Something You Should Know - How Negative Events Control Your Life & Why It is So Hard (For Some) To Lose Weight

Episode Date: January 27, 2020

Don’t you hate it when people ignore your emails? Well, there may be something you are doing in your subject line that increases the odds you will be ignored. This episode starts by revealing what that is – and the simple fix. http://www.mediapost.com/publications/article/291896/subject-line-typos-decrease-email-engagementrates.html It appears to be human nature that bad things feel bad more than good things feel better. As an example, it feels worse to lose $20 than it feels good to win $20. It’s called the negativity effect. Consequently, we will do more to avoid bad things happening than we will do to make good things happen. This has amazing implications to your life you have likely never thought about.. John Tierney is a writer has researched and written a book about this called The Power of Bad: How The Negativity Effect Rules Us and How We Can Rule It (https://amzn.to/30Gn3EQ). He joins me to explain how the negativity effect plays a role in many parts of your life. Some people can swallow a pill without drinking water with it. But just because you can doesn’t mean you should. Listen as I explain the dangers of dry-swallowing medication. http://www.rd.com/health/wellness/swallowing-pills-without-water-danger/ Why do some people have so much trouble maintaining a reasonable body weight while it is no problem for others? While there is no simple answer a lot of it has to do with environment, genetics and how you respond to your sense of hunger. Joining me to discuss this and what science says can really work to lose weight and keep it off is Dr. Giles Yeo. He is a geneticist with over 20 years’ experience dedicated to researching the genetics of obesity and author of the book Gene Eating: The Science of Obesity and the Truth About Dieting (https://amzn.to/3arsV9C). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

As a listener to Something You Should Know, I can only assume that you are someone who likes to learn about new and interesting things and bring more knowledge to work for you in your everyday life. I mean, that's kind of what Something You Should Know was all about. And so I want to invite you to listen to another podcast called TED Talks Daily. Now, you know about TED Talks, right? Many of the guests on Something You Should Know have done TED Talks. Well, you see, TED Talks Daily is a podcast that brings you a new TED Talk every weekday in less than 15 minutes. Join host Elise Hu.

She goes beyond the headlines so you can hear about the big ideas shaping our future. Learn about things like sustainable fashion, embracing your entrepreneurial spirit, the future of robotics, and so much more. Like I said, if you like this podcast, Something You Should Know, I'm pretty sure you're going to like TED Talks Daily. And you get TED Talks Daily wherever you get your podcasts. We'll be right back. more effective than rewards. They've done clever experiments watching how kids learn. If you give them a marble for a right answer, you take a marble away for the wrong one. Taking the marble away, the penalty, they learn much faster that way.

Plus, why even if you can swallow a pill without water, you shouldn't. And a scientific look at what helps people lose weight and keep it off. There is a biological property of some foods which can be harnessed. And that one fact, one universal truth, is that food that takes longer to digest travels further down the gut, making you feel fuller. And you feel fuller, you eat less. All this today on Something You Should Know. Since I host a podcast, it's pretty common for me to be asked to recommend a podcast.

And I tell people, if you like something you should know, you're going to like The Jordan Harbinger Show. Every episode is a conversation with a fascinating guest. Of course, a lot of podcasts are conversations with guests, but Jordan does it better than most. Recently, he had a fascinating conversation with a British woman who was recruited and radicalized by ISIS and went to prison for three years. She now works to raise awareness on this issue. It's a great conversation. And he spoke with Dr. Sarah Hill about how taking birth control not only prevents pregnancy, it can influence a woman's partner preferences, career choices, and overall behavior due to the hormonal changes it causes.

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Today, Something You Should Know with Mike Carruthers. Hi, welcome to Something You Should Know. In the last couple of weeks, there have been some very nice reviews on Apple Podcasts about this podcast. And I know a lot of people listen to the podcast, which is generally a good sign that people like it. But it's always great to hear what specifically people think. And so thanks for those reviews, and if you have a chance, please leave a review on Apple Podcasts or wherever you're listening to this. First up today, emails.

Everyone complains that people don't respond to their emails, but some research shed some interesting light on an important reason why. Typos. According to a study, email response rates decrease as the number of typos in an email subject line increase. Overall, emails without any subject line errors averaged a response rate of 34%. If an error was detected, the response rate average dropped to 29%. Capitalization errors

affected response rates by as much as 15%, according to the study. A correctly capitalized subject line averaged a response rate of 32.6%. But a subject line that began with a lowercase letter averaged a response rate of 28.4%. And this is interesting. Emails sent on a Monday had the most errors, Friday was the second most error-filled day,

while Tuesday ranked as the best workday to send emails. And that is something you should know. You've probably heard of something called negativity bias or the negativity effect, which is basically that we tend to pay attention to and are more motivated by negative things than by positive things. That it hurts more to lose $10 than it feels good to get $10. And it seems to be human nature. But there's so much more to it than that. And understanding how the negativity effect works and how you can use it in a positive way is really interesting.

