The One You Feed - Little Addictions, Big Impact: Transforming Your Habits for a Healthier Life with Catherine Gray

Episode Date: March 3, 2026

In this episode, Catherine Gray discusses her new book about “little addictions” and the big impact of transforming your habits for a healthier life. She explores how everyday compulsions like excessive screen time, snacking, or people pleasing are driven by ancient brain wiring and dopamine. Catherine shares practical strategies for managing these habits, emphasizing environmental changes, self-compassion, and shifting reward systems. The conversation highlights the importance of awareness, reframing language, and building mental strength, offering listeners actionable tools to regain control over their “tiny but mighty” compulsions and make more intentional choices. Take our quick 2-minute survey and help us improve your listening experience: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠oneyoufeed.net/survey⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Exciting News!!! Coming in March, 2026, my new book, ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠How a Little Becomes a Lot: The Art of Small Changes for a More Meaningful Life is now available for pre-orders!⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Key Takeaways: Exploration of “little addictions” and their impact on daily life. Discussion on the neuroscience of addiction, particularly the role of dopamine. Examination of the difference between “little addictions” and clinical addictions. Strategies for managing compulsive behaviors and creating healthier habits. The importance of environmental factors in shaping behavior and habits. Insights on the internal conflict between the impulsive limbic system and the self-regulating prefrontal cortex. The concept of “dopamine shifting” to redirect reward systems toward healthier activities. Personal anecdotes illustrating the challenges and successes in overcoming compulsions. The significance of language in framing choices around habits and self-control. Practical tools and apps to help manage technology and behavioral addictions. For full show notes:⁠⁠ click here!⁠⁠ If you enjoyed this conversation with Catherine Gray, check out these other episodes: Understanding Identity and How Our Past Shapes Who We Become with Catherine Gray Rethinking Addiction and Identity with Catherine Gray By purchasing products and/or services from our sponsors, you are helping to support The One You Feed, and we greatly appreciate it. Thank you! This episode is sponsored by: Hello Fresh – Get 10 free meals + a FREE Zwilling Knife (a $144.99 value) on your third box. Offer valid while supplies last. David Protein bars deliver up to 28g of protein for just 150 calories—without sacrificing taste! For a limited time, our listeners can receive this special deal: buy 4 cartons and get the 5th free when you go to www.davidprotein.com/FEED Shopify – The commerce platform that helps you build, grow, and manage your business all in one place. Start your $1/month trial at shopify.com/feed. Pebl – an AI-powered platform that helps companies hire and manage global teams in 185+ countries. Get a free estimate at hipebl.ai Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Our brains really haven't evolved that much since hunter-gatherer times. And so what's happening is a lot of these things that we find so impossible to put down are pressing on ancient urges. Welcome to the one you feed. Throughout time, great thinkers have recognized the importance of the thoughts we have. Quotes like garbage in, garbage out, or you are what you think, ring true. And yet, for many of us, our thoughts don't strengthen or empower us. We tend toward negativity, self-pity, jealousy, or fear. We see what we don't have instead of what we do.

We think things that hold us back and dampen our spirit. But it's not just about thinking. Our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent, and creative effort to make a life worth living. This podcast is about how other people keep themselves moving in the right direction, how they feed their good wolf. Our guest today is one of my favorite guests of all times. She is one of two people to have appeared on the show now five times.

Her name's Catherine Gray. She's an English writer. She approached me years ago because she loved the podcast and talked about it in her first book, The Unexpected Joy of Being Sober, and we've become friends in the years since. And her new book is really, really timely. It is called,

Little Addictions, freedom from our tiny but mighty compulsions. And she really makes the point that we all have these little addiction. You know, maybe we wouldn't calm addiction, but we know the feeling of, you know, we keep clicking next episode, or we keep checking email again, or we scroll a little bit longer, one more snack. And we talk about how the part of the brain that wants what it wants now needs to be balanced with the part of our brain that can zoom. zoom out and choose the long-term picture. And then we talk about some tools that make that actually more likely to happen. So if you've ever thought, why am I doing this again? This episode is going to be great for you.

I'm Eric Zimmer, and this is the one you feed. Hi, Catherine. Welcome to the show again. Thank you. I'm very grateful to be back for, I think, the fifth time. You and one other person are in the top spot for visits. I love that. As you know, this is my favorite podcast, so I am delighted to be here again.

Well, I'm so happy to have you on. We've talked many times before, and you and I got a chance to meet each other in Cornwall this summer. Ginny and I were planning a trip over there, and you said, I'm going to Cornwall for a vacation. And I said, all right, we'll go there too. It was joyous to meet finally after many years. I think it's been nine years of talking. Yeah. I think so.

And then we finally get to meet in real life. And we had such a beautiful afternoon, didn't we? Eating chips and watching the sunset. We did. It was very, very lovely. And I appreciated the Cornwall reference or invitation because Cornwall was amazing. Yeah, it's stunning there. Yep.

So let's talk about your latest book. Your latest book is called Little Addictions, Freedom from Our Tiny But Mighty compulsions. What led you to doing a book like this, given some of your past work on not drinking and giving up drinking, what brought you to the point where this was what you were really interested in? Well, I don't know whether you will relate, but even though I've cracked my big addictions, clinical addictions, I would say, of alcohol, and then there was cigarettes, and then there was love, so I did a year off dating. Even though I've cracked, those open, I still keep finding, it's almost like a giant Russian stacking doll, I just keep finding

more dolls. So they're ever descending in size these addictions, but they're still there and they're unignorable. And so now I think I'm dealing with, you know, the tiniest of dolls, but they still sort of take me over. And if I use them too much, it really affects. my mental health and I find that also they tend to live in clusters. So if I have a day where I use lots of my little addictions in a way that isn't in my best interests, they all come together all at once. And so I will, you know, start the day too tired because last night I clicked next episode instead of going to bed and then I'll have more caffeine than I should and more sugar than I should. and I'll reach for nicotine and I'll spend too much time on social media.

