The Psychology of Effective Weight Loss
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Summary
When most people think about losing weight, they think about the details of a diet plan, what food to eat, how much of it to eat and when to eat it. What they don t spend enough time working on are the mental and emotional habits that can sabotage their efforts regardless of the diet plan they adopt. That's why, despite being a biochemist, Trevor Kashi has made mindset the foundation of his approach to losing weight.
Transcript
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Hey, this is Brett. The McKays are on vacation this week, so please enjoy this rebroadcast
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episode. We'll be back next week with a brand new episode.
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Brett McKay here and welcome to another edition of the Art of Manliness podcast. Now, when
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most people think about losing weight, they think about the details of a diet plan, what
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food to eat, how much of it to eat, and when to eat it. What they don't spend enough time
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working on are the mental and emotional habits that can sabotage their efforts regardless
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of the diet plan they adopt. That's why my guests say, despite being a biochemist, has
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made mindset the foundation of his approach to losing weight. His name is Dr. Trevor
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Kashi, and he's the founder of Trevor Kashi Nutrition, or TKN. We begin a conversation
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with a thumbnail of Trevor's unique background, which includes earning his first university
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degree in biochemistry at age 17, setting national records in powerlifting, and coaching an Olympic
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fight team, as well as how he went from coaching elite athletes to helping average folks lose
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weight. We then talk about why Trevor focuses on bridging the gap between knowledge and action
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and the erroneous assumptions people make that keep them from following through on their
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intentions. From there, we turn to the phases TKN takes its clients through, which begins
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with getting what Trevor calls food clarity. We discuss how simply tracking what you eat
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can get you to naturally change your diet because of something called the Hawthorne effect.
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It can almost be all you need to do to start losing weight. We then get into how to deal
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with your hunger when you're cutting calories and why it's crucial to be decisive about it.
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We also discuss how you can eventually eat more once you work on eating less, how to manage
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the expectation of consistent weight loss, and why you really need to weigh yourself every week.
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After the show's over, check out our show notes at aom.is slash Kashi.
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So you are a nutrition consultant, but you have a very interesting background to how you got
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to this point. And the way I discovered you is we interviewed Michael Easter for,
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The Comfort Crisis, and you had a whole chapter about you. Tell us about your background.
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How did you start off in the world of biochemistry, and now you help people with their nutrition.
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Oh, whew. Okay. I can have this 30-second life story thing and then talk a little bit
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Okay. So I can start back from as a little dude, where people talk about their first words,
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typically it's like mommy, and mine was why, why, why, why. And that eventually just, I had
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this sort of curious, scientific sort of ilk forever. And I noticed, or somebody noticed,
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my mother noticed, when a lot of little kids, specifically little boys, they wanted to be
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X-Men for Halloween. I think X-Men became a pretty popular franchise in the 90s, right?
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They wanted to be X-Men, and I was like, how did they inject the metal into his bones?
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And I was that weird kid. And somewhere along the line, I ended up skipping grades and doing all
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sorts of crazy stuff. And one of the mentors that I had very early on in my life had a connection to
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the local college. And in the local college, I got started at a very young age. And Professor
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Tui, my mentor there, had some friends over at Translational Genomics. So I ended up getting
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some laboratory experience at a very young age, specifically in the realm of non-smile cell lung
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cancer. They also did neurogenomics, stuff like that too. And along this time, I think I was in
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the 14, 15-ish range, my father got back into my life. And my father had a big interest in fitness and
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bodybuilding, et cetera. And so I started combining my sort of obsessive scientific nature with the
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application of things like bodybuilding and strength sports with my father, because we had very few things
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to bond over. And that led to me doing like my first physique contest at age 15. And I really ended
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up enjoying that process since. And I ended up continuing on with my scientific ilk into graduate
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school. So I finished my first degree in biochemistry, and I started my doctoral degree in biochemistry,
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studying, for the most part, things like the oxidation reduction components of vitamin K.
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And during that time, I transitioned from bodybuilding over to strength sports,
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and because of the different sort of demand, different sport, wanted to try new things,
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et cetera. And what ended up happening, I did okay on the regional and national level for strength sports
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and got involved in that community. And the background I had science-wise, as well as how I performed
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on the field, so to speak, ended up generating a lot of conversations with the other athletes.
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And that kind of started this whole process of, how do we combine these two things to help people
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accomplish the things they want to accomplish? And it started in the athletic realm. And it ended up
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getting to a point to where the demands on my time grew greater than the time that I had.
