The Dr. Hyman Show - How To Break Patterns Of Emotional Eating

Episode Date: May 1, 2023

This episode is brought to you by Paleovalley, ButcherBox, and Athletic Greens. Many of us turn to food as a form of comfort, whether it’s due to not being able to tolerate difficult feelings or not having other forms of pleasure, and it leads to a dependence on using food to soothe and disconnect from our emotions. What we don’t realize is that emotional eating is natural and inborn, and it’s not a matter of having too little willpower. The good news is there are so many things we can do to break unhealthy patterns and cultivate a different relationship with food. In today’s episode, I talk with Marc David and Lisa Lampanelli about why so many of us find ourselves eating when stricken with tough emotions, why it’s normal, and what to do about it. Marc David, MA, is the bestselling author of the books Nourishing Wisdom: A Mind-Body Approach to Nutrition and Well-Being and The Slow Down Diet: Eating for Pleasure, Energy, and Weight Loss, a frequent speaker and consultant, and host of the celebrated Psychology of Eating Podcast. Marc is also the founder of the Institute for the Psychology of Eating, the world’s only health coaching program devoted to teaching the principles of dynamic eating psychology and mind-body nutrition. You probably recognize Lisa Lampanelli’s name from the world of comedy, where she has had a career spanning more than 30 years. She has numerous tours, Grammy nominations, and national TV guest appearances and specials under her belt. Lisa made national headlines in 2012 when she lost more than 100 pounds with the help of bariatric surgery. The comedian went on to speak with unflinching honesty about her lifelong food and body-image issues and has since gone from insulter to inspirer. Now in her 50s, she’s done a career overhaul and works as a life coach, food and body-image workshop leader, speaker, and storyteller. This episode is brought to you by Paleovalley, ButcherBox, and Athletic Greens.  Paleovalley is offering my listeners 15% off their entire first order. Just go to paleovalley.com/hyman to check out all their clean Paleo products and take advantage of this deal. For a limited time, new subscribers to ButcherBox will receive ground beef FOR LIFE. When you sign up today, ButcherBox will send you two pounds of 100% grass-fed, grass-finished beef free in every box for the life of your subscription plus $20 off. To receive this offer, go to ButcherBox.com/farmacy. AG1 contains 75 high-quality vitamins, minerals, whole-food sourced superfoods, probiotics, and adaptogens to support your entire body. Right now, Athletic Greens is offering 10 FREE travel packs with your first purchase by visiting athleticgreens.com/hyman. Full-length episodes of these interviews can be found here: Marc David Lisa Lampanelli

Coming up on this episode of The Doctor's Pharmacy. We're emotional beings, right? This is something that is natural and it really makes us beautifully human. And of course, it becomes problematic when eating is our only emotional regulation strategy. So many of my patients ask me how I manage to work multiple jobs, travel frequently, spend time with my family, and still focus on my health. I know it can seem hard to eat well when you have a lot going on, but the trick is to never let yourself get into a food emergency and to stay stocked up with the right things to support your goals. When I keep nourishing snacks and the right supplements to optimize my health at home and at the office,

I know I'm helping myself make good choices in the future. And recently, I discovered some products from Paleo Valley that I keep on hand to grab and go. They help me stay full and energized even when I'm super busy. Their grass-fed beef sticks and pasture-raised turkey sticks are some of my favorites as a quick go-to snack, and I love mixing their grass-fed bone broth protein into my morning smoothies or coffee. Another one of Paleo Valley's unique products that I really love is their grass-fed organ complex. When our ancestors ate animals, they used all the parts and that included the extremely nutrient-dense organs like the liver, heart, and kidneys. Now I know that not everybody's crazy about preparing organs in their own kitchen, so this supplement is the perfect solution.

The Organ Complex from Paleo Valley is an incredible natural source of vitamins A, B2, B3, B5, B6, B9, and B12, and minerals like selenium, iron, and zinc. It's also rich in amino acids glycine and proline that benefit connective tissue joint and digestive health. And you'll see on their site that it has some really amazing reviews. Plus, it's completely tasteless. This supplement is the perfect way to eat nutritious grass-fed organs without having to prepare them yourself. Right now, Paleo Valley is offering my listeners 15% off your entire first order. Just go to paleovalley.com forward slash hyman to check out all their clean paleo products and take advantage of this deal. That's paleovalley.com forward slash hyman. I definitely recommend trying the grass-fed beef sticks, bone broth protein,

and the organ complex. Ground beef is probably the easiest protein out there that can be worked into any type of dish. I just love how quickly it can help us make a healthy meal. And when you go with grass-fed, you're getting a source of omega-3s and extra vitamins and minerals too. And with ButcherBox, I get 100% grass-fed and grass-finished beef delivered right to my doorstep, no matter which state I happen to be in. They also offer free-range organic chicken and wild-caught Alaskan salmon, which are part of my weekly meal plans too.