And then by the end of the day, my mental health is a four, you know, when I want it to be more like an eight. So that's what I'm grappling with right now. Nobody's worried about me now. I don't have any big clinical addictions. But I know. I know that I could be doing better when it comes to regulating my use of these things. but I had no idea how to moderate. Because I don't want to quit any of these things, apart from nicotine, but that's a side story.

But yeah, I want to use them in a balanced way. So I went out into the world and asked two dozen experts, how do I do this? You know, how do I downregulate my use of this thing to the actual amount I intend to use, you know, rather than finding that my actual usage outstrips that consistently. So that was the mission behind this book. And so words are important. You're a writer and obviously you care a lot about words. Using the word addiction for these smaller things is a feeling I have mixed feelings about.

Yeah. What led you to want to use that word? I mean, I get it. And I can understand why people who've really grappled with a clinical addiction would have mixed feelings about that. And one of the things that I've done in the book to sort of, proof against that is there's a big table at the start where I consulted a psychiatrist and a neuroscientist about what is the difference between a little addiction, what I'm calling, and a big addiction so that nobody is going into this book with a big addiction thinking, I'm going to

moderate down my big addiction to alcohol using this book. You know, it's made really clear right from the get-go. Little addiction is just a colloquial term that I have made up, you know, and if you do have anything larger than a little compulsion, then abstinence is probably the best option and here are the resources you should go to. So, I mean, if little addiction doesn't do it for you, you can think of it as like tiny habits but they're just destructive habits. You know, they're not healthy ones. But I understand your consternation, you know, it is a big word to be using. But for me also, I think it's important that we see addiction as a spectrum because that's how I do see it. And I think if you find that tipping point where your actual use of a thing is starting to tip beyond what you want it to be, that is when an addiction is just the seed.

You know, it's an addiction in its infancy. And I think it's really important that we're all aware of that liminal space. where, you know, we're starting to make decisions that aren't in our best interests. So for that reason, I think it's defensible just. One of the things that I see happen a lot and I kind of, in general, wrestle with is this idea of we tend to over-pathologize normal human behavior sometimes these days, right? Everything gets a diagnosis, which can be very helpful. And again, I think the key here is what words work and help.

Because on the other hand, arguing on the other side, on your side, addiction to me is all about loss of control. That's what it is. It's not about consequences. It's about am I in charge of whether I do this thing or not. Do I feel like I'm calling the shots on this? And so in that way, right, many of these little things, you know, we aren't calling the shots on. And I like that what your book does a nice job of is, I think it threads the needle well between, you got to treat this like it's some really big deal. And look, here's some simple things you can do that's going to make it a little bit easier to do this.

Because I think we all want to cope. We all have coping mechanisms of different sorts. And some are healthier than others. And I don't think that's going to go away or a bad thing. But the book really gives us tools for thinking about it and taking the actions we want to to change it. It's interesting. And then I'm going to stop a monologue because this is your interview. But I interviewed a guy from the UK named Pete Etchols.

Are you familiar with Pete? No. He wrote a book about screen time. And he was sort of pushing back on the Jonathan Hate and that group who are like screens have ruined an entire generation of children. and saying like the science isn't all the way in on that. And he said something though that I thought was interesting. He said the way we talk about our phones is we talk about them as if they are super addictive. And he said that's what our experience is.

But to what degree is that experience colored by the fact that we think that they're addictive or bad? Which I just thought was an interesting counterpoint. Yeah, that is really interesting. And there's a study that echoes that actually, which I'm sure he's probably cited, where if people think of their social media use as an addiction, they are more likely to use it in an addictive way, which I don't want to go too far down that path because it might ruin my premise for the book. I do think there is a nuance, though. That is this. Most people out there are grappling with some sort of thing, whether it's poor.

or coffee or gaming or a gambling app on the phone or buying turtlenecks, you know, that they do a little too much of. And I think that everyone I know has some sort of little addiction. And they're not always fully aware of it. And I think it's so important to realize that it is. And my psychiatrist called it an essentially human impulse to us. overused things. She was like biscuits on the table over there and I know I intend to have three or whatever and I will return to them again and again throughout the day. And so all of us do this to some degree with something. So it's recognizing that it is a universal human experience and not a sign of weakness or failing. Yeah. So that's how I approached it anyway. And I think what you just said

gets to the heart of of that thing for me, which is it is a universal human experience. And we want to be very conscious about what we choose to do with our time and our attention and our bodies. Right. I think that's an important thing. One of the things you say early in the book that I like, you say, we've lost control ever so slightly. Thing uses person rather than person using thing. Yeah. And I mean, this is this is what I've found. Once I start, I started digging into my little addictions. You know, I know what is best for me. I know that.

I'm 12 years in recovery and I have all these tools. And yet I consistently find that my screen time tips over the amount I want it to be. You know, two hours is the golden amount for me. And I consistently go over that. Not anymore thanks to the things I've learned. But it's, you know, TV. I know that an hour is. just right, that's the sweet spot. But then I find myself clicking next episode. You know,

it's just knowing how to keep ourselves in check and put our long-term self in the driving seat rather than succumbing to what our short-town self wants. So that's what I was really interested in pinning to the page with this book. Like, how do we do that? What are the tactics? What is proven? What do the studies say? Once I started unfolding, it, I just couldn't believe how much I found that we can actually use. So it's, it really has changed my life and, you know, transformed my mental health, just writing and researching this book. And there's only one that I'm still, you know, nicotine turns out it's not a little addiction for me. It's more like medium or large. You know, while I was writing the book, it really

digged its claws in and I started finding that I felt like I needed it to focus and to drive and all sorts of things. So for me, you know, obviously abstinence is going to be my option. So I'm on the runway to quitting that. And I think it's important that all of us have that accountability of knowing, okay, how big is this thing for me? Where do I need to go with it? Do I need to stop looking at porn altogether? Do I need to, you know, put myself on gamestop, which is this thing in the UK, which blocks you from most gambling sites? What do I need to do? And it's just having that personal accountability and actioning it. I will tell you a little addiction story of my own.

