Weights and Plates Podcast - #56 - Summer PSA: Change Your Environment

Episode Date: July 10, 2023

We know it's summer, and your busy. Kids are home from school, you're going on vacation, having cookouts... and we hope you enjoy these things! However, as a diet coach, Dr. Santana has observed a few common problems people have when trying to lose weight. One of those is snacking. Inevitably, people who keep a lot of snacks in their pantry end up overeating them and gaining weight when they're trying to lose.   There's an easy solution to this, however. Throw them out! If you want to change your food habits for the better, you have to change your food environment. Throw out the snacks, and only keep food that requires preparation to eat. If you make it harder to obtain snack foods -- as in, you have to go to the store to get them -- then you'll be less likely to eat them. It's those daily habits that add up over time toward the body composition you want or extra bodyfat you don't want. So, simply changing your food environment can stop the grazing and little bites that add up day after day.   Weights & Plates: https://weightsandplates.com Robert Santana on Instagram: @the_robert_santana   Trent Jones: @marmalade_cream https://www.jonesbarbellclub.com

Welcome to the Weights and Plates podcast. I am Robert Santana. I'm your host along with Trent Jones, my co-host. Good afternoon, sir. How are you, man? I'm good. How hot is it in Arizona right now? Oh, I think it's, well, let's see here. It's 106 degrees, excessive heat warning, high of 110, low of 82. Well, it's not too bad, though. I mean, your mailbox is probably still intact at 106.

I'm probably going to go out and hike after I get off this with you. Yeah, that sounds breezy. Yeah, that sounds breezy. You know, ever since we've, you know, had a rapid influx of people here, the city of Phoenix has started putting in restrictions on times you can hike, which is kind of a slap in the face because this city wasn't necessarily a small city, you know, prior to the pandemic. You know, it was the fourth largest. Yeah. When I moved my friend here 10 years ago, he was like, this is the fourth largest city, bro. So there are people lots of people here that have hiked safely in the summer and you know taken the necessary precautions and now they have had their trails taken from them you know oh oh so they're so they're they're uh restricting this to so they don't have to go save people who are too stupid to

exactly take water and whatever. So, and everybody else has to pay for that. And it's like, we've, you know, people have been doing this for 40 years. It's a tiny minority of people that have had this problem. And, you know, I think this could be better prevented with education. I mean, right now, the way that it works here is there's only hiking hours during normal business hours which pretty much excludes anybody that works because now they put they put these electronic gates up you know like you can't go before dawn you can't go after dusk so oh my gosh so if you have a full-time job guess what you

can't hike also like the coolest times of the day to hike you know exactly i mean it's it's silly i mean this is a year- deal too, you know, like, and it's really bad in the winter. Like I remember just speeding to get into the gate before it closed. Cause it will open automatically when you leave, but then it has a sign saying you're trespassing. It's like, oh my God, I pay for this, you know, I pay for this, you know? Oh, wow. Well, you know, I've heard, I've, I've, I've been to the Grand Canyon and there's warnings everywhere. That's like, Hey, listen, if you're going to do the, um, if you're going to hike down in the Canyon, um, and especially if you're going to attempt the rim to rim, uh, trail, like, you

know, Hey, you can't bring a power bar and a bottle of Gatorade. That's not enough. No, that's how it needs to be. You, you will die. But, but they're also, they're like, we can't get you. Like it's too far down. Like, don't expect anybody to get you anytime soon soon if you get in trouble. At least that's what the signs were, you know, 10 years ago when I went. They're still there. Yeah. Well, I noticed that these federal parks are better than the local ones with that. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Usually they're, I don't know. I am a fan of the national park system. That's one of the few things that I enjoy that the federal government has put together, but yeah, they're they're pretty good about, uh, you know, telling you like,

Hey, listen, uh, this shit's dangerous out here and, uh, there's really nobody out here to save you. So, you know, yeah, do with that what you will. Well, uh, I guess, you know, that's, I'm trying to look for a segue here and I guess I don't think we have one. I don't think we have one today, man. Well, I got a little story, and this is totally related to what we want to talk about today. Okay. So I broke... I fell off my resolution for the year, finally.

