The Livy Method Podcast - How Your Dieting History Shapes Your Journey with Dr. Beverley David - Fall 2025

Episode Date: September 18, 2025

In this episode, Gina welcomes back Dr. Beverley David, clinical psychologist and longtime friend of The Program, for a powerful conversation about the mental side of weight loss. Together, they unpack the Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) cycle and how our thoughts, feelings, behaviours, and even physical responses can keep us stuck in old dieting patterns. Dr. Beverley offers clear, compassionate insight into why it can feel so hard to show up for ourselves—and what we can do to shift that cycle. If you've ever struggled with self-sabotage, doubt, or the mental tug-of-war that comes with weight loss, this one’s for you.Dr. Beverley is a Clinical Psychologist registered with the College of Psychologists of Ontario. She also holds a Ph.D. in Sleep Research (Insomnia) and a Master's in Health Psychology.Find Dr. Beverley:https://www.yourpsychologycentre.ca/@drdrbeverleyYou can find the full video hosted at:https://www.facebook.com/groups/livymethodfall2025To learn more about The Livy Method, visit livymethod.com. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

I'm Gina Livy, and welcome to the Livy Method podcast. This is where you'll have access to all of the live streams for my 91-day weight loss program. With a combination of daily lives, guest expert interviews, and member stories, there is something new almost every day. Miss the morning live? Want to re-listen to one of our amazing guest experts? Well, this is the place. This podcast is hosted on ACAST, but it's available on all podcast platforms, including the one you're listening to right now, Spotify, Apple, and Amazon Music.

We're focusing on sustainable habits, not quick-fixing. Is it an opportunity to get curious? We're here to help people get to their health goals. One piece each of time. You build and build and build. The diet industry has messed us up, and our relationship with food and dieting can be very, very complicated. can cause a lot of stress and frustration along the way.

Here to walk us through it is Dr. Beverly, David, clinical psychologist, and all around just fabulous gal. Hello, hi. Hello, Gina. That was special. That was lovely. We are ready to go. I know you're not feeling so hot.

So I wanted to pump you up. I appreciate you being here for us today. Let's get right into it. I was thinking as I was showering this morning. What do you think is the hardest thing for people when it comes to losing weight from a psychology perspective? I know that's a loaded question, but you've been with us for a while. You know the program. You've helped a lot of our members.

What do you think is the hardest thing? I think the hardest thing is our psychology. And whenever I introduce psychology, two things I always want people to get to, get very familiar with and get very comfortable with is, is that CBT cycle. Whenever I'm introducing psychology to little people and all the way up to older people, I want them to understand how humans are and how we work. And that's to describe that we have our thoughts, our thinking, which I often put at the top of this sort of clock-looking like symbol.

So at 12 o'clock we'd have our thoughts. all humans have thoughts and we have thousands of them that just run through like a commentary or every minute of the day we are flooded with thoughts and if only we could read each other's thoughts we would avoid conflict we know what to do but we have them and these thoughts have come from our history and come from what we've heard what we've grown up with what we've seen in the media what we've read what we've seen in the movies and these thoughts are often hard to catch, but they're very responsible for then our feelings, which I put at the 3 o'clock part of this clock. So our thoughts and our feelings really bounce off each other. If we have a

negative thought or if we have a positive thought, it's going to affect our emotions and how we feel. Now, at the 6 o'clock part of this clock, we have our behaviours. And behaviors are what we do as well as what we don't do. And this is where we can sometimes. get in our own way. We can have a thought that I would like to be or I would like to do. And then suddenly this other bully in our brain says, but you won't be able to. You can't. You're not worth it. Or why should you? You know, why should I do this? Why should I do that? Who is this for? And then that interferes not only with our feelings of worth or confidence or motivation, but it then impacts what we do or what we don't do. And when we do and don't do things, we build up more data.