Even saying this out loud makes me feel ridiculous. But solitaire can become a problem for me. You've mentioned that a few times. Yeah. No, I know. I know. I know. Yeah.

I mean, it's never like a huge deal. But like if I'm not conscious and I'm not taking steps to do it, I could lose 45 minutes to an hour a day doing it. which the reason that I have a real problem with it is not that 45 minutes to an hour of enjoying myself a day is wrong. That's not it at all. I actually think that's great. It's just that I don't particularly enjoy it that much. And it adds absolutely no value. Like, Ginny, like, I watch TV shows with Ginny a lot of evenings. And that adds value. I like the show. I think it's, I think they're art. I'm sitting close with Ginny. We're spending time together. Like, that has value. Solitaire

has really none. And so what I generally have done in the past is I just set up a little blocker where I'm like, okay, start my workday, set up the blocker. It blocks the one solitaire site I go to. And that's usually enough because, I mean, I know there's a thousand solitaire sites. But what I need is just reminded for a second. Don't do that. Yeah. And do you know what that does?

That activates your prefrontal cortex, which is what the neuroscientist told me in the book, just that tiny delay, just installing that friction, installing that. means that it can come online. And that's all about the bigger picture and long term. You know, it's like, do I actually want to spend 45 minutes in Solitaire? No. Getting enough protein every day is really important to me and it's harder than it sounds. I'm pretty confident I'll get it at breakfast, lunch and dinner. But that afternoon gap is where things fall apart.

I need one more good amount of protein as a snack. And that's almost always a David protein bar. And when I'm traveling, like right now in Atlanta, recording my audiobook, and I don't know what I'll be eating, I always pack a stash of David bars. David now has two bars, gold and bronze, and they're genuinely different. Gold is the hero line. 28 grams of protein, 150 calories, zero grams of sugar. That's 75% calories from protein, which is the best out there.

Bronze is newer and a little more decadent. 20 grams of protein, 150 calories, zero sugar. And they are both the best tasting protein bars out there. Don't just take my word for it. Try it for yourself. David is offering our listeners a special deal. Buy four cartons and get the fifth free when you go to Davidprotein.com slash feed. That's Davidprotein.com slash feed.

And if you prefer to shop in person, David is available at leading retailers nationwide, including Target, Walmart, Kroger, Wegmans, and the vitamin store. Just check out their store locator to find a location near you. When I went to England and I saw you, I realized something. And what I realized was when I am not sitting in front of my work computer, I never think of playing solitaire. Huh. It just doesn't come up. Yeah.

But the minute I sit down in front of this thing, it's right there. Yeah. And so in my case, I was like, okay, this just feels like habit energy. It just feels like context. Like I get into a certain context and this behavior emerges. And I was like, you know what? I'm going to try and starve this one out. I've been doing sort of the moderate, like just block it, play a little bit here and there.

And I was like, okay, I'm going to try and starve this one out. And I have not played solitaire since I was in England. And it's interesting. I can sit down and feel something inside of me. And so I'll go ahead and re-block it. I don't generally block it now. I don't need to. But some days I'm like,

I feel it, you know, like I'm working on something hard and I don't, I didn't sleep great last night. Kind of your point. Like, these things group up. So I don't feel good. I didn't sleep well. I'm not thinking clearly. I'm sitting here in front of the computer and I'm finding myself like wanting to sort of escape. And so then I'll re-block it.

And I think this speaks to something you're talking a lot about. And I'd love you to expand upon, which is this idea of this pull between these different parts of our brain. Yeah, absolutely. and something which is really interesting about what you just said. Right, so for a start, I've worked this out because we're around the same age, right? And I figured this out through some maths that was far too complicated for me, but I managed it. So I figured out that if I spend 54 minutes a day doing something, so that's around the time you were spending totalitaire, that's two years of my waking life left out. of my, you know, 35 theoretical years if I die right on the average age of death.

And that really brings it home. You know, do you want to spend two years of your waking, remaining life playing solitaire? Now, like you just said with TV, I do want to do that with TV, but I am capping it at 54 minutes a day because of that. You know, I can swallow two years. I can't swallow four. I'm not up for that. I'm not up for spending four years. So two hours a day, way too much for me.

54 minutes is just right. The thing you've just talked about with when you sit down in that situation, that specific situation where you play the solitaire and you feel the pull. So something that I discovered talking to neuroscientists and professors and all sorts is that dopamine, which is what creates that craving, it learns. And what happens is that it has a back propagation of cues. So say, for instance, with the solitaire thing, it's only you sitting down. That's the cue at your computer.

But with my alcohol addiction, that daisy chain went all the way back. So it might have been, you know, when I was 19 or whatever, you know, walking past a pub, would have been the cue to trigger the dopamine, to trigger the wanting. But that went all the way back to, you know, any glass, any cash point, because I would have gone to the cash point before nights out, anything to do with, you know, my alcohol use. And the same happens with any sort of clinical addiction to the point where, you know, say, for instance, somebody who is addicted to smoking crack and they do it out of a broken light bulb. You know, light bulbs are a massive trigger for their dopamine, you know, to be cascading and the craving to ensue. And so it's really interesting how Q hiding can help and changing that up, you know, changing it up. So, say, for instance, if you frequently game on your phone and you're hooked on Candy Crush, you know, simply deleting that from your phone, it sounds so ridiculously simple, but it works because that's the same.

situation that you do it in. And like you said, there are different parts of our brain that are pulling in different directions. And that's why we feel this constant push pull. It's like a tug of war because what is driving the addictive behavior is the limbic system, which is basically, I want what I want and I want it now. It's very emotional. And then there's the prefrontal cortex, which is really helped by delay and really comes online if we do things. And we do things. And things like read instead of watch and all sorts of things that we can do practically meditate, exercise, you know, all of that strengthens our prefrontal cortex. And it's about putting that in the driving seat and, yeah, reangling our reward system towards healthy pursuits,

which is sources of slow dopamine. Yeah, I found out so much about dopamine while researching this book. I had no idea how central it is to addiction and how it really is. is the lifeblood of all addiction. But it's also the source of, you know, any motivation. It's the source of everything that we do that's good as well. You know, it's why we get up and see people and work and strive. Right. Yeah, we need it for sure. Let's talk about some of the challenges that are unique to where we find ourselves today.

