Tara Brach - Changing Unhealthy Habits of Eating - A Conversation between Tara and Judson Brewer

Episode Date: January 25, 2024

Changing Unhealthy Habits of Eating - A Conversation between Tara and Judson Brewer - Countless people live with shame and distress about their eating. Dr. Judson Brewer, scientist, professor and author of "The Hunger Habit" (https://drjud.com/the-hunger-habit/) and many other groundbreaking books, is a thought leader in the field of habit change. He's also a decades long practitioner of mindfulness, and a dear colleague and friend. In this conversation we explore how combining mindfulness practice with a basic understanding of habit change science can free us from unhealthy eating habits. We also look at the larger societal forces that drive overconsumption, as well as the shame that eating behaviors can evoke.

Greetings. We offer these podcasts freely, and your support really makes a difference. To make a donation, please visit tarabrock.com. Namaste, welcome, friends. Countless people live with shame and distress about their eating. I know it well myself through my personal history, and this is our theme today. And I'm speaking with my dear friend and colleague, Dr. Judson Brewer, and Judd is a scientist, a professor, an author of The Hunger Habit. That's his new book and many other groundbreaking books. He's a thought leader in the field of habit change. And he's also, importantly, a decades-long practitioner of mindfulness. So in this conversation, we explore how combining mindfulness practice with a basic understanding of habit change science can free us from unhealthy eating habits.

So we also look at the larger societal forces that drive over consumption, as well as the shame that eating behaviors can evoke. I always learn from Judd and find inspiration in what he offers, and I trust you well too. Many blessings. So good morning and welcome, Judd. It's great to see you. Yeah, so we're getting to talk about something that is very alive for both of us today and kind of circles around this beautiful new book you've got coming out at the end of this month, The Hunger Habit. So I thought maybe just to ask you personally and professionally, what drew you to this?

You want the truth? You could start off by saying some other things, but no, yeah, let's go for it. I don't know anything else. So the truth is that I have a wonderful editor named Caroline Sutton. And she was editor for my Unwining Anxiety Book. And we had a conversation and she said, Judd, I think it's a time for a book on eating. And I said, I'm not that person to write that book. And we had a long conversation and she said, don't you see a lot of patients, you know, who struggle with eating habits?

And I said, yeah. She said, don't you have this program or even on research? And she's like, yeah. She's like, so who else is going to write this book? And she got me. Because I'm like, I'm a relatively, you know, skinny white guy, you know, I, you know, I shouldn't be writing this book. And she's like, you know, you are the person that should be writing this book. And so we talked and we iterated and the book became written. And so it was a wonderful

learning journey for me. And I also want to say, this isn't really about me or my research. It supports the concepts in the book. But it's really about these beautiful stories that I had the privilege of being able to help bring to the world. And these stories are some of my patients and some of the people using our Eat Right Now program. And it's really they are the ones that bring this book alive because it's their lived experience and all that they've gone through from, you know, one person was addicted to eating fast food, another, you know, this whole dieting and binge eating thing, another just mindless eating, you know, the whole spectrum. And their stories are so beautiful. So it's really, this is really their book. It's not my book.

Well, and in working with them, you have been exposed to the depth of that suffering. I'm speaking, I'll be speaking more from having, knowing it on the inside out, but there is such huge suffering. It's so pervasive in the society around feeling addicted to certain ways of eating, habits that people I have hated myself for. So maybe a way to start. One of the things you begin with, which I just found so powerful and helpful, is most of us are going through life telling ourselves we should be different and that we should eat differently. We should be of a different way. We should have more control. We should have more well power. How does the word should completely trap us? I'm a big fan of corny jokes. So here's one.

We should all over ourselves, right? Yeah. And this is a really interesting aspect of society because one, it says, hey, you know, this, you just need to have more willpower. There's something wrong with you. It's not, you know, the formulas and the formulas that I learned in medical school are still true today. You know, it's like calories in calories out. And I like that one because I can remember it. It's pretty short.

But it's true if somebody eats fewer calories. and they burn some off through exercise, that, you know, it's, it's going to reduce weight, right? That's a true thing. And the dot, dot, dot, dot, the assumption is that somebody just needs to do it. They didn't, so these are people who know all the intellectual stuff, but they're not in the trenches trying to work with people who have this, like, shame that they can't just follow the formula. You know, it's simple. What's wrong with me? And this is actually something that I also, another shout out to Caroline in another

conversation we had, she articulated this so beautifully where it's like, with anxiety, for example, it feels like this is something that happens to us, whereas with eating, it's something that's wrong with us if we can't control our eating. So I just want to state if somebody stops listening right now, it's not their fault. It's not our fault. There's not something that's wrong with us. It's that our brain is trying to help us survive and in this environment where everybody's trying to get us addicted to things.

It's fighting against a lot of forces. The wires get crossed a little bit in terms of these survival mechanisms. And then we go down this rabbit hole of willpower and then get stuck and, you know, and exhausted and feel like there's, you know, we can't. do anything about it. But the truth is that if we know how our minds work, we can learn to work with our minds. And the punchline is it's not about willpower. And that's what our neuroscience research shows. Okay. So say a little more about that because in this society, like the idea of putting out an effort and if you really try hard, you know, you'll make it, that kind of thing.

except for Carlin, who says, my theory is, no pain, no pain, which is one of my favorite quotes in all-time history. But mostly we're told that, you know, on some level, if we're not, you know, making it on this one, that, you know, we're not trying hard enough. So how come wellpower doesn't work? And what is it we need to know about how the brain works so we can begin to work with the brain. Yeah. So I don't know. I'm not a historian. So, you know, caveat everything that I'm about to say. The best, you know, in my in my internet searches of like, where did this thing come from? You know, there's this age of reason, Descartes, I think, therefore I am. But even before that, there's a relief on the Parthenon in Greece where it shows

this rider on a horse. And the horse depicts a, the passions and the rider depicts reason. And so there's this struggle between the passions and reason that goes back probably even before that. But those are just some signposts that this question has been around for a long time. And what's stronger? A horse or a rider? A horse can buck a rider any time it wants to. And I think that also gives a nod to how strong, let's call it, our passions are, which include things like, you know, cravings, but also include very important things like our emotions, right? Our passions. Our emotions are really, really strong. So, you know, we could certainly point a finger at, you know, where this started. But also, this was,

way before the term neuroscience even emerged. And this idea that, like, we're just assuming that willpower exists and is a strong force and we just need to know how to use it, that's kind of an assumption that's been baked into Western society for a long time. Along comes neuroscience, this baby, you know, in the, I don't remember when the term was first coined, but 70s, 80s, you know, it's pretty, young field and and it's not that neuroscience is the end-all be-all but it started asking you some people and probably people before neuroscientists started asking these questions like well if willpower exists

where you know it should be a predictor of outcomes and when you look at it there was a there are two well-known researchers from the 70s rascorla and wagner and they actually came up with a formula for what's called reinforcement learning and it's a pretty simple simple formula and it doesn't include willpower as a variable. Interesting, huh? And this formula is still at play today. We've used it in our studies because it's like the one to use, you know, some, some tweaks. But it basically says, you know, this is this is about looking at basically how habits get formed.