Now our thoughts might say, see, you didn't do it. You did fail. See, you can't do it. I was right. Or on the opposite, it worked. It wasn't so bad. I went and I didn't get 100%, but I did better than I thought. I'm going to stay in it. And then, of course, at the nine o'clock part of the the clock, we've got our body, how our very clever brain and body responds to things like threat, because we're very hardwired to be on the lookout for danger. And so thoughts can be very threatening when we're like, I don't want to put myself out there. Why do I have to change? I can't do it. I'll be exposed. I'm an imposter. What all those thoughts can trigger that very frightened part of our brain that then wants to protect us.

And that protection often will say, don't go. Stay in. Don't do it. Don't log in today. It's too uncomfortable. So that often is part of our success, if we can understand the loop, but also part of what makes it hard. If we're not understanding the loop, or if we don't know how to interfere and interrupt the cycle, that's often what probably gets in the way of any change, whether it's a diet, whether it's a healthy, you know, deciding to, I'm going to implement this healthy program into my, into my future and into my now, but it's everywhere. So I did a little drawing. So the CBT is the cognitive behavioral therapy model. Now, we have a visual better than the one than the one I've just drawn that we will post for you

after this. So your, your thoughts are at the top. Your feelings are at 3 o'clock. Your behavior is at 6 o'clock and your body is at the 9 o'clock. Beautiful diagram. Thank you. Okay, I want to put this into action. And I have a question from a member here because there's a couple of things going on. There is our history of with food and how we were raised.

And we use food for so many things, right? We use food to celebrate, to show love, to bond. Some people use it to cope. And we are hungry for a variety of reasons because we are actually hungry out of habit being triggered. So it's very complicated. And then piled on top of that is our history of dieting and diet culture and everything that was taught to us and everything that we learned was a little messed up. It was a little messed up. So I want to start with, I want to start with this one, because this is a big one, because

we ask people to get on the scale every day so they can understand what weight loss looks like on the scale along with how they're feeling, along with what they're doing. And Rachel says, can you speak to the why of a daily way in? Diet cultures of the past push this. Now, I just want to stop and say, diet cultures push. it like once a week. Diet cultures pushed it as a form of success or failure. Right. And so the difference for us is that we are using the scale every day to collect data and be aware of what's going on. Anyway, let me read that again. Can you speak to the why of a daily way in? Diet cultures

of the past push this. And then it was seen to be a bad idea. Now we're back to it. I find daily weigh-ins to be triggering. Can you help me understand why? Yeah, getting on that scale, even if someone is feeling fantastic, they've been doing all the things, they get on that scale and they expect their weight to be down. And if it's not, it can ruin their whole day. And then how does this fit in,

the thoughts and the feelings and the behavior and the body? What's going on now? Okay. Well, I can totally resonate having joined, the program, however many years ago, I'm a psychologist. So often people think, oh, psychologists must know their own triggers and must know their own thoughts, feelings, behavior, and body. And the same thing happened. And when I thought, ooh, Gina's asking people to weigh. You know, and I studied at the University of Loughborough, Loughborough University, right, and the sleep

lab where I trained was right next to the eating disorders clinic, which would look at things like this, you know, whether people are over-monitoring, over-measuring, the hypervigilance of it. And it worried me. I was like, oh, my goodness, what is that? Because it provoked worry for me. Now, many years on, the scale now, thankfully, is just a piece of equipment for me. Just like the stopwatch my swimming coach uses, just like, you know, the race time that if I've raced, I'm monitoring myself. Just like when I ask people to keep a sleep diary, I'm looking for data.

And the interesting thing about it is that when we start doing something that was uncomfortable to begin with, we're hoping that exposure to that starts to lose its grip on us, a little bit like if we have a phobia to a spider or we find it very hard to leave the house. little exposures, exposure therapy, even in our imagination, if we imagine leaving the house and then we sit with the discomfort and then we wait for it to pass and we use psychological tools, whether it's distraction or whether it's imagining ourselves doing well, then we're able to get a little bit closer to that thing. Now, if we're able to get on the scale every day and we notice, okay, my discomfort is 10 out of 10 today. We could then use the CBT cycle to think why.