Did you? It got to me. Yeah. I don't know if you remember what it was. Go ahead. I had one resolution this year, and that was to floss every day. And I made it to about July. Well, I guess it was, I made it to the last week of June and then I fell off the wagon. And it really was really stupid. I've just been really insanely busy the last few weeks and I

just ran out of floss. I don't have any more. And so I stopped and then I didn't get, I was like, oh, I'll go get some more at the store. And then, you know, three days pass and I forget about it. And now it's been two weeks and I have a floss in two weeks. And, and that's just as simple as I reach in my cabinet for the floss where it normally is and I'm out and I didn't go get more ahead of time. And now I haven't flossed in two weeks. That problem is compounded. And that's kind of what we want to talk about today. We want to just a little reminder episode. We know y'all are busy. It's a summer. You got vacations to go on. You got summer camp to take kids to and all that stuff. So we want to do just a quick podcast today about your

environment. If you want to change your habits, especially your nutritional habits, but this counts for training too and getting in the gym, then you got to change your environment. You've got to make your environment the way you want it to be. So if I want to be successful and getting back on the wagon and flossing my teeth every day, I should buy like four or five packs of floss so that there's always some ready to go. And I don't run into the problem of like, ah, shit, I'm out. I'll go get some tomorrow because it's not going to happen. It's not going to happen tomorrow. I'm too busy. And then I forget about it. And then all of a sudden I haven't done it for like a couple of weeks.

So yeah. So let's talk about that. Oh yeah. so let's talk about that. You know, I put a post up a couple weeks ago about this. And, you know, typically, and this tends to be the case with more stubborn losers, you know, on the weight loss side of things, or, you know, people that have a lot of weight to lose. Typically, if you have a lot of weight to lose, you've done some things to put it on to begin with. typically if you have a lot of weight to lose you've done some things to put it on to begin with and uh you know the first thing i try to assess with anybody is environment right and uh the two most common problems that i run into with weight loss clients is uh number one uh eating out um yeah and number two snacking and bying, I mean overstuffed pantries. You know, that's usually what they are.

They kind of go hand in hand, you know. Right, right. So the first thing I ask is, you know, can you remove these things, you know? And there's different levels of removal, of course. But, you know, on one extreme, you can take it all out and get rid of it, clear the pantries. You know, or you can do nothing all out and get rid of it, clear the pantries. Or you can do nothing and continue on your path, right? Oftentimes, this needs to be incrementally done because of reasons we're about to discuss.

When I first started doing this, I didn't realize how sensitive the pantry was to some of these people. Oh, yeah. Yeah. I had a guy years back, you know, he was working with a colleague of mine, a colleague of both of ours, actually, and I was doing his diet. And, you know, he said that he was snacking on all this crap, right, candy or whatever, you know, snack foods. And I'm like, well, you know, how about you just clear that out of your house? It just kind of went, you know, to me that just seemed like common sense at the time you know yeah sure and uh man did this guy have an emotional response to that it's like no that's not going to happen

anytime soon you know like oh i wish i could remember i wish i could find it so i can say exactly what he said but something to that effect like oh nope that's just absolutely not going to happen like i like i asked him to murder somebody you know right right and you know my response to that was well then you're going to get more of the same buddy you know it's going to be hard to that's going to be a hard thing to work around and uh over the years i've seen this scenario repeat itself that was i think that was still the most extreme version of it. I haven't had anybody react that crazy to it since then. But I've also been more, I guess, tactful in my approach because I recognize that there is this, you know, snack people. You're snacking on food for pleasure. You're not doing that for survival. So, you know, there's this emotional connection to these, you know, chips and candy and, you know, pastries and, you know, whatever it is that you're just putting in your mouth nonstop.

You know, small bite-sized pieces of food, right, is what we will use as our operational definition of a snack food. Small bite-sized pieces of food that, you know, you can pretty much keep eating. So, anyhow, I've heard, with that guy, it was completely on him. He could not emotionally part ways with these things that he was snacking on. However, more commonly, the person that I'm working with

will often attribute the snack foods to the needs of other people that he lives with, right? Or she lives with. So, you know, I work with a lot of women, too. And, you know, the most common one is, oh, the kids. You know, I have children, and they need to eat that. And then, you know, as a professional, I try to dance around it, but I'd be doing a disservice to you fuckers if I wasn't being straight with you.

You know, if you think that's bad for you, why do you think it's good for your kids? This is what I always want to ask. If they were at my gym, and this is the problem with online coaching, if this was in person, I would 100% say that. But because it's written, people respond to things differently when they're reading it versus hearing it. I've always been reluctant to say that, but in all honesty, if this is causing you problems in your life, you are too fat per se, you know, your words, not mine. These are things that, you know, people come to me and say,