And the idea is that our brains, and now we know, actually. some of the brain structures involved in this. So, for example, there's a part of the brain called the orbital frontal cortex that determines and stores the reward value of behaviors. And with regard to eating, this is really helpful from a survival standpoint, but also just an efficiency standpoint. And the way that that works is it kind of has a hierarchy of different foods. From a survival standpoint, it's going to preference foods that have higher caloric values because, you know, we didn't have, our ancient ancestors didn't have refrigerators, didn't have steady, you know, didn't have food delivery, you know, didn't have 24-7 restaurants. And so when,

and didn't have a steady source of food. And so they had to be able to pack up on the calories so that they could survive the famines. This is where, interestingly, if you look at fat, fatness, it was actually a sign of prosperity, you know, because it's like, good for you. You're going to survive the famous. We can talk later about how it's the opposite now. But our bodies are like, hey, pack this on. So they're going to preference, say, chocolate over broccoli, okay? Because our survival brains are assuming that that's not, we don't have a steady source of chocolate and broccoli. So they set up this reward hierarchy. And then when given a choice between two things, our brain's going to be like, yeah, chocolate. And then for me, add in a little sea salt,

some cayenne make that chocolate at about 80%. Oh yeah. You know, it's like I can dial that, that bliss factor in about what my preferences are. And everybody can do that. Some people like milk chocolate more than dark chocolate. You get the idea. So we set up these reward hierarchies so that, you know, our brains can help us survive, but also so that we can make quick decisions.

So imagine having to, you know, let's say you go to a restaurant or, and you look at the menu and you're like, I've never had any of these things on this thing. I don't know what I want. Really, we'd have to sample everything to determine what we like the most. So fortunately, we can build up that reservoir of information in our brain and be like, oh, I like, you know, I liked this last time. So I'm going to preference that, you know, in a restaurant over something that I don't know, for example.

And so there are all these things baked into that that help us make decisions quickly. And so we can see from a survival standpoint, it makes sense. From an efficiency standpoint, it makes sense. and then you try to kind of live that in everyday life where we've got constant access to food. Most of us have the privilege of having constant access to food. And on top of that, food is engineered. I wouldn't even call it food. But a lot of these things are in some things like Doritos.

Is that really food? Cheetos, definitely not. In my opinion. And this isn't to demonize Doritos or Cheetos. Some people absolutely love Doritos. Some people love Cheetos. Great. But what I'm highlighting here is that the food industry has really, you know, they have food

engineers that are working over time to have things like a vanishing caloric density. What does that mean? Well, she just melts in your mouth for a reason because it says to your brain, hey, did I just eat something? No, it's gone. I didn't even do it. Oh, maybe put something else in your mouth like the same thing. And so we're, you know, we're putting things in.

Our mouths and our body's like, you didn't eat anything. You didn't eat anything. And so they've got these tricks that they can play on our minds that say, keep eating, keep eating, keep eating, keep eating. And this isn't, this isn't completely new. Do you know when Lays came up with their potato chip slogan, bet you can't eat just one? 1963, the same year that Weight Watchers was founded. Probably a coincidence, but I just think that's interesting. Yeah, it's a good factoid.

Hearing you say, and this is, to me it's so fascinating, is that we're still operating off of a survival brain that is completely rigged to go for calories, even when it's not what's actually going to serve our survival right now. And you have a great quote that says, hunger is a scream. Fulness is a whisper. It's like the survival brain is going to grab our attention and run the show, and we are not as good at detour. what's actually happening. Yes. And yeah, absolutely.

We are not. And so our poor survival brains are, you know, pitted against this modern society that is just designed to get us to consume, you know. And so it's tough. And there is,

fortunately, are exquisitely beautiful and wonderful brains. And I want to separate the brain from the body. Like it's, it's our mind. Let's put it that way, which is this very embodied thing, they're just so wise and powerful. And the problem is that we just don't listen to them.

You know, I have a quote in the book from a James Joyce short story called The Painful Case. And I think I first heard this quote from John Cubbetson, so shout out to him. But, you know, it starts with this character named Mr. Duffy. And I think the first line of the story is Mr. Duffy lived a short distance from his body. And I include that in the book because it's a beautiful example of how we are walking around disembodied. And we're not, we're not listening to these very wise bodies that have a lot to say, especially when it comes to eating. You know, as an example, I was working in my clinic with the, soon group medical visits, where it's a, like a small group of patients altogether,

where they all had shared the experience of binge eating disorder. I don't like the word disorder, but here we go, medical terms. And it took me about a month or longer to realize I was missing something. And I couldn't put my finger on it. And we kept having these weekly groups. I'm like, what am I missing? What am I missing? And it turns out, so one of the clues was that one of the women's

said, you know, I have an urge and I eat. And I just at first assumed that, well, she was hungry. And I said, but I was like, wait a minute. There's something more in that. I don't want to make any assumptions here. What do you mean by that? She's like, well, I have an urge and I eat. And I said, well, how do you know if it's from hunger or from, you know, stress or emotion or boredom or something like that? And she's like, what are you talking about? I've an urge and I eat. And so she had in this and then everybody's nodding their heads and they're like yeah yeah what she said what she said that it turns out that for so many people they lose that ability to pay attention to their body and know the difference between what's and now there are terms for this because this is so common

so know the difference between hedonic hunger which is like this emotion based hunger and it's not even real hunger because they're not physiologically hunger but hungry, but this highlights the other one, which is homeostatic hunger, where our body is out of homeostasis. It's out of balance. And our body is giving us a hunger signal to get us back in balance and says, hey, you know, time for some calories. And so the homeostatic hunger, this really exquisite survival mechanism gets shut down in terms

of not listened to. And it's when it's constantly ignored, then we. We become that Mr. Duffy. We live this short distance from our bodies. And then we don't trust them. We don't listen to them. And we don't even, when we start listening, it's like a foreign language. We don't know what they're saying until we can learn that, or relearn that language.