Okay, so the discomfort might be in a feeling. I feel like a dread or an anxiety or angry. I feel sad. So you'd write that down that three o'clock bit. What was the feeling that happened? You might have relief. You might have excitement. You might, you know, because you might see.

a number that you're like okay good it's working okay so then you move up to the thought what made you think that why did you think that's terrible that feels awful because it's just a number it's just data okay and so i'm going to stop you there i get on the scale and i walk into my bathroom i get on the scale and maybe i feel like great and i lost weight but i get on the scale and it's not down it's the same or maybe it's up because I went to the gym yesterday and I did a workout or whatever that is. And I'm just like, this isn't going to work. I don't know what I'm doing wrong. I'm never going to be able to lose my weight. I get off the scale. Get on again. Get off. Get on again. And then I'm just in a funky mood. And then what's the point of drinking my fucking water? What's the point of trying

to eat protein for breakfast? I'm just going to grab a donut on the way to work. And then it just spirals then the next day we feel bad so then we punish ourselves and starve and deprive ourselves and we try to get back at it but we're loaded with all these feelings so so i got on the scale and i'm just like yeah and so my words are like frustrated or disappointed or failure or maybe deeper i'm i'm never going to lose this weight i don't feel worthy so so i'm left with that what do i do with that next so those are my thoughts What do we do with this next? Okay, so now you've captured the thought.

You've caught it and there's lots in there. Okay, because if you straightaway think this isn't going to work, this isn't for me, I'm a failure, is that true? Is that 100% true? How can you expect in maybe day two for it to be so different? How can you expect something like that? If you're building a house, it doesn't happen in a day. If you're studying for an exam, it doesn't happen if you don't study for it. So our expectations are sometimes elevated.

These are the thought errors. It's got to be quick. I've got to see it move immediately. And if it doesn't, it's a failure. And sometimes we'll internalize the failure. It's a me failure. Other times we'll blame you. It's a her failure.

She's, you know, and so we want to watch out for who are we blaming. And the difficulty with data is that we have to have enough of it. Prospective data is the more we collect, the more we learn. So the more we're able to see, wow, I am actually not a brilliant source of information. My guessing of my weight is maybe wrong. My guessing of that I was going to be higher on the scale was inaccurate. it. Aha, that's now challenged a thought. Okay, this time I feel really great. I feel really energized. I'm going to expect it to go down. Hmm, it didn't. But I still feel good. What's that all

about? Have I gained some muscle? Have I got some energy? Is, am I about to, am I about to drop weight? We want to look at this as an actual trend. We're thinking of looking at it as a graph. And I love it when your members share their graphs, ups and downs with the change. But that's what we want it to be. And then we get to know ourselves. We get to see the patterns of it. I did have that popcorn yesterday and it was very salty. Wow.

I was hot. I did that. You know, I sweated loads and then look at the weighing scales. I got my period. How does that relate? I didn't sleep well. How does that relate? So it's just about informing.

ourselves instead of adding a worth to that. It has nothing to do with your worthiness. It's just a number that then gives you some accurate data over time because it will very quickly tell us, wow, sometimes I am very wrong. I expected it to be up. A lot of people will say that. They'll think I went on holiday. I was dreading coming back to see the scale. And it wasn't so bad. And the alternative to think that's it, it's not working for me, I'm not doing it, I'm going to go back to what I was doing before, then we're not monitoring the change. And unfortunately, probably we'll avoid it. And then that might be where we then don't follow the path that we wanted to. And if you were using your example, then we go and eat something to self-soothe, then we're really going to start getting scared to go back.

on the scale because now we're going to be like, whoa, I did that Friday and then I haven't gone on it since Thursday and I have self-soothed till then. Now I don't want to. Now I'm going to wait till the next program starts again. That's not all or nothing. So we want to be very curious in thinking this is slow and steady and we have to practice that new thought, trust the process. You know, people that are training for the Olympics do not have their time yet. They have to trust their training they have to trust how they're building up that's the that they're at their personal best how they're building up their loading if i'm doing my invisible line i'm halfway through i'm trusting the process i'm not going to expect my teeth to be corrected if they've told me

it's going to take 22 weeks no 22 months rather slow and steady yeah that's sort of like the people have to learn that and they don't know that and they're used to that diet culture of or the dreaded weigh-ins where they would go and if their weight was up, they felt shamed or would lose their lifetime membership and if their weight was down, it would be celebrated. And what's going on the scale is so much more complicated than that. We did a post the other day on all the reasons your weight will be up, that nothing to do with weight gain. We showed this scale.

