Something You Should Know - SYSK Choice: Interesting Math of Everyday Life & Lose Weight Without Dieting

Episode Date: March 21, 2020

 Everyone knows that coffee can help you think and focus and can even improve your mood – especially that first cup in the morning. Years ago, coffee advertising contained the tagline… “Coffee, the THINK drink.”  But it just may be that all the research showing how good coffee and caffeine are for mental function is flawed. If you are a coffee drinker, you are going to want to hear this. http://www.forbes.com/sites/travisbradberry/2012/08/21/caffeine-the-silent-killer-of-emotional-intelligence/ Then, we look at all the math you use in everyday life. Mathematician, Jordan Ellenberg, author of the book How Not to Be Wrong: The Power of Mathematical Thinking (http://amzn.to/2uyMDx6) reveals just how important math is and how it is constantly changing. He also discusses how not to be tricked by statistics and numbers that are designed to mislead you. People do better work when they get a reward. It applies to people at work or kids at home – and it comes as no surprise. What’s interesting is that it actually depends on the type of reward. It doesn’t have to be a big reward, it just has to be the right reward to get people to do their best work. I’ll explain. Source: Dr. John Hoover, author of the book “The Art Of Constructive Confrontation” (https://amzn.to/2UcskBf) Why don’t diets work? Diet books and programs are as popular as ever but we continue to get heavier. Yoni Freedhoff, M.D., author of the book The Diet Fix (http://amzn.to/2vMM55m) explains the reasons why your next diet is likely doomed to fail and what works better to get the weight off and keep it off. 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. Today on Something You Should Know, you swear your morning coffee improves your mental function and helps you think.

But it doesn't really, and I'll tell you why. Then, you use math all the time every day in your life, and yet there's so much we don't understand about it. If you would ask me, what's like the one biggest thing

that people don't know about math, it's that math is not finished. The truth is that in this time, in this place, more new math is being created and progress is faster than at any other time and place in the entire history of humanity. Plus, of course people work harder when there's a reward, but it depends on what kind of reward. And dieting. Just about everyone who's tried knows the weight loss doesn't last. They don't last because people aren't willing to live like that forever. That's why you need to light your life while you're losing the weight, because if you don't, you won't keep living that way. All this today on Something You Should Know.

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.

Something you should know. Fascinating intel. The world's top experts and practical advice you can use in your life. Today, Something You Should Know with Mike Carruthers. Hi, welcome. Come on in. It's another episode of the Something You Should Know podcast. If you're a dedicated coffee drinker, as I am, you have probably heard that coffee, or more specifically the caffeine in coffee, can improve your mood and your ability to think and focus and even remember, right? In fact, I recall years ago, coffee was known in advertising, the tagline was coffee, the think drink. Well, coffee may not be improving your mental function in the way you think it does. Yes, studies do show that these mental improvements occur when people drink coffee, but there's a flaw in the research.

Listen to this. John Hopkins Medical School showed that the reason a person's mood and cognitive function improves when they drink coffee is because they've experienced the negative effects of caffeine withdrawal overnight from the day before. The caffeine that you drink in the morning is just bringing you back to normal after the effects of caffeine withdrawal overnight. So coming off caffeine reduces your cognitive performance,

has a negative effect on your mood, and what the caffeine is doing in the morning, it's just bringing you back to normal. In other words, if you give coffee to someone who doesn't drink coffee in the first place, their cognitive performance will not improve much, if at all. And that is something you should know. Math is an important part of your everyday life. Even though you often don't think about it, in many ways, math gets you through the day and helps you to think and helps you figure out what's right and wrong.

Jordan Ellenberg is a mathematician. He's also a professor of mathematics at the University of Wisconsin. And he's author of the best-selling book, How Not to Be Wrong, The Power of Mathematical Thinking. And he's here to lift the lid off of math and discuss just how important it is. So, Jordan, I remember thinking in school, and my son Owen tells me all the time, because he's in school, that he's learning things in math that he's never, ever going to ever need in his entire life? Well, to which I say, he may not use that exact computation. He may not solve that particular problem that he was asked to solve.