And you share in the book that we're in a space where the speed of time. technological advancements outstrips generational hand-me-down wisdom. We have no playbook of structure of coping strategies to draw upon, which brings us to how we now live, each holding the clutch of little addictions. Yeah, I mean, I think we are now living in the age of peak addictiveness. Our parents did not have to deal with this. You know, they did not have limitless TV shows on the sets to watch, you know, they just had four channels. And they didn't have the bottomless scroll of porn and if they wanted to gamble they had to go down to the bookies or to the casino whereas now everyone has apps on their phone it's just everything is here you know it's

same hour delivery it's ever more we can afford it and it's there and there's aisles in the supermarket of ultra processed food that is just designed to be as moorish as possible so we really haven't been in this situation ever before. And what is really interesting is I spoke with a couple of experts who described it as what's called an evolutionary mismatch in that our brains really haven't evolved that much since hunter-gatherer times. And so what's happening is a lot of these things that we find so impossible to put down are pressing on ancient urges. Like for instance, one of my neuroscientist said we metaphorically still have a honey axe in our hands, which is, you know, if we were strolling through the forest, you know, back in hunter-gatherer times, we would have

cracked open a beehive and eaten as much honey as we could. You know, that made sense. That was a survival method, gorge on the high-calorie, high-sugar food. And our brains are still designed to have the urge to do that. So there's a real problem. You know, we still have, these brains that have these impulses. And we're living in a world where algorithms are designed to be as hooky as possible, you know, exits are hidden, friction is reduced. You know, it's just, it's a nightmare. So we need all the tools that we can get. Yeah, I'm always very struck by how resistant a lot of people are that I've talked to and done work with to using technological tools to fight technology addiction.

That's a really good point. There's this belief like we should be able to do it. Yeah. I'll occasionally come across this. This is going back a while, but there was a drug called antibuse that would make you violently sick if you drank. And I would find people saying like,

well, I shouldn't need to use that. And I'm like, well, okay. And exactly. And you clearly continue to drink. So I would suggest it. I find a similar thing like, well, I shouldn't have to set up, you know, all these weird rules and blockers. And I'm just fully in the, like, in the way I felt about, like, heroin. Like, I'm in over my head with this thing.

Like, I'll take help wherever I can get it. And that is the one thing from doing my book that I would say, if you got all the behavioral scientists in the world together and force them to agree on one thing, they would, a, have a very difficult time doing so. But they would all probably agree that the more that you can do to make it easier on yourself to do the thing you want to do or not or harder to do the thing you don't want to do, the better. Like we all have to rely on some degree of, I don't know, whatever term you want to call it, self-control, discipline, something. There's some there's some thing that comes on that we need to pull us through. But we want to use that as little as possible. I mean, I completely agree. And I think it's the sheer willpower method.

That's how people approach things. They think I should be able to do this. And so they enter things like dry January in the UK and just don't have any tools. They expect themselves to be able to live in a house that's still heaving with alcohol and not drink it. And most people don't make it, you know? And they expect to be able to go to the park. and not drink. They're just like, I should be able to do this.

So I'm going to grit my teeth and white knuckle my way through it. And it just invariably does not work. So like you say, I mean, I always say to people, make it as easy for yourself as possible. Yep. To do the thing that you want to do. And, you know, install obstacles and create friction. That is absolutely the way to do it. And like you say, there's so many apps and devices out there that can help us.

There's one called brick. I don't know whether you have it in the States, but it's this thing separate to your phone where you can tap it and disable whatever apps you choose for a number of hours. So say, for instance, if you don't want to go on social media for the rest of the day, you can disable everything for the rest of the day. And then you retap it to reactivate them. What a brilliant idea. Right.

And they're adopting it like nobody's business. I think they're the ones that are really spending the most time on their phones, but they're also the ones most willing to pick up these tools. And there's another one called OneSec, which makes you take three deep breaths, which is allowing your prefrontal cortex to come online before you open apps that you have designated as your stickiest apps, whether it's vinted or right move or, you know, a roulette app, you know. I don't know what any of those are that you just described. Now I suddenly feel very, very out of the cool apps.

Well, I did talk to a lot of millennials and genie. Okay. All right. All right. All right. To get the tip. At Desjardin, our business is helping yours. We are here to support your business through every stage of growth, from your first pitch to your first acquisition.

Whether it's improving cash flow or exploring investment banking solutions, with Desjardin business, it's all under one roof. So join the more than 400,000 Canadian entrepreneurs who already count on us and contact Desjardin Today, we'd love to talk. Business. Hey friend, before we dive back in, I want you to take a second and think about what you've been listening to. What's one thing that really landed? And what's one tiny action you could take today to live it out?

Those little moments of reflection, that's exactly why I started Good Wolf Reminders, short, free text messages that land in your phone once or twice a week. Nearly 5,000 people already get them and say the quick bursts of insight help them shift out of autopilot and stay intentional in their lives. If that sounds like your kind of thing, head to one you feed.net slash SMS and sign up. It's free, no spam, and easy to opt out of any time. Again, that's one you feed. dot net slash SMS. Tiny nudges, real change.

