Ten Percent Happier with Dan Harris - 220: The Anti-Diet | Evelyn Tribole

Episode Date: January 1, 2020

Award-winning registered dietitian Evelyn Tribole inspires people to rethink their relationship with food and enjoy eating. In today's diet culture, people have stopped trusting their bodies and are ignoring its cues. In her nutrition counseling practice, Evelyn helps people tune in to what their bodies are trying to tell them through awareness and intuitive eating. In this episode, Evelyn describes how her meditation practice has deepened her passion for her career. She further explains the ten principles detailed in her new book, "Intuitive Eating," about rejecting the diet mentality and making peace with all food. Join the New Years Meditation Challenge: https://10percenthappier.app.link/IpETZ7CAX1 Plugzone: Website: https://www.evelyntribole.com/ New Book: https://www.amazon.com/Intuitive-Eating-4th-Anti-Diet-Revolutionary/dp/1250255198/ Work book: https://www.amazon.com/Intuitive-Eating-Workbook-Principles-Relationship/dp/1626256225/ Books: https://www.evelyntribole.com/evelyns-books/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/evelyntribole/ Mentioned on the show: - Crazy Wisdom - https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/209-kryptonite-for-inner-critic-self-compassion-series/id1087147821?i=1000453700663 Podcast Insiders Feedback Group: https://10percenthappier.typeform.com/to/vHz4q4 See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Before we jump into today's show, many of us want to live healthier lives, but keep bumping our heads up against the same obstacles over and over again. But what if there was a different way to relate to this gap between what you want to do and what you actually do? What if you could find intrinsic motivation for habit change that will make you happier instead of sending you into a shame spiral? Learn how to form healthy habits without kicking your own ass unnecessarily by taking our healthy habits course over on the 10% happier app. It's taught by the Stanford psychologist Kelly McGonical and the Great Meditation Teacher Alexis

Santos to access the course. Just download the 10% happier app wherever you get your apps or by visiting 10% calm. All one word spelled out. Okay on with the show. For ABC, to baby, this is Kiki Palmer on Amazon Music or wherever you get your podcast. From ABC, this is the 10% happier podcast. I'm Dan Harris. Hey, hey, happy New Year. So since it's the New Year, I want to let you know about a big project we're launching over the 10% happier app.

We're running a free 21 day meditation challenge during the month of January. This is a really we did this last year. People got a lot out of it. As I said, it's free. You're going to do it with thousands of other people, including me and including Alexis Santos, one of our most popular meditation teachers. If you join the challenge, you'll get to see when I've meditated, when Alexis has meditated, you'll get to see when I've meditated, when Alexis has meditated, we'll get to see when you do it. And yeah, I think it would be super fun. And this is a great way to get people motivated and inspired and to boot up at a biting habit. You can

sign up today in the app. You can, if you don't have the app, you can download it and sign up there. There are also some links in the show notes with more information. The challenge begins on Monday, January 6th, so we'll see you there. Okay, time for the episode. I have to say, I know I say this a lot, but I actually, I especially mean it for this episode.

I loved this interview and it was quite meaningful to me personally. I've spoken on the show before about the fact that I get a little crazy, dysregulated around sort of body image and food stuff. And Evelyn Trouble A gave me just a brand new way to think about this content, a brand new way. I think it's been a minute since I recorded this. We recorded it a few weeks ago, actually when I was out in San Francisco. And I think in the middle of it, I stopped to just point out that she's amazing. And she really is. She is a very experienced dietician. She, in fact, used to be the expert on nutrition for Good Morning America. She's written nine books.

She's got a nutrition counseling practice in Newport Beach, California. The book for which she's probably best known is called Intuitive Eating, and it's a whole ... We're calling this episode the anti-diad, because that's really what it is. Heragamin diets, diets don't work, and this her approach does, and that has been born out in over 90 studies showing the benefit of, of, of intuitive eating. And I have to say I've really been experimenting with this and I find it fascinating.

I want to say before we get started here that this episode is part of a whole series we're doing during the month of January, where we're looking at exercise, sleep, meditation, and diet. And if you are tuning in late and you've missed some of the previous ones, go back in your podcast feed and check them out because this is, I think we were really onto something in terms of helping people boot up healthy habits in a healthier way that involves a lot less shame and self-lodulation. One final thing to say about Evelyn before we dive in here is that she has quite a deep meditation practice and also a wicked laugh, which you're about to hear a lot of.

So here we go, Evelyn Tribbley. Great to meet you. Likewise, I'm so excited to be here. Thanks for making time for this. Yeah, absolutely. So how did you get into meditation? It's so bizarre. I have, it was the securitas route. The long short story is when my mom was dying of cancer, I had to keep missing sessions

with patients and I would tell them why I didn't think I was flaky. And so a patient of mine gave me a book called Mindful Grieving. And I remember looking at it and thinking, why in the hell do I want to feel my grief? I am a ten of sadness and it broke me open because I noticed during those times I practiced some mindfulness as I knew it back then I was just a little baby meditator. But I noticed there was times I was neutral, there was times I actually was happy even though my mom was dying and so it opened something up. And then I ended up taking this is really funny. I took a professional retreat with someone

who's a Zen master and a pediatrician, a health professional. I'll never forget. The second time they made us meditate, I thought I was going to die. I called my best friend, they made us meditate two times. Now we're going to go into silence. Long story short, here I am. I fell in love with meditation.

I now train with Dan Brown, who's just an amazing teacher for me. I've never met Dan Brown. He's at Harvard. He's at Harvard. And the thing that appeals to me personally, I'm a skeptic. That's what I loved about your story. I'm a skeptic.

I'm always the one asking the questions. And because he's also an academic and a practitioner, he is a very satisfying relationship with my mind. And he's just really, really gifted. And one of the most humblest persons I've ever met, especially being at Harvard, you know, so. How did you find him? I got his book, it's a really, really big book

about the stages of meditation, Mahamudra pointing out the way. And I bought it, put it down, five years later, I picked it up, and it blew me away. And I realized I had the illusion of his meditating, but I was not meditating properly. And I thought, I've got to go meet this guy. I've got to go train with him.

And I did, and that's what just knocked me over. So, when you say you weren't meditating properly, but he pointed out the way to do it properly, what was the difference there in the technique between... The biggest technique is, you know, with meditation, your mind goes all over the place. And one of the techniques he has, I won't go into details since I'm not a teacher, but he really has you practice the awareness of your breath the entire way,

and really noticing when you leave, noticing when you have partialized concentration in these types of things. And so, the other thing I like about him is a teacher, when you go into retreat with him, he's there the whole time. Usually, in other retreats I've been in, you have a teacher for me about an hour,

and then that there's constant interaction, which for me is, I connect it with it very deeply. So when you say he went and met him, did you just say, hey, can I get a little bit of your time, or do you show up at him? No, no, no, no, I showed up when it was retreats. I signed up and it was so funny,

it was held at a monastery. So I was like, oh my God, I'm going in deep here. And it was great, it was really, really great. And I have become, you talk about being 10% happier. I think I'm a 10% better person, which makes people around me happy. Where you complex before? I didn't think I was reactive.

And I realized, holy moly was I so reactive. But the thing that has changed with me, I was telling this with Dan, we just met a couple months ago, is that I have changed. I actually, this is gonna sound terrible. Before I would do the right thing, cause you're supposed to, but now I actually genuinely care.

It's hard to put into words with this is, but this connection and this compassion, and you talk a lot about the Wu stuff, the Muishi stuff, and I'm like that. And now here I am talking about the Wu Muishi stuff. And it's like, oh, we have to end all suffering. And so what this is done in my career, oh, you get it. Yeah, I'm not a woo person. But it has lit my passion for what I do to a level I didn't expect would happen to put an end to unnecessary suffering as it relates to mind and body. Because there's so much

unnecessary suffering around eating and body and judgment and shame. And you talk about conceptual mind. Oh my gosh, the rules and the concepts and the judgments that are out there. And it's neat to watch people's lives change. There's a technique that we created through intuitive eating over 25 years ago. We've updated it all along.

And the cool thing is there's now research on our method. And it just warms my heart in ways. I just can't begin to describe. We're gonna go deep on diet culture, et cetera. But let's just stay with your practice for a second. So would you call yourself now a Buddhist? I am a Buddhist. I did take refuge, yeah.

But it's funny, I don't talk about. It's fine taking refuge just for people. You take a vow that basically, you take refuge in yeah. But, you know, it's funny, I don't talk about it. It's fine taking refuge just for people. It's just, I mean, you take a vow that basically, you know, you take refuge in, you're just. You take refuge in the Buddha, the Dharma, and the song. And the song, yeah. And, you know, one of the most troubling parts of it, this is gonna sound really silly,

but I'll just show you where I was back at the time, is that they have to cut off some of your hair. And I've heard you talk about your own hair. So the idea of losing some of your hair for a ceremony, it was just, it's about letting go and not having attachment. But the reason I don't usually talk about your own hair. So the idea of losing some of your hair for a ceremony, it was just, it's about letting go and not having attachment. But the reason I don't usually talk about it is I don't like to be in that othering place being different.

I'd rather find what we have in common because as soon as I say I'm Buddhist, then walls might come up from some other people. But I consider myself a secular Buddhist, meaning I don't know what happens in the life after, but I love the principles and the philosophies, and it's a beautiful way to live without judgment, without having to recruit other people. Yes, that's exactly the way I feel. Oh, yay! Exactly the way I feel. Yeah.

So what flavor of Buddhism did you join from that? Well, it's kind of interesting. I didn't tell you about the detour I took with Shambhalla, and I learned a lot of Buddhism, and did a lot of training with them. I was on a path to become a teacher. I could do what I call baby teaching, or I could teach meditation at an individual level, or lead meditation in a group setting, but not the teaching. And I just tell people what Shambhala is. Oh, please.

So Shambhala is a Buddhist lineage, I guess, founded by a controversial Tibetan teacher by the name of Chogyum, Trunkba Rinpoche, mouthful, he was born into bed, had a very traumatic exit from there when the Chinese invaded, and then ultimately made his way to the west where he dropped a robe, started wearing suit and tie, also became an alcoholic, I guess, and embodied, drank himself to death, ultimately, embodied what he called crazy wisdom. So he was controversial for all of the aforementioned reasons. And yet many of his students really are quite loyal to this day. And so Shambhalla is the

system he left behind. They have centers all over the Yeah. And it was taken over by his son, the sock young sock young me, palm, yeah, who's been on this show. Oh, really? Yes. Before he then got into trouble and was drummed out in me too. I don't know the exact nature of the allegations, but it was. It was disturbing to read all the reports and that's ultimately why I left. I actually, I was still I was starting to already train with Dan.

I knew it's going to be leaving you shimball, but when that happened, it's like, I'm out. I can't support a system in which has been so much abuse of power at such, it's so many different levels. But I will say the weird thing is, and the part I'm grateful for, the teachings that I learned really helped me. It helped me, helped me open my mind, helped me to where I am right now. But the way I look at it is,

what I refer a patient there, and my answer is absolutely not. You need to go into a place of safety, and when there's been places of abuse, people that often enter meditation come in in a really vulnerable spot. And I know this is not unique to other organizations, but it's just, it's really disturbing to see.