I'm too fat. I want to get leaner. So if you, if this stuff is making you too fat, then why do your kids need it? You know? And, you know, when we're talking about the hierarchy of food, snack foods are a luxury, you know? So, you know, they don't need it to survive, but what kind of example are you setting when you're saying, oh, I have to have this in my house because my kids need to eat this thing that I think is bad for me. So I implore you to consider that possibility, right? If you can't eat it, why the hell should they be eating it? You're the one paying for it, too, keep in mind, right? Right, right. Well, and, you know, this is tough. It's tough. I mean, to be the devil's

advocate here, you know, I see this with, you know, I don't have a child who's eating, I mean, he's eating food, but he, you know, he just eats what we eat. He doesn't have preference yet, really, except for strawberries. A kid loves strawberries. But I see this at church. We have a lot of little kids at church of varying ages, you know, from babies all the way up to 10, 11 years old. And there's a lot of battles around food. And, you know, food is one of the very few things that especially young children have autonomy with. You know, they can refuse food. That's one of the few things they can just be like, no, not going to eat that and like actually exercise control in their life. And they do. And, um, you know, sometimes it's, you know, when they get a taste

of that, uh, of the hyper palatable snack food, it's hard to come down from that. And, um, yeah, I can see how if you are as parents, if you've gotten yourself into a situation where you're like, well, they won't eat the baked chicken and, and broccoli that I made and they haven't eaten anything. They didn't eat anything all day. And now they're cranky because they, you know, they haven't eaten anything all day, of course, but they'll eat this oatmeal cream pie. It's an easy win as a parent, as opposed to having another battle. Right. And you're like, I really could, I could use, I could use not having a battle right now. That sounds great. So it's easy to reach for the snack food. And then once, once that becomes established, then it's like, well, you know, what,

now why are you taking this away from me now? Now you've got to substitute it with something else. You've got to sub in something that's of value because you're taking away something else that's high value, this snack food treat. So, yeah, that's tough. Now, it doesn't change what you just said, though. It doesn't change the reality of the situation, which is like, this is not high quality food that you're eating or giving your kids. But yeah, I understand. It's a big psychological battle and it's going to take some hard parenting and some battles to unwind that position. And I think, yeah, maybe some people are just not ready for that yet. Yeah. I mean, that's a whole different rabbit hole.

You know, we're not family marital counselors here. I think that's what they call them. Isn't that what they call them? Family marital counselors. Yeah, sure. Something like that. I think that's the right term for it. I don't know.

They keep changing the names of these things, but that's not what we do. You know, we're not therapists here. We're not here to tell you how to, you know, run your family. But, you know, I will make suggestions about how you should handle food, you know, and food you're paying for, you know, if you're feeding other people, you know, snack wells are not a need, you know, the Tostitos are not a need, you know. Yep. And the reason that I'm so harsh on this is because you're simply not going to get anywhere keeping that in your house.

It's like telling an alcoholic they can have vodka on the kitchen counter you know and that they can write vodka in the house it's just a general you know talk to any substance abuse counselor you know i took a class on that so you know i'm not an authority on that topic but you know i took a class on it at the graduate level and you know part of it required us to go into aa and experience that and it was you know it was interesting you know look what i do for a living it was i needed an elective and it kind of made sense. I'm like, this seems like an interesting elective, you know? So either way, you know, what I heard time and time again in that course and in the AA meetings was that, you know, you can't be, people, places, and things, I think they called it, you know, you cannot be around people that are doing it or places that are doing

it, things that are doing that. That's an extreme situation, alcoholism. That's not what we're talking about here. So, you know, it doesn't have to go that far. You know, you can't, you don't need to cut people off that eat pizza, you know. That's silly, you know, but you don't need to keep Oreos in your house, you know, the things, you know, like having that around is setting yourself up for failure. And if you're that person that can do it, you know, more power to you, but most people that can do it aren't carrying a bunch of extra weight. Right, exactly. It has been my experience that people who are carrying a bunch of extra weight and live in that environment are unsuccessful in their efforts to lose weight so long as the trigger food is in the home, you know?

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, that's my experience too. And, you know? Yeah, absolutely. I mean, that's my experience too. And, you know, it kind of, when I think about how we make decisions all day about food, you know, think about the sheer number of decisions you have to make every day with food, right? There's a lot of them. And most of them are subconscious, I think. But there's a whole lot of them.

I mean, I'd be interested, it'd be lot of them. I mean, I'd be interested. It'd be kind of fun to go. It'd just be exhausting. I don't know if I could do it, but if I could get one of those little clicker things that they use for counting people coming through a turnstile or whatever, but click every time I think about food or what I'm going to do, making breakfast, what kind of breakfast. So that's click, click right there. That's a couple of decisions there. Am I going to put blueberries in the oatmeal today? Click. That's

another decision. What about maple syrup? Click. Do I want protein in this or not? Yeah. Click. So there's probably by the time I get to 8am, I have probably made at least a dozen or more food decisions. Right. And that's before I really even start thinking about the day, like, what are we going to have for lunch today? What are we going to have for a snack today? What am I going to feed, you know, George today? What am I going to have for dinner? There's a lot of them. And so the idea that you're going to essentially white knuckle your way through all of those decisions in a single day and not eat the junk food that's right there when you're hungry, that's a real tall order. Um,

you know, it's easy to do when you're, when you're satisfied, you're sitting there at breakfast and you're like, okay, I'm nice and full. I'm, I'm satiated. Yeah, I can avoid all that food. Sure you can, but now it's three o'clock and you're hungry and you're going to get hungry and you're stressed because you just had a phone call with a, a pissed off client or whatever, or you just had a battle with a child, you know, whatever it is, now you're going to skip the junk food. I just, it's not going to happen, right? And even if you do it in a single day or a single week or two weeks, that doesn't, that's not what matters.