Grass-fed ground beef is the first protein I recommend for people who are trying to get more comfortable in the kitchen because you can just throw it in a pan with some salt, herbs, and spices and make a great meal. But if you've been looking for a way to get more high-quality protein in your diet, make sure you check out the grass-fed beef from ButcherBox, along with all their other humanely-raised antibiotic and hormone-free meats. They make eating well easy, delicious, and accessible. Right now, ButcherBox is proud to give new members two pounds, two pounds of ground beef in your first box, plus $20 off. To receive this offer, go to butcherbox.com forward slash pharmacy. That's butcherbox.com forward slash pharmacy. That's F-A-R-M-A-C-Y, to receive two pounds of ground beef plus $20 off. And now let's get back to this week's episode of The Doctor's Pharmacy.

Hi, this is Lauren Feehan, one of the producers of The Doctor's Pharmacy podcast. Many of us turn to food to cope with our feelings. Then we beat ourselves up. But what we don't realize is that emotional eating is natural and inborn, and it's not a matter of having too little willpower. The healing process means getting unstuck from negative patterns, reframing our inner dialogue, and acknowledging the different parts of ourselves and what they're each asking for. In today's episode, we feature two conversations from the doctor's pharmacy on how to work with a desire to turn to food to soothe. Dr. Hyman speaks with Mark David on flipping the script on emotional eating and with Lisa Lampanelli on doing

the emotional work to transform your life and your relationship to eating. Let's dive in. Emotional eating, it's natural and it's inborn. If you're a parent, if you've ever been around a tiny infant, you observe that infant, and one moment they're crying or screaming, and the next moment there's mama to give them bottle or breast, and that infant goes from crying and screaming and upset to relaxed and mellow and happy. And it all happens in virtually an instant. So we have ingrained in our DNA, not just from your own memories of this lifetime, but from every human who's come before you, we have this imprint, this memory called feel bad, eat food, feel better.

And it works. And there's nothing inherently wrong with that. It's normal and natural. You go for a holiday dinner. A holiday is celebrational. That's emotional eating. I don't know. You go out on a date. Date has its own emotional flavor to it. That's emotional eating. And yeah, you know, you come home from a bad day, a bad experience, and you know deep in your cells, if I eat something, especially if it's something I like, I'm going to feel good.

Food gives us virtually an instant pleasure chemistry release. If you think about it, what's the opposite of emotional eating? Would it be unemotional eating? We are emotional beings, right? And so I think we really need to get that this is something that it's natural, that it's inborn, and it really makes us beautifully human. And of course, it becomes problematic when eating is our only emotional regulation strategy. Yeah. And so what do we do with that? How do we sort of deal with the pattern of emotional eating? Well, you know, here's the thing.

When we are constantly going towards emotional eating, it's asking us a question. And it's asking us, on a certain level, what else? What else can you do? What else can I do to regulate, to manage, to be with my emotions other than food? Because food, it's the infant strategy that we've learned. It's the one that we know. It's ingrained in our DNA. So in order to change a habit, think of habit as automatic. Emotional eating is this automatic, unconscious habit that does itself. You don't have to wake up. People don't wake up in the morning and say, I really need to try to emotionally eat today. It does itself. So in order to change an unwanted, unconscious,

automatic habit, we need to introduce consciousness. Consciousness meaning awareness, awareness meaning presence, meaning that witness part of me that notices, oh, I'm about to emotionally eat. Huh. What else can I do? Yeah. And I'll have people write a list, you know, write, just write an inventory of everything in life that makes you feel good other than food, persons, places, things, thoughts, experiences, exercise, music, watching a goofy video. I don't know. And there's your menu of options if emotional eating sort of has its grips on you. Yeah. I don't know if I learned it from you or not. It was a lecture maybe at Canyon Ranch you gave decades ago. It was like, you know, when you're about to open the fridge, you go, you know, what am I feeling and what do I need?

You know, as a barometer, like, what am I feeling? I feel depressed. What do I need? A hug. You know, I'm angry. What do I need? I need to tell someone what's going on. I don't necessarily need food, right?

Like, I think a lot of the times we have these feelings and emotions that we don't act on through a more productive channel, such as actually expressing that emotion, and it gets sublimated into food. And so, you know, I always tell my patients, you know, put a piece of paper on their fridge that says, what am I feeling? What do I need? You know, before you open the fridge or the cabinet and start stuffing your face with ice cream or whatever it is, you know, maybe I'm lonely. I need to call a friend. You know, maybe I'm tired. Bingo.

I need to get a nap. I mean, my biggest emotional eating thing is when I'm tired. You know, if I'm tired, I'll just kind of want more sugar or carbs or whatever to keep my energy up if I have to function or work. And that's terrible. It's a terrible strategy. I should probably just take a nap or cancel a meeting or do whatever, you know. But I don't do that.

Yeah, you know, part of that one for you, that's, that's really a reframing because I'm the same way. I think tired equals bad. I should have limitless energy to do whatever I want when I want to do it. So if I'm feeling tired, yes. What do I have to do? Do I drink tea? Do I drink caffeine?