So yeah, so I'm no longer with the group. That, I mean, I don't know the sock young very well, then the one or two times we met and I definitely didn't know his dad, but I know a lot of people who were close to him. And it's a puzzle because he was by, by many sort of, I don't know, like we call them objective measures, but if you look at his writing, uh, look at his teachings, he clearly had wisdom. And yet in his behavior, I mean, there's a documentary

about him called Crazy Wisdom. I think you could see it on YouTube. Yeah, it's as if he was sleeping with his followers and obviously drunk a lot. And so it's a puzzle. You know, I don't know much about him. So I don't want to say talk as if I've got some sort of psychopedic understanding,

but it's not surprising for me to hear you were discomfitted by the culture and yet you learned a lot. Yeah, and you was really interesting because when I started to go down the training path, that's him using an obligation. I did do diligence, and I was not comfortable with the history of the founder, but I was comfortable with their older policies of care and conduct.

I was like, okay, it was in the 60s. I don't get it. I don't agree with it, but no one's trying to absolve him. But when this new set of things happened, that was it for me. It reminded me of what you see in family systems of toxicity that go down from generation to generation. It needs to heal. And anyway, that's a whole other story. So yeah, so I'm grateful for what I learned.

That's the good news on that. It didn't turn my mind and it got me incredibly ready for reading. I think that's why I was able to read Dan's book when I first bought it. I couldn't even understand it. I just put it aside. And I was getting ready to lead a meditation.

We do this thing called contemplation. After doing two rounds of meditation, you now take the awareness of your mind and you put to lead a meditation. We do this thing called contemplation. After doing two rounds of meditation, you now take the awareness of your mind and you put it on a phrase. And as a leader, you get to pick what that is. And I was looking for new material. And I go, I'm gonna look at Dan's book again. And that's when I found this stuff

and I couldn't put it down. And that's what my change went. So what flavor of Buddhism is Dan? Well, you know, he's in the lineage of Rime, which has been around for 200 years, and that's where they take what they consider best practices and all the different traditions and teach based on that way. So whoever they think does the best concentration technique,

that's who they're used. So it's kind of cool, you know? So it's like the Zoroastrians are coming to mind. You know, they don't. I've never heard of them. I believe there is a religion, a Persian religion that was a sort of a cafeteria style combination of all the pre-existing Abrahamic religions. Oh, okay. And but sounds like this is like the vert, Dan is doing the Buddhist version

of that and something. Yeah, and that can cause it best practices. And so he blends Western with with Eastern tradition really quite well. And because he's also an academic, he does amazing research on meditation and all kinds of stuff. So I just, it's actually a very cool experience being a student of his. So what for you, you know, given your life history was the most valuable application of Buddhism internally. Was it the kind of the calming of the mind that comes with learning how to focus on the breath? And then when you get distracted starting again, was it the mindfulness that comes from doing that where you see how crazy you are and then the craziness doesn't own you as much? Or was it where you were describing earlier this kind of compassion or a combination of all of the forms? I'm an answer in a different way. It's funny when I'm meditating I don't get into all these places that some people do.

But I see the... Meaning? All these experiences meditating, realizing aspects of the mind. What it does for me is like this is slow unfolding. All of a sudden I realize, my God, I've changed because I'm not reactive. Oh my gosh, I have discernment in places. So I call it free-sframe moments. I'm going to turn experience on because you might relate to it because of your son. So my son was about three, and I was on a book deadline. And my office downstairs, I was facing the computer. He comes in, and he says, hi, mommy.

I don't even see him. But something caused me to turn around and look in his little eyes. And something was off. And I go, are you OK? And all of a sudden he starts crying. He just watched Goofy goes to college. She goes, I don't want to go to college and leave you. I can't leave you.

And that scene haunted me, not haunted me, I thought, I'm so glad I paid attention. This was before meditation, but I call that a freeze frame moment. So what happens now being a meditator, I have a lot more of those freeze frame moments where I notice something and I do something with it, or I just notice it. And maybe I become not reactive or maybe I have more discernment in what I decide to do. It's, I have more patients like I've never had. And I'm kind of a high energy person and pretty,

and I've dampened down a bit. Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, Wow, what were you like before? Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, So that's the other thing. I've had some people say, oh, they're afraid that they would change if they became a meditator. I said, actually, I haven't changed as far as my personality.

The energy, the passion is still there. But the difference is that the compassion and the less reactivity, I'm a better person because of that. Right. I mean, I've experienced the same thing. I mean, I still have many, many, many flaws. It's just that the volume comes down a little bit on the flaws. You feel like you have more visibility of them and into them and agency in the face of them. So there's a Tibetan phrase that I've

quoted many times on the podcast that for enlightenment it translates into a clearing away and a bringing forth. Oh my gosh. Like clear away a lot of the noise and junk and you bring forth the better angels of your nature or just sort of your better judgment, et cetera, et cetera. And that's my experience of how this works. I would completely agree with that. It's hard to put it into words and it's a slow unfolding. And sometimes I'm hesitant to put it into words

and talk about how amazing I feel because I don't wanna have an expectation of someone be disappointed. This is a slow evolution where you kind of look back off the cushion and go, wow, you know? Yes, yes, that's absolutely right. So okay, so how does everything we've just discussed apply to eating? Oh, I'm going to tell you.

This bare in mind, that cackle you just heard is from a practicing Buddhist. That's correct. That's correct. That's what you came into the practice with. I say that with approval. Just a second. Thank you. I feel really validated, not that I need it, but I do.

So here's one way I'd like to say it. Just as the practice of meditation is an inside job, it's inside. The practice of intuitive eating is also an inside job, and it's about connecting to your body. And okay, I have to tell you, I'm also a geek, I love research, and one of the, you're gonna love this. You're gonna love this.

So you can drop as much science as you want. Oh, thank God. So this is gonna intersect in a way I think you might like. And if you don't, that's okay too. So the basis of intuitive eating, it's a self-care eating framework. And it's based off of something- What does that mean?

I want to tell you. It's taking care of yourself on a superficial level, but on a deeper level, it's based around something called interceptive awareness. That term, what that means, it's our ability to perceive physical sensations that arise within the body. I know you know that experience through meditation, but let me tell you what's so brilliant about it. It reveals states like a full bladder, people know what to do with a full bladder, thank God. Hunger and fullness states, but every emotion has a physical sensation.

And so when we're in touch with the physical sensations of our body, we are actually have a treasure token of information to get our needs met. All of this is happening in the right side of the brain and the insula. And guess what? Meditators have more interest, uh, interest-up awareness, which is kind of cool. I consider it our superpower. So when we're aware of physical sensations, it's giving us information like, what do I need right now? Do I need to sleep? Am I lonely? These kinds of things. The problem in the challenge in today's culture, diet culture, is that people aren't war with their bodies. And when you hate your body, at war with your body, you're not listening to the messenger.

It's like your best friend's knock on door, hey, I have some information for you, and you're like, go away, go away. When you respond to that information, it's called interceptivity, but we're saying, I get out of here. And then when people start down the rabbit hole of all these different kinds of diets,

lifestyles, whatever you want to call it, they disconnect from their body, and they start to distrust these sensations because they're trying to fake it out, fake hunger, fake fullness. You know, it's all this biohacking. Oh, this biohacking can be extra, this, extra that. When I was like, how about listening to our bodies? What about that? Okay.

I have a million questions. Oh, please. Let me just start with a base or foundational question. So intuitive eating was something you designed 25 years ago before you started meditating. Correct. You stick by that framework, but you supercharge it with the mindfulness. Is that correct? Well, I'll tell you what's interesting.

It's kind of not correct, because I'll tell you what. Mindful eating and intuitive eating are two different things. They're very compatible and they're different. One of the biggest differences with intuitive eating, one of our biggest directives, there's 10 principles, is reject the diet mentality. Mindful-based eating doesn't have that. You absolutely need awareness to access and two-dividing for sure. In fact, when we wrote the book, John Kemp at Zins Book, Fulcotastophy Living was only out, I think, for about four or five years. It was the first time I'd seen the term Mindful eating used in the vernacular.

And because mindfulness wasn't in the vernacular, we used the description of having consciousness, which now I would say having awareness around it. So I would say anyone coming in from a mindfulness-based background or meditation background is going to have more access to that. I get excited when I have meditators as patients and clients because they can access this a little bit better, but living in diet culture, they still have rules and judgments. They're not even aware of. it's like fish and water, like what's water, right?

Right, yeah. So mindful eating would just be, in my experience of it, and you'll correct me, is just bringing your full attention to the process of eating, which if you've, anybody's ever gone on a meditation retreat, you eat slowly, you're doing everything slowly. Yeah. You eat less, you find, because you're aware,

when you're full, and you're actually tasting your food, and putting your fork down between bites, et cetera, et cetera. It's nothing I've had trouble doing off retreat. So I understand that. Yeah. I think if I'm, if I'm staining it correctly. You are. So one can do that without having a conscious rejection of the water that you reference, which is the diet culture in which we all swim.

Is that a faithful reproduction of what you just said? No. Oh, okay. Right. And I will tell you why. Because people are not aware of the diet culture. So they might be saying that they're listening to their hunger and fullness. And that's awesome. That's a great start. That part is correct. But if in their mind they're saying, I shouldn't be eating this much because that's the rules

of diet culture. That interferes with the awareness. They're not even aware of that. That's an issue. So sometimes what my favorite question to ask metta, oh, I'm going to ask you a question. Can I ask you a question? Yes. Because I've struggled with this stuff. So my question to you, Dan, is, where does your mind go when you're eating? Ooh! I don't know. See? Oh, okay. That's what I'm talking about. Most people don't.

And so, I think mindful eating is an awesome thing. I went to one retreat with a practitioner. I thought, if I'm going to train with someone, I want to really understand the model. And it's beautiful. You're into a sensation of eating taste, texture, all that kind of stuff. How it feels. But working with a mind in terms of, texture, all that kind of stuff, how it feels, but working with the mind in terms of where you're going, or you're comparing your body with someone else's body, or you're comparing your food to someone else's food

that's sitting next to you, they could, oh my god, they got more than I did when you're at retreat that happens a lot, you know. Yes, yes, yes. I'm sorry, I'm talking really fast. So part of what this is, so here's the conundrum that I see a lot. Years ago when I would ask somebody,

could you eat your meals without distraction? I used to get a pretty much a yes on to that. Now, as if I'm asking to give away their first born, because the question I guess, what would I do? Because they're so used to the mind being occupied. One thing I will start with as well, could you commit to one meal? I don't want to make someone do what they don't, I will always respect to honesty.

If the answer's no, then okay, we're going to find another way. And where I'm at right now with some people is like, how about can you commit to three bites and having awareness, the first bite, the middle bite, the end bite, just to get some connection of what's going on, what's the food taste like, what your body feel like, all of these kinds of things that go on.