John Tierney is a writer who, along with social psychologist Roy Baumeister, has researched and written a book called The Power of Bad, How the Negativity Effect Rules Us and How We Can Rule It. Hi, John. Welcome. Hi, Mike. Thanks for inviting me. So since you're the expert and you wrote the book on it, explain the power of bad. Well, the power of bad is the negativity effect, which is the universal tendency of bad events and bad emotions to affect us more strongly than good ones. You know, you hear a mix of compliments and criticism, you obsess over the criticism instead of enjoying the

praise. You know, when you walk into a room and you see a bunch of faces, you obsess over the criticism instead of enjoying the praise. You know, when you walk into a room and you see a bunch of faces, you focus on the hostile one and you miss all the smiles. And, you know, and this negativity effect, it just skews the way we see the world. It skews our decisions and our relationship. Isn't it true? I mean, so our podcast has hundreds and hundreds of reviews on Apple podcasts and all that, and most of them are glowing. Most of them are great. People love this podcast. But guess which ones I take particular notice of?

And the ones you can't forget. It's just the same thing that's happened to us with The Power of Bad when the reviews came out. They've been generally very good, but it's the one sentence here, the one cranky guy who posts a review, who you think never really actually read the book. There must be a reason why we do this, why we're so drawn to the negative. And I imagine it has something to do with our survival as a species or some sort of evolutionary thing. Right. It's adaptive, as evolutionary biologists call it, that it helped our ancestors survive, because it was much more important to pay attention to threats like, you

know, like a hungry lion than it was to savor the good things. You know, you really had to pay attention not to eat poisonous berries instead of enjoying, you know, the great meals. And it's more important to pay attention to an enemy who might kill you or might ruin your life in some way than to be nice to a friend, because a friend can't do that much good for you, whereas an enemy can really do bad stuff. So to survive, life has to win every day. Death only has to win once. So the brain is just primed to look out for those threats. And it's still useful. I mean, it's still important to pay attention to bad stuff. And we learn more from bad stuff. So it's

a great teaching and motivational tool. But the problem, as we argue, is that there's, and we're in this high bad environment now where we're just surrounded by people, the merchants of bad, as we call them, who are trying to scare us, who are trying to get our attention. And they know who are trying to get our attention. And they know the easiest way to get our attention, whether on television, on a smartphone app, on anything, on social media, the easiest way to get your attention is with something bad because the brain immediately pays attention. Well, and you've been a journalist, so you know the old saying that if it bleeds, it leads because people are drawn to the violent, to the bloody, to the to the bad. You know, and I found myself guilty of this throughout my career.

It's how I got interested when I noticed myself earlier. I was a summer intern and I found myself ridiculously hyping this weather story to make it sound like, you know, Armageddon. And I just wonder, why am I doing this and why? And why do readers want to see all this bad news? And the answer for mass media is that it's just the easiest way to get attention. The good news today is that podcasts like yours, that's a whole different form now. And social media tends to be more positive than mass media. I mean, we hear about the Twitter wars. You know, there's an awful lot of vitriol on social media, but there's much more positivity. You know, people tend to share positive things more than negative things. When you tweet positively, you actually get more followers than people who tweet negatively. And, you know, I mean,

you know, these new outlets like, you know, podcasts like this, it gives people a chance to listen for an extended time to something that really interests them, you know, some positive thing that interests them. So knowing that this is very pervasive, it's basically human nature, how do we use it in a positive way when it is in itself not? You can put bad moments to good use. You know, that instead of despairing at a setback, you know, override your gut reaction and look for a useful lesson. You know, the upside of the negativity effect is its power to teach and to motivate. You know, penalties are usually more effective than rewards at spurring students and workers to improve. They've done clever experiments watching how kids learn.

If you give them a marble for a right answer, you take a marble away for the wrong one. Taking the marble away, the penalty, they learn much faster that way. Religions that emphasize health tend to grow much more quickly. They fill the pews on Sunday more than ones that are very benevolent. And, you know, there's even evidence that in countries where more people believe in hell, there's a lower crime rate. It's more of a deterrent. And one of the problems that we see in today's education system is that we've gone to this everybody gets a trophy philosophy. And as a result, students are learning less. There's been rampant grade inflation.

So, you know, the average grade at college now is an A-. So students are learning less than in the past, and it's because we're not using penalties well enough. I mean, you want to do both. You want to reward people for good work, but you don't want to just do this everybody gets a trophy when they don't do good work. But there is a general consensus among people, not necessarily you and people that study this, but I think there's a general consensus in the population that positive reinforcement is better than negative feedback.