Do I go for something sweet? And there's that moment of consciousness. Oh, wait a second. I've been going at it all day and all week. I am tired. I am part of the human race. So I need to relax and be tired. And so there's that moment of consciousness. There's a moment of awareness that is where the game changes. So the first bit is basically there's something wrong with you, but it's really not true. There's nothing wrong with you. You're just having some experience that you're managing with food

that isn't about some character flaw or lack of willpower. It just points to the fact that you need to think about your life a little bit more carefully and what you actually need in that moment and not automatically fill some amorphous need with food. Right. Because if I think I am emotionally eating means there's something wrong with me, what I'm missing is that food is actually my solution. It's not the problem. People think, oh, I'm emotionally eating. Emotional eating equals problem. No, food is your solution. The problem is I have emotions that I

feel uncomfortable. I don't know how to manage food is my solution. I feel better. So let's just come up with better solutions. And at the same time, we're reframing. You don't I don't we don't have a problem. There's nothing wrong with me. Because what happens when you think there's something wrong with you is we go into I'm broken. There's something defective about me and if I feel broken and defective there's a part of my consciousness where I'm not going to feel good about myself and I become susceptible to all kinds of nonsense strategies and approaches and beliefs that are going to give me some quick fix. So feeling broken often has us going through life, not being the real me because I'm broken. So let's talk about myth two, willpower and why willpower is not an effective way to deal with emotional eating. You know, I've never seen anybody be successful

with this strategy to overcome emotional eating. It's like telling an alcoholic, well, you're an alcoholic, don't drink alcohol or a heroin addict, well, just don't take the heroin or a gambler, just don't gamble. It's a more nuanced conversation. Also think about it. What power is a noun?

It's a thing. It's this sort of mythical substance. Where do you, where do you get it from? So I think, so I think emotionally, yeah, yeah. It's, it's a, it's a mythical substance. It's like this holy grail that people think, well, if only I had more, then I can just eat what I don't want to eat. I can just refrain from eating food and then I won't be an emotional eater and I'm not going to gain weight. And in fact, I'll lose weight. But really, we don't need more willpower. We need more nuanced. We need a higher perspective. And what I'm going to say is instead of looking for more willpower, let's look to how is emotional eating a great teacher for me? So if I'm going to really embrace this challenge,

how is emotional eating asking me to grow? And asking that question assumes that you and I, we grow through challenge. We grow through our relationships, our past hurts, our abuses. You had a difficult upbringing, or I have physical ailments, or my loved one died, or I had crappy parenting. Whatever it is for people, we can grow through those challenges. And then stop. So we're here to grow through challenge i'm going to suggest that emotional eating is such a challenge and let's ask a powerful question so if i'm emotional eating how is that asking me and it's going to be different for each one of us how is it asking me to grow as a person you know for some people that might be asking us to i should should examine my diet. I should examine what I'm eating because certain nutritional strategies will influence my emotional eating. It might ask us to look at how am I doing

relationship? Am I having a voice? Am I suppressing myself? Am I expressing myself? Do I have a purpose in life? Do I have pleasure? Do I have connection? Do I have intimacy? Am I being true to myself? If I'm not doing some of those, what will I do? I'm going to feel uncomfortable if I'm not expressing myself, if I'm not being the real me, if I'm not showing up in relationship, or if I'm longing for love, but not reaching out for it. So what do we do? Turn to food. That'll make me feel better. Once again, it's the solution. It's actually not the problem. So that's really helpful, Mark. What about the myth three that if I emotionally eat, it means I sabotage myself. Can you kind of unpack that sort of that relation between

emotional eating and self-sabotage? I love when people say that because we're always mystified. Like people will say, I know what I'm supposed to eat. I know what I'm supposed to do. I just don't do it. And I, I sabotage myself. So, so let's get a little more nuanced about that and take a dive in there. You know, some of the great psychological thinkers, Carl Jung, Joseph Campbell, they talked about the archetypes. And the archetypes, another word for archetypes are voices or personas, different aspects of us. You know, normally we think I'm a person, I'm me. So yeah, I am me and you're you. And that's how we distinguish ourselves. But the me that you think you are

is actually a crowd. So there's the me that's a father, that's an archetype or a persona. There's a me that's a son. There's the me that's a partner to my fiance. There's the me that's a teacher. So when I'm with students, I'm in a teaching role. When I'm with a client, I'm in a counseling role. When I'm playing tennis, I'm in a competitor archetype. You can be in the lover archetype. You could be in the scientist or the nerd. There's literally thousands of them. So they're different voices, different personas.

So oftentimes what's happening when people say, I know what I'm supposed to eat. I know what I'm supposed to do. I just can't do it. I sabotage myself. What's really happening is there's a voice, an archetype that's stepping in and it's unconsciously driving the show. As an example, a lot of people have in them the rebel archetype. The rebel archetype is the part of you and I that is like Gandhi was a rebel. Martin Luther King was a rebel. Mother Teresa was a, she was a rebel. It's going against a lot of the grain. It's going against what society says, finding a better way and having the courage to say no and to resist.

But the rebel can also be a rebel without a good cause. The rebel can be a little immature. So a lot of times when the rebel in us takes over, it's as if we're saying, nobody tells me what to do, not even me. And the adult in us steps out, the health champion in me steps aside, and the rebel takes over, and I'm rebelling against whoever. I'm rebelling against my doctor, my nutritionist, my dietician, my own inner voice. I'm rebelling against whatever society is telling me to do. Yeah. How do you handle that? Well, part of it is starting to notice the different voices that's operating inside you.