It's what matters is what you can accomplish over several months. And, and we've talked about that a lot. The consistency day after day, those daily habits are really what add up to getting where you want to go or not. So yeah, the sheer overhead of decision-making that you have to have to keep trigger snacks in your pantry is just huge. Yeah, absolutely. And getting to a point where you could make different choices about what you put in your house has to be one of the top priorities, has to be one of the goals. If that is not a goal, if you want to continue stuffing your pantries with bite-sized treats for the rest of your life, then you'll probably stay heavy. And if you prove me wrong, send me a story.

Tell me how you did it. I want to learn. But I think 9 out of 10 of you, 9.5 out of 10 of you in this situation aren't getting anywhere in that environment. And I'm not backing down on this. And if that pisses you off, that's fine. You can be pissed off, but that is the reality. And this is the experience I've had working with thousands of people.

It never works. It doesn't work for me even. Like, I'm not keeping French bread in my house. I will eat the entire loaf. You know, I'm not keeping cereal in my house. I will eat the entire box. I don't keep pasta in my house because, you know, I'm going to boil the whole box. Because who doesn't boil the whole box?

And I'm not just going to eat a serving. Have you ever measured a serving of pasta out? It fucking depressing man oh right i can't even yeah it is the one i don't want to know it is the one carb source that you know visually it's like a fat source you get a ton of calories for a tiny fucking portion you know they just pack those carbs in so dense you know but yeah no um you know i've tried boiling the serving and then i'm just hungry i want to keep eating so i know what my foods are and i don't keep them in the house but does that mean i never eat french bread no that doesn't mean i never eat french bread but you know if i do buy it it's with the intention of clearing that thing in 24 hours you know uh or if you know when i go to restaurants

that serve bread before the meal i eat the damn bread you know like i these things. I'm just not going to have them as my staples. It's setting myself up for failure. I will gain weight that I don't want to gain. So, you know, it's not like I'm immune to this. I'm not 300 pounds. I don't know that I have the genetic makeup to get 300 pounds. You know, I don't know. I never try to get that heavy, but I can gain body fat.

I could certainly get over 200, which, you know, has been encouraged by many. That's another topic for another day. But, you know, I'm not carrying 100 pounds of extra weight, you know, and I don't know if that's a genetic thing or just the fact that I don't drink cases of Coke and stuff my pantries with Oreos and chips and other snack food. You know, like I have a pretty solid environment there. I don't know what happened if I lived around all pretty solid environment there. I don't know what happened if I lived around all that all the time.

I don't know. I know that when I started going to Christy's more and she has that stuff. She's one of these people. Look at her. She doesn't carry a bunch of extra weight. She's very lean naturally. She's on the thin side.

So she can eat that stuff and stop. That's not me. When I would go over there, the first few years I started going over there and eat you know the first few years i started going over there to eat more cereal i'd eat little peanut butter cups you know just little ice cream sandwiches and it would add up and then i gained like 20 pounds of unwanted weight took it off and uh you know she just keeps things out of sight because i'm spaced out half the time thinking about shit so if i can't see it i'm not gonna go look for it you know and i forget what

she has in there because i don't live there you know but yeah yeah my point is when you go to my house my pantries are empty and all that's in there are foods you know food items that you can use to cook something and prepare something i got flour spices sugar things like that uh the only thing that i have is oatmeal you know i have that but i don't you know i don't want to binge on that you know i have five servings which i guess to some people is a binge but then i don't eat very many carbs the rest of the day and i'm a front loader but um yes yeah my point is you know i'm not impervious to this shit i'm not sitting here saying i'm this perfect you know but you know i don't have children i get that but and if i did i would not feed them i would not have this i would try my

hardest to not expose them to this stuff you Eventually, they're outside your environment. You lose control. I get that. But I'm not going to have that stuff in the house. You got to go seek that out. You got to work for that. Shit's expensive too, by the way. It's overpriced. Overpriced shit. Yeah, it's crazy. Speaking of that,

I want to do an episode sometime about 90s food. Because we're 90s kids. Oh, yeah. And my wife and I were talking about this the other day. Just the sheer ridiculousness of the snack foods that we had available as kids in the 90s. It's only gotten worse. It's absurd.