So when I think of the title of your book, The Hunger Habit, it's really, you're talking a lot about the habit of operating off of, emotional hunger and the habit of not listening to the homeostatic messages from our body that are telling us when we're really hungry. And so what I'd like to have us look at is that, you know, to change a habit and make new choices, you have to be able to pause and begin to learn how to listen. And most people feel like when there's that, oh, I have an urge and I eat, there's not much consciousness or mindfulness that, oh, I should pause. It's challenging. When craving strong, you know, our minds are very focused. We want what we want. So I'd like to have you

talk to us a bit about how to interrupt patterns with awareness so we can begin to reconnect with our body. Yes. So let's let's explore that. First, I want to highlight something that you just said. When we have a very strong itch, that natural urge is to scratch it. And that's, you know, I don't know many things, if anything, that is a stronger itch than, you know, than a strong craving to eat, eat some food, for example. It certainly, and it's a, it's a, that craving is, I see this a lot in my patients who struggle with addiction, whether it's food or something else, that. urge is all consuming. And so I just want to highlight how challenging this can be. So I think of this, and over the last couple of decades now, we've been kind of just collecting

data to see what that process of change looks like. And the good news is there is one. We've had some pretty solid results from our studies. We developed this. right now, apps, you know, with the idea that it could help people, but also it's a really good vehicle for studying things because it's a standardized treatment delivery. So we know exactly what they're getting. You know, we're studying therapists or things like that. It's hard. There's variability. There's personal fit, things like that. And it, and it can be really challenging to do those types of studies in, you know, living human beings. So I just want to highlight the challenge for all the folks that do that really important work. For us, it got easier

because we could say, well, we know exactly what they're getting. We know how much, you know, what the dose effect is because we can see how many modules they complete and things like that. And so we've collected a lot of information over the years. And we kind of found this stepwise process where the first step is somebody has to become aware of whatever that, let's call it, hunger habit, whatever that hunger habit is. And I want to highlight that, you know, that we use that specifically because a lot of, you know, whether it's overeating, whether it's eating mindlessly, whether it's stress eating, you know, there are so many things that trigger us to eat. If we can't see what the process is, we can't work with it. So that's really the first step. And I think of it is,

you know, mapping out these, these habit loops. And the more research I do, the simpler things get, which is great because it makes it easier to remember. And so, you know, with any, with any habit, you know, it's a trigger, a behavior and a result that sets that habit up. But really the most important thing to pay attention to is what's the behavior? If we can start to identify it first and bring it to light, it helps us be able to see what triggered it. And also, I want to highlight the trigger is the least important part here. So even if we don't, notice what triggered it. It's not that important. But we can see, oh, I'm eating or I'm about to reach for something. And then we can also look at the result of the behavior in that relationship is

critical, which also, you know, goes all the way back to Buddhist psychology. You know, the, you know, the Buddha talked a lot about cause and effect. I never really understood what that meant until, you know, I kind of synced it up with what I understood in science, which is, you know, reinforcement learning or reward-based learning is based on how rewarding a behavior is. So if we can identify the behavior, let's say, well, you pick one. What example would you like to use? Overeating, stress eating, mindless eating, pick any. We'll start there.

Yeah, stress eating. Okay. Just uncomfortable. Want to get away from it. Want to soothe it. Want to put it underneath. Okay. So let's start there.

And so if the trigger is stress, right, as you pointed out, stress is uncomfortable. And so our brain says this is uncomfortable, make this go away, which goes back to our survival mechanisms of saying, hey, you know, if you put your hand on something hot, pull your hand away type of thing. That can be reflexive, but we can internalize that learning. Like, hey, when something's unpleasant, make it go away. So we're stressed. And then we eat something, not because we're hungry, but this.

This is the hedonic hunger kicking in. So we eat something and then we soothe ourselves or as a lot of my patients describe it, they numb themselves when they're from that, whatever the emotional pain is that they're trying to get away from. So that numbing is reinforcing for the habit because it feels better than feeling the pain. And I say this when they don't, because they don't have, they haven't learned the mechanisms to actually hold the pain. So somebody can hold the pain, the emotional pain. I'm not saying hold on to a hot rock that's going to burn you.

We can drop that one. But if it's emotional pain, a lot of us are taught to distract, avoid numb, right? And these phone, I love Cornell West. He says these weapons of mass distraction, you know, because. That's good. Yeah. Or these billboards that are in our pocket that we pay for. you know, that are constantly getting us to like consume and distract ourselves from our experience,

all of these are decreasing our ability to have good distress tolerance, right, to be with our emotions. So long story short, unpleasantness says, hey, eat some food. And then we've, we know ourselves, we avoid, we distract, we feel better. And that's what drives the process. So if we can start to map it out and see, oh, I'm in this habit loop. One, it helps us see what's happening. And two, it helps us see, oh, this is just my brain, trying to help me survive. This is not my fault, right?

Habits generally are helpful. And here's one that just kind of got off the rails a little bit, you know, miswired. Does that make sense? Absolutely. So we become aware of the stress and that we're noticing what's happening and we just pause there and recognize, oh, this is the positive reinforcement habit and this is not my fault. This is the way the brain is wired. One of the things I wonder about that is because when I go inside my own, you know, I spent

a good number of years, I think, with an active, diagnosable eating disorder and then other years where, you know, wouldn't have been so visible, but it was, you know, just part of my psyche. One of the most predominant things I noticed is it wasn't just the urge about going to eat. And it was like throughout the day, the thoughts just circling around food and circling around my habit of food. And so it was much harder to have a discrete incident to interrupt because it was so much a part of my ongoing operation. I'm glad you say that because for so many people, thoughts about food are all consuming. like it just takes all over the road bandwidth all day and there's a there's a woman named anne in my

the describe in the book and this was this was the case for her and actually jack probably everybody except for the guy that mindlessly eat eight where um it's just like it's constant you know and it also highlights you know i love this quote i'm sure you um you're well familiar with this you know what we resist persists and so if we are setting our ourselves up to be like, I got to resist this craving. I've got to do this. So Jackie in the book describes this as the craving monster. And she said, you know, basically like whenever she ran away or tried to fight with it, it just only fed it. It made it bigger. And eventually it would always get her. And so, you know, people spend all day just like either consumed with like,

oh, this, I want this. I'm going to have this or I can't have this. And and so that, that resistance, it just builds that perception. assistance around, you know, eventually succumbing to it. Totally makes sense. And part of what you talk about as you begin to describe how to interrupt with awareness is beyond just the moment where there's an acting out, but start to develop this habit through the day. You say five times a day, but it's what I call the sacred pause, even if it's just for a few moments. But just to pause and say, you know, what am I aware of right now? That's one inquiry.

I often will say what is happening inside me right now because it brings the attention inward. I actually have two questions. They bring together the fullness of mindfulness, which is, you know, what's happening inside me right now. And can I let this be? Can I be with this? And what happens is it drops under the thoughts. I may, what's happening may be the thoughts of, when am I going to eat, what am I going to eat? But then underneath that, at least for a few moments, I'm building tolerance of a little bit more of that raw sense of unease or anxiety or whatever.

But you named it so perfectly. We're doing this because we have not yet built up that tolerance, which actually becomes a kind of freedom, a spaciousness that. that's different experiences move through without having to react. So you have a number of tools that you talk about if we can wake up enough to pause, how we can start shifting that hierarchy that says, this is the thing that's going to make me feel good and ways of kind of challenging it. So can you speak to that a bit? Sure.

And so just to give people a roadmap here, there are three steps that we've, I don't, this power of three is crazy. Because yet again, you know, we're not saying, hey, force this into a function of three when we do the research. It just happens to be when we do this qualitative, you know, we did this great group based research study. My former graduate student, Ariel Bechia led some of this. But it's like it happens to show up in yet another three.