So it's actually doing a little bit of an inventory on what are the voices that might possibly be stepping in. And once we start to learn about them and notice them, just another brief example, the child, you know, we often think of the inner child. So we all have a child in us. The child is beautiful child in you and me. It's innocent. It's sweet. It's loving. It's open. It's carefree. You know, and the child could also be a brat. And the child also wants immediate gratification. The child wants what it wants when it wants it. And a lot of times people who are gripped with emotional eating, they have been dieting since they've been young, or they were bullied for being chubby, or they were told by somebody in their environment, my mother, my father, my sister, my friends, whoever it was, my teachers,

that your body's not acceptable as it is. You have to go on a diet. And all of a sudden, that innocence in us is crushed because we have guilt and shame about our body. And at some point, the child in us just wants to scream, I just want to eat whatever I want. I want to eat the shipper. I want him to cut the meat. And so as we begin, so in answer to your question, how do I deal, how do we work with that? We start to notice when that voice steps in. So you have to be aware because those voices are stepping in beneath our awareness. We're just not present to it. So we feel like we're blindsided. Something's sabotaging me. Well, it's sabotaging you because your witness consciousness or the adult in you or the king and queen in you is just not paying attention. So, oh, I'm on a diet right now because this is what's going to help me feel better. When I don't eat so much sugar, I have my energy. I don't have brain fog.

I start to drop weight. And so, okay, I'm going to stick to my low sugar or my no sugar diet. And then all of a sudden, I find myself opening up the refrigerator and like, I just wanted some ice cream. And it's helpful to know, oh, okay, that's the child in me. What does a child need? Generally, a child needs love and attention, and a child also needs guidelines. You can't let a child run the show. You can't let them run the kitchen. Chances are they'll just eat breakfast cereal all day. So it becomes a conversation with yourself. It becomes a negotiation.

What else can I give that child such that I can appease it? And how can I breathe in my adult, my king, my inner queen to be present and make the choice? So it's a practice. Yeah. And it's really important to learn the skills to really understand the origins of your thinking around what you're eating. Because it's often not what you're eating. It's what's eating you. And unless you figure that out, it's really hard to clear up the challenges we face around food and eating things that are going to help regulate our mood, our energy, our well-being, extend our life, all of it. So I think that's super important. Also, I want you to talk about sort of this from a little bit of a different angle because often, you know, our feelings can drive us to eat and eat in ways that

are not good for us. But also eating in certain ways can drive feelings that are problematic for us, right? So it's kind of a bi-directional thing. If you eat the wrong food, you'll feel like crap, and then you want to eat more. So I've noticed that. The more crap you eat, the more you want to eat it. And it's really interesting to look at the science around that from the point of view of food and food addiction and the biology of food, as well as the psychology of eating, because they're very related. Absolutely. Food influences mood. Our mood influences our food, i.e. what food we eat and how we digest and assimilate and calorie burn it. You know, I think at the most basic, simple level, and you just mentioned this, if I eat poor quality food, if I eat junk

food, I'm driven to eat more. Now, a part of that, a big part of that is poor quality food tends to be low in nutrient density and head brain and gut brain, the brain in your belly, the enteric nervous system, those two brains are constantly scanning a meal and they're scanning the nutritional profile of the meal. And body wants good nutrition. That's what it wants. And when you feed a body food that is bulky, it seems like there's a lot of caloric value here, but it's lacking in the right micronutrition or macronutrition. Brain isn't always smart enough to say, hey, you know, you need more vitamins and minerals. You need more essential fatty acids. The brain just generally will scream hungry.

It wants us to look for more food because we're not getting what we need. We're not meeting a nutritional requirement. That to me is the wisdom of the body. For sure, so many of the junk foods that you and I are exposed to are designed, unfortunately, to addict us to them. They have the right crunch profile. They have the right flavor and sweet and salty profile to capture us. They have the right combination of sweet and fat. There are certain 50-50 combinations of sweet and fat that'll easily get us hooked. And then once we're hooked, you feel bad about yourself because you think you're a willpower weakling. But what's actually happening, it's your biology that's driving you to eat more. But if I think I'm a willpower weakling, I'm going to go down the rabbit hole of I'm a victim. What was me? And we get disempowered and then we just feel stuck. Yeah, it's so true. I mean, I think Kevin

Hall did an interesting study where he basically let people eat as much as they wanted or whatever was in front of them. And they had basically one group got ultra processed food, which is kind of pulverized industrial ingredients that aren't really bearing any resemblance to real food. And then he let other people eat just nutrient-dense whole food as much as they wanted. And the people who were given the ultra-processed food ate 500 calories more a day because they weren't getting the nutrition they wanted, the nutrient density. It's like looking for love in all the wrong places. And it actually, there is medical conditions around this. One of them is called pica, where little kids eat dirt in order to get iron because they're

iron deficient. So I mean, you know, our biology is smarter than we are. And we're going to keep eating and eating. But if we keep eating things that have no nutrient density, we're just going to overeat. And then we're going to get this vicious cycle. And then those foods are addictive. And then we gain weight. And then we feel worse.