And so what I find that's missing in the meditators that I've worked with is not knowing where the mind goes when they're eating. They think that, oh, I'm eating without distraction. This is really great. And I would say, yeah, that's great, but where's the mind? Where's the mind?

And if your mind is in distraction, then you're not really connecting with your body. But the cool thing is, you get to the point of effortless effort. You don't have to be a monk and meditate to get this process down. But when you're in the learning curve, it helps to have more of this awareness. And we know from research on neuroplasticity, for neurons to rewire together to fire together, there has to be

awareness at the time. This is coming out of Andrew Hoberman's lab out of Stanford. So I think it's a really cool thing, you know? So I just want to keep pushing a little bit on the difference. I think by this point, the listener will have understood what mindful eating is, which is again, bringing your full attention to the best of your ability while you're eating to the tastes of the food, to the sensations in your body, and then when you get distracted starting again. So I think that we've got that down. So what's left for us to do right now is to dive deeper into intuitive eating and what

the difference is there. Right, right, right. So I'll say one more thing and I'll get into those differences. So a scholar, we were in this great discussion on Facebook on what is intuitive eating and the two of you folks were writing beautiful things. I wrote beautiful things. I thought on it to you to be eating and she comes in and says, well, I think intuitive eating is a framework of self-care

eating, and mindful eating is a skill set. I thought, oh my god, that's beautiful, and it's nice and short. So that's another way of looking at it as well. Very compatible. That's the thing. If anything, your listeners come away with this, it's very compatible.

But when you start looking at it from a research base, it's important to know there's a difference in this. So one of the big things is rejecting the diet mentality. And one of my, I actually had a debate, I was on a conference panel with some mindfulness experts and I said, you know, my position is it puts people on the path of unnecessary suffering. If we can't already let them know I'm part of the secret and that is if you're dieting, it's going to hijack this whole process.

When you're dieting, the mind goes external. How much in this, how much in that, how much do I weigh, what about the macros? And we need to be going inside instead. So it's a path to having less suffering. But don't we need to know you referred to macros? Sorry, I did that. Yeah, that's fine. But don't we need to have the basics of nutrition down?

For example, I went to a, I moved, I gave up animal products about a year and a half, maybe two years ago. And I had to do a big education with a nutritionist, a vegan nutritionist who taught me how to do this without making myself sick. So learning that and getting a sense of like, am I getting enough protein today so that I have enough energy? Don't I need to have some external? Well, here, the answer is kind of, and here's how I will say it. The 10th principle of intuitive eating is on your health with gentle nutrition. And the reason we kept it as we made it the last principle, at least I both have master science to raise a nutrition. She's your co-authors.

She's the co-authors. That's her naming in. At least, RESH. Yeah. And we love, especially, I'm the nerd geek on the team and I love science and we love nutrition. But what we found is if we introduced that too soon, it interferes with the process of checking in. So it's more of a timing issue.

Yes, health absolutely counts, but if we do it too soon, it becomes problematic. Gotcha. So, okay, so we don't need to go there now. Correct. So walk us through the rest of the principles. Okay, so we reject the diet mentality. That's easy. That's easier said than done, because it's everywhere.

On and you're hunger, that's pretty straightforward. On and you're hunger. So don't stifle it if you're hungry. Yeah, this is actually a normal experience. It lets us know we need to eat. And actually, the sad part is, and I've seen this a lot with my patients, is if you try to ignore hunger and you try to fake it out,

guess what happens? You end up into this what I call primal hunger. You cross that line. I don't care. I'm going to eat you. I'm so hungry. And people have a lot of guilt around that and they don't realize, guess what? This is your biology.

This is your body really, really working well. We've seen that in a classic Minnesota starvation study. I don't know if you're familiar with that. Oh my God. Can I tell you about it? So these guys were college age men who men who conscious objectives in World War II. And just to be in this study, they had to be super-duper healthy,

biologically and psychologically, past all these exams. And then they were put on a semi-servation diet for a period of months. And we saw what happened to them. Predictably, they became malnourished, but what was really shocking is what happened to their mind. They started collecting recipes and cookbooks. And all they would do is talk about food.

And when I give this talk at universities, I tell them, and these men lost interest in sex. And when I say it, I think, oh, they know how profound that is, because there's no energy. Then some of the men started binge eating and creating eating disorders. And on average, these guys were getting, they weren't starving, they were having around 1700 calories a day. So this became the first study on the psychological consequences of under-eating.

So we've known this. And since then, when we've looked at all the research that's come out on dieting, when you diet, it messes up your mind like, oh, it increases risk of eating disorders, the act of dieting actually causes rebound, weight gain. Most people don't know this, but by year five, it's going to come back. The most consistent predictor of weight gain is dieting, going on a diet, regardless

of how much weight you started with, right? So shout out to Grace Livingston, one of the producers on the show who sent me, and this may be an excerpt from you, but there is not a, this is a quote here, there is not a single long term study that shows that weight loss dieting is sustainable. Study after study shows that dieting and food restriction for the purpose of weight loss leads to more weight gain. Yes, weight gain. Worse, the focus and preoccupation on weight leads to body dissatisfaction and weight

stigma, which negatively impacts health. Yeah. Isn't that shocking? Isn't that shocking? So when I have conversations with doctors, I would say, would you prescribe a medication that by year five actually causes more problems, actually causes heart attacks as opposed to clearing out arteries and they're like, hell no. And it's like, well, why would you prescribe weight loss then? And it's a complex area of science. And so what a lot of healthcare practitioners do is they follow policy, but they're not following the research. It doesn't work.

So then the question is, what do we do? We can still do healthy behaviors. Wait, it's not a behavior. Wait is not a behavior. And then people have so much shame when the weight comes back. And when they're losing the weight, like especially on Instagram, oh my gosh,

all they're before and after. And it's so loud. Oh, look at me, I feel so good. And then when it all comes back, you don't hear a thing. You don't hear like, I feel awful. I can't stop being. So binge eating is really common, a common consequence of dieting in terms of harm, you know?

But is there anything wrong with wanting your body to look a certain way? You know, it's a really good question. I think in today's culture, the answer is, it's all around us that kind of pressure. So the real issue when I'm working with patients that want to do this work is I'll tell them, can you put this idea of weight loss on the back burner? Because if it's your primary directive, it's going to interfere with the process.

And I can't even tell you what's going to happen to your body within two of eating. You might stay the same, you might lose weight, you might gain weight. Because this is about healing your relationship with food. But it's a really tough one, I say especially for women in this culture, but men as well, when you start looking at the incidence of eating disorders, one out of three people with eating disorders identifies as a man.

And the thing I find that's so disturbing is that eating disorder rates have doubled. A new study just came out in May looking at 90 different studies. They have doubled because because in my opinion, the Diet Culture has normalized this unhealthy relationship with food. I wonder if social media is part of that as well. Oh, I'm sure it is. Yeah.

So, I'll just speak personally. I've mentioned this before on the podcast. A little bugaboo of mine is, I'm 48 as we record this. I had like a brief shining moment in my 30s where I was single and was very fit, very fit. And for the first time in my life, I had like visible abs. And it's created this little hobgoblin for me,

this little bug of blue. I, you know, I don't like as I've gotten older that I have more sort of girth around belly. Even though it's not much, I'm a slim guy. And yet I notice it coming up again and again in this sort of self-critical loop in my head. So I wonder, is what you're saying to me, just drop that, you know, and is that even doable?

Dropping the desire to have the body look a certain way? So my short answer is yes, drop it, Dan. even doable, dropping the desire to have the body look a certain way. So my short answer is yes, drop it, Dan. But that's a hard thing to say to anyone when they have that desire because our culture reinforces this all the time. And so I start looking at, how does this make you feel, this constant comparison to a time in your past? So that's the thing I look at.

So this is where we use the mind of meditation. And that is, let's get a curious non-judgment. How does it make you feel? Oh, I'm here again. I'm comparing. Oh, how's it? How's it affect your eating? And here's the thing that just kills me, how it affects relationships, especially if you're really pursuing it because you're going out to dinner with your wife or your friends. And instead of really engaging in the conversation, the back of your mind is chattering about, well, I want to look this way. I want to look this way, the diet says this, the diet says that, and you're not connected. You literally just described like my last few dinners. Thank you. So that's harm, that's harmful. And so I think that's why I get so many people unsolicited emails and DMs,

oh my god, this changed my life. And I think it changes because you're starting to connect with the people that are with you as opposed to playing that game where you're talking to someone on the cell phone and they're there, they're saying the right words, but you can tell they're not there. It's the same kind of thing. But how do you acknowledge to your credit that this is hard to do? So I mean, I pass reflective surfaces on the regular in my bathroom as I'm getting ready and it's just this automatic thing of Oh, yeah, you know, how does the body look right? um, and then it's a spiral into negativity

Now I've I've actually done a reasonable amount of work Thanks to the aforementioned Grace Livingston who's who is very interested in this stuff And all the work of Kristen Neff who who's, oh, she's awesome. Right. It's a lot about self-compact. So I have these little mental habits that I've tried to develop that when I notice that voice kicking in, one, you know, Kristen Neff has this great three-part thing. The first is just to notice, mindfully, that you're, yeah, this sucks.

This is suffering. Two, to tune into the fact that there are millions of people right now dealing with this exact same thing to sort of widen the lens and more perspective and three to send yourself a little bit of good vibes. But I, while I've found this to be a useful sort of circuit breaker on this habit loop, this habitual self-laceration, I still have this question looming of, well, aren't, isn't a certain body type, you know, muscular, visible muscles? Isn't that a sign of good health, and therefore, isn't it rational that I should want this? Well, that's a loaded question, so I'm going to answer it many ways if I may. You can go as long as you want. Thank you. So first of all, you cannot tell by looking at someone's body at the health of their body.

So there's someone who's kind of well known on Instagram named Latoya Shanti, who last year got fat-shamed at the New York Marathon, my old 21 or 22. She's in a big body, she acknowledges that, she's as fit as can be. So you can't tell by looking at someone's body. But because of all the images we see on social media and then you being in the media yourself,

there's a pressure you have that I would say the average man doesn't have. Yeah, I gotta look at my face on television all the time. Yeah, and so so part of this I actually do another Tech I love Kristen and if we actually adapted some of her work in our our workbook to work with these kinds of things and so We'll put a link to her interview in the show notes. Oh awesome So I think one of the things we have to recognize here when you're talking about body in this case You're talking about a belief system and a value system So this is not just have happy thoughts and it goes away.

This is, we have to root this out and this is going to take time and practice. So the only time, no, well, so one of the things I just got really curious with somebody happened to be like a math genius and I said to her, how many, when did you start having thoughts about your body negative thoughts? I think for her it was age 10, I think she was 40 when I was talking to her and I said how many times a day do you think you've had these negative thoughts? And let's multiply it out. It was like 50 million or something like that. So so much suffering. It's so much suffering, but the point is so much suffering. Absolutely. So you're having 50 million hits of body shame versus three

hits of a Christian, a Christian, a Christian Neft technique, which is awesome. But sometimes people have the expectation that I'm going to use some loving kindness and self compassion. And I'm going to be all kumbaya with my body. And my answer is I would love if that was true, but we need to know it's going to take time and space because it's all around us. And so it's going to take these repetitions. And one thing I would add to this when it comes to bodies is to recognize.