He may not need to know, you know, how long the shadow of that particular ladder is leaned against the house of that particular height at that particular hour of the day. But the skills that he's building, the ability to take a problem and break it down into its component parts and solve each one in sequence, that's one of the basic mathematical skills. Another basic mathematical skill, I read about this a lot when I read about algebra, because this is one area where people are really like, what is this for? What is algebra for? And what that's training you to do is to say,

if you see the output of some phenomenon, how do you figure out the input? You know, in algebra, you're saying, okay, if 5x plus 8 equals 13, what was x? That's like what we do in any situation in life where we see, let's say, the result that we want. Let's say we're like politicians, right? There's some result that we want to get, and we say, okay, what policy would we have to make to get that result? It's like reverse engineering, and that's fundamentally what algebra is. So give me an example of how math solves a real-world problem. This will help me with my son the next time he says,

I don't need to learn this because I'll never, ever need it again. So what's an example of real math solving a real problem? I think people love this example of the missing bullet holes. Scientists in World War II were trying to figure out how to armor the planes. They were sending commissions over Germany. And they saw this very interesting phenomenon that the planes would come back and they wouldn't have bullets distributed evenly over the whole plane. There was like more bullets on the fuselage and less bullets in the engine. They were like,

this is really important information. We've got to figure out how much more armor we have to put where the planes are getting hit in order to protect them. But what they realized after thinking about it a little bit more is that that was the completely wrong strategy. You had to put the armor where there weren't any bullet holes. That seems very weird. Why would you want to armor the parts of the plane that weren't getting hit? And the answer is that it's not that the Nazis couldn't hit the plane on the engine. It's that those planes that were getting hit on the engine were not coming back from the missions.

And that I consider to be a fundamentally mathematical insight. I mean, if I had to sort of sum up the mathematical approach to life in one sentence, it would be don't just answer the question, ask whether it's the right question. Wow, think about that. They didn't need to put more armor on the planes where they were getting hit by bullets. They needed to armor the planes where they weren't getting hit by bullets because that's where the planes were getting hit that didn't come back. I mean, that's genius.

It's simple, but really that's genius. I don't think this is unique to math. I think in general our way of schooling is about what's the right answer to this question. If you get enough right answers, you get a good grade on the test, and you move on, right? Fundamentally, learning is, I mean, one of the things it's about is getting the right answers to questions. But if we want to sort of develop really powerful thinkers and citizens and participants, we need to do both of those things, right? Not just answer questions correctly, but interrogate the questions themselves and ask whether they're the right questions. And I think math is an incredibly powerful vehicle for developing that.

One of the things that happens a lot now is people throw around statistics, data, and say, and see, that's why this is true. And you talk about how, you know, we can be very misled by data if we're not careful. Right. But the most important words in that sentence are data if we're not careful. Right, but the most important words in that sentence are, if we're not careful, because I think we have the capacity to be careful. And as a teacher, one of the things I'm trying to do is help train people how to do that. Because I think one thing that I think is a bit of a negative right now is that people have become aware that statistics can be used to mislead if people are

not vigilant, if people are not careful. And unfortunately, I think as a result, people have gotten a bit nihilistic and just said like, oh, you can make numbers say anything you want. Like some statistic comes up that's inconsistent with my worldview. I'm just going to assume that that person must be trying to fool me. And then you have no place to stand, right? If you've just decided I'm not going to believe anything because I believe statistics are lying, boy, then you're just like floating in space, like with no solid ground to stand on, like no capacity to make reasonable decisions.

So, you know, what I think is just as you say, that if you're not careful, yes, you can be fooled. But if you are careful, thinking about the numbers and thinking about the statistics is like a absolutely fundamental importance in like understanding how the world works can you give me an example or two of statistics people have used that upon closer examination just don't hold up well I like them what I'm from right here in Wisconsin where our governor said, you know, half of all the jobs created last month in the whole United States were created in Wisconsin.