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And so I regrettably ended up having to distinguish between the people who wanted some advice by like,
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well, I guess this kind of became a business all on its own, I guess. And somewhere along that line,
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I ended up getting recruited by the Azerbaijani government and acted as a physiologist for them,
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for their fight sports, specifically for the Rio de Janeiro Olympics. So I lived overseas in a cave for a
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while. And I came back a little over a year later, you know, back and forth, et cetera. And ended up,
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ended up, I guess, I ended up stateside, I wanted to find that word, and then operated out of a
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strength and conditioning facility in Florida. And that gave me greater exposure to the quote,
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general population. And here we can kind of start the story in terms of philosophy,
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where how did this go from working with high level athletes to working with quote, general population?
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And what we come to notice or TCAN operates as if people for the most part kind of already have a
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good enough understanding of how to eat and move in a constructive way. And the trouble comes with
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turning that knowledge into action. So for that reason, we focus very little energy on telling people
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what to do and more energy on helping people to understand the options they have so that they
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can make the most constructive decisions for themselves. And so we call it bridging the intention
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intervention gap. So people have an idea of what to do, they have an idea of what they want,
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and we help bring those two things together. And so in a practical way, this means trivializing what
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to eat and when, and instead shining the spotlights on, well, with the facts as we know them,
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how do I best manage my thoughts, feelings, and emotions, or my thoughts, feelings, and actions
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so I can get closer to what I want? Does that make sense?
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That makes sense. Okay. So, okay. So it sounds like you're taking, okay, you're using your knowledge
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about with biochemistry and you can apply that. I mean, that's what nutrition is. It's biochemistry,
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but you don't, with your, with the general population, you're not focusing on, well, we got to eat this
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carbs, fats. You're not thinking about that. It's more, that's, that's in there, but it's more,
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you're thinking about the human body is not just a body, but there's a psychological part to it as
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well that you have to understand. Yes, exactly. So the biochemistry, just like in real life,
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operates in the background. And we focus more on the foreground here, which has to do with, well,
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what am I thinking? How do I feel? And how do those things combine to influence the decisions I make?
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And the biochemistry happening in the background, we just kind of weave into the programming as we go.
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Okay. That makes sense. So let's start, let's start with this question. So why do you think,
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your approach works? I guess you're calling it Trevor Cachy method or the Cachy method. And we'll
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get into the details of that. Like, well, maybe I was not, why do most people when they say, okay,
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I want to lose weight, right? That's why most people, when they start thinking about their food
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consciously, they're thinking about, well, I need to do that so I can lose weight. So they typically
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think I got to go on a diet, right? So I got to reduce calories. There's how I'm going to go,
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I'm going to do paleo, high fat, but you know, we've talked about this on the podcast before
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studies. And I think personal experience can show this as well. I think it's like 95% of all diets,
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they fail. So what are they doing? Why do diets fail? What's going, what are the erroneous
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assumptions that people have about nutrition and losing weight? Thanks to popular diets.
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I get, I get chills hearing that question for a couple of reasons, a little bit out of fear and
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a little bit out of excitement. Great question. I love it. And I kind of want to start it with saying
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something that has the potential to sort of inflame a little bit. However, I do think it leads us to a
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more constructive outcome. I find it curious that diets in the abstract do the failing. So I'll just
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lay that out there. Even the language as we use it, diets fail. And I find that interesting because
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diets as they stand, you know, they represent themselves as an abstract concept. So to expand
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that a little bit, if 95% of diets fail, they do the failing, then does that mean the 5% of diets
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do the succeeding? And that leaves very little room for us humans to do anything.
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So I kind of want to start there in the context of like, what role do we play in the success and
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failure, rather than describing it in the context of the diet having a success and failure. And by
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focusing on the role that we play, we have the largest chance of making a difference in the long
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term. So presuming the efficacy of a diet, notwithstanding like, you know, carbohydrate,
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fat, protein, vegetables, timing, all that sort of stuff. So that sort of efficacy, notwithstanding,
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and then moving on to your erroneous assumption language, which I like, people make three, I think,
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to use your language, erroneous assumptions that increase the failure rate of most, maybe all
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things we do. And so we can cherry pick and say, well, studies say 95% of diets fail, but you know
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what? I'll bet a dollar that 95% or more of all projects, if you'd like, have similar or even
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greater failure rates. And so we may inflate the importance of diets because of their presumed benefits
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on our physiology and presumed benefits on our social status. But we really swim in examples of
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people that have folders and files and garages and addicts and mental spaces filled with projects
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that put on the back burner or save for later or whatever. And so these situations, I think that the
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failed diet and the unfinished project, they have similar if identical constructs to them. And we just
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use the word fail for one. And I think that adds different implications. Does that make sense?
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That makes sense. So it's like the knowledge and tension gap that you talked about earlier.