I hear things from people like, oh, you know, I just, I'm, it's hard for me to stay motivated when I haven't lost the weight yet. And we are just starting out. I think they're so excited and they're working so hard that they feel like they should get more like their success is based on the scale. You started with the capture the thoughts. And I know you have the capture cancel correct. So we've captured the thoughts. I got on the scale.

These are my thoughts that I'm having. What is the the cancel part is this is not true. I am totally capable of losing this weight. My hard work is going to pay off. I'm doing the things. I, you know, if I just keep showing up, it's going to work for me. The scale's not a matter of success. Like, whatever that is.

And then the correct it is, I'm doing the work. I'm showing up. It's, you know, it's going to work for me. Is that, does I get that right? Yes, you did. And you can add, you can add to it. And if you don't believe that the thought, so you've caught the thought. So you've caught the thought.

I can't do this. It's not going to work. You really want to unpack that. What's the evidence for that? Where did you, where did you get that idea from? Is it early days? Have you noticed any change in other places? What would you say to a friend if they said, if your child came to you and said, Mom, Dad, I can't remember anything I've studied. Nothing. You would be kind to them. You'd say, let's sit down and let's think. You know, what's the capital of Ontario? You'd be kind to that. Or if your friend was also doing the program and she was like, oh, yeah, like I got on the scale today and you would say, oh, but, you know, you're doing great. Like, stick with it. Are you noticing any other changes? Okay. Yeah. Got it. Stick with it. Then if you're trying to, so you've caught it, you've caught the thought that is responsible for the feeling. We're trying to catch the thought that responsible for the feeling so we don't do the wrong behavior so that we don't then go, I'm out. Okay. So now we're going to think, okay, what will I do with my behavior? Now we want to go for a walk, want to make a cup of tea.

But then we have a think of the thought. And then we're thinking, okay, maybe somebody isn't able to yet say, I am capable of losing this weight. Because that might not sit with them yet. You might think, I'm worried. I don't know how to do this yet. I don't know if I'm capable, but not I am not, you know, we don't want to say I'm not.

I'm used to, I can't do this. And then you might gently change the thought, I'm learning, I'm doing the things, I'm trusting the process, and that would be that sort of what would you have said to your friend? Because when you say that to your brain that doesn't believe it yet, you know, if I said, you know, you're very capable of doing this, they might think I am not, you know, you can say, I know that. I felt the same way. It feels like a really daunting task. That mountain feels very high, one step at a time. okay, because then we're more likely to stay in the boat and think, okay, I can get there,

I can do this, I can do hard things. But again, if we're able to helicopter out and also think of, okay, it was just one bit of data, it was one, it was the weighing scale, don't forget to look at the other things because we hyper focus on things. So that would be also a catch-it. Why am I focusing on that one thing? when maybe there's been four other things that were great. That walk felt easier.

My sleep felt deeper. I felt more energized. My skin looks fresher. What else is there? We don't want to just focus on that one thing that might be pulling us under. Yeah, those non-scale victories are really huge. Those non-scale. So you're not just collecting the data on the scale.

you're also collecting how you are feeling, what you are doing, and all those other things that are happening. If your weight isn't moving and you're doing all these things, there's a lot going on. It's just that you can't see it. So people will do the program and get off cholesterol meds, drop A1C, see improvements here and there. Like people who are getting their blood work done or have health issues actually walk away with tangible proof, but it's so hard for us who can't really measure what's going on inside our bodies. And I just want to say that. this if you are getting on the scale and it's too much for you right now that's okay like you don't have to weigh at all what you don't want to do is weigh once a week because that doesn't tell you

anything because you could have a great week your weight could actually be down the night before you do a way in you have a crappy sleep you do a workout that day you have salty food and next thing you know the scale is actually up and you think oh my goodness all that for nothing but you actually missed the day before when it was down so either every day or not at all and it it's okay not to weigh right now if you think that's just not a place that you're ready to go right like you're just maybe like nah i'm just i want to put that off um i have another question here um i have this is very similar and i guess we're gonna this is sort of our focus today i have a question um i'm having experienced a harsh often often abusive messages of diet culture

i recognize this program is very different right and that's what i'm trying to prove every day This is so different than anything you've ever done. This is why I don't use diet language. We don't do extremes. We're all about awareness. We're all about education. We're all about helping you give you the tools and resources you need to make real change in a healthy way, physically and mentally. It's where you see people who've done the program and they'll say trust the process.