All right, back to the show. I use something called ClearSpace on my phone, which does a similar thing. It just doesn't stop me. It just makes me take three deep breaths and say I want to do it, which again, very often is enough. My thing is I check email on my phone way more than could possibly be necessary when I'm like when I'm really lost in it. And so ClearSpace just sort of stops me because I'm like, all right, you know, I'm going to click that thing. I'm going to have to wait three seconds. I'm going to have to take a deep breath.

And oh, yeah, actually, I don't need to check it because I just did four minutes ago. Yeah. Right? But that's all happening on an autopilot method. I want to talk more about this pulling of the two parts of the brain, which in essence, I think you're saying comes down to a little bit of a battle between what we may call our limbic system, our emotional systems, and our prefrontal cortex, which is where all our executive function lives.

It's the part of our brain that can say, here's what I think is most important to me, here's what I think is good to me. Here are the plans that I want to follow. And it's a battle between, you know, to a certain degree, between those two. But what I found fascinating is I think you're quoting Anna Lemke from the book Dopamine Nation that we get prefrontal cortical atrophy as our reward pathway has become the dominant driver of our lives. Yeah. And I mean, this is what happens when we have a clinical addiction as well. Our prefrontal cortex literally, it loses synaptic density. In other words, it shrinks.

And what happens when people enter recovery and begin a path of abstinence is that it regains that lost volume. And there's even been one study, Dr. Mark Lewis commented on, that shows that it goes beyond the level of those people who were never clinically addicted to anything in the first place because you're having to do all that resisting. So your prefrontal cortex gets really strong. And it's just so interesting to me. I've found out nine practical ways that we can activate and strengthen our prefrontal cortex.

And LMK and I, we exchanged some emails about this as well. One of the ways that she suggested is telling the truth about everything, you know, big or small. And I couldn't agree with that more because it's something that's central to my recovery. my partner calls it my weird honesty thing. He suggested he was like, you should write about that for the book. That's definitely one of your little addictions. Because sometimes he's like, can't we just lie? Can't we just say that, you know, me is ill or whatever, so we can't go to the party?

And I'm like, no, you know, we have to be honest. But I told so many lies when I was in active addiction that that is just something. That's a pillar. And I'm not willing to compromise on that. So how does that help us make our prefrontal cortex more synaptically dense? I'm not actually sure, but I guess it probably comes down to discomfort because almost everything that activates the prefrontal cortex isn't something that's easily won. It's something that involves some sort of mental grit or, you know, pushing through a bit of a

wall. So, you know, the things that activate are exercise, meditation, you know, meditation. you know, meditation is really hard. I've started doing it on a daily basis and it is hard. And, you know, reading books rather than watching things the whole, even if you read the news rather than watched it, that helps you gain some distance from it. So I always do that now with the news rather than watch clips of atrocities.

I'll read about it because it just enables me to sort of maintain that emotional knowledge but also not getting really, really wrapped up in it. And, you know, telling the truth, this time, I can't remember all of them now, but you know, there's lots of ways that we can consciously activate it and almost all of them to do with delayed gratification. And, you know, cold water therapy, for instance, that's hard. You know, getting into an icy plunge is hard, but it really helps your prefrontal cortex. So it's so interesting finding the ways that we can do this consciously and almost all of them aren't fun to begin with. Right, right. Yeah, you've got a couple others on here. You talk about exercise, talk about big picture judgments. Talk to me

about that. Yeah. Yeah. So because the prefrontal cortex, it really zooms. out and sees the whole picture. So, so for instance, the experts that I spoke with, he said that the reason people in recovery, you know, they strengthen their prefrontal cortex is because he said to me, okay, so you liked getting high and you like being sober, but what do you like better? And that's what the prefrontal cortex decides. Now, I didn't like getting high. I liked getting drunk, but, you know, whatever. It's the same principle. And where it really comes online is, I want to watch TV right now, but I have a deadline

tomorrow. It's the decisions that really have a bigger picture in mind, you know, the in five years time I want to, or in a year's time I want to. So one of the ways that you can use this is I don't make vision boards because I can't be asked to collage. And I don't want to, you know, get scissors out and cut out pictures of whatever. But I do every January, I write a letter to the universe or, you know, whatever you want to call it and outline what I want to achieve this year. And that's a big picture judgment. That is me, you know, looking at the whole year and thinking, what do I want to do?

You know, it's not the here and now. It's not instant I want to watch Tehran. You know, I want to watch this new show on Apple TV. It really is thinking about your long-term self. And the more that you can do that, the better off you are. And the stronger your prefrontal cortex will become. It's kind of like weightlifting. You know, it just gets stronger and stronger.

And then it will be able to overcome whatever your, you know, you know, limbic system and striatum are telling it to do. So one of the neuroscientists I spoke with Dr. Alex Corb, he described, he said the prefrontal cortex is like the adult in the room. And I've extrapolated on this and made it, you know, the most responsible adult you know, the one who owns packing tubes and uses them, had three types of pension, you know, the one you invite to the pub quiz because they know about foreign policy. Whereas the striatum and the limbic system which really power all addiction and short-term decisions are like a dog and a teenager. And if you leave your striatum and limbic system to their own devices, they will run your life.

So you really need the adult to come into the picture and, you know, take control. That's what the prefrontal cortex does. So it's absolutely key to any sort of addiction, recovery or management. Yeah. Yeah, the term I use for myself is I think about like, I call it my wiser, truer self. Like, what's the better version of me want? But a question, and I was just writing about this because it's, I've got a section in the book on it, that I find encapsulates this really well for me is, what do I want most versus what do I want right now? Yeah. Right. Because oftentimes we end up in this thing of like, I want this thing, this moment, I want that. thing, but then there's that, you know, I do have a deadline. Instead of realizing like, oh, I really do want to turn my book in on time, that's really important to me. Right now I'm sort of giving that prefrontal cortex a little bit of emotional energy to use also because I'm recalling like,

oh, that is, that is important to me. I do want that. And I think that's what a lot of these battles come down to is they just come down to that basic, yeah, what is it that I want now versus what do I want most? Yeah. And not everything is that way. Sometimes we get into values, you know, conflicts between our values and that's a whole another avenue of challenge. But when we're talking about these little addictive things, I couldn't agree with you more,

that basic idea of just getting enough resources to the parts of our brain that are capable of making better decisions. Yeah. And it's tough. It's harder to do that. So one of the things that I'm doing right now is I've just set up a pension. Do you use the terms pension in the States? You know, it's retirement savings.