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Yes, yes. And so going back to the erroneous assumptions, I think we mainly have three,
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and they base around us, ourselves. We make erroneous assumptions about ourselves. We make
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erroneous assumptions about other people. And then we make erroneous assumptions about the situation at
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large. And they have sort of this demanding, perfectionistic sort of air to them, where I
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must be perfect and do things perfectly. Erroneous assumption one. Erroneous assumption two,
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others must treat me well. And erroneous assumption three, life must be fair.
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And so to answer your question of what erroneous assumptions do people make, I think, well,
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people can combine language in ways to make all the erroneous assumptions an unlimited amount of
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them. But when we take a step back, failure and emotional disturbance, and somewhat comically
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disturbance about that disturbance where people get mad because they're mad, sad because they're sad,
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et cetera, largely come from the expectations they place on themselves, other people, and the
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That makes sense. Okay. So I can see this. Okay. The perfection aspect, I think everyone's experienced
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that moment. They're like, well, I'm on a diet. I'm going to be really good. And then they go to a
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restaurant, they go to Chili's and they have an awesome blossom. And they're like, well, might as
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well just go ahead and have the, uh, the, what's the, the, the volcano, chocolate volcano.
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I like where your head's at. Right. Okay. So there's that, that perfections. If you can't do,
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or if you're, I mean, say you're doing like paleo, it's like, if I don't do like, if I,
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if I eat any like thing that's like a caveman couldn't eat, then it's not worth doing. Right.
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And that can just get in the way of you actually making progress. So that's like that perfection
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thing. Yes. And so that sort of perfectionistic demand we place on ourselves gives us this,
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this leverage point to give ourselves permission to act against our self-interests. And so from a
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schematic standpoint, it ends up to work out something like I must eat perfect where perfect
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might encompass, like I must eat paleo, I must, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. So we'll just call
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it eating perfectly where we define perfect as whatever plan that person has. Right. I must eat
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perfect or else. And so when you, when you put these demands on yourself or demands on your diet,
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et cetera, et cetera, unless we meet our own demands perfectly or the external circumstances meet our
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demands perfectly, we get to trigger this sort of, or else mechanic in our brains where we can say,
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I must eat perfectly or else I may as well just give up and do nothing and hit myself forever.
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And I'm a stupid dummy head. So from the perfectionistic standpoint, it lends itself
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towards that sort of black and white thinking where we sabotage ourselves.
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And how do other people get in the way? Like their assumptions about it? What are assumptions
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about other people? Cause okay. I can see the assumptions about circumstance, like life needs
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to be fair. Right. Cause I think everyone's like, well, this diet will work if these certain
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circumstances are in place, but if something goes off kilter, like I have a bad day at work,
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kids are up throwing up at two o'clock in the morning, you know, I couldn't maintain my diet and
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like, it's just going to throw everything off. I guess I've seen that happen in my own life and
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people listen again, this happened, this can happen to other projects in our life, not just
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nutrition, but the social component, what's going on there. So for instance, it could be something
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like they must accept me or else. And in this case, the, or else tends to raise stress levels,
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cause some emotional disturbance, which some people try to deal with by doing things like eating.
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Okay. That makes sense. And so that is how it ends up relating in a, in a rather direct way.
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People end up using eating as a, as a consumptive behavior to distract from disturbances that they
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get from placing demands on others, for instance. It's a stress reliever.
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Distractor. And so, I mean, that's one of the, your big things you're trying to tackle is you're
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trying to help people understand why they eat. Cause I think we often think, well, you eat cause
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you're hungry, but you would say, well, really, are you really hungry when you ate that, you know,
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Yes. Yeah. In a lot of instances, we, we take cues from our environment or the thoughts we have
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as permission to eat for whatever reason. It could be the time of day. It could be the room
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we have put ourselves in. It could be an interaction we had. And sometimes it aligns
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Let's dig into your method. I think high level, I think people that kind of understand what
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you're, you're probably going to do is you want people to think, develop a better relationship
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with their nutrition and think about the psychological factors, not just the physiological
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factors that go into it. And in this first part, you know, when you, when you take on a client,
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you start working with them, you go through this, there's a phase to, there's a process. And this
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first part, you call it the goal is to help your client develop food clarity. What do you mean by
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that? And what goes on during this phase when you first start working with somebody?
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So I use the term food clarity as sort of like a, like front end language so that when people look
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us up and they read about it, it, I have some terminology that, that people can, can kind of sink
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their teeth into a little bit. And in short, it really means that people make a lot of assumptions
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about what they do and they make demands based off of those assumptions and can upset themselves or
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sabotage themselves when the results they get deviate from the demands they make. Okay. So that's a fancy
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way of saying, I'm eating so little, but I keep getting fatter. Therefore I get to be mad, et cetera.
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And so when it comes to food clarity, I use that term to represent a whole manner of things.