I mean, there's two reasons why we have that idea. One is the self-esteem movement from the 1970s and 80s, which is one of the sorrier mistakes in the history of psychology. In fact, my co-author, Roy Baumeister, you know, who's one of the leading social psychologists, he started his career, think, you know, in that self-esteem research and thought it looked very promising because people saw that kids with high self-esteem, you know, do well. And they thought that's what caused it. When in fact, what Roy and others found out was that, no, that's not how it works. That yes, people who are successful have high self-esteem, but the causation is they have

high self-esteem because they're successful. Just having high self-esteem doesn't help you. So that's one of the reasons. The other reason, and this whole idea that the carrot is more effective than the stick, we traced the history of that cliche. It goes back to the 19th century when there were cartoons, and people would advise parents that it's more effective to use a carrot than a stick. And they would tell this fable about that's how you got a donkey to move better,

was to put a carrot there instead of using a stick. And the question we ask is, has anyone ever seen a donkey move that way? I mean, when you look at the horses in the winner's circle at the Kentucky Derby, you don't see any carrots dangling there. You know, the jockeys have whips. And our conclusion is that the reason we think that encouragement works better

is because it's a lot more pleasant to give encouragement than it is to criticize. You know, people would rather say nice things. It's a lot less stressful when you evaluate someone just to tell them lots of nice things and let it go at that. So it's more pleasant to give praise, but it's much more effective to give a mix of both because the criticism is really where people learn. One of the things people struggle with is what is that mix? What is too much and what is not

enough? Well, we talk about the rule of four, and that is that, and this is based on a lot of different research into how people respond to financial gains and losses. You know, researchers who study how many good days someone has versus how many bad days, how many good emotions versus how many bad emotions to see what seems to work. And the general rule is that it usually takes four good things to overcome one bad thing. That's the rule of four, as we call it. And, you know, and it's a useful rule of thumb. It means that if you're late for one meeting, you're not going to make up for it by being early the next time. If you say one hurtful thing, you need to say at least four good things to make up for that. And one of the unfortunate things has been this idea of the criticism sandwich where you start out with lots of good things for the person, and then you slip in a little criticism, and then you say a few nice things, and that's it. The problem is if you say all the good stuff first, and then you say the person, then you slip in a little criticism and then you say a few nice things and that's it.

The problem is if you say all the good stuff first and then you say the criticism, the criticism just hits the brain so hard that it forgets all the stuff that came before. And so the person walks out of the meeting, all they can think of is the bad stuff and they've forgotten all the good stuff. So our advice is to get the criticism done early and then the brain's on high alert and then you say the praise and try to say more than four bits of praise

for every bit of criticism and give the criticism and you can do it in a positive way saying this didn't work last year but here's a way that we're going to deal with it next year and things are going to be better than ever. So you don't want the person walking out demoralized, but you've got to make sure that they hear what's gone wrong so they can improve. We're talking about the negativity bias, the negativity effect. And my guest is John Tierney, who is co-author of

the book, The Power of Bad, How the Negativity Effect Rules Us and How We Can Rule It. Hi, I'm Jennifer, a co-founder of the Go Kid Go Network. At Go Kid Go, putting kids first is at the heart of every show that we produce. That's why we're so excited to introduce a brand new show to our network called The Search for the Silver Lightning, a fantasy adventure series about a spirited young girl named Isla who time travels to the mythical land of Camelot. During her journey, Isla meets new friends, including King Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table, and learns valuable life lessons with every quest, sword fight, and dragon ride. Positive and uplifting stories remind us all about the importance of kindness, friendship, honesty, and positivity. Join me and an all-star cast of actors,

including Liam Neeson, Emily Blunt, Kristen Bell, Chris Hemsworth, among many others, in welcoming the Search for the Silver Lining podcast to the Go Kid Go Network by listening today. Look for the Search for the Silver Lining on Spotify, Apple, or wherever you get your podcasts. People who listen to something you should know are curious about the world,

looking to hear new ideas and perspectives. So I want to tell you about a podcast that is full of new ideas and perspectives, and one I've started listening to called Intelligence Squared. It's the podcast where great minds meet. Listen in for some great talks on science, tech, politics, creativity, wellness, and a lot more. A couple of recent examples, Mustafa Suleiman, the CEO of Microsoft AI, discussing the future of technology. That's pretty cool. And writer, podcaster, and filmmaker John Ronson,