That's an amazing statistic. In Wisconsin, right, it was quite impressive if like half of the whole country's job growth came from Wisconsin. That means like other states, right, must not be doing very much in terms of jobs. But here's the actual situation. In fact, there were plenty of states that created more jobs than Wisconsin. How could that be if Wisconsin had half of all the job growth? How could any state make more? Well, the answer is lots of states had negative job growth, right?

Lots of positive, lots of negative. It all added up to some number that was pretty close to zero so that each state that had job growth at all was accounting for about half of that. So one reason I find that such an interesting example is that that number that the governor said was not false. It was literally the case that if you add up all the job growth, positive and negative, over the whole country, it was a rather small number. And Wisconsin's job growth was 50% of that. On the other hand, Minnesota was right next door to us. Minnesota's job growth was 70% of that. So I think what's – look, politicians are going to sort of say whatever suits their interests, right?

I mean, there's no question there. What's interesting there is that it's not typically that people say numbers that are not true. It's that they say things that are true but are intended to mislead, right? That number is intended to make you feel like, boy, like Wisconsin is like the top job-growing state in the whole country. He didn't literally say that, but it's intended to make you think like that. And that's another example of how I think math is not just about saying, is this number correct or not?

Math should be about saying, wait, is that number even the correct number to ask for? Or should you have asked for some different number? I'm speaking with Jordan Ellenberg. He is a professor of mathematics at the University of Wisconsin and author of the book, How Not to Be Wrong, The Power of Mathematical Thinking. contained herein are the heresies of redolph buntwine erstwhile monk turned traveling medical investigator join me as i study the secrets of the divine plagues and uncover the blasphemous truth that ours is not a loving god and we are not its favored children the heresiesies of Redolf Bantwine, wherever podcasts are available. 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. Apple named The Jordan Harbinger Show one of the best podcasts a few years back,

and in a nutshell, the show is aimed at making you a better, more informed critical thinker. Check out The Jordan Harbinger Show. There's so much for you in this podcast. The Jordan Harbinger Show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. So Jordan, how else do we use math, maybe even unknowingly, like you were talking earlier about, you know, we do use math and that's why we learned it in school because we're going to need it. But are there other things that we think, well, that's not really math, but actually it is? Yeah, I mean, I think, you know, basically our whole decision-making apparatus

where we have to make some kind of mental compromise between different needs that we have. Every decision we make, we are weighing different things that we want. What's my short-term goal? What's my long-term goal? How much more am I going to weight my short-term goals than my long-term goals? What if I have different goals that are in conflict? How much do I weight each one? That is not a purely mathematical problem, but it's at least a partially mathematical problem. And I think one thing that's really interesting is just people's attempt to say what quantitatively is going on inside the human mind if we weigh these things. Especially when a place where this comes up all the time is a lot of times you have to figure out whether

you want to do thing A or thing B, but the outcomes are uncertain. You don't actually know for sure what's going to happen, and then you're talking about probability, and then you're definitely talking about math. One area that people know is math and know that when they look at the math, it's really the odds are not in their favor, and that's, you know, the lottery and gambling and Las Vegas and those things.

But somehow the mind doesn't seem to care, and we do it anyway. You can ask 10 economists and mathematicians and statisticians and get 10 different answers about why people play the lottery when in the long run, you're going to lose. Look, after all, if people didn't lose money in the lottery in the long run, there wouldn't be a lottery because the whole point of the lottery is to generate money. I mean, that's just like, that's a simple economic fact. Where I come down on that is that people are mostly not playing the lottery as a rational investment vehicle.

They're playing the lottery because, I mean, the word playing tells you a lot, right? They're playing the lottery because they find it fun to gamble in the same way that they would have fun, like going to the movies or something like that. And they're spending like that kind of money for some combination of, yeah, maybe hoping to win something, but also being entertained. And somebody does win. So it could be me. It could be, but I don't think that should be your primary reason. I think your primary, I think what you're getting for your two bucks is the fun of thinking about it being you.