Yeah, we would call it a retirement or a 401k or an IRA. But yeah, similar thing. Yeah, yeah. Well, I'm only just doing that age 45, which is absolutely too late. And so I'm trying to do battle with, I love eating out. I love going to my gym and buying it. an overpriced salad and smoothie. And I worked out that I'm spending, you know,

60 pounds a week on these overpriced salads and smoothie. I don't necessarily really enjoy. So what I'm now doing is, you know, trying to prepare, eat beforehand something tasty at home that's nicer and putting that away for my pension. And it is the harder choice and it takes more planning and prep. But I know that feeling.

future me, which by the way, one of the tips in the book, which I found really interesting, is that there was this study and it showed that if you see an age-progressed picture of yourself, then you will double the amount you put away for retirement savings, which I found so interesting. So I used this app while I was researching the book to look at a picture of myself when I'm 70, and now I have it on my phone. And I always think about my 70-year-old me. And, you know, she's going to want to go on holiday.

She's going to want to eat out. Yep, yep. So putting that money away for her is hard, but it's important. So I'd like at some point to get into some of the specifics, because you name a bunch of common tiny addictions in this book. Gaming and gambling, people-pleasing, shopping, television. There's more than that. I'd like to get into some of those specifically, but the book kind of does two things.

One is it sets up, all right, here's the problem across all of these. Here are some tools that you can use that are helpful across all of these. And then here are some specifics related to this particular tiny addiction. Are there any big picture tools that we haven't really hit yet that you think are important? Yeah, I mean, so something that I write about in the book is that dopamine, detox and dopamine fasting is really overused at the minute. And it started off as something that I think was well-meaning, but now it's become very misrepresented.

Everyone thinks that dopamine is a pleasure chemical and that we like our phone because we get quick hits of dopamine while we're scrolling through it. And that just isn't what dopamine is. So dopamine like we've covered is about wanting, not liking. But it also gets us to do everything good in life. So, you know, create a beautiful family Christmas or write a book. You know, the irony is that you would never do a dopamine fast without dopamine. So there's a whole chapter in the book, which is about dopamine shifting, which I think is a much more accurate term.

and reangling our reward system towards these slower sources of dopamine which don't drag us into a deficit afterwards and there's a bunch of them they're very similar to the ways that we activate the prefrontal cortex in that they're to do with delayed gratification so it's you know things like gardening or painting or writing you know with your hand

or reading you know anything that isn't instant that is slightly harder one. And that's a huge way that we can do battle against the sources of fast-released dopamine that is basically every little addiction listed in the book. So, yeah, that's an overarching thing that I wanted to mention. And that is hard. I mean, all of these things are difficult because my experience is that what we try to substitute for the behavior that, Let's say our thing is playing games on our phone. We're like, okay, I don't want to play games on my phone.

Instead, I'm going to do a puzzle, an old-fashioned puzzle on the table, right? That's slower dopamine. The problem is that in the beginning, an old-fashioned puzzle isn't as stimulating. And this is the core problem of anybody who's gotten over a big addiction knows is you're like, well, okay, yeah, I'm doing these other things, but they're a far cry from getting high. And we've got to be able to stick with it long enough for our brains to change, for us to have more synapses in the prefrontal cortex, for our neurochemicals to shift. How do you think about bridging that gap? You know, how do you think about staying with something when our initial reaction is, well, this is not giving me what I need?

Yeah, I think that's, it's a really interesting question. And I don't think the gap has to be that large. So I know my partner won't mind me talking about this, but my partner used to have a real gaming addiction with apps on his phone. And there were very simple games, things like balloon popping, you know, or, you know. Solitaire. Yeah, exactly, exactly. And so what he's now done is, and this has come from experts in the book as well, which he read and was inspired by, is he's deleted all the games from his phone. and he's still games,

but he does so on, you know, a big desktop with, you know, proper kit where, you know, it's a proper console. So making that shift

means that he has to go to a physical place. The game isn't always in his pocket. And now he's playing games with more of a narrative arc, you know, like the EverQuests and the, I think he plays God of War or something like that. So it doesn't have to be,

so radical a shift, you know, something as simple as that, you know, moving away from the app games that are, my expert described them. So, Professor Natasha Scholl, she was like, they're repetitive ludic loops, these games like Candy Crush and, you know, they're just, they're not doing anything. There's no story. There's no quest. You're not taking a team and going off and doing something cool. And it was really interesting to me because a lot of my experts were gamers. In fact, most of them were. It reframed how I think about gaming, but only when it's done in a physical place, they all did it in the same way at a console and played these games with the narrative arc, which I found really interesting. So you can still get the fun. That's the

thing. It's not about never gaming again. It's just about doing it in a more deliberate way, in a way that's more in line with your intentions. Okay, so we've got dopamine shifting, any other broad tools that we should be thinking of before we get into some of the smaller specific tools. Trying to think. Well, I think it's about being aware. So many people don't realize that addiction is just learning.