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And in this context, it has to do with, well, what foods do I eat? When do I eat them? And how,
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if at all, does that impact the way that I think, how I feel and what I do? And does it have
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necessarily a causal relationship? No, it more just serves to raise an awareness to what you currently do.
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And when you raise a real awareness to what you currently do, then you can make more informed
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decisions about what to do next. And so TKN positions themselves there to say, okay, we have
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gathered all of this information. How do we make the best use of it? And we call that first part food
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clarity, because one of the first things that we suggest people do, we, we suggest just keep all,
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just keep track of the stuff you currently do. Because I think when, I think when a lot of people
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join programs or start diets or fitness or whatever, they just kind of jump right into whatever
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directions that the program gives them. They try and turn their life upside down and conform to whatever
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those rules are immediately. And I just quite frankly could give a damn about that stuff.
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I care more about what you do right now, because if we have an operational understanding of what you
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do right now, well, then we can take what you currently do, stabilize that day to day. And now
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we have a baseline in which we can make some legitimate changes.
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Gotcha. So this, this basically is like, you're going to start measuring, measuring what you actually
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eat. Cause a lot of people don't even know. They just sort of like when they take a serving of
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something, they don't know like how much is in that. Like they have no clue.
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Yeah. So I, I really, under most circumstances could care less of that. You have to eat three
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ounces of spinach or 42 grams of peanut butter or whatever. I more care that you have an idea of
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what you currently do at this very moment day to day, because then you could go, Oh, that makes sense.
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Where do we go from here? Or I already know where to go from here because now I have this
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information I can use to my advantage versus operating off of these assumptions.
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No. Yeah. Like measuring your food. I, I, I do that. And when I started doing it a couple of years
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ago, one thing you learn right away is like, you're surprised that your, your assumptions of what is,
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what counts as a serving is completely off. So I've seen this happen with people. They're like,
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you know, I don't eat that much. Like I had some toast with a serving of peanut butter,
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but it's like, have you actually seen, seen what a serving of peanut butter is? Like,
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what you think is a serving of peanut butter is not a serving of peanut butter. It's actually
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really, it's really depressing to see what a serving of peanut butter is.
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Yeah. Yep. I agree. And once you have an understanding of what this means in real life,
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well, then it helps you to inform your decisions in real life versus here are the assumptions I make
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in my brain. And because of the assumptions I make in my brain, here are the demands I expect of the
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results. And when those things deviate from each other, people tend to say things like, screw it,
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right? Right. I bother. I can't stand it anymore. This diet doesn't work, et cetera, et cetera.
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We're going to take a quick break for your words from our sponsors.
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And now back to the show. And what's interesting to you, so in this point, you're not, you're not
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telling people to make any changes in their, their nutrition. You're just saying, just measure
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what you're actually eating, but there's a principle from psychology. I think it's called
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the Hawthorne effect, right? Yes. Yes. So what's, tell us about the Hawthorne effect and how
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just measuring stuff can actually change behavior and just by just nature, by not just naturally.
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Okay. So if you could see me, you could see my steeple fingers like Mr. Burns.
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So I think how this happens matters less than it does happen. So I will just go out there and say
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that I care about the utility more than the mechanism at this point. Although we can use
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a somewhat rational theory to guess about what's going on. So strictly speaking, I think the addition
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of tracking to what you normally do changes, strictly speaking, again, nothing about other
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behaviors. However, asterisk, asterisk, monitoring yourself presents a unique change of behavior
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all on its own because it creates awareness of your thoughts, feelings, and behaviors in general.
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And so people can use the information they get from monitoring their behavior to influence the way
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they make decisions. I like to explain it this way. How many people see a police officer and then slow
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down? Even if they go, even if they, they drive within the speed limit. I do it all the time.
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I think practically everybody does that. Yes. And so does seeing the police officer make you slow down?
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No. No. No. And here I think drives the biggest point home between how TKN operates versus other
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things, I guess. So what happens with the way, with the theory that we use or have or model we use,
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et cetera, you see the police officer, okay, formulate an inference based off of what you see
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and then use that inference to inform your immediate behavior of slowing down. And so a lot of people,
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they skip that middle step. They think, I see the cop, the cop makes me slow down. In reality,
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I see the cop, I interpret that information as X, Y, and Z, and then I use that information to inform
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my decision to slow down. And we try and intervene as best we can in that middle step because we can do
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relatively little about the things you experience, okay? However, if we can become aware of that step where
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we make inferences, where we form beliefs, well, then we can have a real impact on how you use the
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information you do have to make better decisions. That's the long answer about the Hawthorne effect
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and at least how we use it. In reality, it's like, if you think you're being watched, then you change
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what you do. It's probably the quick and dirty explanation. However, watch yourself, then you can
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Yeah. And you see this same sort of thing happen with like personal finances. I think there's like
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a lot of core, like the similarities between nutrition and personal finances. A lot of people
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think in personal finance world, it's all like, you got to know about stocks and ratios and blah,
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blah, blah, you know, but really it's just like, it comes down to psychology. And they've, one of the
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things you do in personal finance is like, just track what you spend. Don't change anything,
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just track. And then from there you can start and like the Hawthorne effect comes in and then you
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also learn information about why am I spending my money? Do I, did I really need to spend money on that?