I am not a body. You have done some awesome things in your career. I think I told you, I read your book, and it's like, damn, look at all the stuff you've done. You're not a body. You're a dad, you're a reporter. You've done all these amazing things. You are not a body.

So sometimes I will have people acknowledge that. I am not a body. For some people, here's a little Buddhism. I ask people, what's your body lineage? And like, what do you mean? I said, well, what about your mom and dad? How do they feel about their bodies? How about your grandparents?

And looking how it comes down the family tree, it's like, woo, no wonder. This is not so easy just to root with a couple of compassionate thoughts. It's something we need to do, but it's going to take time. And then in your case, you've got a family. And so one of the things I love to say when I'm working with parents is, I would love to stop the've got a family. And so one of the things I love to say when I'm working with parents is I would love to

stop the legacy in your family. I don't want your son to have these kinds of worries. I want him to go have fun and play or go school instead or whatever he wants to do but not be worried about the value of his body. Just to be clear, just to emphasize a point you made before, you're not saying be unhealthy. Correct. Oh, absolutely. I'm not saying that. No, I met just the other day,

another woman, not the woman you referenced who is in a big body herself, and she runs Marathons. In fact, she runs, she's basically an ultra marathon. Wow. That's her, what is it? I've forgotten her name, but she was lovely. She was on Good Morning America,

and just radiant human being, and just killing it out there. And so if you took, I would imagine we didn't do this, but if you went and took, did blood tests on her and did an EKG and all that stuff, I suspect you would find she's extremely healthy. And so that's the measure I think I'm hearing you say so in my case for example I recently got a workup and all the numbers came back

Really positive. Yeah, so maybe that's what I should be focusing on rather than you know the how my pants fit Exactly exactly and it and to recognize it's to be a practice to keep letting that go. Noticing how it makes you feel, doing some of the compassion itself, talk you were mentioning, and remembering you or not, a body. Stay tuned. More of our conversation is on the way after this. Life is short, and it's full of a lot of interesting questions. What does happiness really mean? How do I get the most out of my time here on Earth? And what really is the best serial? These are the questions I seek to resolve on my weekly podcast, Life is Short, with Justin Long. If you're looking for the answer to deep philosophical questions, like, what is the

meaning of life? I can't really help you. But I do believe that we really enrich our experience here by learning from others. And that's why in each episode, I like to talk with actors, musicians, artists, scientists, and many more types of people about how they get the most out of life. We explore how they felt during the highs and sometimes more importantly, the lows of their careers. We discuss how they've been able to stay happy

during some of the harder times. But if I'm being honest, it's mostly just fun chats between friends about the important stuff. Like if you had a sandwich named after you, what would be on it? Follow life is short wherever you get your podcasts. You can also listen to ad free on the Amazon music or wonder a app.

So I'm gonna give you an example. When we talk about health, we need to be broader. It's not just our bodies and what we eat. It also includes things like our mental health, our well-being, our social determinants of health, all these kinds of stuff, how much sleep you're getting. There was a really profound study published in the 90s. It was, I called the, and name every study I read,

I just said, it's a half and I have. So I called the Food Worry Study. And they looked, so the reason. So that was an affectionate laugh. I'm not laughing at you laughing at you know I was laughing back at you I like to laugh so I wasn't even threatened by that one I also want to make clear to the audience that I'm enjoying this oh good good I like your energy thank you so Paul Rossin looked at four countries he looked at the United States he looked at France Belgium and in Japan and the United States we in the, we worried the most about what we eat, and we enjoyed

it the least. The French, on the other hand, oh my gosh, they love their food, and they could care less about health back when this was done. And Belgium and Japan were somewhere in between. And the thing that he said was so profound was, you know, we keep worrying about if food's going to kill us or cure us. We haven't looked at what the impact of that worry is because when you worry it raises cortisol That's not good for health either and that's what I'm seeing right now

It's just too much worry around the eating like let's enjoy our food food is supposed to be enjoyable It's it's a source of pleasure and I will tell you Dan I was really lucky earlier in my career I was on a task force with with Julia Child when she wanted chefs and nutritionists to get along So we'd have to meet once a month and come up with something. And it really impacted me. And the message to the dietitians and nutritionists of the world is like, when you're planning all this healthy stuff, please, for the love of God, consider taste. And to the chefs, please consider health. The idea, it's not one way or the other, you know?

I just kind of rocked my head back in recognition when you said the thing about worrying. Yeah. Because it's just really bad with me because I spend a ton of time worrying about this this morning. I'm saying we're doing this interview in San Francisco where I'm out here for work and my wife and son came and which is amazing. And I try, when we can get into this, try not to eat too much processed grains,

sort of like bread stuff, but I love bread. And now that I don't eat animal products, it's one of the few sort of like sinful things available to me. So this morning, okay, so she's making a lot of gestures. I'll let you talk in a second. So this morning, my wife ordered avocado toast for me. When I got back from the gym, I ate it all. But was I enjoying it?

Yes, but a lot of there was this worry going out of the background. So that's toxicity. Yes, yes. Can I say stuff now? Yes, please, say as much as you want. So first of all, that kind of worry takes Rob's you from the joy of eating.

I feel in my body right now. Oh, so, and I wanna mention something, and you saw me react. Yeah. It's going, ah, when you said, sinful. So when we start talking about foods in moralistic terms, it's problematic. And I try my best.

I really know it. Yeah, and especially with kids, because kids are so black and white and they're thinking, I eat a bad food there for I'm bad. I'm going to give you some examples. I'm going to break your heart because it breaks my heart down. So this is going to have to do with kindergartners. It's funny.

I have a really cool Instagram feed where people comment and say things that just gets maybe even more energized. So someone's kindergarten teacher removed the homemade cookie mom put in the lunch because the kindergarten teacher said it was bad. Now this little kindergarten is afraid to eat this kind of food that mom packs in the lunch, which is to have that fear at five years old and have the parent having authority over what they want to pack in their kids lunch, things like that. It makes me sad.

I'd rather the worry be somewhere else, you know, but not with what we're eating. We need to get back to the joy of it. I totally agree. And yet, I have the little voice in my head. Let's hear the phrase. Yes, good. I'm glad you're cool with that. Is saying, well, isn't there empirical evidence to suggest that some food is better for

you than other foods? Oh, let's go there. Okay. So here's a really interesting thing about data. A lot of, I'm developing kind of a philosophy and you can tell me what you think about this. A lot of the fear mongering, it used to be from the media, from headlines, from nutrition research news and the media would sensationalize it. Now I'm seeing that the universities are putting out press releases that are putting the sensationalistic stuff

in there, and the media is just merely reproducing it. A lot of these studies showing, quote, bad effects, like what you're describing, are something called epidemiological research, which association not causation. Gosh, did they control for exercise in this group? Did they control for smoking? Did they control for sleeping?

There's so many things they're missing. So these epi studies studies because they're so large in numbers, there's thousands and thousands of people, sometimes millions, they generate lots of headlines. And these studies have a value, they tell us, you know what, this is interesting. We should do a study on humans and see it wouldn't intervention data make,

wouldn't intervention trial make a difference. Will it change the quality of their life? And so we don't have that much data in nutrition. There's a lot of, a lot of soft stuff on there. And so food becomes preached in terms of identity like it's a religion, you know? It's amazing to me how this has happened that people think that they're better than other people

because they eat a certain way or that they're not so good because they didn't eat a certain way. And so this is where we need to really remove the morality from eating. Okay, so I hear you when you say that we should be skeptical of the research, are we not at a point where the research is dispositive on eating a sleeve of Oreos? Oh, well, let's look at that. That sounds so straightforward of a question, right?

And I hear that. But see, here's the thing about the Oreos. Who would want to eat a sleeve of Oreos with that feel good, you know? So the people I meet that would eat a sleeve. Me, by the way. Okay. So that was not without, that was not judgment on other people. Good, good.

So this has even better than it's you. So we'll go with it. So my experience is that when people eat sleeves, the cookies, our whole boxes, and I work with a lot of people that do. Yeah, you're sitting with somebody who used to. Yes. Oh, yay. There's usually deprivation in that background. There's usually like, I can't have this food.

And there for when they say, Yeah, my parents didn't let me have food. Oh my God. Okay. So then what ends up happening is the fight, when they finally get it, get to have it, whatever, there's an event that comes along, there's an emotion, we just say, the heck with it.

You eat those cookies and you really know in that moment, you're never gonna have them again. You're never gonna have them again. So I'm gonna get them all right now Well, I can because I'm right you're laughing you get it right? I just call your story you did right so that's that's the issue and so when someone says I'm enjoying this interview So I'm so glad I'm so glad we'll have to do it again You're amazing. I really think first of all you I think you're helping me right now in this moment And I think by extension you're gonna help tens of thousands of people. That's why I'm here.

When I get that from you. Yeah. Just a little bit of love in the middle of the day. Oh, thank you. I always take that in. Thank you. Good. So, one of the things I get is we haven't talked about the third principle of intuitive

game. We'll get there. Or one of them. I know it's so funny. I don't know the order. I can tell you what they are. I don't know the order because I never go in order. I go with what the person needs.

But one of the principles is the most misunderstood principle and controversial for those who don't get it is called making peace with food, which being all foods fit, including Oreos. And the biggest fear question I get is, oh my gosh Evelyn, if I let myself eat whatever I want, I would never stop. That's what I was going to ask. Thank you. See? Did I call you already?

Intuitive ask you. Thank you, see, did I call you already? Intuitive of you. And that usually is a reflection for how much deprivation there's been in your life. Because there's a permission paradox that happens. When you really know you can have the Oreos or whatever it is, for the first time you get to really ask, well, do I really want them? If I eat them now, I'm gonna enjoy them. And why would I eat a quantity that doesn't feel good

in my body, you know? It changes everything. It's one of my most favorite things to observe over and over again. And I have to tell you, I didn't tell you this part, there's a lot of research behind the foundation of intuitive eating. It was research inspired, but now it's evidence-based now. But our model is actually based on a lot of research around kids, where they show this phenomenon that if you forbid a kid from having a food, that is the food that they obsess about. That's a food they end up sneaking.

That's the kid who at the birthday party's going nuts over the cake and the candy, not the presents, and stuff in it in their pockets. And so we see that same phenomenon in adults. So as an example, when someone's, I'm gonna make this complex, but easy at the same time. So when someone's dieting, not getting enough to eat, and now they have forbidden foods around,

they can't eat this or can't eat that, and something happens and they can't stand it. So they eat like a box of Oreos. And in their mind, nothing can explain that, except, oh my gosh, it must be addiction. And it's like, no, this is a combination of biology, when you're not getting enough to eat, your brain is not craving kale.

I have never met a patient, you had to say, Evelyn, you gotta help me, this kale thing, I can't stop eating it, right? Because our brain needs carbs. It's the preferred energy source. But because, and I'll say, the experience is real, nothing can explain this, this drive and the intensity in the urges, that primal hunger.