And some of my experts would describe it as disordered learning or maladaptive learning. Others didn't use any negatives to, preface it whatsoever. They just said it's a terrific example of how the brain has a hyper ability to learn. But it's about repetition, learning in a repetitive way, which then becomes a habit, which then becomes an addiction. So what we do in a row really matters. And oftentimes it's just a matter of pushing through that discomfort of doing something different in a row. And then it starts to bed in. You're learning a new way of doing it, you see? So for instance, with TV,

I still love TV. I'm always going to watch TV. It's one of my joys, but I've timeboxed it within 9 to 10pm and that's now become habitual so that it feels strange if I turn the TV on before that or watch it beyond that. And so I've learned a new way of watching TV. And I think all of us, If we're given a chance and we don't rely on sheer willpower like we were talking about earlier and we make it as easy for us as else as possible, we can learn new ways of using all of these things. And that's certainly what I've done while I've written the book. So, yeah.

Excellent. So let's talk about, I don't know, pick one. Do you call them the sticky eight? Am I remembering that right? Yeah. So the sticky eight are alcohol, nicotine and cannabis. gaming, gambling and porn, our phones and ultra-processed food. And then we've also got seven more.

So three of them are more behavioural. And people don't realise how addicted these behaviours are, but they are procrastinating, judgment and gossip and people-pleasing. And then we've got caffeine, shopping, let me see if I can remember them all, and dating, flirting, and sex. I think I've hit them all. So, yeah, I mean, choose your poison. What do you want to talk about?

Well, I don't want to talk about caffeine. No. Well, I guess I should say I don't want to talk about caffeine because I certainly am physically addicted to it. I am certain. And I don't do more than what I set out to do on any given day generally. I'm not downing the 3 p.m. espresso that I regret later, but it is a temptation. Let's see.

We did gaming. Let's do people pleasing. Okay. Let's do people pleasing. That's an interesting one. Not that I have any challenges with that. So people pleasing is a really interesting one. So my psychotherapist that I spoke with very quickly corrected me and said it's actually

fawning. and it's the fourth unknown sibling, largely, of the survival mode family, which is fight, flight, freeze, fawn. And obviously, you'll know about it because you'll have interviewed people about it. But one of the reasons it's so hard to turn off and we experience true withdrawal, like physical discomfort when we start trying to stop fawning, is because it would have ensured our survival back in the day. You know, even a hundred years ago, if you were ostracized by your family, for instance, you didn't stand great chances of survival. So it is such an inbuilt urge to please our families in particular, which is why people pleasing is so acute there. But also our wider community. And that's one of the reasons why social media is so insidious because our wider communities have become our followers, you know?

We want them to like what we're doing. And that's why when we post, we check, check, check to see if people like us, like what we've posted. And it's being aware that it is going to be uncomfortable. And I've certainly experienced it in my whole body when I started saying no to things and pushing through that because that's the only way that we can change it. But the discomfort is real and it's normal. and it will go away eventually once you teach your amygdala that it's okay. One of my experts said the amygdala has to be open for you to change it. So the only way through is through.

Ah, I love that. That's really good. That's really good. That you can only work through that fear when you feel it is what you're saying. Yeah. He describes it like a clamshell. You know, it has to be open and activated. You have to be, you know, in the situation where somebody wants you to laugh at a joke that you find really problematic and say, actually, I, you know, don't think that's funny.

And that's the only way you can teach your physiology and psychology that it's okay not to do the thing. Well, that adds another brick to the wall of why avoidance is so destructive. Right? I mean, because avoidance is just every time you avoid something, you subtly send signals to yourself that it is something to be feared and you should avoid it. And then you feel bad about yourself for avoiding it. But what you're also saying is that you don't have the chance to realize that what you're scared of isn't that scary unless you actually face it and feel the fear. Yeah, and do it anyway. And I mean, I would definitely recommend if people are trying to stop people losing awful.

morning that they start with baby steps and, you know, start with a WhatsApp, you know, or saying no over email before you tackle the bigger, the thornyer topic of saying no in person. But once you start, it can be a little bit, I found that it was almost a little bit addictive, the batting back and the saying no, and I took it a little bit too far. And I had to walk it back and start saying yes again. So, yeah, the people displeasing can be addictive too. Yeah. Well, I don't know timing of episodes.

So listeners, I don't know when you'll be hearing this in relation to something else. But a woman wrote a book about fawning called Ingrid Clayton, I believe. And Chris is editing that episode right now. Fascinating. Can't wait to hear that. Yeah. All right. I think you had ultra-processed food, right?

Give us a couple tips there. Okay. So with ultra-processed food, it's, again, about being aware that there's this bliss point installed. I mean, that's everyone knows about the bliss point now. It's that exact confection of, you know, fat sugar salt that means that the minute we finished the last morsel, we want more. I found, so I've now shifted my diet away so that it's 80% non-ultra-processed. And some of the changes were really actually quite simple. Like you can find ice cream that isn't ultra processed.

You can, you know, most bread is ultra processed, which surprised me. But if you buy bread from the bakery, even if it's in store, like in the supermarket, that's generally okay. Or it's the organic baked beans rather than, you know, the non-organic. So the changes that you can make are pretty simple. But one of the most surprising things I found out, one of the books I read when I was researching this chapter was by, Dr. Kessler and it's called Food or Fiction, the truth about the ultra-processed foods making America sick. And I had no idea.

So I knew about the gut brain connection, but there is actually a reward system in the gut. So I found that really interesting. And that's one of the reasons we find some of these foods so compelling because they hit that reward system. So many of the tips that might actually, experts gave me were just about friction, you know, making sure that you don't keep these foods within reach. It's obvious, but it's true. And if you do want to keep them, then something that you

can employ is called unit bias. So we see whatever serving of a food as one unit, whether it's a big gulp or a tiny little, you know, kids can. So something that I've started doing, if I want to have M&Ms or whatever, you know, I'll put it in a tiny little bowl. The tiniest bowl I have, you know, I have a family pack of crisps in the cupboard, but I'll decant them into my smallest bowl. And I see that as one unit, and that's really helped. And I also put ice cream, which I love into a cone. And that's meant that, you know, I used to eat a quarter of a tub. Now I eat a sixth of a tub. And also, identity change can be really compelling. So saying I'm not the kind of person who eats ice cream every night.