discussing the rise of conspiracies and culture wars. Intelligence Squared is the kind of podcast that gets you thinking a little more openly about the important conversations going on today. Being curious, you're probably just the type of person Intelligence Squared is meant for. Check out Intelligence Squared wherever you get your podcasts. So, John, one of the things, in fact, I just recently spoke with someone about relationships, and they said, well, constructive criticism is still criticism, and that you're better off, at least in a personal relationship like a marriage, to shine a light on the positive

things people do and ignore the bad ones, because by praising the good things, they'll do more of them. That's true. I was speaking there about when you're a teacher or you're a supervisor who's evaluating someone and your job is to get them to improve. So in that sense, you've got to do the criticism. In personal relationships, you also, when there's something wrong, when there's something really seriously wrong, you have to talk about it. But in general, in relationships, you also, when there's something wrong, when there's something really seriously wrong, you have to talk about it. But in general, in relationships, it's great. The more you can tamp down the negativity and stress the positivity, the better it is. We pride ourselves on the many good things we do for our family and our friends for going

the extra mile. But what really matters is what we don't do. Avoiding bad is far more important than doing good. You get relatively little credit for doing more than you promised, but you pay a big price if you fall short of a promise. And researchers who've tracked couples over time to see which marriages survive and which ones don't, they find that it depends mainly on how spouses deal with negativity. You want to avoid saying hurtful things. You want to avoid doing hurtful things. And you also want to give your partner a break. In really successful marriages, people maintain what researchers call positive illusions. In fact, there's some great brain

scanning experiments where the part of their brain that makes negative judgments shuts down when they look at a picture of their partner. They've learned how to do this. And the great thing is that when you have these positive illusions about your partner, they eventually start believing them, too. They've been unrealistically high. And it works for both of you. So, I mean, it is really important to avoid needless negative things, to give your partner the benefit of the doubt when something goes wrong, to don't, you know, don't assume that because they did something that bothers you that they were selfish or that they were trying to hurt you. You know, assume that there might have been some other reason for it. Look for that other

reason. And also, really capitalize on the good moments. Researchers use this term capitalization to talk about how you can put those good moments and those good comments and good thoughts to use. One of the simplest techniques, and since I studied this research, I try to do it every day, is that when you have good news, share it with someone because sharing it makes it much more powerful. And when you hear someone's good news, don't just sit there quietly nodding. You should do something like say, that's great, ask some questions about it, talk about it. It makes the triumph more significant. It makes both of you feel better, makes you feel closer,

and it really does magnify the joy. You know, there's a great aphorism from Mark Twain from Puddenhead Wilson where he says, to get the full value of a joy, you must have somebody to divide it with, and that's crucial to do in a relationship. It almost seems that today, the idea of penalizing or punishing someone for something they've done wrong or they've not performed well, that penalizing them for it is almost archaic, and that the enlightened approach in some circles is to praise the positive and ignore the negative when what you're clearly saying is to is to just praise the positive is a fairly weak way to motivate people's behavior or performance penalizing does work i mean there's no it works with you know with workers and there have been experiments with teachers who either get bonuses if their kids do well,

or they get paid dock from them if the kids don't do well. And the threat of that penalty is enough to really motivate the teachers to do better. And students are the same way. So I think, again, we don't want to go back to corporal punishment, but we do think there should be some kind of penalty mixed with rewards. I know you talk about the power of getting other people's view on what's wrong with your life, because just as we can see more objectively other people's problems, other people can see more objectively what's going on in our lives because we're just

too close to it. I mean, the power of bad, we have the story from a novel by Anthony Trollope about this marriage that fell apart for absolutely no reason. You know, the husband and wife, nothing bad happened really, but they both just kept antagonizing the other one and it just built up and built up. And early in the novel, when the wife is upset about something the husband said, her sister offers the best piece of advice in the novel, as we say, it's, if I were you, I would forget it. And in that sense, relying on someone else to make a judgment for you, going to them, because they don't feel personally threatened. They don't feel personally affronted by it.

And there are interesting experiments when they ask people to gamble in laboratories that when they ask you to decide how I should bet, you will make much more rational decisions than I will, because you're not personally involved in that. You don't personally feel that sense of loss. And so you can be much more rational about it. Football coaches are just incredibly irrational. We see this every Sunday where they keep punting on fourth down when all the odds, all the statisticians tell them you should go for it, that it's, you know, that you'll score a lot more points in the long run if you go for it on fourth and short, almost anywhere on the field, you know, beyond your own 10 or 20-yard line. It really makes sense to go for it. And yet the coaches

are so afraid of that failure. What if we don't make it? It'll be on the highlights reel. People will blame me for the loss, and they just keep punting instead of it. And we tell the story of one high school football coach in Arkansas who he trained himself to overcome that negativity bias by he said, I'm not going to go with my gut. I'm going to pay attention to the statistics. And the way I'm going to avoid being swayed by my emotions in the moment is I'm going to make a rule beforehand. These are the only situations in which I will punt. And otherwise, I automatically go for it. And his team punts once a season. And they have won the state championship year after year.