But when you get to a point that you're ready to allow these foods in first, you need to nourish the body consistently, and then allow these foods in, it changes it. So a few months ago, on my, I just recently debated a scientist, I loved doing the veins, on addiction, food addiction, so-called addiction, and to get ready for it besides having research, I thought, you know, in my experience, I've had a lot of patients believe they were addicted to food, and with time, they realized they weren't. So I posted on Instagram, do you ever believe you were addicted to food

and then realized you weren't? Oh my God, the stories that came in. The stories that came in. So to me, it's an example of the problem when you start labeling things. Calling things when the research isn't there to support it. It's a kissing cousin to labeling something sinful. Yes, yeah.

Yeah, I just realized that changed topics on you a little bit on that. No. Yeah, it's a similar idea. It creates a barrier and it creates fear. And when you have fear around eating, guess what? You're not going to want to trust your body.

Yeah, and I want you to trust that digressions, even really, really long ones, are totally welcome here. So don't worry about it. So let's just go with what you're on right now, because it's very, very interesting to me personally. One thing I would just want to say is, you've basically helped my wife win an argument. Many probably in the course of this, but one in particular, as it pertains to our son,

I don't know that I actually, we really argued about this because I've just let her go with it, but her view is around dessert stuff. Just don't be weird about it. Just let them have, you know, just to to a to the point of, you know, you don't want to just give them dessert for every meal, but if he's, you know, asking for something and it makes sense, let him have it. And as a consequence, our son's not that crazy about sugar. See, that's what I'm talking about.

So he's really not Halloween. We came home, he spent the whole evening organizing the candy into different groups because he liked the colors or the kind of candy it was. Didn't want to eat any of it. See? Oh my gosh. And yet, if your wise wife hadn't been, you know, nudging you in that direction,

I would have been crazy about it. Or he would have been crazy about it. Well, I would have made him crazy because my parents made me, I don't wanna get down to my parents with my parents, I love my parents. They, my dad used to say this really nice thing to me and my brother before we were going to bed

at night, he'd say he would take nobody's perfect, but yours close as is possible. Oh my God. And I feel that way about them as parents. There is no such thing as perfect parents, but my parents were wonderful parents. And yet on this one, I think they, because they're physicians and we're trying to make us healthy

out of this incredibly positive loving impulse, limited our sugar intake. And that has, I'm now realizing, made me pretty crazy about sugar. Well, and let me also just validate what you're saying. I've never met a parent yet who didn't want to be doing the best for the rest And so what we say now is like okay, you're learning something different and maybe you can do something So I've got to tell you the story that reinforces what you're saying because it's so visual I got a call from a parent about her seven-year-old daughter over

Holiday we had a white dress on Chocolate fingerprints all over her dress and she said said, honey, did you eat the chocolate, whatever it was? And she said, no, mommy. No, mommy. And the evidence was everywhere. And she said, you know, that was the first time to her knowledge,

her daughter has outright lied to her. And she made her wonder, what am I doing here? Am I making a mistake that my daughter needs to lie to me? So she came in and saw me in long story short, well-meaning, but they had rigid rules, absolutely no candy. So the only time this kid got candy was that parties, this was like a party kind of thing.

And the visual of that white dress with the chocolate. So I gave her similar advice what I'm suggesting to you. It's like, let's liberalize the food. We don't have to serve dessert for dinner, but we don't make it a big deal either. Food has become switzer when it's neutral. We don't put energy into it. And long story short, it changed the whole dynamic.

Yeah, my wife has done a really good job. Good for her. good for her. So let's get back to the thing you said before that perfectly described my mentality, which is, so let me just step back and say on sugar, I went through this long phase where I would just binge it to the point where I would feel awful. And when I say awful

I don't mean awful just awful in the moment. I would feel awful the entire next day. Oh, yeah Yeah, that's how much I was okay, and I have an addictive personality Okay And So what I decided to do a couple of years ago was I was it was yet another day where I was texting back and forth with my wife saying I feel awful today and I just decided you know what I'm going to leave it alone. I can't I'm having trouble with moderation but I'm reasonably good at abstinence. So now I've for the last couple of years I've gone through the world of with just a policy as you know you can make me as my friend Gretchen Rubin says you

can make me a birthday cake but but I'm not gonna eat it. And it's been reasonably successful in that I haven't had a day where I felt awful because I ate so much, so many Oreos a night before. But now sitting here with you, maybe I have to tweak that success story. And the reason why I'm bringing all this up is you said before, a lot of people say to you, if you allow me to have that one Oreo, I'll never stop. Yeah. So that's my mentality.

Yeah. So given everything I just said, how would you suggest I proceed? I'm so glad you're asking. I get this question a lot. So first of all, I'd want to make sure that you're getting enough to eat because the truth is, let's say you had just a crazy day on deadline, pulled into a meeting, you worked out and you finally got home and you're having dinner at eight o'clock and let's say lunch was at 11.

In other words, nine hours without eating. If you decided to make peace with sugar right then and there, you're going to eat a meal's worth and that's not going to feel good. So I'd want to make sure your body's nourished and that when you have whatever it is that that sweet that you have it at a time when you can pay 100% attention to it. And we're asking you the earlier, where's your mind go when you're eating. I want your mind to be on the, I would love for your mind to be on the process of eating. Note what comes up even before you do it. Fierce, excitement and maybe being judging the fact that you're excited. Oh my god, this is the wrong man. I'm so excited. That's common, by the way, really common. And then even

just noticing as you're unwrapping the candy, the sound of the candy, as you put, you know what I love? Oh my god, I wish I had it here with you, but like a junior man, it's our my favorite ones to do a food experience with, because I would have you smell it. And when you smell junior man's, yes, you smell man, you smell chocolate, you smell hints of vanilla, then you put it in your mouth, and don't even take a bite,

and notice what happens to the taste and the texture. Then take one bite without chewing, that's hard, hard to do. I always say, pretend I'm a kindergarten teacher, don't go ahead of me. And then finally, when you feel comfortable, you know, to notice the taste, notice the texture, and then after you finish swallowing, notice the remnant taste. So I actually do this in my office.

That's mindful eating right there, both of them. It is, it actually is. Well, the first lesson in mindfulness-based stress reduction is the raisin. The raisin, yeah, yeah, yeah. This one sounds much more fun. It is much more fun. So I usually have people bring in their foods. And I tell you, this is what I just have to joy to do this work

to watch people's minds get blown. I'm like, oh my God, I had somebody who used to binge on candy corn, pounds and pounds. Every holiday, when it would come around, Thanksgiving and around Halloween. And she brought them in. We did this thing. She tasted things she'd never tasted before

because it was always urgent. Herring, do this now before no one's looking. Herring, let's do it fast. Don't taste it. And then feeling like what you were talking about, just feeling awful afterwards. And part of that awful is not only the physicality from the eating, but the emotional labeling.

So it becomes in mesh. This is what this equals now. You know, so we have to separate it out because all along as you're eating and when you finish do I like how I feel? You know, you can stop anytime you want to. Okay, so I suspect that what I'm about to say is I suspect speaking for many people in the audience, which is, wow, you are really forcing me to rethink my relationship with food.

And yet I'm still in this position of wondering how am I going to do this. I still feel if I tonight at dinner with my wife and child for the first time in a couple of years say okay I'll have a little dessert. How's that going to go? Even if I've been I've had a bag of food over there that I'll probably eat between interviews today. So I will be nourished by the time dinner rolls around. And yet I have this fear that I will go crazy. So, and that fear is really common. So number one, I'm glad you're challenging

or thinking on this. I love that. You're challenging, I think. Yeah, yeah, I'm glad that you're revealing that. It's good. But I'd want you to do it at a time that you feel ready to do it. I see.

So like, for example, I've really noticed, I've been jet lag the last couple of days and I've done a bunch of mindless eating. Sure. Fatigue is one of those mind states that can leave that. You would want me to feel physically and mentally strong. In a good place for us. Today, a good point. You get to decide that.

Let me share a little bit of research behind this. It might help with the fear factor. There's a couple of drivers that we created this principle. One of them has to do with habituation research. Habituation has to do with novelty. That when something is new, it's very exciting. One of the best stories I ever heard was from a habituation research. He described falling in love. You're falling in love. And for the first time, you hear that person say, I love you. And it's magical, and it's awesome in your own top of the world. 10 years later, you're married, you're a committed relationship that same person says, I love you. And it's nice, but it's not

the same level of joy. When you get a new car, when you get a new computer, when you knew anything. So that's what habituation is novelty wears off. It's like leftovers. It's really the leftover principle. You know, after I used to do some cookbooks, and I'll never forget making making cakes, and all my family, oh my God, cake, cake, cake, cake. But by the end of that chapter, I couldn't give a cake away, because they knew they could have it.

So what happens is when someone's been dieting or have rigid rules like no sugar, what happens is food stays scary and food stays exciting. You know, you haven't had the habituation effect, you've had the extremes, You haven't had the middle. So what we know from habituation effect, if you want to do this systematically, I actually have a systematic approach,

you would choose one food, the same flavor, same brand. So for example, if it was ice cream, maybe it's hoggondoss ice cream, but you don't vary it up with halotop, because it's very different, even if it's vanilla. You know? And because we know with novelty, if you introduce new flavors, it'll take a little longer.

You can do it that way if you want to. You can it any way you want to but when someone's really really scared I'll say you know Let's create the optimal situation. What do you number one? What do you need to feel safe? What's optimal for you? Where do you want to do this? I've had some patients say I don't want to do it at my home I don't want to have a bag of candy or a big gallon ice cream calling my name. Can I go out somewhere? It's like absolutely yes you can and so It's about build what ends up happening you don't have to eat through the alphabet of sugar to get this. But once you start having a certain amount of experience, as all

of a sense, like, you know, and it's just a beautiful thing to witness over and over again, like what you see in your son could be in you as well. But there's been too much energy and too much rigidity around it in my opinion, which is why it keeps it exciting. And therefore, with excitement comes fear. So you would recommend that the abstinence model that I've been bringing to sugar is probably not the wisest approach. Yeah, that's what I would say.

And so what you're recommending if I'm hearing you correctly is pick one super exciting, the most exciting kind of dessert. Or any kind, you could do the safest dessert. Maybe something boring. Like for me, boring, you could do the safest dessert, maybe something boring. Like for me boring, for my taste buds would be vanilla way for cookies. It's dessert for some people, but it's like,

no, I'd rather have a real cookie. Well, I agree with that. But if we're trying to go for habituation, should we pick the most exciting? It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter. You just keep repeating it. So the dessert of the week might be a certain

what cookie or ice cream or whatever that happens to be. And then do what with it? Just eat it slowly. Yeah. Yeah. The way you described with the juniors. Yeah. And I would generally recommend not before a meal, but to do it sometime after a meal. So hunger's not driving it. It's all about the taste experience of it. And over time you're saying, habituation sets in. And then I can walk into a holiday party with a cornucopia of pastries and not. It's not a big deal. They think, oh my God, what did you, I mean, the thing that's so funny, in the early days

and people didn't know what I do for a living, they're like, how can you do that? How can you only eat two bites? It's like I'm full. And they're like, oh, it was no magic. That's, that's what a bit. Wation is. But when you watch it in your kids, you're seeing that play out over and over and over again. When you watch it in your cell.