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Then you start making decisions based off that data.
00:23:26.140
Correct. And so you bring up a good point about that. In so far as also a lot of people kind of
00:23:32.140
wonder like, where did all of my bad spending habits come from? Where did all of my bad eating
00:23:37.180
habits come from? And so forth. And you realize that just by monitor, like just with self-monitoring,
00:23:42.140
you can find all of the, you can make all those things moot because what causes a problem matters
00:23:46.840
way less than what maintains it. Gotcha. All right. So you're in this food clarity phase.
00:23:52.620
People are measuring what they're eating, like, so they can actually see. So they can't be like,
00:23:57.060
I just eat a serving of peanut butter. They actually know what a serving of peanut butter
00:24:00.720
is. But then you're also tracking, okay, well, why, why, why did you eat? Like, were you feeling
00:24:04.560
upset? Were you stressed? You're also tracking that. After you've gone through this phase,
00:24:08.960
again, when there's no, you're not, there's nothing prescriptive going on here. You start doing,
00:24:14.760
you start making some changes, making some suggestions. So what, what happens after establishing food
00:24:19.480
clarity? In a lot of instances, the Hawthorne effect ends up taking hold and people end up
00:24:24.760
correcting or changing their, their eating patterns over the course of the food clarity phase.
00:24:29.920
And so practically speaking, that means, well, we can just continue on what you have been doing.
00:24:35.200
We can make, we could effectively make zero changes based off of the data that you provided
00:24:39.240
because you already put yourself on the right track of your own accord. Does that make sense?
00:24:43.560
That makes sense. But again, you're not, you're not like giving like a, you're probably not giving
00:24:47.100
like a very specific meal plan. You're just saying, okay, let's look at what you're doing
00:24:51.140
already. Maybe you make a nudge here and see if that does something. Yeah. It's a nudge. And I
00:24:57.240
think, I mean, the Hawthorne effect can take, it can help out a lot with that. So for example,
00:25:01.820
like there's been times where I've like, I need to lose weight, but I do, I track macros and
00:25:06.720
sometimes I'll have a morning, like a Saturday morning. One of my favorite treats is to go over to
00:25:09.960
quick trip and get a sausage, egg, cheese biscuit. It's really good, but it is like, it is fortified
00:25:18.520
with fat. So I eat it. Enriched. It's enriched with fat. And the thing is like, I, I know I'm
00:25:27.320
going to be like hungry, like in just like 30 minutes after I finish this thing. Cause it's,
00:25:32.500
there's not, doesn't really take up a lot of space. And so I realized, man, I'm, I'm not gonna
00:25:36.540
be able to eat that much. I'm gonna have to like, there's going to be changes. I'm gonna have to
00:25:39.080
make somewhere else. Or might they be more satiating food, more like broccoli or, you know,
00:25:44.640
potatoes or something that's not laden with butter. So you start doing it naturally. Like
00:25:49.240
you sort of figure it out on your own. You, you take your finances and you translate them to things
00:25:54.220
like calories, the same sort of premise with taking stock of what you have and allocating resources
00:25:59.020
accordingly. Same exact principles. Gotcha. How do you deal with people who like, let's say they're
00:26:03.660
trying to lose weight. So they have to reduce calories. And sometimes you start feeling hungry.
00:26:07.740
What do you do? Like, do you help, how do you help people with that? Where they're like, man,
00:26:11.320
I'm just really hungry. It's like 10 o'clock at night. I'm just starving. I've had that happen
00:26:15.800
to me. Like I just want, I want to eat, go to the, I want to go to the cupboard and just like get a
00:26:19.360
scoop of peanut butter. So my stomach just shuts up. So you, you present a great question that has
00:26:27.020
idiosyncratic resolutions, a fancy way of saying each person kind of gets a different approach.