Is there much new in math? I mean, do you discover new things in math the way science discovers new things in science? Absolutely. And actually, I'm glad you asked that, because I think if you would ask me, what's like the one biggest thing that people don't know about math? It's that math is not finished. I think a lot of people think a mathematician is somebody who lived a long time ago. The truth is that, you know, in this time, in this place, in the United States of America,

more new math is being created and progress is faster than at any other time and place in the entire history of humanity. I mean, it's really like a privilege to be present at this like incredible flourishing of new techniques, like new ideas, new discoveries, new theorems. It's really, I mean, it's really quite amazing. Given all that you know and all the work you've done, can you give me a couple, three, four, five things that you wish people understood better when it comes to math in everyday life? Sure. I mean, so some of them are the ones we've already gone over,

that new math is still being created today, that it's like a living subject subject, in fact, incredibly healthy. You know, another one, this is a big one, is that I wish people could be more comfortable with uncertainty. I saw something the other day that absolutely appalled me. They said that the Canadian Weather Service won't ever say that there's a 50% chance of rain. And why won't they?

Why won't they tell you there's a 50% chance of rain? They said won't they? Why won't they tell you there's a 50% chance of rain? They said because people get upset, and they're like, well, we need an answer. We need to know whether it's going to rain, so you've got to tell us whether it's 60% or 40%. You've got to make a decision. And that's, of course, complete nonsense because sometimes it is 50-50. Why shouldn't they say it's 50-50 when it is? And I think what people are looking for is, I mean, I think what the misconception there is that people are saying, like, well, I want an answer, yes or no.

Is it going to rain or not? So they say 60%. They're like, you said it was going to rain. But, of course, that's not what it means, right? It means that it might rain, and we think it's more likely than not that it will. Or if they say 40%, it might rain, and we think it's more likely than not that it will, or if they say 40% it might rain, and we think it's more likely than not that it won't, or if it's 50%, they're saying, like, yeah, as best we can tell, there's a 50-50 chance it will rain. And I think it's a little, and I do think it's something that I would like to get out

there that people should be more comfortable with. For many real-world questions, the right answer is not yes or no. The right answer is that there is uncertainty. I mean, and that's true of the weather. It's true of tomorrow's weather, which is pretty well modeled mathematically and physically. All the more so when we ask questions

about like matters, about the way people will behave or like political questions or stuff like that. I think people sometimes have a misconception that when you do math, what that means,

you get a yes or no answer. But for real world problems, it's much more likely you're going to get an answer that has a certain degree of uncertainty in it, and that's not somebody kind of hiding something from you. That's the truth. Yeah, that's not how we think of math, though. We do think of it as one and one is two, so the answer should always be definite, not vague or not, you know, uncertain. Math should be very certain. Yes, and that's a

misconception I would love to overthrow. What about just in how people deal either with, I don't know, other people, their car, whatever, that how math plays plays into that, maybe unknowingly? Your car is a perfect example because people are constantly making that decision. I drive an old car, I don't know what you drive, but I drive a 2001 Subaru. And, like, definitely, you know, that means that you go in and there's something that needs to be fixed and it's, like, kind of expensive and you've got to decide, is this the moment where I'm going to get a new car

or am I going to fix this? You know what I mean? And that is a question that has lots and lots of aspects. It's not a pure math question, but it's partly a math question because you got to say like, okay, how much more money am I willing to spend on this car? How much do I want a new car? How much is that worth to me? I think people are not often like opening up a spreadsheet and doing that computation when they make that decision. But at the same time, I think that in some way, even if they don't formalize it by writing down

numbers, they fundamentally are thinking mathematically when they try to compute that trade-off versus how much do I not want to spend this money now versus how much do I want to buy a new car later, like how much am I going to enjoy a brand new car and how does that translate into dollars in my bank account, etc.

There is things fundamentally mathematical about that. Yeah. One of the, and maybe it was you who told me this when we talked previously, one of the things that I've taken to heart and actually try to incorporate is, I don't remember the example, but let's say you're taking a trip and you plan out how you're going to go to the airport, you're going to get on the airport, you're going to get on the plane, you're going to...