You know, they score 50 points a game. They always go for it. Even if he's on his own one-yard line, he goes for it. Isn't that interesting when the statistics, the facts, fly in the face of punting on fourth down, and yet everybody does it. And it's amazing. I mean, you watch the games on television, and the commentators are the worst of all. They're, oh, my God, he's going for it on fourth and one on the 50-yard line. I mean, it's ridiculous to punt in that situation.

You're going to gain maybe 30 or 40 yards, but you're giving up the chance to score. And that is so much more valuable. This negativity bias, the negativity effect where we tend to notice more the negative things in our life, seems to not only apply to individual lives, but also in a broader sense, in that people seem to think that the world is getting worse. And yet, objectively, from what I've read, that things are actually getting better in almost every area of life. The better life gets, you know, the more assiduously we look for bad things. And, you know, there's an old saying, no food, one problem, much food,

many problems. We suddenly invent these first world problems. And, you know, it's very sad to me because virtually every measure of human well-being is improving around the world. It's amazing how much better off we are than our ancestors. We're the luckiest people in history. We live longer, we're healthier, we're wealthier, we're better educated. And yet, when you ask people how things are going, are things going to keep getting better? If you go to developing countries where they can see this progress right away, they're optimistic. But in rich countries like the United States and in Europe, people are more pessimistic because they're so swayed by this negativity effect by seeing bad news all the time that

they don't realize how much better life is getting for everyone. Well, it would seem that just being aware of this, being aware of the tendency to focus on the negative can really help you shake loose of it because you're on guard for it. I try to not read all the news because I know how much my fellow journalists hype things. And I look for, you know, the big question I ask when you hear about some new awful trend is, or about some new awful problem is, what's the trend? I mean, there's always going to be problems in the world. There will always be some people who are doing worse in some ways.

But what's the long-range trend? Are things getting better or worse in this case? And what you find over and over again is that over the long haul, things are getting better. There are blips sometimes, and some people suffer. But on the whole, things are getting better, and we solve these problems. You know, when something comes along, we come up with a solution that typically ends up leaving us better off in the long run. When the dust settles from

all of this, what's the takeaway? What's the message here? We want people to realize that there is much more good in the world than bad and that and and that we there's much more to celebrate than to mourn and again we want people you know to know how to exploit the power of bad when it's useful and it's a great way to learn you learn more from failure than from success and instead of being you know devastated by a setback we want people to learn how to look for the lessons from it but above all we want people you know, devastated by a setback. We want people to learn how to look for the lessons from it. But above all, we want people, you know, to overcome the negativity effect, to see that how much is going right in the world and how much can be going right in their lives,

and to be optimistic about the future. Things really are getting better. Well, it's a good message. People would remember it better if it was a bad message, but I'm glad it's a good message. John Tierney has been my guest. He and his co-author Roy Baumeister have written a book called The Power of Bad, How the Negativity Effect Rules Us and How We Can Rule It. And you'll find a link to that book at Amazon in the show notes. Thanks, John. Thank you'll find a link to that book at Amazon in the show notes. Thanks, John. Thank you very much, Mike.

Hey, everyone. Join me, Megan Rinks. And me, Melissa Demonts, for Don't Blame Me, But Am I Wrong? Each week, we deliver four fun-filled shows. In Don't Blame Me, we tackle our listeners' dilemmas with hilariously honest advice. Then we have But Am I Wrong?, which is for the listeners that didn't take our advice. Plus, we share our hot takes on current events. Then tune in to see you next Tuesday for our Lister poll results from But Am I Wrong. And finally, wrap up your week with Fisting Friday, where we catch up and talk all things pop culture. Listen to Don't Blame Me,

But Am I Wrong on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. New episodes every Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday. Do you love Disney? Then you are going to love our hit podcast, Disney Countdown. I'm Megan, the Magical Millennial. And I'm the Dapper Danielle. On every episode of our fun and family-friendly show, we count down our top 10 lists of all things Disney. There is nothing we don't cover.

We are famous for rabbit holes, Disney themed games, and fun facts you didn't know you needed, but you definitely need in your life. So if you're looking for a healthy dose of Disney magic, check out Disney Countdown wherever you get your podcasts. Have you ever wondered why it is some people struggle with food and body weight while others don't really seem to have much of a problem? Why can some people walk away from food when they've had enough while others have a real hard time saying no to more? And why was this not such a big problem 50 or 60 years ago?