And we actually drive hormonal patterns that cause us to eat more. And so you end up with this kind of mishmash of biology and psychology that is just sort of a disaster. And you have to really elegantly embrace both of those pillars. Here's another thing. So many people have been taught that, well, in order for you to lose weight, you have to go low fat. And there's a lot of people that still believe that. A lot of people on low fat weight loss. And low fat or low and essential fats, we call them essential for a reason. So your listeners know my body needs this, but a lot of people don't understand that they don't get that they're listening to old science. So they're eating low fat and you show me a person who's eating low fat, who's then

becoming fat deficient. And I'll show you a person who will be binge eating and emotional eating and overeating and thinking that there's something wrong with them because they can't control their appetite. No, what's actually happening is you should be on your hands and knees thanking your body because it's brilliant and it's letting you know you have a nutritional deficiency. The challenge also is that a lot of times if we're fat deficient or if we're protein deficient, brain isn't always smart enough to have you crave fat. Sometimes you could be fat deficient and you'll just crave sugar or you'll crave carbs, or a lot of people will be fat deficient and they'll crave poor quality fats. They'll want to go for the fried foods because that's sort of what their body knows. And that's what their body wisdom is unfortunately driving them towards. But the point is, it's easy to be

low fat. You're driven to emotionally eat and and that drivenness is real. You feel it. And you feel like, God, I gotta eat, I gotta have this. Because the body isn't a isn't a little bit of a desperate place. It knows that it needs this nutrient. so you can have a functioning brain and a functioning hormonal system. So there's a little bit of an urgency there. And that urgency feels like something's wrong with me. Yeah, it's so true because a lot of people don't realize this, but if you're obese, you're very likely to be nutrient deficient. You have excess fat, but you have low nutrients in your system. And I see this over and over again. I had a patient at Cleveland Clinic, it was

shocking. You know, I call them functional medicine virgins where they, you know, there's a lot of the patients I see, you know, really tried everything, try to be healthy, eat well. This was just someone who came into our program who really had never even heard of a vegetable basically. And, and, and they were fairly educated, but they just didn't understand anything about nutrition. And they grew up eating junk food in their family and that's what they ate. And she was, you know, massively overweight or BMI was like 43 and she had diabetes, heart failure, you know, kidneys failing, liver failing. It was quite amazing. And, and when I did her testing, I was so shocked to see like the level of nutritional

dysfunction in her system, you know, deficiencies of zinc and B by magnesium deficiency of omega-3 fats. Her omega-6 to 3 fat ratio was 20 to 1, which is just ridiculously dangerous. And you should be like 1 to 1 or 2 to 1. I mean, it was horrible. And I was like, wow, she's so overweight, but she's so malnourished at the same time. Fascinating. Fascinating what the body does. Hey everyone, it's Dr. Mark. You know, so much about wellbeing centers on daily habits. If we cultivate poor habits, we can end up with poor health and risk suffering a laundry list of chronic conditions like autoimmune disease, metabolic conditions, and leaky gut. But when we cultivate good health habits, we can reverse and even eliminate many of the health problems

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And now let's get back to this week's episode of The Doctor's Pharmacy. What was it like inside when you were riding the train of success or the rock of success and you also were struggling internally with weight and body image issues and food addiction.

Right. And all these things that we kind of hide. Yeah. How was that? What was your internal journey there? Well, there's a lot of shame associated with weight. Now, unfortunately, I think people feel like if they can, quote unquote, control the issue, then they have a lot of shame.

So I had shame that I couldn't handle. Like I go, what is wrong with me? And then I thought, well, if Oprah, the most powerful woman in the world still has weight issues, what hope does Pam from accounting have? Like, why should I have such shame about this weight? And I said, let me, instead of having this dark hole that inside that's open, and I try to fill with food and purses and shoes and concert dates and fame, why don't I start working on what's in there? So I said to myself at 50, I said, whatever I've been trying to use to fill the hole ain't working. Marriages, all that. Let me take it out of the picture, get this bariatric surgery, but at the same exact time, start the emotional work that'll

keep the weight off. And I've kept it off for almost seven years now. Yeah, by the way, 50'll keep the weight off and i've kept it off for almost seven years now by the way 50 in the time yeah surgery fails sure sure because the surgery fails or because people keep figuring ways around i had a guy who was a doctor nephrologist weighed 400 pounds he lost almost 200 pounds after bariatric surgery And then he figured out he could eat M&Ms all day long. Yeah. One by one by one, slowly. And he gained back all the 200 pounds. Yeah. And you know what's wild? That's why surgery gets that bad reputation. And I say to myself, look, it does. It's a tool. It's never been the fix all. Like I literally could gain all my weight

back if I wanted to. Like, I mean, shakes, chips, all that stuff goes down smooth. But what am I really helping? I'm not filling that emotional void. Last night, for instance, I had a feeling of loneliness. Now, I rarely have that because I have, thank God, the best friends, best family, and a great dog. Well, let me tell you something. For some reason, no one's home last night, meaning as I'm trying to call them. And I'm like, oh my God, I have no one. And I go, I'm going to eat. And then I go, well, that's the behavior of somebody who isn't doing the emotional work. So I pulled back and I said, look, you'll eat when you're physically hungry.