I find that so hard, though. It's so hard to trust the process. So I want to unpack that if we have time. But I recognize this process program is very different. How can I internalize its approach, shift my beliefs, and cultivate some self-compassion while staying accountable to my goals? Ooh, that's loaded. First of, I love their awareness that these are the things that they need to do.

But how can we get past that it's different? Because sometimes people are used to the same old work for me, and they remember the weight loss, but they gain it all back because those diets were never going to help them lose weight. So we're doing in a different way. It's going to help them actually be able to lose. but different is hard, and it's hard to trust something I don't know. And it was a good question because it brought up a question that often people will ask, and parents ask this a lot when I say to be gentle on their children,

they'll say, but that won't teach them anything, you know, because they want to be hard. They want to be, you know, if you did that, then firm. Firm is key because that's often what we've grown up with. So when somebody is being introduced to a more compassionate tone and a curiosity tone, and that comes from lots of different therapeutic models, psychological models, but one is compassionate focus therapy. We're intentionally trying not to trigger the threat brain.

We're intentionally trying not to use the harsh language and the abusive language so that our brain is able to stay okay. you know, we're going to do better at our driving test if we have somebody that's calm next to us instead of somebody that is being really mean, okay, that nasty culture, the harsh culture. But people will sometimes think, hang on, if I'm compassionate to myself when I make that choice that I now regret, well, am I not holding myself accountable? Have I not told myself off? You know, am I going to just do that now over and over again? Am I going to to have a donor every day because Beverly and Gina say that we can be kind to that bit of me.

So they worry because they think that's it, you know, and it doesn't actually work like that. We want to be able to take the power away from that bully because the bully keeps us stuck. When we think about psychology, we think about our early on stories, our predisposing factors, our past, what we were like when we were babies, if we've got epigenetics of trauma or famine or whatever that is, our early on stories, then we've got our precipitating factor. What happened just before something? So even now, I'm like, why now? Why would you like to embark on this journey now? Okay. And then we've got what gets a stuck perpetuating factors. And that's one of them. when we then don't alter our scripts and think, okay, I did have that donut or I'm allowed to

have that donut if I want. And we take the power away and we use the CBT cycle to think, I don't have to tell myself off. I don't have to feel bad and guilty. And I don't have to now deprive myself and discipline myself the next day. What happens? Well, probably the power of the really starts to disappear. I wanted something sweet. I had something sweet. I didn't berate myself. Therefore, I'm calmer.

Therefore, our brain is able to make better choices because when we're calmer, we're able to think, do you know what, that one bite was enough? I don't need the rest of it. It's not I can't have it. I don't need it. And you were talking about this the other day

with our taste buds that sometimes our taste buds have enough. And I love that. It was very, very mindful. It was wonderful to think that one bite actually satisfied that thing we wanted. And we didn't need to carry on and eat the whole ice cream pot or whatever they're called over here. So notice that and then be kind because I want you again to collect the data to think when I didn't tell myself, thought, how did I feel the next day? Probably motivated to think, right, new day, what are my

intentions? How am I going to get myself closer to my goal? How am I going to catch those thoughts that are often all or nothing or I've got to be hard on myself now? We want to be really on the lookout for this. And if it happens, because this is often when we find it most useful to do psychology is when we are in one of those high emotional states, because then we can look at it. We're like, aha, I've caught it. It's telling me, I must not eat tomorrow because I've just gone out for dinner for my birthday. And then you want to say, hold on, and catching that thought. Is that thought healthy? Is that thought an old script? Did it work in the past? What will my body think about this. If I deprive it, what's my body going to do? It's going to panic. It's going to say,