How long does this habituation take? And does it have to do? I have to do it systematically by food. No. If I do it with vanilla wafer, it will scale to everything else. No, it's really different for everybody. I don't have a metric on that. I have some people that prefer to list every single food

they're terrified of eating and create a hierarchy. Sometimes they start with the safest foods, but they, you know, feel safe to them. And then they will, I know what's really sad now, I have people afraid to eat carbohydrates. It's like, no, not the carbohydrates, your brain needs them. And so we're starting with basic foods, like bread and those kinds of things. The carbohydrates is a big category as I understand it. It's the big difference between rice and wonder bread. Yeah, yeah, but it doesn't mean it's bad. You know, wonder bread.

Yeah, yeah. I know, right? Oh, apple macchi and nutritious are you? What are you saying? Ha, ha, ha. But look at the French, you know, the French bread, for example. Yes. That's white flour, man.

They have one of the lowest rates of heart disease in the world. And yes, we can argue that they have other health enhancing behaviors that they do, but one food is not going to make or break you. One food is not going to, unless you have an allergy to peanuts, it's not going to do you in. So I've done this around bread, too, which is made

into exciting. I mean, it'll listen. And therefore, it's super exciting when I start eating it, all of those psychologies kick in. Right. And then because in your mind, I'm not gonna do this again. This is an exception because I'm jet lagged. Yeah.

Then it's more exciting. And now the volume's gonna come in because it's opportunistic eating. I'm never gonna have, oh my God, this bread. Especially here in San Francisco, oh my God. So you're gonna eat more quantity and so that drives it and then you don't feel good. And then you say, see,

I need to have rules around my eating. This doesn't work. So again, what you would recommend is a habituation process. Yeah, when you feel ready, not when you feel ready, not when I say you're ready, when you feel ready to do this, you know, to start adding sweets back in. And same with bread.

Yeah. And would you do these concurrently or separately? Would I be feel ready to do? So for example, I've learned to get out of the way of my patients. I've had patients come in, ready to do things. I would have never recommended.? So for example, I've learned to get out of the way of my patients. I've had patients come in ready to do things I would have never recommended. And they do beautifully, you know? So I've had some patients that go out and buy every single food they think they can't have and put it in their pantry.

That would terrify a lot of my other patients. But if they're ready to do that, I'm not going to stop them. If that feels like they want to do that and they're ready, okay, let's do it. I have other patients that are terrified as we start really slow and that's okay too. They'll buy a teeny tiny cupcake like it, sprinkles or sousi cakes are one of those places, the mini ones, you know, not the regular size. That's okay and you get to see what happens.

And you know what happens, oh, I don't know if I should tell you this, oh, I'm gonna tell you. The thing that cracks me up, it happens. I would say one out of four times. Someone has a food, they have this hate-pull-push-pull relationship with, they finally give permission to eat it.

And then, and then, they don't like it. And it's not that it tastes bad, but we've removed all the excitement and there's no taste in it, you know? It for, I had someone who was into chocolate kisses and I said, you know, if you're going to eat chocolate, why settle for, you know, there's nothing wrong with kisses. The one I go for a good dive or something else. And they said, what a great idea. And then when they had the kisses, they didn't like them

at all. It's like, oh my God, this is like getting a crayon tip, you know. So it's a surprise, you know, or I had someone who was a French fryaholic and she made peace with French fries in which he discovered in the past, she would only have them wimp and limpy off of her kids' plates, her husband's plates, sneak them in lots of lots of that way. And what happened to her, she was no longer willing to eat them that way. She'd only eat them away. Oh, so this is another principle of intuitive eating aim for satisfaction, you know, it ultimately is not satisfying to

overeat, and it's ultimately not satisfying to under eat. And what I love about this principle is only you can answer that. What's that feel like to you? What would a satisfying what would a satisfying meal feel like and taste like? And how do you want to feel afterwards? How do you how okay answer those questions? questions? We all have to answer them ourselves, but how do we answer those questions? Well, so first of all, first of all, first of all, first of all, first of all, first of all, first of all, first of all, first of all, to start with the question, I've had patients say, I have no idea. And crying, because they've been on so many diets, following what everyone told them what to do, because I will often ask what's your favorite food,

and they'll go, no one's ever asked me that question. I like to see would they have any joy in eating at all. So looking at what that might be, and sometimes they don't know, so we start doing experiments, or sometimes they have a history, like when they were kid, oh my god, I used to see what they have any joy in eating at all. So, looking at what that might be, and sometimes they don't know, so we start doing experiments. Or sometimes they have a history, like when they were a kid, oh my god, I used to love eating, you know, macaroni and cheese and broccoli or something like, whatever, whatever it happens to be. And then ultimately, so here's a classic I used to hear, diets are like fashion, they come and they go, they come and they go. And so this is when people are doing like big old salads, no croutons, hold this skin

off the chicken and an iced tea for lunch. And I had a patient say, oh, that was really good. And I said, was it satisfying? Oh, it was really good. Did it, how long did it sustain you? Two hours? I said, oh, so you had a meal. And it only lasted for two hours.

It sounds like it's more like a snack to me. It seems like a pain. So looking at those kinds of things, and it only you have the answer to that question. And so I consider myself kind of like a tour guide. I can direct you for some fun rides, you know, with eating, but you get to decide if you like it or not. It seems like mindfulness would be incredibly useful. Oh, it's very, very useful. Absolutely. Absolutely. Having awareness of everything. Awareness is key to all of this. Yeah. Where are we? Where are you? I mean, so in mindful eating, we really slow down while we eat

that part of intuitive eating too. Yeah. And you know what's really interesting? So in mindful eating, we really slow down while we eat. Is that part of intuitive eating too? Yeah, and you know what's really interesting? I don't put any emphasis on slowing down, because I think it's kind of contrived. I put the emphasis on the savoring aspect of eating. I see. Because that's actually interesting.

You slow down and be mindless. Yes, you can. You absolutely can. Because back to that question, what does your mind go when you eat? If it's somewhere else, you are and not your mind's not there on the eating. So yeah, so looking at that and so people have asked what do I do when I eat then there's no TV there's no phone. That's what you recommend to people to start noticing what does it taste like in other words when when.

When people start practicing yeah to it of eating you're saying don't do it in front of the TV. It's okay to have a conversation with other human beings. Absolutely. But don't be reading your phone or listening to a podcast. And the only distraction would be a conversation with another person other than that you're just eating. Yeah, and I'm always careful about this phenomenon that we've seen is that when people come

from a dieting background, they invariably accidentally turn into a deviating into a set of rules. And so this is not where I was going with this. Well, that's why I'm offering this little bump stop here, Dan. Flow down. You're already way ahead of me. I should just stop interjecting. Oh, no, no, no. This is good because that means other people are thinking the same thing.

So I would say, yes, it's a best practice, especially if you're new to intuitive eating. But let me give you an example why I think it's important. And my patients laugh at this. And I love this. This is when I used to read the Wall Street Journal. So at the very bottom of the front page, sometimes they would trick me.

I know they did it on purpose. I'd start reading a story while I'm eating breakfast. And oh no, it's a full length feature, two pages. That meant I had to have more cereal or more whatever that was eating, so disconnected and then I'm so full. I thought, isn't this hilarious? I'm a creator of this model. I know this stuff, but I just got disconnected.

So it happens. It's normal. You still run afoul of your own precepts, you're saying? Of course, because I'm human. And that's my point. This is not past or go. Actually, this uses as a really great example. So I don't react to that.

I don't go, oh my God, you bad dietitian. You think you are. It's like, oh, I'm a comfortably full. What I know from my own experience, it means I'm probably less hungry for lunch. And I don't do any penance for it. I like to say what my body's going to do naturally, you know? So we're really just riding, we're tuning into our bodies and riding that through the

day instead of letting all of these external factors drive us. Including people. You've been saying this all along and it only took me now to understand it. But that's actually the way it works. So that's actually, you're actually very advanced that you understand it right now. Okay. I'm sincere when I say that it's you are actually in charge. You're the boss. And I tell you my young adult patients love it. I say sincere when I say that. It's, you are actually in charge. You're the boss.

And I tell you, my young adult patients love it. I say, I work for you. You're the expert of your body. The problem is you have fear around your body. You have mistrust. I can help you start to cultivate some of these things and the compassion that's needed when you make eating, I don't even have to say mistakes,

but when you eat in a way that's upsetting to you. I'm always like, what can you learn from this experience? What can you learn from this? What were the causes and conditions that this happened? Yeah, you don't feel good right now here that, but what happened? And what might you do differently next time? Well, for example, so what would I do differently around having flown out to San Francisco a couple of days ago and experience some pretty massive jet lag exacerbated by having a four year old in the hotel.

We woke up at 315 very, very high. No. No. So, what can I learn from that? Because I can't make jet lag no longer a part of my life. And so I did a lot of sort of mindless comfort eating. How would I incorporate that into my going forward attitude towards you? Yeah, so what I do with this is like, it's like, you work with what you know it would be

true for you. And that is jet lags are regularly part of your career, that kind of travel. And so the question to me is, okay, this is, I call it heavy metal jacket time for self care. And I'm in the same way, by the way, I don't feel good when I'm traveling like that. So that means I'm going to do my damnedest to get sleep. You don't have that option with a kid, you know, waking up at 315,

but I'm gonna really make an effort to have meals if I can rather than snacks. I don't, I don't, my preference, and this is not a right or wrong. My body feels better if I can sit down and have a civilized meal as opposed to running from snack to snack. The snack will do a lot of that.

Yeah. The latter, the right for snack to snack. And, and I do that in my office when I have busy, crazy days, but I think the reason I'm not so impacted, I don't have the jet lag or other things going on. I think there's something about the act of sitting and taking the time out that it does something for my mind besides the actual eating aspects. So for me, that's something that really, really works.

It might mean I'm not taking on an extra project during that time period. It's going to be yes, but not now or later, or it's just gonna be a flat out no. So I look at those kinds of things. So when you're having what I call these really vulnerable times, what foundational self-care needs do you need? And that's not a bunch of woo-woo. I've had patients call me on that.

It's like, I wanna get a manicure. I don't wanna, it's like I'm not talking about that. I'm talking about the boring self-care, like sleep, you know, like having downtime, time for yourself, time to have a meal. And sometimes you can't. And you're going to be one of my best out of body experiences, not out of body, awareness experience.

I am driving, this was a crazy day. I'm fighting off a cold. I have a cough drop. This is multitasking, multitying, a cough drop on one side of my mouth and I'm eating a bagel on the other as I'm driving to work. And I thought I wish I had a picture of this. And the reason I love telling that story, sometimes it's the best we can do. And I was okay with that, didn't I mean?