And chances are everything should go okay, but eventually things do break. Your car won't start or they lose your luggage or something. And we never plan that into the plan, but statistically, it's going to happen sooner or later. And if you don't plan that into the plan, you're going to have trouble. Right, and it's funny because it's the exact flip side of what you were saying about the lottery. Somebody's going to win the lottery, right? And in the same way, somebody in your town, their car is going to break down today.

Somebody is going to get into a fender bender. That is happening to somebody, and it might be you. Right, and eventually it will be you. Something's going to go wrong. If it's not the fender bender, it's the car breaking down, or it's they're losing your luck. But nobody's life goes perfect, and yet when we plan life, we plan it to go perfect. Yeah, although I think that's an area where if you talk to professional planners, like, they don't, right? If you, like, talk to the person who runs the subway system of your city, they have redundancy, right? They have a backup plan.

At least I hope they do. If your city is run properly, right, that is the person whose job it is not to assume that everything is going to run fine. Right, yeah. And that's a very mathematical job. Yeah, it is. It is. But we tend not to weave that in. We tend to assume that everything will go just the way we planned it.

Right, and I think in some sense, that's exactly the point about, I think a truly mathematical point of view doesn't say, okay, I have this formal binary plan where each thing follows from the next thing and this is exactly how it's going to be, I think the truly mathematical way of thinking of it is at each step, how much uncertainty is there and whether it's going to be exactly the way I predict that it is.

Because it may be that if your plan is very complicated and has like 25 steps, the chance of the whole thing going through without a hitch might actually be pretty low. Lastly, you know when I watch the Big Bang Theory and I see Sheldon with his whiteboard and he's doing these equations that go, you know, on and on and on? Is that real? Is that math? Is that what you guys do?

I mean, do we write equations on a whiteboard? Yes. Do I see that character as, like, the role model that I want to be the public image of math? Hell no. But do you get excited, like, he gets excited about equations, and do you stay up all night thinking, God, this is just the greatest thing

in the world? Yeah, well, I'm too old to stay up all night now, but I used to. But I do. Yeah, look, I think when you're a mathematician, you know, you get in bed, and, like, that's what you think about when you're falling asleep. And if you wake up in the morning and it's a little too early, it's before the alarm, and you can't get back to sleep, like, that's what you're thinking about, right? That's always there with you.

The great thing about being a mathematician is you're never bored. Well, perfect. Well, I think that's an excellent peek inside your mathematical mind. I've been speaking with Jordan Ellenberg. He's a mathematician, professor of mathematics at the University of Wisconsin, and author of the best-selling book, How Not to Be Wrong, The Power of Mathematical Thinking. There's a link to his book on Amazon in the show notes for this podcast episode. 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. As a category, diet books sell really well. And there are plenty of diet programs that also do really well. And yet, as a population, we continue to get heavier. And I think most of us are in agreement that diets don't really work. People go on diets, then they go off diets, and then they end up gaining the weight back, and often end up gaining back even more weight. Dr. Yanni Friedhoff is an MD MD and he's really looked at this whole issue of

dieting and what happens and why they fail. And he is also author of a book called The Diet Fix. Welcome, Dr. Friedhoff. So why do you think that even though people know that diets are likely going to fail, we keep trying them? Why? Well, so I think that ultimately diets fail because we are taught by society as a whole that success and suffering are synonymous with one another. And whether it's TV shows like The Biggest Loser that really hammers home the point that it's perpetual suffering, or if it's just the media or friends and family, we think suffering's our ticket.

Most people don't want to suffer forever, and so they undertake short-term efforts of suffering that don't last, neither the effort or the weight loss. Right. Well, and that's most people's experience. And not only does it not last, but people end up putting even more weight on, right? That's right. So people regain quite regularly any weight that they've lost through suffering.