Dr. Giles Yeo is a geneticist with over 20 years experience dedicated to researching the genetics of obesity. His current research focuses on understanding how these pathways differ from person to person and the influence of genetics in our relationship with food and our eating habits. He's author of a book called Gene Eating, The Science of Obesity and the Truth About Dieting. Hey, Giles, welcome. Hello, thank you very much for having me, Mike.

So why is there this difference? Why is it such a struggle for some people and not for others when it comes to food and body weight? There is a huge genetic influence on body weight. There is a clearly huge environmental influence as well, but actually you'd be surprised by the role genetics plays. And we've found this out because of the study of twins, for example, where we can take identical twins who have all their genes versus non-identical twins who share as much genetic

material as, you know, you would with your own sibling or parents, 50%. And actually then ask, well, how much difference, you know, is there going to be in someone's physical traits when you share all your genes versus half your genes? And if you do that, then we actually see that the genetic, the heritability of body weight, it's actually around 70%. So you can read that, say that 30% will be an environmental, 70% down to your genes. Wow. Well, that's a pretty big number. That 70% of your eating and your body weight is controlled by your genes. And if that's the case, 70%, if that's the case, where were those genes 50, 60 years ago when there wasn't

the obesity problem we have today? Now, this is the interesting thing. Genes do not exist in isolation. So genes are there. What are they there for other than to help you adapt to the environment? So I'll give you an example. Imagine that I have a twin, okay, that stood next to me and both of us look identical. They will look exactly the same in one environment. Say the 1950s where everyone was skinny, okay? Now, suddenly the environment changes, okay? Say it's 2019 now, 2020, sorry. And the environment changes and you come along and you push me and you push my twin.

That's the environmental change, okay? Now, you push me and I stand up. I tense up my muscles and I don't fall over. Whereas you push my twin, unbeknownst to anybody, my twin has a sprained knee. Bang, down he goes. So in one environment in the 1950s, because there is no push, because there was not enough food around, in essence, we all looked pretty much all skinny. Whereas suddenly, move to 2020, to today, and food is on every corner, and you can't go to a gas station without finding chocolate jumping out at you. Suddenly, that push happens, and the change in environment has unmasked genetic susceptibility. That's why.

So our genes haven't changed, but the environment changing has brought out some of these susceptibilities that we now see today. So the environment has changed, and it is now easier to overeat, yet still some people don't. So what's going on? That's right.

For some people, because of their biology, they could sit in exactly the same restaurant, order exactly the same meal, but yet one person be full after the meal and another still be hungry because of their biology. Some is satisfied and can stop and the other one can't, or they're still hungry. Is that then therefore just destiny that they're destined to be heavier because they can't stop? I mean, destiny is a very strong word. I think your genes clearly do give you, provide a bracket of a sense of possibilities, okay? Like a load of possibilities that are there, okay? Of what you can possibly become. But it doesn't give you a moment in time. I'll give you an example. So my example is I will never ever run as fast as Usain Bolt, okay? And I'm going to say it's because of my genes. But that doesn't mean that if I train harder, I won't run faster than I do now. So what your genes do is they do give you a set of possibilities.

You know, I'm not going to be as skinny or look as good as Brad Pitt for that matter. OK, but it doesn't mean that in between there, I can't actually do something about my body weight. It's just more difficult for some people than others. So it's going to be destiny is a strong word. Your genes can make life a little bit more difficult for you, but that doesn't mean you can't do anything about it. How does things like behavior enter into this? And what I mean by that is, I mean, just from personal experience, I know that I could eat a meal and still have dessert, but if I wait 15 minutes, I can eat much more easily resist the dessert because I now I'm starting to really feel full and I don't really need that. So that what you've just described

is actually giving time for your gut hormones. So these are the signals that let your brain know what you have just eaten or currently eating get to your brain. And the vast majority, in fact, all bar one of the gut hormones that get secreted as you eat make you feel fuller. So what you're describing is the natural physiological response to actually eating. Now, what happens is different people will secrete differing amounts of gut hormones. That's the first thing. Or sense the gut hormones to differing levels. So what you're saying there describes you. Maybe for me, it takes 20 minutes. Maybe for someone else, it takes 10 minutes. Maybe for some other people, it takes exactly the same amount of time, but you need to eat more to get that same satisfaction.