So the first step we've already talked about. is, you know, we can formally think of this as mapping out a habit loop. I think informally, we can just really be identifying what the behavior is. And, you know, is it, I think of as the why, what and how. Like, why am I reaching for food, right? Which can kind of identify what flavor of hungry it is. You know, am I actually hungry? Is this boredom? You know, is this an emotion? Is this just a habit type of thing? And then the what, what am I reaching for? Is it comfort food. There's a reason that's called comfort food. And then how am I eating? Am I just consuming it mindlessly? But we can really just highlight, you know, what basically the,

what's the mechanism? What's driving this? So let's say stress eating as an example that we've been using. So that's the first step. The second step is very paradoxical. And you mentioned these tools. The tools are actually mostly in the third step. And the second step is something that people, I think naturally often skip because in our Western mindset, they just think, okay, here's the problem. I got to find a solution. And so they go to the Tar Brock website and they're like, hey, here's a bunch of great tools. Let me just use these. And I see people faceplant quite a bit here. Why do they do this? Because they think, I'm just going to do this. You know, I just need to use rain. I just need to do something to make this craving go away. And they're getting back into this resistance.

of like I just got to I just got to fight this. The second step is and again, this is if I had to sum up or if I if I was only allowed to know one little tiny piece of the Buddhist teachings, it would in, you know, I had to pick one. This is the one I would pick hands down where there are a number of sutas where the Buddha talks about exploring gratification to its end. I had no idea what that meant when I first started reading these. But when I look at what my patients and the folks in our programs are talking about, it totally makes sense. So basically he says, you know, it wasn't until I explored gratification to its end that knowledge and vision arose. So he's basically saying, you know, and on the night of his enlightenment, he wasn't in deep

samadhi or some type of meditation. He was actually contemplating this thing called dependent origination, which I also couldn't understand for the longest time. But the idea here is we've got to we've got to see how much gratification, right? How rewarding in modern neuroscience terms, how rewarding a behavior is. And if it's giving us, you know, if we squeeze that fruit and it's giving us some juice, we're going to keep squeezing it, right?

But when we explore that gratification to its end, when there's no more juice and we realize this isn't actually juice, we become disenchanted. And so the Buddha talks about this becoming disenchanted. with old behaviors. I say this is critical because it is. And he laid it out so beautifully. The idea is if we're no longer, if we can't see that something's rewarding, our brain is going naturally say, hey, that's not rewarding. Stop doing that. And it's not going to say stop, like force yourself to stop. It's going to say, are you sure you want to do that? There's no,

there's no juice in that. You're still squeezing that thing and there's no juice. That's what a habit is, right? And we see this with eating where if somebody doesn't really clearly see and feel, it's really feel, it's not see, because our feeling body is much stronger than our thinking brain. If we don't feel those results of our behaviors, we're never going to change them because that's what habits are all about. I think of it is set and forget. You set the reward value of a habit, and if you don't bring some inquiry in, if you don't discern that it's no longer rewarding, then you're going to keep doing it. So let's use...

Can I ask a question about that? Please, please. In my experience, that when I could do that reflection on, is this really gratifying? Like, what am I getting from this, you know, and run through and sense how will it feel in the future? And that kind of a process of inquiry, which I, like you, totally value, wasn't ever able to do it when I was in the grip. Yes. Because emotions override the cognitive capacities to be able to sense to the heart of gratification. So I could do it when I was in another state.

And that was really powerful because for me I found, you know, it became so clear that it was sustaining misery and that it, that the being consumed with thoughts about consuming. was taking my life away. Yes. And then it turned into almost a process of aspiration and prayer, Jed, where that just, that clarity made me pray, you know, like the longing in me to wake up and be free, pray to that, you know, that there may be some, you know, the compassion and clarity needed to be able to shift habits. But I'm just naming that it's, we can't expect much.

when we're in the grip. Yes. I'm so glad you named that. And I write a little bit about that in the hungry habit. I think of these as rear view mirror moments. Beautiful. But this is this is really, again, it's not my idea. It's the Buddhist idea where he was and there was a sutur he's talking to his son,

Rahula. You probably know this one. But for folks that don't, you know, Rahul is asking his father, the Buddha, like, hey, you know, how, how basically how can I do skillful? How can I become more skillful my action? And the Buddha basically says, well, reflect on your actions before you do them. And if they're wholesome, go for it. If they're unwholesome, you know, check to see how gratifying that might be, basically,

and see if that helps you become disenchanted and not do them. And then he says, you know, I get it. Beforehand, you might miss it. You're right in the throes of it. And he's like, so if you can, reflect on it while you're doing it. And like you're highlighting, you know, that's really hard to do for most of us, especially at the beginning of learning how our minds work. And so the Buddha was like, don't worry.

you know, until you nail that one, we got another one afterwards. And he says, so reflect on it afterwards. So that's why I call these review mirror moments because it's like, you know, something crazy happens on the highway and we just like avoid some, you know, like somebody pulls out in front of us and we swerve quickly and avoid an accident. We do all of that. And we're not be like, well, let me be mindful of this moment. Crash. Yeah, exactly. You know, so we we have to, you. know, in the moment, our body and our brain is going to do something often pretty quickly, or we're going to get caught up in it.

But we can reflect on it afterwards. And I call this, you know, these rearview mirror moments, because if we can recall what it was like afterwards when the dust settles, as long as we can recall the embodied experience, we can learn from it. And there's a bonus to this because we can do that over and over and over. So, you know, when it's like for me, I was addicted to gummy worms, right? So I can still recall what it's like to eat gummy worms. Let's just say that, you know, not a spoiler for the book.

Gummy worms. I'm just repeating, you were addicted to gummy worms. Yes. I think that's a great headline. We each have our thing. Yeah. And I couldn't have them, couldn't have them in the house, right? Because I'd eat the whole bag.

And, you know, for me, so just walking through that process for me, right? And often, you know, it was at night, stress eating type of thing. So I started paying attention as I, so I'd look at him. I'm like, this looks like a fishing lure. They throw these things in the water, but I'm going to put it in my mouth. Okay. And a fish wouldn't go for it. Right, right.

Yeah. Fish are like, are you kidding? That looks like a gummy worm or whatever. So I would start paying attention. I was eating these things. And the first thing I was like, this tastes kind of like petroleum. I was like, the sickly. sweet, the mouth feel wasn't quite right.

And then so I became disenchanted with gummy worms. It didn't take a long time to do that, but I had to pay attention, right? And then, um, you know, and then I compared those to eating blueberries where, you know, for me, I won't go into the details, but blueberries for me are like, boom, that it's a no brainer. Because these, this food co-evolved with us to be the perfect, you know, for me, the perfect mouth feel, the pop when you've got a plump, you know, crisp blueberry. Maybe you never know if it's going to be a little sweet. or a little sour, you know, it's like some intermittent reinforcement there.

It's just like the perfect for me. It's the perfect food. And so using that as an example, going back to this, you know, this disenchantment thing, we've got to see, we've got to feel what the results are of these behaviors before we become disenchanted with them. And that's what helps us step away from the grip of them without any willpower. And so just to bring this back to the science. You know, these, Raskerler and Wagner, in their equation, no willpower needed, they have this error term that is critically dependent upon one thing, which is my favorite word.