What can be really traumatic and challenging is doing that many times and considering yourself a failure with each. So again, we're taught that if we regain suffering. What can be really traumatic and challenging is doing that many times and considering yourself a failure with each. So again, we're taught that if we regain our weight, we've failed. We didn't have willpower. We didn't try hard enough or want it badly enough. Feeling perpetually like a failure at something that for many is a very important thing can erode a person's self-esteem and really even lead to frank depressions and difficulties with self-efficacy, body image, even interpersonal relationship.

So what's the answer? Well, so I think the answer is changing our attitude about what success looks like. And so I tend not to talk about things like body mass index tables or ideal weights. What I'm trying to help people cultivate is what I like to refer to as best weight, which is whatever weight a person reaches living the healthiest life that they can honestly enjoy. Because truly, there will come a point where a person cannot happily eat less and a point where a person cannot happily exercise more. And their weight, living with that life, is what I would refer to as their best weight.

Because if you can't happily do any better, you're doing your best. And I think bests are great. Is your best what you think your best is? Or is your, I mean, what, who's to determine best? Well, so truly, there will come a point where there is no better to be done without an extreme of effort that certainly won't be maintained. And that will differ for different people. It'll differ because of things like genetics and metabolic rate. It'll differ because of coexisting medical problems or medications that are required, socioeconomic status, real life realities. They do get in our way. So while for sure there are things in everybody's life that we could change to improve our health and our weight, there will be things that aren't changeable. And so there's no way to predict how much a person can lose

happily. And the key, of course, is that if you don't lose it happily, it comes back. But couldn't people use that advice and say, well, screw it, you know, this is as good as it gets. I can't do any better than this. I may be fat, but this is as good as it gets. And that doctor said it was fine. Well, I've rarely met a person who doesn't have room to improve their lifestyle, and that would include me. You know, we all have things that we can improve upon, but ultimately, I don't think that we, every other area of our lives, we accept the fact that we have limits, and there's nothing wrong with that. I think accepting that in weight management isn't a bad thing either. Ultimately, virtually all of our chronic diseases, heart disease, depression, osteoarthritis, even cancer is preventable to some degree, even to a large

degree through lifestyle change, yet it's with weight people seem to think that they should always be perfectly perfect all the time. And I think it's that attitude that's toxic. So yeah, maybe there'll be somebody out there listening who thinks, you know what think it's that attitude that's toxic. So yeah, maybe there'll be somebody out there listening who thinks, you know what, it's not important to me, and that's okay by me. Truly, we are allowed to choose our own destinies. And if there's a person who feels that change is beyond their capabilities, who am I to say that there's anything wrong with that? And that's what we do with everything in our lives. We choose to do what we feel we can and desire, and it's nobody's place to judge someone who's not doing that. Okay, so what's the process that a person goes through

so that they get to the point where they can say, okay, this is as good as it's going to get? Fair enough. So there are things that can be done in terms of dietary organization that can help make a person live happily with less. And really, that's what it's all about. Frequencies of meals and snacks makes a difference. The amount of protein and calories where a person is ensuring they actually eat enough. I worry much more about people eating too little than eating too much. But there are things that can be done with food to help stay in control.

Ultimately, hunger is not our friend. And so if someone is trying to eat less, so to speak, waiting until they're hungry to eat, it's like going to the supermarket hungry. You buy differently. You shop differently when you're hungry, whether it's from an aisle or from a menu or from a cupboard. Hunger is not our friend. And so a lot of what I talk about in the diet fix

has to do with trying to minimize and prevent hunger so that it's no longer a white-knuckle willpower affair, but rather about reorganizing life some. And then asking questions like when you're considering an indulgence, first of all, is it worth it? And some days it is worth it. And then if it is worth it, finding out and asking a secondary question, which is how much of it do I need to be happily satisfied? But always being in denial leads many people to ultimately quit. I'd rather someone had the smallest amount of indulgence in their lives that they needed to be happy than to try to cut it out altogether and then ultimately quit. So where does the

motivation need to come from? Just as people need to find motivation to try diets, where is somebody supposed to get the motivation to do this and get started and get to the point where they can say, okay, this is as good as it's going to get, but at least I'm doing this? Well, I think that sadly in society today, there is plenty of motivators. You know, weight stigma and weight bias is very real. Anybody who struggles with their weight will know exactly what I'm talking about. But we do, as a society, shun people with obesity. And the gluttonous sloth narrative is one that is readily accepted. I don't agree with it, but it definitely affects a person's life.