Yeah. It's been years since I've really paid much attention to it. But yeah, the Gushers, the Squeeze-Its, the Mondo, Fruit by the Foot. Fruit by the Foot. It's just like, it's hilarious and ridiculous. Like the kind of all the shit that we ate. Ecto-coolers.

Yeah, I agree. I think you said something in there, which might be a good way to think about navigating eating out versus snack foods. Right. Um, because we've talked about how eating out is a problem because you can, you know, the thing about restaurants in particular is that you can just consume so many calories in a single meal that you can undo a lot of work if you're trying to lose weight, you know, and you're in a 250 calorie deficit every day, you know, in seven days, that's 1500 calories, give or take. And you can easily eat 1500 additional calories in a restaurant meal, right? With ease. Yeah, with ease. Yeah, sure. However, you know, if, um, if you do like, if you do have problems with snack foods, like certain snack foods and you still want them, right? Like I still want like a pastry or donut

from time to time. And I think there's there, I think saving that stuff for eating out might be a good solution, right? So instead of, I'm not going to have that stuff available at home, but I will, I will not stop myself from that stuff available at home, but I will not stop myself from going and getting it when we go out to eat. And that could be a nice way to do that, right? So you could still scratch that itch a little bit, but it's outside the home. It's a special thing, right? It's not something you do every day. It shouldn't be something you do every week either. Maybe once a month, once every couple months, something like that. I think that's probably a good strategy for managing your trigger foods, let's say.

Give yourself some space to eat them, but at the same time, let's take it outside the house, right? So you don't connect being home with having that stuff. I think the greater point here is that we talk about habits habits a lot and right now we're talking about a pretty big habit and you know typically people try to come in that's on the training side too they want measurable outcomes and the weight loss client wants to lose x amount of pounds in x amount weeks or months right and uh you know if you just purely look at that from a physiological standpoint you have to restrict calories you got to keep protein high, and you have to train. You know, that's the combination.

And you want to have enough carbs in there to stave off any performance or muscle loss, which you're going to get some. You know, most of you are going to have some of that happen, but you're mitigating it by having the maximum amount of carbs that you can have while staying in a deficit and keeping the protein high. So it's simple, right? But, you know, then you get into behavior. So diet itself, the diet part, the biochemistry part, the physiology part, that's pretty straightforward and works reliably well when all variables are controlled. The thing that gets complicated is human behavior and the environment, right? Yeah. are controlled. The thing that gets complicated is human behavior and the environment, right?

Yeah. And, you know, I use the word habit a lot, but this is, you know, when you're setting goals, you know, there's a reason that you're carrying the extra weight. Sometimes it's as straightforward as, okay, I got pregnant, had a kid, gained a little too much, and now, you know, finished breastfeeding, want to lose weight. And sometimes that goes pretty smoothly, you know, situation like that. Or I was working 24-hour shifts. It was unsustainable. Now I'm back on a normal schedule, I just need to, you know, get my structure back and want some accountability. Again, straightforward situation. But a lot of the time, it's, you know, pretty standard lifestyle, nothing out of the ordinary, and lots of snacking, stress eating and eating out. And when you're in that situation, and you know who you are, part of your goal setting

has to be, I need to shrink down the amount of shit I have in my house. If you don't include that as a goal, you're going to fail. I will repeat that. If you don't make the conscious decision to set a goal to have less bullshit in your house, you're going to fail. you're going to fail. You're going to fail. If you don't set a goal to not turn a restaurant, a fine dining establishment, into an all-you-can-eat buffet when you eat out, you're also going to fail.

You have to address these areas. You have to make different choices when you go out to eat. And the rest of the day, on the day that you go out to eat, you have to make different choices. The habits have to change because I can write you a seven-day menu and tell you exactly what to eat. And if you do that, for seven consecutive days, you'll lose body fat. And if you repeat that another seven days, you'll lose body fat. Maybe at some point, you'll plateau and I'll take a fraction of that food out and then you'll start losing again.

That is an efficacious method of losing weight. It works in a lab. It works when all variables are controlled. But let's be real. You don't live like that. You're going to eat away from the house. Some of you are going to stress eat. Some of you have pantry problems.