It's called awareness. If you don't pay attention when you eat something, you're not going to see how rewarding it is. And so for me, when I was in the habit of just downing a bag of gummy worms, I was reaching for the next one while one was still in my mouth. I wasn't paying attention, right? And so here, I have to pay attention. And people want to know the science here. If I see that it's not as gratifying as I expected, I get what's called a negative prediction error, meaning it's not as good as expected. And that's where the disenchantment comes in, right?

So this, I love this because the Buddha described this way before science, the term science was even around. Maybe, I don't know. But it's like, oh, you know, cause and effect, cause an effect, cause an effect. And we get this dopamine spritz and we learn, oh, this is not as rewarding as I thought. And it makes it much easier to step away from that behavior. And we actually did a study with our eat right now happen. We found, you're right for this? It only takes 10 to 15 times of somebody paying attention as they overeat for that reward value to drop below zero.

And for them to start shifting that behavior. So which makes sense from an evolutionary perspective, we don't have. have 20 times to get chased by a tiger to learn that it's dangerous. We have to learn that pretty quickly. So if we pay attention and we can see very clearly and feel, I should say, we can feel very, very quickly, oh, this is not rewarding. It becomes much easier to let go of that. So that's the whole of the second step.

And we can see whether you look at Buddhist psychology or look at modern science, they're saying the same thing. So that is so helpful to realize. that when we really get how gratifying something is, we can choose differently. And what I want to do is kind of deepen the inquiry a bit of what gets in the way in the sense that you highlighted the word feel, that we really have to feel the impact. And many people are eating because of trauma. You know, that it just, they're so cold.

correlated, that trauma, you know, it's just intolerable experience and then eating helps to buffer it. And so that, and a lot of the tools and when I say tools, I mean, the awareness practices that help us to recognize what's gratifying and make new choices have to do with being able to feel our bodies. And I'm going to ask you to talk about that some more. because as Mr. Duffy exemplifies, we are not so in our bodies, the more trauma, the more dissociated. So it's actually hard to sense even distinguish gratifying, not gratifying, and actually feel in the body what's going on. So two questions and related to that. What if it's difficult to feel the body?

Because so much is about learning to be able to be awake in the body. distinguish between the hungers and so on, are what if as you're trying to get somebody to pay more attention, trauma's activated? So those are kind of, because it's so trauma's not just, oh, that small 5%, trauma's in a whole lot of us. Yes, yes, absolutely. Whether it's the capital T or the small T, it's everywhere. And so I'm glad you highlight this and I have a chapter on trauma in the book and that you know this actually i think in working with folks in my program and patients i've you know i i stumble upon some analogies that seem to resonate with some people and so one of them i'll i'll talk about two just in case they're helpful for folks one is you know if you think

of a smoke alarm in your kitchen it's really helpful when there's a fire but if it's miscalibrated it's it it's not only less helpful but also can be very confusing and so if you're boiling water on the stove and your smoke alarm goes off that's not that's not going to help you cook dinner or or know when there's actually a fire in your house and I think of you know things like PTSD and other you know trauma related responses where we've we've learned and often this happens you know whether we're young or whenever the traumatic events happen, our brains go into these modes of like, I got to protect myself. And then they get stuck in these modes when there isn't danger. And so the and then it gets reinforced as a memory and reconsolidated every time we have that

emotion or the thought that comes up and it just kind of re-triggers us. And that emotion comes up and we're like, you know, our brain's like, yeah, that was really bad. And it adds a sometimes can even add a layer of strong emotion on top of it. So it just kind of layers and layers and layers to the point where we're like, this is, this is, I can't touch. I can't even go near this. Right. So that smoke alarm analogy can be helpful for people to kind of understand. It's, they may not actually be in danger right now. But their smoke alarm is going off. Their internal smoke alarm because that's what it learned to do. And it,

and it's so, um, hair triggered, so to speak that they can't even look around to see and ask, the question I have my patients ask themselves is to ground them, take some moments in whatever is helpful to ground themselves, you know, whether it's looking at an external object and grounding on that.

I like, you know, I'm just looking at the pattern of a lampshade in front of me, like something very simple and often external because it's, you know, the internally, all the alarms are going off and then use that as a way to be able to expand their view because when we're in fight or flight, we're like, I got to run and just ask this question and train

themselves. This isn't something that happens instantly, but am I actually in danger right now? And of course, if somebody's in danger, they need to do something about it. It's helpful to know that, right? But for the vast majority, when somebody's had a trauma, you know, a habitual trauma response, it's about kind of unlearning that habits, recalibrating that smoke alarm. And so if they ask the question, am I actually in danger right now? That can help, and then they're not, that can help them kind of see, oh, false alarm.

And then maybe do some more practice therapy, whatever's helpful for them to help them start to dis, kind of disentangle the, you know, and recalibrate that alarm bell. One other way that I think about this, and this actually came from a live conversation in one of our groups with somebody. He was in his 60s and he had had, you know, childhood trauma. And the only thing as a kid, right, not his fault, completely helpless. The only thing he could do as a kid was to worry because that's the only thing he could do. Because that was in his head. Nobody, you know. So that's how he kind of.

helped himself, let's put it that way, was that he would worry. And then he's in this habit of worrying and he carried that forward for 50 years, something like that. And so we talked about this in terms of like putting on some shoes, the only shoes that fit at the time. Right. And for him, it was worrying. Honoring that pair of shoes, but now asking, do these shoes still fit? Or are they actually causing my feet pain? And for him, in his 16, he wasn't in danger anymore, right? He hadn't been for a long time, but he could ask, oh, is this worrying helping me? No.

Can I honor any, it was so beautiful the way he put it. Like, can I honor my childhood self, right? Honor that part of me that was just trying to help. And then let it go. It helped him let go, take off those shoes and find a new pair that helped him walk forward. That's beautiful. It totally does. What it makes me think of is for some, it's like that smoke alarm going off.

And for others, there's still a sense of woundedness and danger that still needs tending to. And what I'd like to do is share with you a story that really touched me and get your input on, you know, given what you've just said, because this is a woman with a lifelong eating disorder, and she's remembering this pivotal moment when she had run away and she came back and she asked her mother if she loved her. And her mother's response was, how could anyone ever love you? So this is a... And so she, this is what she writes. She says, it took me almost 50 years to heal the damage from all her ugly remarks. Recently with my therapist, I related a childhood ritual of mine intending it to be amusing anecdote to illustrate how far back

my eating problems went. I even laughed as I spoke, poking gentle fun at myself. It was only when I noticed that she was watching me with sympathy rather than amusement, I became aware of the tears on my own cheeks. And this is what I told her. From the age of five or six until I was willing to my teens, whenever I had trouble sleeping, I would slip out from under the covers and steal into the kitchen for a bit of bread or cheese, which I would carry back to bed with me. There I'd pretend my hands belonged to someone else, a comforting, reassuring being without a name, an angel perhaps. The right hand would feed me little bites of cheese or bread as the left hand stroked my cheeks and hair, my eyes closed. I would whisper softly to myself,