And so, too, does weight. Once it gets to a certain point, for most people, it will start having an effect on quality of life, whether it's because of cropping into other medical problems or literally a person feeling their weight, you know, hurting or having difficulty moving around. There does come a point for a lot of folks who say, you know what, I need to make a change. I'm not happy with the way things are. The key then is to pick a change that the person can honestly say, I could live like this for the rest of my life and live like this happily for the rest of my life, rather than just, I could tolerate it for now. Tolerating things for now, eventually you going to do the best I can, and then I'm going to stop trying when I get there, and that's a good place to sit? So it's not about stopping trying.

It's quite the opposite, actually. So the key is undertaking a series of changes that you're comfortable living with in perpetuity. It's just that a lot of modern-day dieting has been predicated on changes that themselves are not comfortable in perpetuity, whether it's cutting out an entire food group that a person loves, regularly battling with hunger, avoiding their favorite foods. Those are commonplace dieting plans, right? But they don't last because people aren't willing to live like that forever. So whatever a person does in order to lose the weight, they need to continue doing to keep it off. And again, I know I'm a broken record, but that's why you need to like

your life while you're losing the weight, because if you don't, you won't keep living that way. But that typically is going to probably mean that the weight loss is going to be slower, right? I mean, it's going to be less... No question. So the only way to lose weight in a big hurry is to do something that is totally non-sustainable, either under eating or over exercising or some combination or some form of dramatic restriction. Now, there are some people out there, and God bless them, who are comfortable with very dramatic dietary changes and restrictions. Nothing wrong with that. It's just most people aren't comfy with that. I can't tell you how many people in my office, for instance, I've seen who tell me how great their low-carb diet was to help them lose weight,

but then they gain it all back when they couldn't stand a low-carb diet anymore. On the other hand, there are some who do love low-carb dieting. You've got to find your own groove. And I think the suggestion that there's one right way to go is one of the things that makes it challenging because I don't think there's one right way to go. I try to teach people how to troubleshoot and figure out what is the best practice for them, but there are a lot of different people on the planet, and I don't think there's one right diet

for everybody. But are there some common things that you recommend and that you find, if people do, that this gets them on the road to success? Absolutely. So I think there are some common things that can be done. One of the most important ones is making sure a person eats enough. It sounds strange, but there are many folks who believe that success requires constant under-eating, whether it's under-eating throughout the day

because they're worried about their intake at night, or whether it's just in general trying to under-eat. Ultimately, if people are regularly battling hunger, hunger is the reflection of 100 million years of evolution during times of extreme dietary insecurity. When we're hungry and there's highly caloric foods in front of us, we are programmed to eat them to excess. And so one of the most important things for anybody who struggles with dietary control is getting rid of that piece. And hunger is not just stomach, it's also brain. You know, it's not just growling, it's cravings.

But eating frequently for many helps quite a lot, ensuring there are enough calories in every meal and snack, ensuring there is protein with every meal and snack, because studies absolutely show that protein is more filling. Those are very useful and important pieces for almost everybody. I know one of the things that people often comment on is that the next day, they always regret, you know, rating the refrigerator at midnight, but at the time, it was just impossible not to, and that that sabotages the diet, and then everything spirals from there. And I think that is almost always, especially when it's nighttime-based, a reflection of inadequate or poorly organized daytime eating. And that when I see people like that, and I've been working in weight management for a decade, thousands and thousands of people, when someone

tells me they just struggle at night, I know they will be much easier to help because those folks do great when they front load their days in terms of calories and protein. And suddenly the nighttime fridge raid, it's not even that they're able to resist it, it's that they're not driven to do it. I do think that is just a different side of this hormonal hunger coin. Oh, so when you say front load, you mean breakfast and lunch or just all meals throughout the day? Or what does front load mean? Well, it depends on the individual.