A lot of you have pantry problems. Let's be honest here. So you have to have pantry problems. A lot of you have pantry problems. Let's be honest here. So you have to have habit goals. You have to because if you're just purely setting a weight loss goal and you have all these things in place in your daily life, you're going to fail because you're not going to lose weight because you're going to eat 10 Oreos one night and then tell me you only had a couple. And it's going to cause you to gain three pounds in a day. Then that's going to stress you out. Then you're going to lose that three pounds. Then you're going to stay where you were at baseline for another four days. And right when you're about to start losing again, you're going to

eat 10 Oreos again. You can insert whatever food you like, but that's typically how it goes. And, you know, you can insert whatever food you like, but that's typically how it goes. Most recently, I started trending up on planned weight gain because I just introduced, I brought Halo Top back into my life. The thing is, these new flavors, they have five different options of chocolate now. Before, it was two different options. I think it was like chocolate, you know, I forgot what it was. There was chocolate, then there was some other chocolate with these little white speckles in it i forgot what it was called now they've added okay chocolate caramel brownie which has been available in texas for four or five years but we just finally got it in phoenix every time i go to wichita falls i'd like eat it every day because i can't get it here

i don't understand why this is that's the one flavor i could not find in the state of arizona but it was chocolate caramel chocolate caramel brownie halo top that's like yeah that's ridiculous yeah they're just like what what are the three most decadent things we could name and let's put that on the oh dude put that on the lid i love that flavor but every time i go to wichita falls i have it this was pre-pandemic the first time i had it so i know it's been there since at least 2019 and uh right maybe 2018 you know but we had just got it this year and then now they've added chocolate cake batter and they've added chocolate ice cream cake. And what's the difference with that? Oh, one's the batter, one is the baked cake.

That's the idea. Well, Christy said, she's like, oh, I could taste the cake batter in this. I can't. It just tastes like chocolate to me. But to her, she said, oh, there's batter in there. And then the chocolate ice cream cake has little chocolate balls that are in there little pearls of chocolate that crunch crunchy you know yeah yeah so like so i have a theory about i have a theory about ice cream by the way um i did i think i think there's reason ice cream is so universally loved

by humans but especially by men because i've've just noticed, like, men in particular, like, are just completely powerless in the face of ice cream. Whereas women may choose a different dessert to be powerless in the face of. I think it's because ice cream is the closest thing to breast milk that you can get. We're going to get some comments about that. that you can get. We're going to get some comments about that. It satisfies, there's this like primordial urge that, you know, you want the comfort of the breast milk,

but, you know, pretty quickly in your life, it becomes socially unacceptable to drink it. Obviously. But ice cream, ice cream fulfills that need. It's like a Freudian need for... So why isn't it...

We're going to get some good comments about that. So why don't we just drink a gallon of milk a day then? Well, I don't know. But I guess that's the thing, right? So I don't know what the composition of breast milk is. But I think from the last time I read about it a while back, it's got more carbs in it. It's probably sweeter.

I don't know. Let me know if any of y'all have tasted breast milk out there. Well, here's an alternative theory that's somewhat supported. But it's not specific to ice cream. But one reason is when you eat something that's high in carbs and high, or no, sorry, I'm mixing up my nutrients. High carb, high fat is just delicious you know i'm just gonna say that period yeah but but you know since i brought it up an

aside if you're eating what is it uh if you alternate between salty and sweet you can keep eating you get disinhibition and you can keep eating because it overrides your satiety signals now i don't know if high carb, high fat does that, but it sure feels like it does. I have to go look that one up. Yeah. There's a, yeah, I don't know. We buy raw milk around here, which is delicious. It's incredibly good. It's, it tastes amazing. Like I can't, I cannot go back to pasteurized milk. Uh, but there's something about ice cream in particular that just has, it gives you that emotional response. Dude, it's sugar.

It's fat. Cow's milk doesn't have. It's got that mouth feel. But, you know, I mean, diet ice cream over here. And I can tell you I don't want to stop eating that because there's fucking artificial sweeteners in there. And sorry, professional research, you know, meta-analysts, scientific people who say there is no evidence suggesting that. Well, I have anecdotal evidence in my own life, and I will go by that for my own situation. If I have something that's artificially sweetened, I want more of it.

But then that same thing applies to sweetened things, too. But I think it is a little bit more extreme with the fake sweet sweeteners or the artificial sweeteners but yeah but here's the thing and this is why there's quote unquote no evidence no evidence means no peer-reviewed journal paper that's what that really means and uh you know oh fuck it my introduction to research we're going to do a big episode on this at some point i just have to we got to get dr bradford back on but remember people absence of evidence is not evidence of absence let that sink in um that's not to say believe all the bullshit that you hear you know that's you know uh ask yourself if it passes the smell test and if it doesn't you are right to be skeptical uh you know

yeah professional research is done by humans by humans and when it's done on humans it compounds the problem you know and we'll dive real deep into that but you know i get people like i see people on instagram they get riled up about artificial sweeteners don't make you want to eat sweets well dude it makes me want to eat more sweets, okay? So I'm going to make my choices based on my experience. And, you know, it's an anecdote, sure, you know. I'm sure that there are people listening that shared a similar anecdote.