they're there, go to sleep, you're safe now. Everything will be all right. I love you. And so I'm bringing this up because so much trauma in our world comes from that severed belonging, that poor attachment, and that our way of self-soothing, as you write about it's like this is one of the ways of self-soothing. and when the smoke detector goes off, there really is a place inside that's still not feeling the love and the belonging, that there's a need for love and connection. So I'm wondering if you could speak to how when it's that kind of severed belonging, the processes of awareness can help to change habits and find that. a higher reward way to go about things that actually address that. Wow, what a wonderful story and a great question. So I think there are probably 12 different ways

and all probably a complimentary that could help with this. So let's pick one or two. So one, you know, I love that story of how creative the child was in, in creating the angel, the mother that wasn't the mother, you know, or being motherly in those moments. And, you know, it's like, what a parents do they feed their children so that they can get the calories to survive. It's so beautiful. And so, you know, this hand, the motherly hand, one holding and soothing and one feeding, you know, it's like providing the physical and the emotional sustenance all in one. You know, and so here, so you're asking this question, well, how can, how can awareness help with this?

I think one piece here is to be able to see, see the stories that we have come to believe. Where so how could anyone love you? Is this story that, well, one is it, was it she 16? You said when she ran away and her mom said that. You know, when she comes back, you know, so very impressionable, especially very, probably in a very vulnerable moment. I'm guessing I'm making this all up. Getting that message really all along is the point.

Yeah, she was very young. And then here's the, you know, the nail in the coffin of the story that then she maybe internalized. It's like, oh yeah, how can I be lovable?

So there's this story and bringing awareness in to see it as a story. And I'm thinking there's a somebody that I wrote about in the, in the book where he, there's this. practice of starting to see all these voices in our heads that are telling us stuff. And this is something that I learned from Thunasaro Biku, beautiful example. He calls these committee members in our heads. And so think of this as a committee member in her hand that said, you're not lovable. So every time something would trigger that, you know, like, you know, be like, oh, you're not lovable.

And so the story gets perpetuated. And so here, so Kevin had a big, you know, he started mapping out all of these committee members in his head on sticky notes. And then he actually posted this on my Twitter account, so beautiful, where he's like, he mapped them all out. And then next to it, he took another picture where he had basically, so it was like, you know, bad Kevin, shame, Kevin, you know, a terrible Kevin, Kevin, Kevin, Kevin, Kevin. And then he named all those as voices. You know, it's like, you know, I won't put names to them in case there are people's names

that are like, I don't want to be associated with that. But basically, there's this picture. of it's like, it's not me, it's these voices. And so he could bring awareness in, see these as voices in his head. And with that, give him the perspective to see these are just thoughts. These are just stories. And beautifully, there was one that he just crossed out and he didn't give it a name. It was shame.

And he said, shame doesn't get a seat at the table. And so here, when we can see through these stories, we don't we can let you know it's easier to see them as stories and not as who we are and so that we can more easily let go of them and so that's where i'd say one place awareness is really helpful and let's stay with that because it's so much a part of the teachings of awareness that if you can see the story you're not as identified with the story there's more freedom to realize who you really are and the deep suffering that we're really talking about in this whole process is that when we get caught in eating habits that turn us against ourselves, we end up feeling like a really small, bad self.

That's our identity. And I can speak personally and say, the level of disgust I had with myself, the embarrassment, the isolation, that identity is very small and very solid. And so beginning to see the stories that perpetuated is really powerful. What I found for myself in that line, the issues are in the tissues, is that it wasn't enough to see the story. I couldn't see the critical voice saying, you're unlovable, you're unworthy, you're disgusting, whatever. I had a feel in my body, and this comes back to the body, the feelings of the shame. It's like it doesn't have a seat at the table on one level, and yet it's so deep in the body. And even when we see the story as a story, we believe the body's feeling of that yuckiness.

And so for me, you know, it's that phrase, we're not surprised. survival of the fittest were survival of the nurtured, you know, Cozalino. It took years, Judge, years of me going under the story of bad self and having my hand on my heart and feeling the pain of it, feeling how trapped I was, and finding different pathways to offering compassion, nurturing, finding other people that nurtured. It took nurturing so that I really truly didn't have to be. believe the stories and could rest in a larger sense of identity. Yeah.

So just sharing that, because I agree with you, the first step is to see that we're telling ourselves untrue. Whatever is causing suffering, we're believing something untrue. Yes. Yes. And I absolutely love, it's been so beautiful to follow the evolution of your teaching around rain. And, you know, with N being nurture as compared to non-identific.

which in my opinion is really challenging to use with my patients like what is not a notification and they get stuck in their heads whereas you're bringing in something so pragmatic around like what are the conditions that are going to help support someone in being able to like overstory nurturing right just going back to the the person that you described she didn't get the nurturing that she needed at those times and so ringing in that nurturing now is really helpful for helping us to be able to open to our experience. And then, you know, I think of it as, I think of kindness and curiosity as these two best friends.

Mm, I love it. And so kindness, nurturing is kindness, bringing kindness to ourselves is self-compassion, right? And it might be, and it's not that we have to nurture ourselves. That's another I must do. But it's asking, how can this nurturing, nurturing come to be? Yes. And so the therapist, friend, family, you know, whatever pet, I have two wonderful cats. nurturing.

So whatever it is that helps us nurture can open the door where that kindness can call her friend Curiosity. And curiosity can come in and kindness says, hey, we've opened some space for you. Can you help us explore? What do these sensations feel like? And curiosity says instead of going, oh, no, this is bad. curiosity and go, oh, let's explore it. Because kindness is there to hold our hand when something is unpleasant.

And then curiosity helps us see, well, unpleasant doesn't equal bad. It just, and then we can be, well, how unpleasant is it? Oh, what's unpleasant? Oh, oh, oh. And then suddenly we're like, is vibration? Is it tingling? Is it tightness? Like, what is it?

And then we can get, again, when supported with kindness, we can get super curious and be like, really? That's what I was afraid of. And then we can remember, oh, this is just our brain trying to help us survive. And it associated tightness, tension, burning, heat, but, but, but, but with danger. And it's like, oh, this is tightness. And then, oh, I can be with this tightness because kindness is holding my hand. And curiosity is like, check this out, check this out, check this out, as compared to run away.

So one of my favorite sayings, the only way out is through. And so we can learn kindness and curiosity help us turn toward our experience and say, hey, you know, check to see if there's danger, no danger. Let's explore this a little bit more. Right. And then another quote that I love, what stands in the way becomes the way. And so here's something that we've been running from our whole life, danger, danger, danger. And then we're like, oh, this can help me.

learn about myself. How does my mind work? And then we get in this space, we're like, oh, this is how my mind works. And then we see how powerful we actually are instead of being driven by these impulses, these passions, these fears, these, all these things that make us just, they're like, jump. And we say, how high, how quick should I run? How quickly should I run away? We can say, wait a minute. Do I need to, why am I listening to you? Do I need to be running away? Maybe I could be running toward because I'm going to learn more from learning about my reactions to these sensations than running away from them. How cool is that? You're describing the classic two wings of the bird.