00:26:34.280
However, I can try and give you a good understanding of how we could approach something
00:26:38.300
like this. So if something like this comes up, I like to lean on irreverence, which is a fancy way
00:26:45.580
of saying, well, like, let's try and make a joke of this situation as a way to provide us perspective
00:26:50.960
in terms of making a better situation, in terms of making better decisions. So we can either make
00:26:54.740
a joke of it, or we can just show it very little respect as a way to help calibrate our decision
00:26:59.060
making apparatus. So when somebody says, let's all throw you under the bus, when you say I'm tired
00:27:03.960
and stressed and want to eat a bunch of stuff and I have all these cravings. Okay. So then we can have
00:27:08.660
a conversation where I might ask the question, how do you deal with the tendency to want to smash
00:27:14.820
somebody's face in and still manage to act polite? How do you deal with the tendency to want to rip a
00:27:19.740
loud fart during somebody's big speech and manage to hold it in? Or how do you manage to deal with the
00:27:24.600
tendency to want to skip where it can show up anyway? It's like willpower, self-control.
00:27:29.120
Essentially, yes. So to some degree, we incorporate tolerance. And so two factors dictate the
00:27:40.360
maintenance of a plan under situations like this. And the first most important factor I consider
00:27:47.520
tolerance, which operates exactly how it sounds. The way the ability or capacity to maintain
00:27:54.500
composure when you feel stressed, okay, which has trainability, which becomes a different
00:28:01.460
conversation. However, so the most important thing in the moment becomes exhibiting tolerance to the
00:28:07.340
situation, dealing with it for a short period of time so that you can make a rational decision,
00:28:12.700
which means the second most important thing to consider in the grand scheme has to do with
00:28:18.520
overcoming ambivalence. And so a lot of, in other words, if you can manage your behavior in those
00:28:25.620
other situations we just mentioned, in other contexts, which you do, then we already have
00:28:30.460
sufficient evidence to suggest that you can continue to manage your behavior now in this situation.
00:28:36.900
And so what happens is when people manage their behavior in those other situations, like keeping
00:28:42.020
yourself from punching somebody in the mouth, right? You create this sort of compound argument in your head,
00:28:47.360
which I then try and, I try and work with a person to get them to form out loud where they state their
00:28:55.160
preference and then compare that preference to the desired outcome. And then we use that to drive
00:29:00.360
sensical decisions. So the, I would really like to rip a loud fart and, and I know that would distract
00:29:07.180
from the, from the speech and potentially embarrass me and the other person. So I'll keep it in.
00:29:12.280
And so you state your preference, recognize and tolerate your preference, and then compare that to the desired
00:29:19.320
outcome. So in this case, the preference to sabotage yourself in some way, and you compare that to the
00:29:24.640
desired outcome, and then you can make an informed decision. Do I want to continue on with this or not?
00:29:29.980
Okay. Do I want to rip a loud fart and cause a scene? I, I, I would like to rip a loud fart and I know I'd cause a
00:29:37.840
scene. Do I want to continue to do this? No. And so for food, for instance, we can throw demandingness
00:29:43.580
in here, which becomes easy when it comes to food, where someone might say, I must eat to live.
00:29:48.060
Sure. Okay. Therefore I must eat whenever I feel like it or else. And here's where things start to
00:29:55.640
get interesting. So a lot of people have cravings that get worse over time, or they intensify over time,
00:30:01.120
especially as they continue on with diets. Okay. Basically a lot of times cravings coexist with
00:30:07.500
ambivalence and that ambivalence intensifies and protracts the craving. Essentially wanting to eat
00:30:14.140
a thing, just wanting to eat a thing presents a minor hassle anyone can deal with. If you want something
00:30:19.340
and you realize it might hurt you, if you do it, then you move on with your life. However, if you start
00:30:24.840
deliberating with yourself about whether you should do it or not, that ends up causing the
00:30:30.920
problems. And so when people tend to label their issue as like an intense craving, I really think
00:30:37.200
it presents itself more as a person prolonging their own misery by deliberating over what to do
00:30:42.160
about the cravings. And so practically this means making a decision. And so decisions end up kind of
00:30:49.240
obviating a lot of the problems people have associated with craving because the cravings exist and get worse
00:30:54.980
because people wonder and argue with themselves, do I give in or not? When you could just say,
00:31:00.820
no, and move on. Does that make sense? That makes sense. All right. So like, let's say some people
00:31:05.080
eat because they're just tired. They want to, that's their go-to. Say, well, no, I'm not going
00:31:10.420
to do that. Don't debate it. And the same thing, if you're feeling hunger, I mean, I guess you have to
00:31:13.840
kind of be tolerated. Like, well, I'm going to be a little hungry. Like I'm going to feel some hunger
00:31:17.420
pains at 10 o'clock at night. I can deal with that. Yeah. A great way of putting it. I have gathered
00:31:23.860
enough evidence to know that I can deal with this mild hassle right now.
00:31:28.840
All right. So you have to get comfortable with discomfort.