So the two most common eating patterns that I see that work, one is a three larger, squarer meal style approach where literally a third of your day's calories with each meal, where 25% of each meal comes from protein as far as caloric contribution goes. Or there's the three meal, two, three snack a day approach. But again, the key is not going too long between meals and snacks in that approach because each meal and snack is smaller than those larger three square meals. The right way to go is the way that works for that individual. And so I'm hesitant to tell everybody to do three meals or two or three snacks, but it has been my experience that that's the easiest one to do logistically, because not everybody wants to have the large heavy breakfast each morning. One of the things I think that draws

people to diets is that usually in any diet, it tells you very specifically, this is what you can eat, this is what you can't eat. and people like that structure. So with your plan, is there a general guideline as to what you eat and what you don't eat? People sometimes get a little bit too hung up into the minutiae of nutrition. You know, I don't think that we have enough scientific data to support one way of eating being far superior to another. Cooking from fresh whole ingredients, do that more often than not, and you're already getting a pretty good grade in nutrition. From a weight loss perspective, there are actually quite a lot

of different approaches out there, from intermittent fasting to low-carb to low-fat. And again, I'm not married to any of them. It's whatever works for a person. So the Diet Fix also has a section on trying to help a person rejig a diet that just didn't quite make it. Someone liked it. So, for instance, those low-carbers who just couldn't quite hack it,

maybe there's a way to tweak that diet to make it more long-term and livable. But I actually encourage people to try all sorts of different approaches while they're trying to suss out what is the right way for them to go. Because there are a lot of different ways to do this. At the end of the day, currency awaits calories. Controlling them is the key to weight. But how you control those calories in part will depend on the foods you enjoy and on properties of food, like for instance, the protein I keep coming back to that leaves people feeling fuller. Well, I sense that anybody who's gone on a diet and off a diet and gained the weight back and tried another diet

has a sense that what you're saying makes a lot of sense and might be a more practical way to go. I've been speaking with Dr. Yanni Friedhoff. He is an MD and author of the book, The Diet Fix. There's a link to his book on Amazon in the show notes for this episode of the podcast. Well, this will probably come as no big surprise, but research has found that people do better work when they're rewarded for it. But it gets a little more interesting.

Research has proven that when celebration is pre-planned into a project, people work harder and better knowing that there is a payoff coming at the end. And the payoff has to be more than just a paycheck or being told, hey, nice job, good work. This is also true at home with kids and in relationships. When people have something good to work toward, there's going to be more energy, more dedication, more sense of ownership, and the result is always going to be better. On the flip side, if people work hard and receive no reward, they often become cynical and resentful. The rewards and celebrations don't have to be big,

they just have to be thoughtful. And that is something you should know. That concludes our SYSK Choice episode for this week. I'm Micah Ruthers. Thank you for listening 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. She suspects connections to a powerful religious group. Enter federal agent V.B. Loro, who has been investigating a local church for possible criminal activity. The pair form an unlikely partnership to catch the killer, unearthing secrets that leave Ruth torn between her duty to the law, her religious convictions, and her very own family. But something more sinister than murder is afoot, and someone is watching Ruth. Chinook, starring Kelly Marie Tran and Sanaa Lathan.

Listen to Chinook wherever you get your podcasts. had a pretty good run. 15 seasons, 327 episodes. And though we have seen, of course, every episode many times, we figured, hey, now that we're wrapped, let's watch it all again. And we can't do that alone. So we're inviting the cast and crew that made the show along for the ride. We've got writers, producers, composers, directors, and we'll of course have some actors on as well, including some certain guys that played some certain pretty iconic brothers. It was kind of a little bit of a left-field choice in the best way possible. The note from Kripke was, he's great, we love him, but we're looking for like a really intelligent Duchovny type. With 15 seasons to explore, it's going to be the road trip of several lifetimes.

So please join us and subscribe to Supernatural then and now.