Say, for instance, once I started telling myself that it became a source of pride that I don't eat ice cream every night, rather than, I can't eat ice cream every night. It's so bad for me, I've got to stop that, you know. That small side step in meaning and language is just so much more appealing to our brains. But yeah, I mean, there's a ton of tips in the book, but I can't remember them all. the way that I approach food now is completely different. As we wrap up, take one thing from today and ask yourself, how will I practice this before the end of the day?

For another gentle nudge, join Goodwolf Reminders' text list. It's a short message or two each week, packed with guest wisdom and a soft push towards action. Nearly 5,000 listeners are already loving it. Sign up free at one you feed.net slash SMS. No noise. spam, just steady encouragement to feed your good wolf. Yeah, it's become so challenging in how easy everything has become. Like I remember there was a point where I could say to people like just, yeah, don't have junk food in your house. But now, you know, you can have nearly anything delivered

to you in like 20 minutes. DoorDash will bring the worst of it right to your door. It's, it's become harder to engineer yourself out of some of those things. I do find food a fascinating one in how the palate really does adjust over time. I guess it's similar to what we've said with other things. In the beginning, my experience is a lot of these things are really, really hard, and then they slowly become much easier. When I'm not eating like a lot of processed sugar at all, I find it very easy not to eat it. Yeah. It's just not really an issue. But once I start, you know, once I start the sugar monster, wakes up and is ready to go. And a lot of times for me, it's just getting through those first

couple of days again. Okay, wait, just stop. Like, I'll go on vacation. When I go on vacation, I'm like, I'm going to eat what I feel like eating. And then I come back and I'm like, the sugar monster is still hyper aware. And everywhere I go, oh, look at that, look at that. But after a few days, he just sort of goes back to sleep a little bit and isn't, you know, checking out every candy aisle everywhere I go. Yeah, and it's just about finding substitutes that make you feel good. So I truly used to eat ice cream every night. And now I've discovered that pear and yogurt really hits it for me.

It just feels, it feels decadent. And once I've had that, I'm not craving ice cream anymore. You know, it is these simple shifts. And it just, it feels almost ridiculously elemental. but it does work. Well, it is trying to make this sort of change as we're talking about. I think of it in two broad categories. The first I would call like structural. And it's all these sort of tips that you're giving around make it as easy as possible. Don't have it in the house. Set up your environment to make it easier or harder to do it. Be specific about what you're going to do. Think through your cues.

Try and think through the habit loop that you're in. It's all this structural stuff. And that solves a lot, a lot of problems. Yeah, it's about creating new normals. So one of experts in the book, Dr. Kessler, he, as soon as he sits down in a restaurant now, he says, please don't bring the bread, because they automatically bring the bread. And that's just become a habit for him. And so he's not going to eat the bread, you know? So it's, yeah, it really is just about installing new ways of doing things.

And actually I spoke with one expert called Sheru Azadi and she's a behavioral change expert. And I said, look, I've got a real problem with biscuits. I just love biscuits. I could eat 10. You know, I want to eat three, but I eat 10. And she really turned it on its head and she said, is there ever a time when biscuits aren't a problem? And I was like, yeah. I mean, of course all the time.

And she said, okay, so you're not powerless over biscuits. You know, I want you to go away and reclaim that untapped power over biscuits. So I did. I kept biscuits in my house for the following week and did eat them in a moderate way. But what I discovered was I don't want them in my house. I actually don't want to have to even think about it, you know. I want to eat the odd cookie when I'm out. And that's it.

I don't actually want to entertain them and host them. So, you know, I think a lot of the time we, we have more power than we realize and it is about reclaiming that. Yeah. The thing with the biscuits is you are having to exercise self-control when they're there. And that's sort of like, you know, the first point being we get everything structurally as best we can. Then we do need to rely on some self-control and learning how to work with ourself in that moment. Some of the things you talk about, about how we shift back to our prefrontal cortex, it's kind of having both those skills.

the ability to pre-plan our environment and then the ability to in the moment resist temptation. But we're going to have a lot better chance of doing that if we are at that moment far less. And your book does a great job of teaching us how to do both those things. Oh, thank you. And something that's also really interesting is the shift from I can't to I don't. So I used to think I can't have biscuits in my house because I can't resist them. Now, I think I don't have biscuits in my house because I don't want to have to resist them. And there's been many studies that show that that is a compelling change.

You know, the I don't drink is much more attracted to our brains than I can't drink. And that's why that works. That is a really valuable switch. Okay, I would like you to read as we close here a section from your book. It's on page 309 as a closing. Okay, all right, we'll do. Once you step into your untapped power, the not doing the thing can become more of a rush than the sugar or alcohol or nicotine or gaming or porn, whatever it was, ever was. Because we pick it.

You feel that small push of pride in your chest, that pulse of slow dopamine from what you choose to do instead, which sustains you for much longer than instant. gratification ever did. It's a home-cooked protein breakfast rather than a shop-bought sugary pastry. Our rebelliousness, our mischief, our kicks, start to come from the not-doing, and we don't find ourselves as darkened as we expected to by the deprivation. We've reframed the refrain as the bigger, better choice for us. The reward from it isn't the flicking on of spotlights. It is a steady, flickering oil lamp. That's beautiful. I love that.

Thank you. Thank you. I've really enjoyed this chat. Thank you. Yeah, I think that's a great place to wrap up. Thank you so much. As always, until we do number six. Yeah, absolutely.

I can't wait. Thank you so much for listening to the show. If you found this conversation helpful, inspiring, or thought-provoking, I'd love for you to share it with a friend. Sharing from one person to another is the lifeblood of what we do. We don't have a big budget. and I'm certainly not a celebrity, but we have something even better, and that's you.

Just hit the share button on your podcast app or send a quick text with the episode link to someone who might enjoy it. Your support means the world, and together we can spread wisdom one episode at a time. Thank you for being part of the one you feed community.