00:31:34.360
Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So this is what's happening in this phase. And like, this is what's happening
00:31:38.060
in this phase two part. You're working with a client and you're helping them manage these issues
00:31:42.740
that pop up, right? And figuring out like ways that they can deal with it and consulting them and
00:31:48.980
coaching them. Like, well, what, do you really have to eat peanut butter when you're feeling
00:31:52.720
really, really hungry? Well, maybe not. Maybe the hunger will, like, that's another thing you talk
00:31:56.380
about too in a lot of your podcasts about the feelings. Like don't, like feelings can be like
00:32:00.940
not very trustworthy. And that's why sometimes like there's like a nutrition idea out there,
00:32:05.500
intuitive eating. Like just eat when you're hungry and stop when you're full. Sometimes like
00:32:09.360
you're, that's messed up. Like you're, the feeling connection to your body is all out of whack.
00:32:15.560
And so you might feel like you need to eat, but your body, you really don't.
00:32:20.700
Yes. Eating intuitively and finding success with that presupposes a balanced psycho emotive state
00:32:28.080
all the time. Because if at least the way that I interpret the term intuition, you can pretty much
00:32:36.240
use synonymously with impulse. And so if somebody says impulsive eating, they know exactly what you
00:32:43.860
mean. Right? Right. However, if somebody says intuitive eating, that sounds fancier and different.
00:32:50.300
However, intuition and impulse mean essentially the same thing. And so in a lot of instances,
00:32:56.800
a lot of the clients that we have, I would consider recovering intuitive eaters, so to speak,
00:33:04.280
because their intuitions effectively led them to me. And so we just, we can make rational decisions
00:33:12.000
with good information. Right. And I mean, a lot of what you're doing is you're, you're kind of,
00:33:17.420
I mean, in a way you're, you're trying to retrain people like, like the intuition. So the intuition,
00:33:22.320
because like, it'd be nice to like, if you can just go on intuition, life's a lot easier.
00:33:26.420
Right. If you could just be, well, I feel like that. And it sounds like, you correct me if I'm wrong,
00:33:30.520
like all the, you know, this food clarity and then this, you know, working with them on the second
00:33:34.880
phase where you're trying to help them figure out, okay, what can you do when you have these issues?
00:33:39.140
Like you're kind of retraining like an, like an intuition. So it's actually based in reason.
00:33:47.480
Another interesting part. So you go through phase one, phase two, but there's an, there's a third
00:33:52.020
part that I've heard you talk about where there's a part where you actually start increasing calories.
00:33:58.140
But let's say someone's trying to lose weight and they've lost weight. Then you're like, well,
00:34:00.740
no, actually we're going to, well, you're going to eat more food and you're going to actually going to,
00:34:05.760
you might lose more body fat. And that people might hear like, what, how does that work?
00:34:12.680
Okay. So we can, we can describe this in a few ways. However, a lot of it has to do with,
00:34:21.480
a lot of it does have to do with food choice. So like you said earlier, like I, I really want to
00:34:27.640
have this. I love quick trip by the way. You did reference quick trip, right?
00:34:32.460
Just making sure that we have alignment on quick trip here that all in all, from a food volume
00:34:38.960
standpoint, that sandwich represents a morsel and that you can take that five, six, 700 calories and
00:34:45.800
turn it into a relative feast. And so over time you make better decisions about food choices to
00:34:52.180
stay, to get and stay satisfied with the food choices that you do make, which then ends up
00:34:57.780
helping with things like cravings on the backend. Additionally, when you start to keep track of
00:35:04.520
the amount of calories you consume, when we start adjusting a person down so that they may lose fat,
00:35:13.940
we understand that essentially we all suck at measuring when we start. We understand that.
00:35:21.360
And so we start the values relatively low, understanding that 99% of the time people end up
00:35:29.660
eating more than they report because their measurement skills could use some, could use some
00:35:35.400
mastering. And so what ends up happening is that over time, even though we, we set, we set the presumed
00:35:44.100
calorie intake relatively low, knowing that a person will most likely overeat because of measurement error.
00:35:49.660
However, we account for that overeating to still be beneath a person's maintenance level. Does that
00:35:55.300
make sense? That makes sense. Yes. So that means that as a person continues to improve their measurement
00:36:01.220
skills, they actually, even though they might report the same amount of calories they consume,
00:36:06.340
they start consuming fewer calories over time because their measurement error declines. Does that
00:36:11.260
make sense? That makes sense. Yes. Okay. Now accounting for that, we can start actually increasing a
00:36:18.120
person's calories over time. And this ends up happening functionally for a few reasons. One,
00:36:25.120
that we can increase the calories over time within the confines of the person's maintenance,
00:36:31.380
which effectively means that you can eat one calorie under maintenance and still continue to lose fat
00:36:36.760
in theory. Okay. Okay. And so if a person gets better at measuring over time and we increase the
00:36:42.840
amount of calories they consume over time, then that means in terms of what they report,
00:36:47.840
they report way more and what they do eat ends up matching much closer to what they report.