So what are you supposed to do? Ignore that. Ignore your own experiences. And, well, I'll just continue eating this because there's no peer-reviewed journal that says that it causes this. No, I'm not going to fucking live my life like that and you shouldn't either but my whole point is i was eating halo top you know it's not very high in fat so the keto ones are i get the regular ones that's what's you know uh high high in fiber fairly high in protein and then it's got some sugar and sweet fake sugar in there i don't know which sweetener they use yeah uh maybe stevia i

don't know i have to get the label and look at it. But either way, you know, I'm like, all right, I'll eat this. I have a taste for it. Then all of a sudden I'm eating it every couple of days. Then all of a sudden I'm eating it every day. Then all of a sudden a pint's not enough. And then all of a sudden my weight's going up. And I'm like, oh, well, I got to get this shit out of my house because, sure, it fits the bill in terms of macro nutrient profile fiber

protein low fat you know low-ish fat that's pretty low fat actually you know it fits the bill biochemically but uh there's something going on in my brain where i want to just keep downing that shit so i took it out of the house and i dropped two or three pounds immediately, you know? Right. And it's just not in my house anymore. And I'll probably eat it again at some point, being mindful that I'm liable to start stocking it again, you know? Right, yeah. And maybe it's something you just need to eat when you go to Wichita Falls. Sometimes I need it, you know?

Yeah, exactly. That chocolate brownie, so I tried all three of those, and I was cycling between the three when I went to this little Halo Top binge, if you want to call it that. And I just ended up defaulting back to the chocolate caramel brownie that's been in fucking Wichita Falls and the rest of Texas for the last five years, but only got to Phoenix this year. buying that one in the end because that is the best chocolate flavor that halo top offers but uh you know i hope you're all hearing this because i do it to people and then i just get it out of my damn house i can't have it in there you know yeah um and that's that's all there is to it um when my girlfriend's cutting weight she uh buys less cereal because that's her thing well there's two things so she there's habits that she has to focus on when she's trying to do a show one of them is not staying up past 10 because if she's up past 10 she wants to eat and she doesn't just want to eat because i eat past 10 you know i

have protein bowl i don't have this issue that she have different issues with food than she has she will want to eat the most sugary substance she can get her hands on. Usually it's cereal. You know, she usually defaults to cereal, but she sometimes gets popcorn, which is not very sweet, you know. It's more on the salty side, but high carb, you know.

She will just go for bite-size carbohydrate sources that, let's be real people, you typically don't stop eating if given the option, you know. Yeah, right. So, you know, it's a combination of two things. typically don't stop eating if given the option, you know? Yeah, right. So, you know, it's a combination of two things. She has to not have it in the house, and she has to try to get to bed at a reasonable hour. The longer it gets past 10, the more likely she is to crush a half box of cereal. Yeah, that's a great point. There's a nutritionist out there somewhere, and I can't remember where I saw this. It was a few years ago, but, uh,

it was a lady that she, she said she keeps office hours or she keeps a restaurant hours for her kitchen in the, in the house. And that means restaurant hours for her means that the kitchen is closed between the hours of two and 5 PM. That's right. Nothing's open.

And, uh, and, and her point was that like, no, no good food decisions are made between those hours. And ever since I've read that, about 3.30 rolls around and I started getting hungry and I started thinking about what I want. And it always pops in my head because I'm like, yeah, you know, I think we have, I think we still have some brownies leftover that we made a couple of days ago. Yeah. We have one of those. And I think about what she said every single time, like no good food decisions were made between two and five. I'm like, damn it. She's right. Every time it's like, I never want anything

that's like, I never think to myself like, oh, I think I'll have some celery with, uh, you know, some hummus on it. Maybe I might eat that at 11 o'clock, but I'm not going to eat that at three 30. And, uh, yeah, that's probably one thing. If I was, you know, if I wanted to lose weight, that's one of the things I would do in my house is just two to five. You know, I don't need that energy, uh, for me because I'm usually training before noon. Um, so it's not like I need those, this extra fuel from the food. It's just something to kind of break up the monotony of the day. And so yeah, I would have to do that. And that means that I'd have to just be a little bit hungry for a couple

hours before dinner. And that's the last thing I'd say is it's okay. You know, it's okay to be a little hungry. You shouldn't be starving all the time because if you do that, again, you're trying to white knuckle your way through and that's just, it's not going to work. It just, it doesn't, right? Nobody successfully does that. You have to give yourself options. One of the ways that I weaned myself off of these chocolatey sweets, because that tends to be what I go for. When I was younger, it used to be more salt. I don't know.