Do I win that battle all the time? Hell no. Like 20% of the time, I'm like, yeah, I'm going to nail something right now. But you know what? We're all flawed. We all got to work on this. I'll be working on this till I'm 80 and that's okay. As long as I'm making those little steps. Yeah. So, so when you were, um, overweight and struggling, were you, were you conscious of the stories you were telling yourself that led to you to keep eating that's interesting i probably was deluding myself into going you know when i'm happy with myself this way or oh yeah i'm fat and proud you know and you make fun of yourself as much as you make fun of the audience which is why my comedy worked because I loved the audience, but I goofed on both of us. So the fact is, once you start going, I really don't like what I see in the mirror because I got into, a lot of people seem to go through this with this surgery.

When you look in the mirror and you're overweight, I would go through the, look in the mirror, hate what you see, get depressed, eat, look in the mirror again, hate yourself for eating. Like it just basically is one big cycle of depression. So once I got the surgery, I go, oh, I got to work on that. But yeah, I think I deluded myself into being like, well, this is as good as it gets. Just like with a job, like with me with comedy, I could have stuck with it. I said, hey, 30 years in the business, I'm doing well. You make your money, you're okay. Bad marriage. That's okay. He wasn't hitting me. I wasn't hitting him very often. And I was like, you know what? I can stay in this, but do I want my life to have joy? And I think that's what the weight was really

showing up as, this lack of joy. So thank goodness I suddenly got brave and decided to tackle them all. But you didn't slide back, right? You got the surgery, you lost the pounds, which often happens. And then somehow something shifted in you that allowed you to stick with it. Yeah, yeah. Was it help? Was it some awakening you had?

Was it just like white knuckling it? What happened? Oh no, I don't white knuckle it. I have a therapist, of course. I have a life coach. I mean, I basically call in all the freaking cavalry. I'm like, how do you handle emotional eating? I've read all the books. I have all your nights at the round table. Oh, yeah. Because you know what? I'm worth it. I want to live. Dude, I was listening to the radio today. And this was a 97 year old Carol Channing dies.

Now I'm 57. I say to myself, oh, my God, if I take care of myself physically and emotionally, I could live 40 more years and continue to help people and help myself. And I'm like, oh my God. It really helps to know I have life to look forward to. So I think that's what a lot of the emotional work for me is going. I'm looking forward to every day and living a long time versus, ah, I'm in a job that's okay. Like a lot of us,

we have a low grade form of dissatisfaction that we put up with. We really shouldn't have to. It's sad to me. Yeah. And it's true. And you were in your career, in a way, being of service.

You were making people laugh, which is something we don't do enough in our world. And it brings people joy and happiness, gives them a dopamine hit. Yeah. It makes you feel a little better. It's not the worst thing in the world. It's not like you were making, you know, pesticides for Monsanto or something, right? That's my next career.

Well, you know what I think it was too, though? I think it was my dad dying on a Saturday. So I had to do a shift because comics usually work on Friday, Saturday. So I remember every Saturday I would be a little sad and I'd have to psych myself up. And I saw this great, uh, Ted talk or YouTube talk. Some comics said about giving laughs instead of getting laughs. Cause we as comics can be very self centered. It's give me give me give me i killed oh yeah it's all about me and i started to have to shift it to giving to the audience and that's when i started getting standing o's again but then that didn't seem like

it was fulfilling enough and i go you know what i'm gonna step back from this i'm gonna shift my life and i felt the only time that i was really making myself happy and them was to do something totally different like I'm doing now with the workshops and the coaching and stuff. It just is the fit that I was looking for. Okay. So you're in this transition. Your father dies. You're waking up to the fact that you want to shift your life towards more joy, that

you were helping your dad through the process of death and being of service. And then that gave you, even though he was dying, it gave you a different experience of joy or happiness, which is kind of bizarre, but it actually is actually what happens when you're in service. In fact, being of service, altruism is hardwired into us and it actually stimulates dopamine in the brain, just like heroin or cocaine or that donut. Oh, well, good. I'm glad I got the healthy way. Yeah.

And so, you know, you had this insight, but insight often doesn't translate into action or behavior. What was the sort of moment where you were like, okay, I'm going to do these things. I'm going to get divorced. I'm going to quit my job. I'm going to get my body under control. I'm going to do this new career. Was it all of a sudden, boom, boom it happened or was it this slow process? I think it was sort of brewing inside for all those years

You know that my father was sick and then afterwards and I'm the type I was brought up by depression era parents So I said to myself, I'm not gonna do this stupidly I'm gonna make sure I save not going to do this stupidly. I'm going to make sure I save enough money so that if I never make any more money, it's okay. Even if I live in a tiny studio the rest of my life, I don't care. So I said, look, do it the right way. Have a target date set up for this, which I did. But I think it was the real turning point of actually taking the action was I took this

workshop at Kripalu, which is a meditation place and yoga center in the Berkshires from a woman called Maria Sirwa. And she's very, very into positive psychology. And she has this three step plan for resilience. So it's accept reality as it is, take small actions to give you a happier life, and then seal it with gratitude. Because we all forget to seal it with gratitude for what is currently here. So I started doing that. I'm like, okay, what's the reality?