So this is instructive because your example is instructive, and I know that's why you shared it, is one can have a sense of humor as opposed to sort of an inner sort of militaristic attitude toward the mistakes that we are ultimately going to, the mistake may not even write, might not even be the right word. Learning experiences. Learning experiences that we have on this course because, as you said earlier, we are human. We are going to overeat until we're uncomfortable at bowl. Yeah, absolutely. That's your terminology.

And your approach, which you just modeled is laugh at it and learn from it as opposed to go into some crazy self-lazzeration. Exactly. And that's the part that actually hurts mental health, all of that, the expectations and the rigidity. And that's what I find for a lot of people when they struggle with this. So sometimes I have this rigid mindset that eating needs to be the certain way. It's like, no. And that toxicity that you've, the cortisol you've released into the system, almost guarantees that you're gonna do it again. Well, that's actually a really good point. And that is, if you're being stressed out

about your eating decisions, and then you stress eater, you've just double loaded yourself up. Absolutely, absolutely. So, let's go back to the, I have the 10 parts of intuitive eating. We've rejected the diet mentality. We've honored our hunger.

We're making peace with our food. For here is challenge the food police. Oh yeah, this is a good one for you. And you have jumped out of order because it's a couple of other. Yeah, I told you. So that's fine. All good. You know what's it I do in session two? Yeah, I told you. So that's fine. All good.

You know what I do in session two is like, what is the person need? Yeah. This is the model, but you don't have to go in order. When you write a book, you have to go in order. But yeah. So challenge the food police is working with the inner critic, the inner bully in your mind. You know, it's the collective food police that tells you how to eat and those kinds of

things. Like, so I like to ask, where did your rules come from? What food rules do you have and where did they come from? I'm not even so much concerned about the rules. I'm looking more at the rigidity on them and I'm looking at what happens if you so-called violate one of your rules. How does that impact you? And that's an interesting conversation right there.

Where do my rules come from? I think they come from random bits of... Well, actually, you know, I have a nutritionist who actually is quite a compassion soft in his approach, even though he's a vegan bodybuilder. Okay. But he's pretty sort of, he has a sense of humor and is not, I think, very much understands the dis-utility of shame. But I guess, yeah, him or just random conversations I had with people who look really healthy. Yeah, and so, and then we start looking at some of the rules. So let's say it came from a person of authority,

well, where did that information come from? It's really interesting. When we, it's deconstructing sometimes our own myths, it's like, well, who said that? Who made up that rule? You know? To what end? Is it serving me right now?

Is it serving me? Or is it, I once had a patient, I love this. It's a mundane example, but it's a brilliant one. And she said, yeah, my rules, I have to have protein with me. I was like, okay, what happens if you don't? Because I'm kind of disappointed. And I said, why? She goes, I know I'm going to be hungrier later.

I go, that's, you know, so that was great feedback. She's not rigid about it. She's in touch with her body. I didn't work with her very long because she was really in a really good place. Well, protein is interesting because I keep it in mind in part because it's a little bit more challenging to get protein when you're on a plant-based diet. And I'd like to exercise and you need a certain, you know, you know, these much as the culture is telling you. Sure.

Yeah. But as I've learned, but you need a certain amount of protein for the performance your best. So I do try to keep that in mind. That is a, I guess, a rule and there are plenty of my life. It could be a guide. If it's, so if it's a guideline and a preference, that's not a big deal. It's, it's when I look at the rigidity of it.

I see. You know, and especially when it involves restricting, that's when I get really concerned. Gotcha. That You're eating less. All right, so that's four, five is respect your fullness, which we've done. We've done, yeah. Six is discover the satisfaction factor, which we've done. Yeah. Seven is, and I don't think we've done this one, honor your feelings without using food. Yeah, and so, and I want to be, I want to clarify on this. It's it's normal to use food with feelings and we celebrate when we have a wedding there's going to oh did you have wedding cake Dan? Oh yeah I had I was eating sugar. Those are kinds of things that make me sad when there's a

life event that we have a tradition as a culture and you opt out for whatever reason. Do you know what I mean? I am rethinking the whole sugar thing so I love that. So I'll get back in touch with you after this and let you know I'll go. That's awesome. So it's about expanding your toolbox for coping mechanisms. So like when you travel and you're constantly exhausted, what are your coping mechanisms to deal with the emotional fatigue

and then the physical fatigue looking at those kinds of things? So I use a kind of a two point technique there. When eating is feeling like it's beyond you, that you're eating in a way that doesn't feel good to your body, it's a way of coping with emotions. What are you feeling right now? That's not a hard question to ask or answer, but the one that stumped people every time is, what do you need right now that's related to that feeling? What do you need right now?

You know? So if I'm bored, and I'm reaching for something that I know is not if I'm bored. Yeah And I'm reaching for something that I know is gonna make me feel crappy. Yeah, because it has in the past Okay Or actually it's not so much the thing. It's the quantity of the thing. Okay It may be asking myself what are you feeling and what do you actually need? Yeah, yeah? What kind of stimulation can I have other than, doesn't need to be food? Yes.

I have this growing list of things. I start with a couple of foundational suggestions. I get people and then we grow from there. So my top two right now are people are curating puppy videos. And then what's the other one? Lama videos, a little baby Lama's. Because it's just something to do that's kind of engaging and you can look at it later. It has to be whatever's meaningful for you.

Meditation. Meditation, there you go. Eight, respect your body. Oh, that's a big one. And we alluded to it a little bit at the top. And that is this idea that you cannot tell by the look of someone's body what their health is and that all bodies, and I mean all, and I'm really careful when I use words all or never, and I mean when

I say all, all bodies deserve dignity and respect, period. And that's a tough one for a lot of my patients. A lot of my patients have grown up with shame around their bodies, or not even shame per say, but that the only way that you can be successful in the world is to have a certain kind of appearance, you know, and they're spending all their time and mental energy around that and in pain and suffering. And I do see a lot of patients with eating disorders. And I think part of the reason we're seeing eating disorders double is because of all of this appearance-based stuff we got going on with our culture in part with social media and in part with diet culture.

Well, what do we do about the fact that we have we can stipulate I believe because you've said it to the fact that people will judge you often based on how you look so Given that many of us want to navigate the world and I'm on TV Yeah, so people if I put on a bunch of weight may notice or may not attend to look This is very unfair, but it tends to be way more scrutiny on the females on TV than the males. But nonetheless, maybe they'll notice and maybe I'll be less successful or whatever. Should I not take that into account?

So, we're talking about a big issue right now and has to do with weight stigma. And that's a problem that I want to help solve, but it's systemic, you know. And okay, I'm going to be really vulnerable with you now. The one and only time as an adult that I thought about dieting was when I made my debut in Good Morning America. It was four months post-pregnant, postpartum rather. Post-pregnant, yeah. This is back in. Back in 95.

Yeah. And I thought if I'm ever gonna diet, it'd be now. And I thought about it, and I couldn't do it from being aligned within my values. But the point I'm saying is I felt that urge because of the perception. And so what we need to do, this is easier said than done, is we need to work past that, you know, that you're more than what you look. It's interesting right now to be seeing more diversity in media, more diversity in magazines and women's

bodies and sizes. And we need that. So it's, there's not an easy answer on that, but we see the harm of weight stigma in health care. Where doctors are looking, and these have been documented in medical journals where they look at someone and say, oh yeah, just lose weight, you'll be fine. There was a woman who died a few years ago in Canada. It was a feeling often after doctor to doctor, they said, just lose weight. She finally saw a doctor that saw more than her body, did a work-up. She had a stage 4 cancer and died just days later.

So in her obituary, she put that in there so that no one would go through the fat shaming that she had. It's a really big problem in our culture, you know? Wow. And yet, it's not sure, it really answers what we should do as individuals. If I'm on the hunt for a new job

and I want to look my best in my interviews, yeah, this is a systemic problem. I can't solve that myself. And yet, I still need the job. So should I not be restricting my eating or... No, absolutely not. Do double sessions at Barry's boot camp in order to lose the weight?

No, I think, and actually I have worked with people in the entertainment business where that's part of, I mean, I'm talking about actors and I used to work in movie industry. And I've been there seeing that. the problem is and what I look at is what this does to you in terms of your energy. All your mind now is going to on this, this diet thing. If you're acting, you can't even emote properly because you're a little dull, you know?

And so it's about really connecting with what you bring to the table, what your value set is, period. And I would hope, hope, hope where you're adding your career right now, that that's what really matters for you. And that maybe you can start being part of that message, Dan. Yeah, I mean, it's really, I'm really, there's so much here that's electrifying. Yeah. This is a big one, an important one, too.

No, I'm referring to everything you're saying. Oh, thank you. I be one thing that's just particularly on my mind right now is just thinking about how much energy I've wasted on this. Yes, oh, you know, I will tell you I can't tell you how many tearful sessions I've had with people around that the amount of time spent, the amount of money spent postponing a vacation or not going to an event because they want to blow their diet. This one, I'll tell you this, I'll tell you this, when I hear a lot from parents, is how cranky they were in yelling at their kids in a way that wasn't aligned with their parenting

values, you know. And I don't say this to guilt or shame anyone, but just to shed the light on, there are consequences when the body is not getting enough to eat. Our body, you know, we have this illusion that we have 100% control over what we eat. It's kind of like breathing. We can, we need all the stuff with the breath. You can do in meditation, but you can also choose to stop breathing, but you also know the moment you stop to choose breathing, your body will finally make you breathe.

You'll pass out, and when you come to, it'll be, you're going to inhale the whole room. And the same thing with eating. If you stop eating enough food or restricting to a certain level, there gets to be a point where your body mind can't stand it. You're gonna be thinking about food more. It's in the brain aspect and there's gonna be a drive. And then when you finally eat, you're gonna inhale it. It's not a little polite snack here.

So nine exercise feel the difference. Yeah, and actually it was interesting. We have our fourth edition's coming out in June 2020. We're actually changing the word to movement instead of exercise because so many people have had a lot of shaming around that in terms of the militant kind of stuff. But the idea is that you move in a way that feels good. So having the joy of movement was so key. And I don't know if you know my athletic background, but I'm someone who naturally likes to move. I ran on the boys track team because they didn't have a girls track team when I was in school and then competed in college and then Olympic trials in the marathon. So I'm I'm someone who I like

exhilarating movement not because of what it's doing to my body, but I love how it makes me feel during it and then afterwards. Wow, well now I have to admit, you know, I exercise most days, and I do like the way I feel afterwards, but I think that very often I'm doing it not because I'm enjoying it in a moment, but I'm doing it because I like, I want to make sure that I'm healthy and I want to make sure that, and I have some goals either stated or unstated internally about the way I wanted to show up on my physique. Uh-huh. Uh-huh. So, and what happens at least with some of the people I see is when the exercise or movement is mainly about the calories burned or physique oriented, it's easy to burn out.

And then, number two, if someone's on some kind of weight loss diet and they're exercising, I don't know how to do that. That's hard to do. And so a common pattern I see is they stop the diet and they stop working out and they have a lot of shame. And my answer is, I don't know how you do that. Ferrari is not gonna go if there's no gas in the tank. It's not gonna go around the track and your body doesn't want to go. But how do we uproot those?