hold on, she's doing that, or he's doing that starvation thing. Buckle in, boys. And so we want to say, this is where Gina says trust the process. We can do, we can restart the day every time. We can, we can get back on to that, that plan that we want. We can refill the water bottle. We can do, we can restart the day. don't have to think, okay, I've got to then use that mean bit. So that might be what your lovely member is asking about. It's a new tone. She's using compassion, curiosity, care, kindness. And that is often then where we're actually able to make even better decisions. So it's about really changing that style. And it takes a while. And this is, I love this because this is what I'm saying to our members, you're rewiring how your body's

come to function physically. You're adjusting your hormones, like you're, you know, giving your body what it needs and no longer feels need to strip out. And you're also rewiring your brain mentally. And that can take time. I saw someone here saying, I feel like all I think about is the food I'm planning every day or maybe getting on the scale every day is causing you to have to deal with these, these thoughts and feelings.

That's the whole point is that this program is designed in a way to help you. truly lose your weight in a way you're going to be able to maintain, which means making change, making change physically, making change mentally. But that takes time. And I just want to say, you don't have to do it all, meaning like you don't have to unpack everything. Like if you don't want to get on the scale every day, don't do that. Just don't do once a week. I use other ways. I love that, right? If you are feeling like you're putting too much effort into the food plane, keep it really simple and recognize it's going to take a few days for you to get into that routine. If you're recognizing you have all these thoughts, you don't have to deal with them all at once.

You can be like, whoa, there's a lot going on here. Similar to this conversation today with Dr. Beverly is about awareness. It's about awareness, right? She talked about the cognitive behavioral therapy model. We'll post that in the group for you. She talked about the capture, canceled, correct. That's going to help change your thought. We talked about all the thoughts and feels that are going to pop up.

You're not going to work through all this in a day or a week. It's going to take a while. I see some of the comments in the, some of the members in the in the comments section talking about, I've done nine programs that I'm still working through some of this. So go easy on yourself, right? And if you find that it's too much, take a step back. Ease off, right? You don't have to do all the things all the time.

Give yourself the time that you. need and do it in a way that works for you. Before we go today, Dr. Beverly, David, is going to be back, and she's going to be help us helping us work through all these things that are going to pop up along the way. Anything to add before we go, Dr. B? I think that's brilliant. The important message is to pause, slow down and start to notice that awareness is very important in every part of our life, but thinking, let's start noticing with kindness,

with curiosity and wouldn't it be so lovely to be able to look forward to food that fuels us instead of dreading it because often people are saying that's all I'm thinking about now is food but probably we're doing that in a different version anyway but now I want you to visualise one day really looking forward to nourishing and nurturing and celebrating your body so that it gets what it wants and needs that would be really lovely a car. around food, a calmness around your health. But yes, brilliant. I will be back, definitely back.

I'm going to, I've opened up my next sleep program, if anybody wants to sign up for that. That's going to start in October. After our sleep session, October the 6th, if I've run for six weeks. And you can submit your receipts for psychological services if you have insurance. And I'm picking a day. It might be a lunch and learn for the. catch it cancel correct it program so then that will be helping people do this to think okay how do we build the tools to well first of all the why why does it happen how do we catch them

how do we gently look at them so that we can then start to rewire our very clever but our very primitive brain just to drop that on us like that i love it please tell me when you are ready to go and we will let everyone know you can follow you that was a big truth bomb i love how you just you went from that massive truth bomb you got to go back and rewind that last like minute of what she said there because there was so much there um then you're just yeah i'll be back wait okay um you can follow dr beverley damon at dr dr beverley uh on instagram and you can reach out to her as well at your psychology center dot ca oh my goodness already looking forward to our next conversation. Dr. Beverly David, everyone, clinical psychologist.

She is a sleep researcher as well. She can be back with us talking about sleep and how when you don't get sleep, how that affects your brain and the choices that you're making. Thanks to everyone who joined us live or watching after the fact. Have a fantastic rest of your day and we'll see you next time. Thanks, Dr. B. You're welcome. So good. Thank you.