So it isn't a universal thing that people will feel fuller if they just wait? It's a universal thing where clearly, if you eat enough, you will feel full. That's universal. But for some people, you know, they may not have a real appreciable rise in gut hormones at all until they eat a lot more. So what is that? What is the feeling of, gee, I'm hungry? What is that feeling? You see, you're asking a complicated question. There are different kinds of feelings. There is What is that feeling? which is different for I'm hungry. So one drives you to start eating, and there are sets of genes that actually play a role there, and ones that actually make you stop eating. And there are another set of genes that are there as well. And then there are ones that actually control or influence the interval between meals that make you actually more or less hungry. So it depends

what element you are talking about that actually then influences each of these individual portions of eating. Then I haven't mentioned the rewarding elements. So because for some people, I mean, there are foodist fuel people. Now, I'm not one of those people. I'm definitely a foodist pleasure person. So for me, eating makes me feel good, okay? The ooh-hoo feeling to food, which happens with chocolate cake and less so with broccoli. And what happens, imagine if there are going to be genes there as well, which make your rewarding pathway slightly less sensitive, which means you need more food to get the same hit in the I feel nice portion of the brain. So there are those reasons that drive people to eat

more as well. Well, and you just pointed out, I could be hungry. And if my choices are celery or chocolate cake, I'm probably going to eat the chocolate cake. And if my choice is celery or nothing, you know, I might just wait, might wait till later. Unless, and that's true if you're not starving. But imagine if you were starving, actually starving, you'd eat the celery. So what we all now know, and as you know, the hungrier you are, the simplest foods taste the best. A piece of bread, a piece of cheese, some rice, delicious. But the fuller you become, the more picky you become with your food, right? So this is a phenomenon we all go through every single day. And so you're right about the celery until you get hungry enough to want to eat the celery. And my sense is that when, let's say you're really hungry and you put a plate of

spaghetti in front of me, that first bite is going to be spectacular because I'm so hungry. And right after that, the satisfaction gets less and less and less with each bite. But since I've got a whole plate of spaghetti here, I'll probably eat the whole thing. Ah, so what you're describing there are two things. You're right about the pleasure of food dropping as you actually go, because the fuller you become, okay, your brain begins to then change the craving for the type of food that is there. So this is where the dessert tummy, the dessert stomach comes from, right? So imagine if you're 50,000 years ago in the Serengeti, all right? Imagine you brought home an antelope and say it's taken you 2,000 calories to take down

the antelope. So you go back to the village, you eat your 2,000 calories, you enjoy the first bit of it, but then you finish the 2,000 calories. But there's no guarantee you'll get the antelope the next time around. So your brain begins to make the eating, okay, make you eat more than you need. But how do you get past the fact that you're now stuffed with 2,000 calories worth of venison? Well, what happens is your brain begins to increase the caloric density of foods that it likes to eat, which means that for every gram of

food, you get more calories in it, right? Why? So you can stuff as much in as possible without eating volume. And what is high in caloric density? Well, foods you can stuff as much in as possible without eating volume. And what is high in caloric density? Well, foods that are high in free sugars, which back in the Serengeti would have been ripe fruits and maybe some honey and foods that are high in fat. And the sugar and fat are actually desserts. And so actually, your dessert stomach is a holdover from your time in the Serengeti to keep you eating, even as you've become stuffed with the venison. So you're stuffed with a plate of spaghetti, for example, but then suddenly the chocolate cake arrives after the spaghetti, and you then continue eating. Yeah, well, I was going to say, you know, I mean, every kid has said, well, you know, why do we have to wait till after dinner to have dessert? I mean, I'd rather eat the chocolate

cake. It's going to taste better when I'm hungry than it is after I'm full. And especially for a kid, this is particularly true for children who, you know, if you've got children or interacted with kids, know they can eat food that is so sweet. If you ate it, you went, oh, okay. And the reason for that, that kids are driven to high fat, high sugar food is because when they say are young, they need to, in the wild anyway, need to grow as quickly as possible, as quickly as possible so that they don't become tiger food. And so the way they do that is by making sure they want to eat the sweet stuff. They want to eat the French fries. They want to eat the potato chips because that is

high in caloric density and will make them grow quicker rather than celery. What kid picks celery over potato chips? You know, very few. And so it seems like things are working kind of against us now that we're more adapted to a previous world. What's the advice here? Knowing what you know, I mean, how do people who struggle with their weight, you know, I mean, they can go on the next fad diet and fail at that. But I mean, what's the answer here?

Look, the only way to lose weight because of physics, or the easiest way to lose weight, pardon me, is to eat less. Okay, now that is obviously is the easiest way to do it, but it is actually quite difficult. And any diet that gets you to eat less will get you to lose weight. So you need to find something that suits you and you need to put things and get a strategy together. And knowing about your biology should help. As we know more and more about our own biology, we should hopefully begin to tailor diets that are more suited to each of our individual biology. So that's the individual point of view. Okay.