Something changed. Now it's more sweet but uh i was eating six bananas a day for like four days and all of a sudden it calmed down you know but i cut out i cut out the diet soda i cut out the you know the low calorie uh chocolatey sweets and cut out the real chocolate too obviously more like a washout period i never cut things out with the intention of making these things permanent because it's not realistic but i cut all that out and i was crushing bananas like crazy because the flavor profile was close but it was a fruit you know and uh by by day four i'm like oh i don't need six bananas anymore i can get by with you know two yeah and yeah then i then i was fine from

there and i dropped all the weight i needed to drop this was two years ago and uh i think i talked about it during while i was going through it but uh you know just to reiterate that yeah i try to think of what is the closest thing to chocolate that i could eat that's not a pile of you know sugar and you know with a banana although you know these anti-fruit and vegetable people would call that sugar but i guess what i'm referring to is you know something that grows and isn't you know a concentrated sweet you know yeah it's real food it's real it's real it's real it comes with fiber and nutrients yeah yeah i like my bananas so but so i'll probably have to do that you know i'll probably do that again if I start spiraling. But, you know, I learned that trick from my brother.

He went from fruity – he liked tart sweets, so like pies and shit, fruity pies. And he went – he was eating like four pounds of grapes in one sitting. And now he eats sweets a couple times a year. But it took him like over almost two decades to figure that out, you know? Yeah. Well, there you go, man. If you want to change your body composition and you haven't made progress this year, you got half the year left, right? The year is not over.

You have half a year left. You're going to have to change your habits. And that means you're going to have to change your environment. And that means you're going to have to change your habits and that means you're going to have to change your environment and that means you're going to have to change your pantry. So, um, you know, think about that. Think about what you might change, what you might throw away. And, uh, you know, the other thing, the other thing is right now, lots of you are on vacation. Uh, you're traveling, you're in new places, you're going out to restaurants a lot as part of that vacation, whatever it is that you do during the summer. Maybe you've got just friends over and

you're having more cookouts and stuff. That's cool. That's great. That's what life is about. However, what that means is it's also throwing you off your normal schedule. I know this because podcast downloads typically drop in the summer And podcast downloads tend to be representative of people's habits. It's just, it's kind of part of their daily routine, whether they're working, you know, and have some headphones on or they're commuting or whatever. And podcast downloads drop in the summer, which tells me that people are just off their normal schedules. So that's why we wanted to record this one now is to remind you, this is nothing we haven't said before, but hopefully this is just a good reminder for you that once you're back and you're back from that vacation, I hope

you enjoyed it. Get back to your habits, refocus on them. You know, maybe you can clean up some things, but if you just continue to kind of let summer vacation be like your normal everyday thing from now until the rest of the summer you're probably not going to get where you want to go so all right i think i've yammered on enough today you want to sign off i think we beat this to hell uh if you want to be successful in anything you have to create an environment for it you know nobody says and you know when you get into discussions of nature versus nurture and all that shit, nobody says that it's 100% environment. But we all acknowledge that it's a large percentage due to environment.

So you have to change your environment in addition to learning how to set expectations in terms of the limit of your own bodies, right? So it's a combination of things. If you do not change the environment at all, you're going to fail. Okay, so factor that into the equation. It's not something you get to ignore. Anyhow, let's close out. I think we've hit this enough. Thank you for tuning into the Weights and Plates podcast. You can find me on Instagram at the underscore Robert underscore Santana or weightsandplates.com. If you are in Metro Phoenix, I am located just south of Sky Harbor Airport. I have a gym here. We offer memberships and private training.

You know, come on by. I'm going to expand my hours soon. The hours on the website are, you know, those hours that I'm, you know, my office hours essentially. I'm here all day though. You can call and if you want to drop in, get a look outside of those hours, but I'm going to expand them in the next few weeks here. And the gym also has an Instagram page, weights, double underscore and double underscore plates.

That's the word and. All right. Excellent. Hey, and if you need some help with changing your habits, this stuff is not easy, right? We're talking about it as if it's simple, which it is. It's simple, but it's not easy to do. It's actually quite hard. And if you need some help with that, that's totally okay. Go hire Coach Santana. He can help you with this stuff. This is what he does every day with his clients. And they can do that at weightsandplates.com. Is that the best place to go find your diet, your diet nutrition coaching? That's right. Yeah, weightsandplates.com under online coaching. There you go.

Weightsandplates.com. All right. Well, you know where to find me. I'm on Instagram at marmalade underscore cream. And if you want to ask me any coaching questions, jonesbarbellclub at gmail.com. All right. We'll talk to you again in a couple weeks. you