So I'm not doing that. I'm not on a diet. But I do all different forms of exercise and I really like the way I feel and a little bit how I look afterwards, but I don't often enjoy the doing of the thing. So you're saying I should just totally orient toward exercise that I actually enjoy in the moment. For the most part, but sometimes, I'll give you an example, maybe meditation's a better example for me to use.

I often don't enjoy it while I'm doing it. I enjoy the aftermath of it. I enjoy the quality of my life, but sometimes it's a pain in the butt for me to go sit on the cushion. It's just the, you know what I mean? And so that can be that way sometimes for movement as well,

but knowing that you get these other secondary benefits, I think that's fine. So fine, so I swam a bunch this morning and it was a little monotonous. But so I might not have loved it in the moment. But I do like the way it makes me feel on if I'm tuning into that. Yeah. There's the power. Exactly. Exactly. I will say one thing I've mentioned Grace Livingston, who's one of the producers on the show. She's also helping me. I'm writing a book right now about kindness and she's served my partner in crime on that as a heading up a lot of the research and also giving me feedback

as I go and she refers to herself as a book therapist. Oh, I love that. It's really cool. And she had the suspicion that maybe there was a little bit of difficult energy around my approach to exercise. And gave me a suggestion to occasionally drop in the notion while working out of gratitude. Oh, I love that. So I'll be working out and I'll notice that I'm on some big jag of, wow, I'm not doing enough or this is not going to be enough for the day, or this isn't gonna make a difference on whatever metric I want.

And just to best of my ability, boom, just be grateful that I have a body that's functioning at this level, at this age, et cetera, et cetera. So many people don't. And I found that to be a pretty close to a silver bullet. I have to drop it in a bunch, in my mind, and as I did during swimming today, wow, this is boring.

Hey, but you can do this thing. And I was able to get swimming lessons not long ago so that I can do it correctly, but grateful that I had the means to do that, et cetera, et cetera. So that, anyway, I just share that as a part of it. Well, I think that's a really good point. And then I think what I'd add to that too, that it's okay to take a day off if you're not feeling good,

if you're not feeling it, you know? Because you don't want to get injured also. That was the hardest thing I ever learned how to do is that rest is just as important as training, especially if you're going more at intense activities. I just recently, I'm going to tell you, my aspiration is to be a ping pong player and into style. I actually have a ping pong coach.

And I love it. And one of the reasons why besides fact I love it is I don't see many entries around at all, you know, because I want the longevity of doing this. My other sports I've been injured in. So yeah. Let's do the last. Okay. The, the, the 10th of your pillars here. Okay. Which is one that we've mentioned, but I think it worth digging in again, because I can hear skeptics out there asking this question in their heads over and over again, honor your health with gentle nutrition.

Right. So in other words, you don't beat yourself up over how you ate, and it's more about looking at your pattern of eating over time. And the biggest kick I get is when someone asks me, when can I start eating healthy, Evelyn? And my answer is anytime you want to, but usually they're coming out of the rabbit hole of dieting, they're making peace with food and they don't want to go back to the rigidity

of which they had. And so it's looking at those kinds of things. It's looking at, yeah, adding some more vegetables into your eating and those aspects. And so one of the things I like to stress is intuitive eating is actually 10 principles. You can't cherry pick them and just say it's just make peace with food. If you go on to Instagram and you look at the hashtag of intuitive eating, all you see are pink donuts. I think because people are so excited they can eat these things. That's what they write about. They don't write about the on-your-health with gentle nutrition

but that's still a part. And you get to a point, you don't apologize or explain what you're eating, whether it's donuts or whether it's a salad with kale and tofu grilled into it. It's your body, your business. Okay, so if people find themselves at the end of this conversation and in the position which I find myself right now, which is really intrigued, what are the next steps? What they want to do. I want to do your program. Oh my gosh! Wow! So we do have a workbook, the Intuitivating Workbook. That's one way it's more intense in the book because

there's a lot of questions in there to really help you get connected. Read the book, get the workbook. Get the workbook for sure. For sure. We have a free online community, the Intuitivating Online Community. You can follow me on on Instagram. And so the way that I say is this that most people can actually do this on their own. But what happens sometimes is they, when you have a long history of shame around your body or around dieting, it might, you might need some help with that. And so we have trained people that trained in our method and you could check that out too. So you may have somebody locally who could be your counselor.

Exactly. They're certified into a debuting counselor. Yeah. That's excellent because it sounds like for, I I just to repeat what you just said and I'm thinking this may be even true for me, that as exciting as listening to a conversation like this may be or as exciting as a book and a workbook may be, you may need an accountability partner or something. You know, and I got to tell you, okay, I guess I'm going to tell you this. So we have, we have over 900 people in 23 countries trained in this. So I just finished training three groups of Ukrainian psychologists. They want to train because the Moscow, the Moscow psychologist got trained.

So I think it's great, but it's really neat that they're, you want to use this method. Do you know what I mean? Because imagine if every health professional that you saw your doctor, you saw your trainer, you saw your nutritionist, and you're getting a similar message, I think we'd be in a better place in this world. I'm gonna do it. Oh, that's awesome. Anything in closing, is there any point that I didn't give you a chance to make

during the course of this interview? My gosh, I feel guilty by not giving you some answer to that question, something profound. Ha ha ha ha. Do you feel satisfied at the end of this meal? Oh my God, I feel satisfied at the end of this conversation. I actually do. I feel heard and understood, which is actually really a really great feeling. The fact that it's opened up your mind to some

possibilities is throwing to me. I can guarantee you I got more out of this than you did. Oh, well gay. Thank you so much. Yeah, thank you. Big thanks to Evelyn. Since recording that interview, I've really been doing a lot more studying of her writings and I actually even planned to start working with her personally. I've, I'm getting a lot out of her work, so I really appreciate her coming on the show and perhaps more to come from her in the future. Let's do the voicemails. As we did last week, we're going to have a ringer answer your questions. Ray Houseman, who is the head of the coaching unit, these ninjas, meditation ninjas, we employ

at the 10% happier app, who can answer subscriber's questions if they're running into difficulties or if they're curious about something. Ray runs that unit and she's going to answer the voicemail questions this week. Here we go with voice mail number one. I'm new to the meditation and find it comforting, I'm working on quieting my mind and relaxing and finding ways of relaxing in many situations. Find myself getting stressed that work quite a a long and meditation seems to be helping, but I'm also a very visual person. In particular, when you focus on the breath, you need to rise and fall the chest, or even

the sensation in and out the sinuses. I find myself mentally picturing the human anatomy and doing almost like an animation of the breath going in and out of my sinuses or even in and out of my chest through the airways and I was wondering if a lot of people have this issue of having these mental images and if they are even an issue, should you try to get rid of these images and just focus on the sensation? Or is it okay to have mental images of the physical process of you breathing? Thanks and keep up the good work. Thanks so much for your question. It's absolutely okay and fairly common to have visualizations of the breath occur

when aiming to direct the attention to the sensations of the breath. And it's important not to make the visualizations the primary focus of the attention. There's no need to try and get rid of the images but we want to direct the attention to the experience of the attention. There's no need to try and get rid of the images, but we want to direct the attention to the experience of the body when we are attending to the breath. Visualizations and images are like thoughts. They are products of the mind.

In order to support the mind in attending to the body sensations, it can be helpful to discern where we feel the breath most easily. Some people have an easier time feeling the sensations of the breath in the rise and fall of the abdomen. Others feel the breath most readily in the rise and fall of the chest. And some people find it easiest to feel the in and out flow of the air at the nostrils. If you're having a difficult time feeling the sensations of the breath, it can be helpful to rest a hand on the abdomen and feel the movement of the abdomen through the hand,

or put a finger in front of the nostrils and feel the air flow push against the finger. With time and practice, the mind becomes more sensitive to the sensations of the breath and the support of the hand or the finger won't be necessary. I hope this is helpful and offers you some support in your explorations with your practice. Thanks again for your question. Thanks for that Ray. Let's do voicemail number two. Hey Dan, this is Harrison, 28 in New York City. I've been meditating for about two years. Appreciate everything you're doing for the practice, for everything to the mainstream. Unfortunately, I have asthma, weezing and chest tightness.

And as you can imagine, focusing on my breath so closely can sometimes be distracting. All I can think about sometimes is the tightening to my chest or the fact that I can't breathe so well. This is a narrow group of people that I imagine could be applied to people with a cold or something like that. I'm just wondering what your thoughts are and how to feel with it. My thought would be you would just accept it and do the best you can, or maybe take a

different center of focus. But anyway, hope to hear from you. And thanks. Thanks for this question. It's a good one. When there is constriction in the breath or the breath feels strained for various reasons, it can be helpful to widen the scope of awareness and allow the attention to rest in a more overall sense of the body.

When we practice meditation, we are interested in observing what's happening in the present moment experience, in the mind and the body, and making skillful choices in how we relate to what's happening. In this situation, widening the field of attention can support the mind in finding some sense of relaxation or ease in the midst of a more challenging bodily experience. We can also observe the tendency of the mind to get more narrow and focus on the difficult aspects of what we are experiencing. This is natural, and in certain situations it's an important response. However, when we're practicing meditation or when we are in life situations that aren't calling for emergency responses, we can begin to ease this reactive tendency of the mind to become more narrowly focused on what's difficult,

and allow for the difficult aspect of our experience to be part of what's known in the moment, while we also hold an awareness of more easeful or settled aspects of our experience. Sometimes, if the body is feeling really unwell, it can be helpful to expand the awareness even further out, and allow sounds to be held in the field of awareness and let them more uncomfortable feelings related to the body unfold in a more spacious mind field that's being balanced by having an awareness of sound.

I hope this is helpful and offers you some sense of direction to explore in relation to this experience. Thanks again for your question. Big thanks again to Ray for doing this for Pitch and End. Really appreciate it. Good stuff. Before I go with just a reminder, sign up for the meditation challenge. Starts on January 6th. You can sign up inside the app or you can look at the show notes on this podcast episode and find some links there to sign up. You'll be able to join me and Alexis Santos, one of the great members and happier meditation teachers in the challenge. You can make sure that I'm not a huge hypocrite and that I'm actually meditating.

And also looking your feed this week, we're going to we're going to put up a talk from from the app in the app. One of the things we do is we post these like five to seven minute long wisdom bombs, these little talks from great meditation teachers and also occasionally one or two from me. And this week we're going to post one from me about how to cultivate a meditation, a meditation habit. Before I go, I also want to thank everybody who contributes to the show, Ryan Kessler, Samuel Johns, Grace Livingston, Lauren Hartzog, Tiffany O'Mahundro, Josh Kohan. Thanks to all of you, really appreciate your hard work, and I'll see you next week. Hey, hey, prime members.

You can listen to 10% happier early and add free on Amazon Music. Download the Amazon Music app today, or you can listen early and add free with 1-3-plus in Apple podcasts. Before you go, do us a solid and tell us all about yourself by completing a short survey at Wondery.com slash survey. at Wondery.com slash Survey.