The problem is we're never, ever going to fix the problem until we fix the food environment we actually live in. Okay. And this is, you know, what, what, what you were saying, you know, you go get gas and, and there's chocolate. Okay. You're assaulted with chocolate by, by, by the till. You didn't go there to buy chocolate. You went there to get gas. You go to the, to the drug store to get some, you know, Tylenol, right? And why are you being assaulted with chocolate? And et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. So I think there is some space to actually look around and try and fix the environment that we live in to try and improve the food environment that we actually live in. Well, and I mean, it's been pretty popular wisdom that, you know, if you don't bring crap into your house, you won't eat it. And that's one way to fix at least your home environment.

Yeah, that's the one environment we have full control over. And, you know, and so that would be a good strategy. But even that, then even the type of crap you bring in or not crap, it depends. It's, you know, one man's meat is another man's poison. So just as an example, my wife loves chocolate. And so she bans me from buying it in the house because if I bring it back a little bit, she'll track it down like a stinger missile. Whereas me and chocolate, you know, it's okay. I don't not like it, but I won't necessarily seek it out and actually eat it. Whereas my weakness are potato chips. So there, we need to understand our individual weaknesses, so to speak. So in our

house, it sounds like a bundle of laughs. We have no chocolate or potato chips for that. But you're absolutely right. When people decide or think it's a good time to lose weight, New Year's resolutions or whatnot, they very often couple the idea that they're going to eat less with exercising more. And what I've discovered, and I believe there's research to support this, that exercise really makes it harder because exercise makes you hungry. You're absolutely right. And I think if you speak to athletes who are trying to get down to fighting weight or what have you, they tell you the same thing. You lose the weight first and then you train because there is the magic of exercise. The truth about exercise is that it's not particularly good for weight loss. Now, just to be clear, I don't want to be, you know, telling people bad advice. Nothing replaces the good of

exercise. Nothing. Even if you don't lose a single ounce, okay? So please exercise. But for weight loss, it is bad for weight loss, but it is actually particularly good for weight maintenance. So what happens is once you've lost the weight by eating less, and when you are trying to maintain now your fighting weight, actually exercise will help you maintain that weight loss. So is there a strategy or at least a philosophy that can really help people lose weight? There is a biological property of some foods which can be harnessed. And that one fact, one universal truth is that food that takes longer to digest travels further down the gut, making you feel fuller. And you feel fuller, you eat less. So I'll give you one example. A calorie of protein make you feel fuller than a calorie of fat, than a calorie of carb, in that order.

Why? Because proteins are the most chemically complex to digest, to take apart. As a result, it just travels further down the gut. It makes you feel fuller. And if the moment you start to think about this, then you realize, hang on, this is how the Atkins diet is famously low carb, low carb, I'm counting my carbs. Actually, it's less about the carbs being removed and more about the fact that you've increased your protein amount that you're eating. So you eat more protein, you feel fuller, you eat less. And this is how the keto diet works, the paleo diet works, the carnivore diet works. Now, other foods that can make you, that take longer to digest is foods that are high in fiber because the, you know, so

if you eat a fruit, for example, it's going to make you feel fuller than if you drink orange juice. Why? Because orange juice has no fiber, orange just has fiber. So I think you can harness that fat where you can increase your protein, not by huge amounts. And remember, all protein counts, whether or not it comes from meat or from beans or from tofu. All right. And mix in foods that are higher in fiber. What happens is you are going to tend to feel fuller and you're going to tend to eat less. And that is probably a useful way for some people to try and lose weight. Well, it's a problem that certainly plagues a lot of people. And it's good to understand what's going on and why it is for many people, why it's so hard to say no to food and what works to put the odds in your favor that you can lose weight. Dr. Giles Yeo has been my guest. He's a geneticist with over 20 years experience dedicated to researching the genetics of obesity. His book is called Gene Eating, the Science of Obesity and the Truth About Dieting. There's a link to his book at Amazon in the show notes. Thank you, Giles. Thank you so much, Mike.

Are you able to swallow a pill without chasing it with water? I've never been able to do that very well. And as it turns out, even if you can do it, you probably should not. If you swallow a pill dry with nothing to wash it down, there's a chance it can get stuck in your esophagus, and that can cause all sorts of problems like inflammation, irritation, heartburn, chest pain, and more. Since there are no pain nerves in parts of the esophagus, symptoms don't always begin right away, which can make it difficult for you to know if that pill really went down all the way. To avoid dangerous complications when swallowing pills, it's always best to wash them down with at least eight ounces

of water and do it while you're standing or sitting up, never lying down. And that is something you should know. If you like this podcast, don't keep it a secret. Share it with someone you know. I'm Mike Carruthers. Thanks for listening today to Something You Should Know. Welcome to the small town of Chinook, where faith runs deep and secrets run deeper. In this new thriller, religion and crime collide when a gruesome murder rocks the isolated Montana community. Everyone is quick to point their fingers at a drug-addicted teenager, but local deputy Ruth Vogel isn't convinced.

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