories, if I could just find a way to get my clients to stop drinking their calories, we'd have a huge win. And again, going back to the same philosophy of not telling a client you can't have, the strategy would be drink more water. I kept them, did you drink a gallon of water?

It's hard. It's actually, people don't think so, try it. Yeah, it's hard to like, consistent. And everybody go, oh, I drink plenty of water, yeah, if you ever measured it and actually seen, like try and measure it and see if you actually hit a gallon. Half a gallon is hard for people. Yes.

So given someone a goal, like three quarters of a gallon to a gallon of water. Half a gallon is hard for people. Yes. So, given someone a goal like three quarters of a gallon to a gallon of water in a day, is challenging for what's you, and all it does is it keeps them busy drinking that. They don't ever have the time where they're craving a soda or juice because they're constantly having to drink the water. Now, along with that, add a little bit of sea salt

to your water. When you're drinking that much water, you are gonna be expeling more sodium. Being low on sodium will send a hunger signal to your body or a craving signal to the body. This is especially true for people with a low carbohydrate diet. We work with a company called Elemente and they make an electrolyte powder that's high in sodium. You can put that in your water, there's no calories, or you could take literally pink Himalayan salt and a pinch in a bottle. You wouldn't even taste it, but it's enough to give you the sodium to balance out all

that extra water. Especially if you're working out and still getting after it. Definitely. I mean, it's so amazing when you add in just a pinch of salt to what that does for your performance, you know, in training or running or anything else. Yeah. One of my favorites are carbonated water. Carbonated water, this is anecdote,

so I have no studies to support this, but carbonated water when it comes to cravings, is like amazing in comparison to regular water. Especially if you're trying to reduce the amount of alcohol in terms of like carbonated water and lime for me was always a fantastic replacement. Who was it turned us on to that? Somebody did that. I don't remember. Yeah, it was definitely like a game changer for me just because I It was the mouth feel it was the smells all that kind of stuff and it did help

So I've done that and then what I'll do is I'll put I'll put lime carbonated water in the salt Yeah, yeah, like a corona. Yeah, it's like a corona. So I've done that for a long time. And it does. It's just more satiating, I guess, or satisfying than just a regular glass of water. So that's just a, that's a hack.

That's a trick. Again, I haven't studied support that, but that's just a lot of anecdote. All right, the last step we've already mentioned quite a few times, which is the practice of fasting. By the way, the practice of fasting doesn't just apply to food. You can fast from anything that you have an impulse with. So if you impulsively go on social media,

or buy things, you can fast. If you impulsively buy things, you can fast from it, right? If anything that you do impulsively, if you fast from it, what you end up doing is you end up dealing with the feelings, and then you automatically realize you can deal without you don't need it, right? If anything that you do impulsively, if you fast from it, what you end up doing is you end up dealing with the feelings and then you automatically realize you can deal without you, you don't need it and you start to develop a new relationship and it's almost, it's not quite, almost like hitting the reset button. You hit the reset button, you start over and now you're comfortable. I went 24 or 48 hours without whatever this thing is that

I'm fasting from this case, it may be food, in which case, now I feel like I have a better handle on it. Well, really what you're doing is you're slowing down the speed, because most of the time you get into trouble, and the cravings, it's all about speed. Yeah, quickly I can get it, and feed that trigger, that impulse, and to be able to create that space, do all the steps we mentioned in between

is really about slowing things down, being able to really be aware of what's happening to be present. Thank you. That's suck. Okay. That, what Justin just said right now is the most important part of this. There's two things that I want to say.

One, if you have had eating disorders in the past, fasting is not a good option, because it can push you back in that direction. So we're not talking to you if you've dealt with that before. Two, what Justin just said about being present is so important because if you fast, and the way you deal with your feelings is distracting yourself while you're fasting,

what you'll have is a symptom eruption at the end of your fast. And you'll see this sometime, someone will fast for 48 hours. And then they'll binge afterwards. Super consistent. Yes, because they whitenuckled it the whole time and distracted themselves.

When you fast, you don't just not eat. You also sit with and allow yourself to feel what you're feeling. And you become aware of the feelings. If you distract yourself when you fast, the rebound is gonna be nasty. You're gonna go back to eating and you have solved nothing. And if anything, you've given yourself permission

now to binge and then you encourage us, this not very good relationship with food that you end up training. I also like, and I know you kinda said it, right? The, the, the, the kind of reset feeling that I get where I become like ultra sensitive to foods that don't agree with me. So if you make the mistake of fasting

and then going eating something, that is a food that doesn't really agree with you very well. Oh my god, it just destroys you after that. So that's what's kind of cool, is like after you do it, you really are craving these like you want vegetables and whole foods and you want like a light meal because eating something really heavy after that,

especially if it's something that doesn't agree with you. Oh man, you will feel that, notice it right away. Physiologically, too, here's what happens as well, is that the receptors that are responsible for the sensations, the pleasurable feelings that we get from food, when we are constantly feeding ourselves, they down, they down regulate. Okay. When you fast, these receptors that are responsible for, there's a lot of them, right? There's your dopamine and your serotonin and there's other things, other things that happen in the body. When you fast those receptors up regulate and then here's the interesting thing. You'll, let's say you're a candy addict, so you just love sugar, love candy. You fast for

however long, 24, 48, 72 hours, whatever. You come out of the fast, you don't eat candy, go eat a piece of fruit. The fruit will taste sweeter than you could remember. It'll be sweeter than what you experienced before because it's almost like this. It's like not having sex with your wife for three weeks and then you have sex with her. It's like, oh my God. It's like having a sponge that's full of water

when you're oversaturated and you're just running water and it's just going right through. It's just having it and then ringing it all out, and then running it underwater, how it just sucks up an episode with everything. I mean, the food tastes, the experience with food after a fast is quite remarkable. And I remember thinking that,

like I ate foods that were healthy, but then I ate them after a fast. I'm like, oh my gosh, this asparagus is so delicious, which I've never said before, right? So it's a very interesting physiological phenomenon that happens a while, but while you're fasting, you have to be aware, otherwise you'll do the-

That's a bit- What you just said right now is actually a great strategy to get people to like vegetables or like something that's healthy for the day. Introduce them after the facts. Yeah, introduce them after the facts. Actually, do you know what? When you're, see, was it Chris Rock who did the stand-up

where he talked about the salt teen cracker, he's referring to not having sex, like he's having like you know, and then you give it to him and then oh my god, it was the best damn cracker. I had my life. You know, it's a salt team cracker. It was because he was starving. So it's the same concept. Like you fast for an extended period of time like that, introduce a food that maybe

you didn't think that you liked very much, but you're so hungry. Watch how good those carrots or the vegetable taste because you haven't had anything. Excellent. Look, if you like our information, head over to mindpump the vegetable taste because you haven't had anything. Excellent. Look, if you like our information, head over to MindPumpFree.com and check out our guides. We have guides that can help you with almost any health or fitness goal. You can also find all of us on social media. So Justin is on Instagram at MindPump.

Justin, Adam is on Instagram at MindPump.com and you can find me on Twitter at MindPump.com. Thank you for listening to MindPump. If your goal is to build and shape your body, dramatically improve your health and energy, and maximize your overall performance, check out our discounted RGB Superbumble at Mind Pump Media dot com. The RGB Superbumble includes maps and a ballac, maps performance and maps aesthetic. Nine months of phased, expert exercise programming designed by Sal Adam and Justin to systematically transform the way your body looks, feels and performs.

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