Don't love comedy, learn how to be a coach, see if I like the classes, see if it's something I'm good at, follow that. So I had my little plan all set up. Then I was like, okay, what action first? And I'd start doing these steps and then I'd practice gratitude too and it all sort of converged into where about a year and a half ago I go oh my god I totally am ready but again the resilience is that hey I'm going to keep coming back and coming back and that's what makes me keep going so if I have a coaching session where I think I dropped the ball in this practice session I'm in if I do a workshop where I don't get through to somebody out of the 30 people and I, you know, it stops me from beating myself up.

So I think that resilience practice is huge. And I think that's what kind of made there's a million people listening who are wanting to change their life and struggling and getting inspired from this conversation about how you shift it. Right. What would you tell them? Well, this is a great question because the first thing everybody says is, well, it was easy for you because you have money.

First of all, I'm not some kind of baller who's sitting on $38 million. I'm not one of those people. But we all have the means to do little steps. So, it's not easy for me. I started in comedy when I was 30. Mark, I lived with my parents and hid it from everybody because I was like, oh, you know, I want to make it as a comic. So, even if you have no money or you- You live in the basement with the Janis Joplin poster on the wall. Worse than that, believe me. I lived in my childhood bedroom because I was like, I'm cool as hell. I'm going to be a comic. So with this, I did one of these things where I go, okay, Lisa, you want to quit comedy. You have a few bucks in the bank, but it ain't going to

last forever. What's the worst that can happen? See, I'm the type, I ask what the worst is can happen, and then I do it anyway, because the worst ain't that bad. Mark, they all go to, I'm going to be homeless. 90% of people I talk to, oh, I'm going to be homeless. When the hell have you ever been homeless? I should call my next book. Hey, at least I can type. The fact is we all have a skill we can use. We all have a gift. We all can work at Starbucks. I mean, they have health insurance, for God's sake. So I always say to people, stop thinking everybody else has it easy. Look at your reality. Write it down.

Then figure out little steps. Because don't you find with your patients, too, little steps make you feel so much better. So I'm taking little steps. Like little wins. Little wins. If I can do it, anyone can. Because I'm, you know, I am just feeling my way out too. Okay.

So you've gone through all this and you started, you got trained in coaching. You were leading workshops. Yeah, I love that. Oh my God. To be in a group of people and have them feel like they can work on themselves just makes me so happy. It's so cool. So how do you use your story to work with them? That's a great question too. What happened to you? You must have gotten married to a

wonderful woman who brought it out of you. I did. She's texting me as we speak. So I ask all the right questions. If I could attract a male Mia, I would be so happy. I have to settle for a dog. So the thing is, storytelling is a huge part of my workshops and I'll tell you why. I show I'm vulnerable to tell all the crap I've been through with food. I mean, because, you know, we have a lot of shameful food behavior from the past. I tell them, hey, I'm still working on me. I still had a little binge the other night. I still didn't feel good about myself yesterday when I looked in the mirror. I tell a lot of story throughout the weekend workshop so people know that they could tell theirs too. So what I love,

oh my God, I remember the first time, because I'm very anal, I like to try out every step of the workshop with friends and family before just to make sure it's good, before I sell tickets to the public. I remember the first time I told the story, every person around the room just like emoted and was really open and vulnerable and told their story. And I'm like, wow, that story helps promote openness and vulnerability. And that's people just want to feel safe. If I tell you my story, you feel safe to tell yours. And if you don't, that's OK.

So all I can do is be an open book. That's why I said to you, hey, ask me anything you want. I'm the most open book in the world because I always tell my publicist she has the easiest job because I've told her everything she'll never find naked pictures of me on the internet thank God so what are the things that have emerged from people doing your workshops have you seen people shift have yes there's been changes you know some are slow boil you know they'll sit there and they'll go,

wow, I feel a little better. And we give them an exit plan, as you know, afterwards to maybe start a Facebook group together to have sort of a life map for the next year or whatever. A lot of them, it takes them a long time to get to the actual action, but it's brewing up there just like it did for me. So I have a friend who she took my workshop and took no action for about six months. Then she emails me that she just went to hypnotist and she's gone down six sizes in three months. And that's, she says it all started when she took the workshop i didn't tell her to get hypnosis she had to find that out for herself as a tool but you can lead them to be more self-accepting more open to these different messages and modalities and you go hey

this is great so so far i haven't had any complaints i make them fill out feedback forms i said you're not going to hurt my feelings. I'm new at this. So, you know, I've just, you know, hope that it keeps kind of getting better and better. Yeah, you know, there's an amazing sociobiologist, a scientist at Harvard, E.O. Wilson, who's written many books and is, you know, one of the leading scientists in the world. And he said the world is really interpreted through story, and that's what creates meaning in life. Right, right. And I think that we really all need to have story in order to make sense of our experience.