In Buddhism, it's described as the two wings of awareness are mindful, seeing what's true where we need curiosity and interest. That's what energizes the inquiry. And then the other wing of the bird is compassion, is that kindness that holds our hands. And that's what frees us. And those are our superpowers, as you described in this book, that actually when we start activating them and applying them, give us freedom.

And I want to just carry forward on one thing you Nate said, which I feel is so important and so misunderstood, is that when we talk about compassion, people have a very individualistic idea that compassion means, I am supposed to comfort myself. I am supposed to hold myself with kindness. And I find that the times I most need to nurture, I'm in a very regressed place.

And I don't feel like myself is big enough to nurture. So it's very, it feels wise and wholesome to sense what's a source beyond what I'm in this moment feeling is me, because it's only in the moment. it's just an illusion. And, you know, it might be I sense my friend Judd, or it might be my dog, or it might be a sense of the heart of the Buddha. It doesn't matter. But when there's a sense of a larger source, it's almost like my spiritual heart can nurture my human heart. Because it's all, anything I'm thinking of as outside me is actually the loving awareness that I belong to. But it's a bridge. So I want to emphasize what you said, which is nurturing,

can come from any source. And in many moments, it needs to be living relationships. We need each other. And I just wanted to ask you to speak a little bit, because I know we don't have too much more time, as to what you've noticed for people in terms of social support, the difference it makes in making this less personal and feeling accompanied. Like, it's not my fault. It's just our condition. that kind of thing. Yeah. Well, and just in case anybody was listening and they're like, well, there are three steps and you only talked about two. Let's use this as the segue into talking about what you're asking. So we use the social and the nurturing as this example of the third step. So the third step briefly defined is anything that helps us step out of our old habit loops, right?

So we map it out in the first step. We see, oh, this is what's driving my eating habit, whatever it is. The second step, we ask a simple question, like, what am I getting from this, right, and feel into the body, remembering that the feeling body is much stronger than the thinking brain, because it's so wise if we just, and that's how we can recalibrate and kind of re-engage, it's like we're befriending ourselves again. I'm like, oh, this is a very wise body, let's be friends, talk to me. And it's like, thank goodness, you're finally listening. And so that's the second step. The third step is learning how to step out of these old ways. And I think of this as the simple way that I think about this to remember it is like the big finding the

bigger better offer and so if our brain is set up as a reward hierarchy system let's leverage that and so we become disenchanted with the shame for example or the story we're like wow that story's just not helping me these shoes don't fit we can say well what's better and the social so let's talk about social connection for example the nurturing aspect of this. I like of this, I like to, one way that people can be kind of asking this question, what's better, is being able to see the difference between feeding our wants, which are these old habits, and meeting our needs. And so connection, social connection is, you know, if you look at Maslow's hierarchy of needs, you look at anything, any society, any religion,

any spiritual tradition, you know, community, you know, and I love this one of my favorite different quotes from the Buddhist teachings is, you know, the Ananda talking to his cousin and attendant, I'm sorry, the Buddha talking to his cousin and attendant Ananda. And Ananda says, oh, isn't this great? The holy life? You know, it's half of the holy life. And the Buddha says, don't say that. Don't say that, Ananda. The spiritual community, basically, is the whole of the holy life, just emphasizing how important community is. Just letting that sink in, like, community, whether it's a pet, whether it's a friend, whether it's a friend, whether it's a family member, whether it's a, you know, a Sangha community, whatever that is for us.

Just letting that, like, how important that is for nurturing us, just for anybody watching or listening. Just letting that sink in. The whole of the whole life. And so one thing that we've built into our E right now program, I felt that this was really critical because we started, it was about 10 years ago that we first developed our E right now app. And I'm very pleased to say that it is now a CDC recognized diabetes prevention program. The only one that I know of that's like based on mindfulness. I won't go into the details of how all of the fun challenges that it took to get there. But, you know, we can, we are very proud.

And really standing on the shoulders of many of giants of folks who did the research showing that mindfulness can really be helpful here. So in that program, as I was first designing it, I was like, we have. to have a community as part of this. This isn't just going to be an app. You know, some people are that that community is going to be within. It's going to be their pet. It's going to be their family, whatever. But we want to provide community for people to be able to share with each other and support each other. So we created this online community that is very active. And it is I hardly have to moderate it at all because the vibe in it is like, you know, we're here to support each other.

And so, you know, like people just don't, they get in that space and if they have some mind space that's like, it doesn't show up because it's just, you know, it's just like there's this social contagion of like kindness. Beautiful. Yeah. And so, but it's that was, so that's one piece that, you know, I can moderate that and answer questions, but really it's the peers that are helping each other. And then we have a live group every week through Zoom.

So we'd been doing this for years now, way before anybody knew what Zoom was. And each week, we can, we can come together as a community. and people can share their experience and we can do inquiry. So if somebody's stuck or struggling, you know, they can do inquiry with me or Dr. Bodette, Robin Bedet,

who co-leads it and other folks that lead it with me. And so I just want to highlight that because that is one, one of my favorite times of the week is coming together in a community. And two, to just kind of, I can't even describe how wonderful it is where people are just their like, cheering each other on.

You can just feel the support in this 2D. It's amazing how it like comes through a 2D interface. I mean, I love having conversation with you and I'd love to do it in person. But this works pretty well too. I know it's crazy. So just imagine that with like 200 people. And I also want to give a shout out to what you all are doing because,

you know, the importance of community with like Cloud Sanga is like bringing people together. Even if they can't be together physically, now we're in this virtual universe, you know, at least part, I don't think it will ever fully become virtual, hopefully. But we can, we can overcome some barriers where people don't have the means to travel or not and don't live in a place where other people are so they can come together. So I just want to highlight that yet again, the Buddha is right, it is the whole of the

holy life. It is. So powerful. And I can just vouch personally that being in different groups and working and working with groups of friends. over the years, that it's one of the most powerful ways to undo shame. And shame keeps the whole thing going as we, you know, it's a loop. If we really get it that others are struggling with the same thing and how many, it's very

pervasive in the culture, it doesn't seem so much like, oh, it's my fault. And that is so crucial. And for those of you that are listening and, you know, you know, you know, you know, it's my fault, and, you You want to explore the hunger habit and the, you know, it's a real pro. Every day there's a way that you can deepen your attention and really change habits that have been going on for a lifetime. If you want the supportive community, just check on my homepage on my website for CloudSunga. And there are groups that are just around what Judd is doing, this program, that you can

that kind of support. But this kind of leads me into a final question, Judd, and we talked about it a little before we got on and it feels so important that having programs and having strategies to help this self break a habit in a way distracts from the society and how our society is geared towards having us develop these habits of not attuning to our bodies and our hearts and getting addicted. And you've named some of the reasons. I mean, we see the billions going into the food industry to addict us. And in a deeper way, you know, our biggest suffering is not remembering our belonging to each other. And this society absolutely is geared towards more and more polarization and not belonging, whether it's because