And your story and the stories you tell and the storytelling is really how we understand the world. That's a good point. I do now that I don't do stand up anymore. I do do these storytelling nights where me and a bunch of people, actors, comics, different people who have weight or food issues in their past or present when we tell stories. And they're really funny, but they also are heartfelt. And I just after those shows, I notice there's a real sort of shift in the question and answer session where it's like people want to go way deeper. They don't want to keep it surfacy anymore. I'm like, ooh, so they benefited from story.

And also, you know how the coaching class I'm taking, you really work on dissolving people's limited thoughts and the stories they tell themselves about themselves. So last night, for instance, with this eating thing, with the loneliness. Yeah, what was the whole narrative going on there? It was wild. Because really, I mean, the work is- Let us in there for a minute. The work is dissolving those thoughts. I had a day where I just wanted to talk to my best friend.

I have the same best friend for 32 years. I call her up. She's disabled. So I, you know, we talk on the phone a lot instead of get together in person. She's not around. And I'm it's almost like a life partner in a way where you're like, why aren't they around? Yeah, right. So I go, oh, I have no friends. Like literally that thought comes in. I have no friends. Now, if you logically look in my phone, you're going to go, oh, my God, you have at least five people who are that deeply invested in the friendship as you are.

However, the thought is I have no friends. Then it's the feeling is sadness, loneliness, et cetera. Then the behavior is could have been eating. Could have been that sheet cake. Hell yeah. In the freezer. The M&Ms, one after another. So instead, I take the story, like the tools we

learn in coaching, is to really try to dissolve it and say, is that true? Do I have no friends? Well, it certainly feels that way now. Yes, it's true. Is it absolutely true? Like Byron Katie says, no, because we don't know what's absolutely true. Nothing is absolute. And then it's sort of going, how would I act, behave, and feel if I never had that thought? I wouldn't go to the food. I wouldn't be sad. So it's getting distance from the story. So the crap that we tell ourselves, we can self-coach a lot. You know, I'm not trying to talk myself out of getting clients, but let me tell you something. A lot of this self-coaching really helps people because I have to every day go, oh, that thought's coming up and then get some distance from it. So that's a very interesting thing because most of us, thought and behavior have no space in

between. The pause, the big pause has to happen. Yeah. We have the thought, we identify with the thought, we act based on the thought and that determines our reality yeah what you're saying is you figured out a way to create a pause between thought and behavior right i'm lonely i have no friends i might as well get fat again because nobody cares about me and sitting here by myself just my dog and life's horrible and i think you know then you go down this rabbit hole. Yeah. So, I'm trying to integrate that for me. And like Byron Katie's work about that just is, I mean, at first I was like, I read Byron

Katie's book years ago. Okay, back up. Who's Byron Katie? Oh, she's the foremost authority on something called the work, this work she created. And Martha Beck, who I'm taking my coaching certification class with, promotes using that as a tool with yourself and with your clients. It's basically deconstructing that story to where you go, it's just not true, and having some distance from it. So it's asking yourself a series of questions about your beliefs and your thoughts. Yeah. Like, for instance, do you have a limiting belief,

Mark? Does a limiting belief ever come up for you? Are you that perfect that you don't? Yeah, of course. Okay, like what would be something that would weirdly just pop into your mind at a moment of stress? That's an interesting question. I think it's interesting

because my mother brainwashed me to believe that I have no limits. Okay, so. Which is actually the opposite problem, which has allowed me to drive myself into the ground and to harm myself in different ways than what we're eating, but it's not that different. Sure. And I think. So even if you take that limiting thought that keeps you stuck in this, Byron Katie

says what you should do is you go, I have no limits. Is that true? No, hell no. So say you were the guy. I mean, I can only eat like 12 cookies at a time. Oh, I love that limit. I love that now and she would then say you know do you you work you work around that knowing that's not true and how what what you would be like if you didn't think that was true

which probably would be say no more i feel like you don't have to heal the whole world feel like yeah i know weird right like this podcast is over there see i turned down a client today because i don't want to be that person who thinks they have to save the world because I have limited resources. I mean, I'm just learning this. Plus, it was like about addiction. And I'm like, I don't know anything about that call, Dr. Drew, you know. So, I just go, isn't it funny that this Byron Katie developed this thing that we can get some distance and go, oh, I'm telling myself that story again. So, is that true?

And what are the next questions she has? Well, you already said no. So you know it's not true. So you know how to act as a person who knows it's not true. So what would you do differently? I would say no more. There you go. I would feel like I had to work on the challenging thoughts

that make me feel like I have to do everything for everybody all the time. I hope you enjoyed today's episode. One of the best ways you can support this podcast is by leaving us a rating and review below. to do everything for everybody all the time. I hope you enjoyed today's episode. One of the best ways you can support this podcast is by leaving us a rating and review below. Until next time, thanks for tuning in. Hey everybody, it's Dr. Hyman. Thanks for tuning into The Doctor's Pharmacy. I hope you're loving this podcast.

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