of all the social hierarchies that have some people higher and some lower and then create a sense of something is wrong with me, separation. Capitalism itself, this assumption that we're supposed to keep on growing as an economy that of course means keep on consuming, consume more. And I often think about, you know, if we didn't have such a core attachment with Mother Earth, you know, so much fear and separation, we wouldn't be overconsuming fossil fuels. We overconsume. And so in a way, I just want to shift the attention to a larger society that keeps us on this very toxic track and invite your comments on that. I know it's a huge question. Sorry. Well, and it's an important one. And, you know, I've been trying to educate myself around, you know,

there's so many things that I don't know and especially so many privileges and assumptions that I've grown up with just as being a, you know, cisgendered white, you know, street male. And if we look at this, so in then just let's focus in on the medical industry. It's largely an industry at this point. You know, this consumption assumption that you're highlighting, you know, that we're now waking up as a, as a world and realizing, you know, the world does have finite resources. We can't just keep consuming because we're going to destroy it. And we're, you know, we're well on our way if we don't, if we don't turn quickly. And so I was reading this article, I'm not going to be able to pronounce this person's name, but we can put it in the show notes. The title is three

repositions on the fat body evaluating the ethical shortcomings of the obesity discourse. And I think this is important for me as a physician, but I think important for anybody because that, you know, as medical professionals, we get indoctrinated in medical school to, you know, make us, try to make ourselves sound smart by like learning all these medical terms. And so one term that I learned in medical school was obesity. And we're like, oh, that's a medical term. well it turns out and there's great research that's continuing to be done on this is that that can be extremely shaming for people where the and there are number of ways that this is done and I want

I'd love for people to read this article because it really highlights them but you know and they're like well don't use don't use the term obesity let's call it clinical obesity so we can highlight you know when somebody is at an unhealthy weight you know we're focusing on helping them be healthy. You know, it's like medicalizing it yet again. So, you know, people are exploring using the term fat and it trying to make it neutral to which I, you know, it's a noble venture. But how, you know, how much I still remember even as a kid around like these terms like, you know, like fat camp and fat chaming. And so I think you, and I think this movement, from what I understand, a lot of it, you know, moving fat into a,

more of a neutral term, it's going to take time. But this is actually being led by fat people who are like, this is, you know, hey, it's okay. Right. And but this article actually highlights some other things that I hadn't even thought about before around this society placing the blame on individuals and saying, okay, you know, maybe we can come up with some neutral terms. You know, it's still going to take time to come up with any neutral term. because that's the whole point of something stigmatizing.

But even then we say, well, you know, okay, whatever term we're going to come up with, you still have to change. And so there's all this bias in medicine and studies show this pretty clearly. The doctors judge their patients. Yeah. Whatever you want to call it, they're still judging them. Yeah. And that's problematic.

And so patients come in with this shame and I go, you know, I didn't, I didn't lose weight again, right? they don't even have to say it. Just one look from the doctor. And then even if it's like some not even the look that the doctor's thinking, if they've got that story, they're going to bias and they're going to be biased and see it. Right. And they're like, oh, you know, they're fat shaming me again or, you know, I'm a bad patient. And so that's moving aside the question that we can all be asking, which is, hey, society, how are you helping here? because, you know, food deserts are real.

The corn subsidy that makes, you know, high-futose corn syrup extremely cheap is real, and it's been around forever. You know, how is society actually taking responsibility for helping society, right? So we can be asking our Congress people and say, hey, you know, can you guys stop fighting for a while and, like, you know, amongst yourselves and maybe pay attention to people that voted you in? And we'd like to, we'd like to have a conversation around, you know, all this, all the, who's, who's, who's who's who you're serving. Are you serving the lobbyists? Are you serving your constituents? And it, it, you know, with that when they, when they're like, well, it's the individual's problem. They just need to use their willpower to change. You know, it dehumanizes the individual, the actual people who are suffering. And so I just want to highlight something. I'm going to read this article now, um, in a, an essay, there's a, I just learned about an essay by George Orwell that was called a hanging. And I'm just going to read from the article that this physician wrote. He says, in that in a hanging,

Orwell describes what's going on in the mind of a soldier who follows a prisoner who's about to be hanged. The man walks with a steady pace. Suddenly he does the unexpected. This is the person that's being about to die. Suddenly he does the unexpected. He steps aside to avoid a puddle. So imagine somebody walking to their death and they step aside to avoid a puddle. And here's a quote from Orwell. This is the soldier's mind. It is curious. But till that moment, I had never realized what it meant to destroy a healthy conscious man.

When I saw the prisoner step aside to avoid the puddle, I saw the mystery, the unspeakable wrongness of cutting a life short when it is in full tide. This man was not dying. He was alive. just as we were alive. And so these industries dehumanize us and get us running around in circles, you know, so much around things that don't matter, where we forget the humanity and that we are these, we are the prisoners, that the soldiers, whoever the proverbial soldier is, is not seeing. And so this is how important it is to remember, you know, that we are all human.

I don't know what else to say. I mean, it's just so powerful. I'm right here with you sitting with it. The sense of what's not seen, you know, and how much our society is driven by forces and values that cut us off from feeling connected to each other and seeing the realness. of each other. And then from that place of being cut off, we try to go for something to comfort ourselves and our society then feeds us addictive food. In other words, it creates the suffering and then soothes the suffering with substitutes, whether it's get more possessions, you know, win this prize, eat this food that create more separation and suffering. And I just want to thank you

so much for that sharing because it just brings it to the heart of that this is a path of waking up to really feel our hearts and what they really need and going for the highest level of the hierarchy that you talk about, the highest reward, which is the freedom to love without holding back, the freedom to feel love, the freedom to feel our belonging, the freedom to be awake. and these habits that are really conditioned by the society keep us trapped. And that's not a way of not being accountable. We can feel empowered because there are ways we can train our hearts and minds, but not to take the blame off of society.

Society, we need to change our society too. Yeah. And I would just add to that, the more we learn how our minds work and the more we learn to work with our minds, the more we can repurpose that energy of shame, of blame, of guilt, of feeling something, of holding that huge boulder of a story of there's something wrong with me. And we can repurpose that energy towards social change. And we can all band together.

And we can see that love is so much more powerful than hate or selfishness or whatever. And we can band together and actually. make that change happen. That's exactly right. Because right now we're talking about the particulars of the habits of eating, but it could be the habits of making others wrong and the habits of identifying with, you know, in a polarized way, any of these habits, that if we can work with our own hearts and minds,

we can start stepping out of them. Yeah. Yeah, I love there. There's a, it reminds me of a quote from Martin Luther King Jr. And I don't know if his Christmas sermon or something where he says, And we, you know, despite your hate, we will love you no matter what. And we will win a double victory.

A double victory. Those are words to end on. Thank you so much, Jed. Again, the hunger habit, it's going to be out the end of this month. And you will find, as I did, a huge amount for life-changing understandings and practices. So blessings. Thank you. Thank you.