00:36:56.200
And that accounts for a lot of the mathematical discrepancy. However, in terms of physiological
00:37:00.880
discrepancies, we can account for things like thermogenesis, like your metabolic rate can go up a
00:37:08.000
little bit for a variety of reasons. Food choices can also make a difference in terms of how efficient
00:37:12.860
your digestion, how efficient you digest the food. And one thing that people end up kind of neglecting
00:37:21.100
in terms of these differences in food intake has to do with the fact that a person now has a much
00:37:27.920
more balanced, healthy, active lifestyle. And so we also keep track of activity. And as activity starts
00:37:34.680
to incline, so then does your maintenance, which means that we can continue to increase the calories
00:37:40.100
that you take in, understanding that your maintenance ends up going up for a variety of reasons, which
00:37:45.740
allows us to kind of end a fat loss phase at a relatively high caloric load, when under most
00:37:52.700
circumstances, people's calories decline over time as their progress stalls. Does that make sense?
00:37:59.440
Yes. Okay. So we try and start relatively low and end high where we end at what would presumably be
00:38:08.400
your new maintenance. And that gives us a lot of options.
00:38:12.120
It seems like it'd be a lot more enjoyable, like knowing that.
00:38:17.300
Right. Yeah. Like that's more motivating to stick with something. Ah, I get to eat more.
00:38:22.540
Yes. Because in a lot of other situations, you kind of get scared to check in like,
00:38:26.080
oh, are they going to chop it all away? What do I do? Do I, do I fudge my information next? You know,
00:38:31.180
it ends up becoming a really strange sort of like countdown to doomsday sort of situation.
00:38:36.220
When, when we really present it as, well, we can start lower and it does kind of suck for a minute
00:38:44.960
Because as we, right, we can deal with it. We have the, we have the evidence we can deal with it.
00:38:48.760
And over time, we just, we just add a little bit more and a little bit more until eventually
00:38:53.260
like your calorie to body weight ratio ends up changing dramatically.
00:39:00.720
So I'm curious, how do you measure or track results with clients without making them
00:39:05.500
obsessed too much about it? It seems like you're not, your, your goal is to not make
00:39:10.680
So how do you track results? Are you, is like a weekly weigh-in?
00:39:13.820
And so I, I have people check in once per week and then they can check in more often if they
00:39:21.020
please. The, any sort of preoccupations a person has with any measurements they, they take, we deal
00:39:29.160
with on a, on a person to person basis. However, when we, when we kind of go over the function of
00:39:34.460
measuring, an easy way to say this, a lot of people have preoccupation with measuring for various
00:39:40.040
reasons. Okay. And for that reason, they end up opting, opting for, for other possible programs,
00:39:47.580
consultants, coaches, et cetera, that kind of offer a no tracking approach. Have you heard of something
00:39:53.160
I guess intuitive eating, intuitive eating might be one.
00:39:56.580
Okay. Or maybe, maybe measuring and like the people, people get scared of a scale. Okay. I'll just
00:40:02.940
use that as an example. So I, I kind of come at it from a rational perspective of under any
00:40:08.620
circumstance, whether you, whether you gain, whether you lose, whether you do a program,
00:40:14.360
whether you do in your own thing, you always measure and track, you always measure and track
00:40:19.020
no matter what. And so if you, if you intend to measure and track, or rather, if you measure and
00:40:25.180
track anyway, it makes the most sense to measure and track with the most accurate information possible.
00:40:29.560
So how do I explain this in a way that makes sense? People measured before they started,
00:40:33.760
they just measured in a different way. They measured using their eyeballs. They measured
00:40:38.420
using their gut. They measured using their, their clothes. They measured with how they looked
00:40:43.260
in the mirror. They measured with a cup. They measured with a spoon. They measured with their
00:40:47.380
thumb. They measured with how good and how bad they felt. And under any circumstances before,
00:40:53.020
during, or after a program, you use some measurement system to help inform your decisions.
00:41:00.640
And so if a person makes themselves crazy, if a person claims to make themselves crazy by virtue
00:41:06.680
of measuring, it becomes a pretty straightforward conversation of, well, you measured before,
00:41:11.260
you just measured in a different way, in a way that led you down the path that, that you had a problem
00:41:15.900
with. And so if you measure regardless, because that, because humans make decisions based off of the
00:41:21.880
measurements they make, now the difference becomes, well, may as well use something more accurate and
00:41:28.020
more precise relative to the other way I measured before. That makes sense. And I mean, how do you
00:41:34.360
also deal with it? I mean, when you're working with a client and they're, I think a lot of people,
00:41:38.360
when they go to this expectation with any project, they think like success is going to be linear.
00:41:42.840
Like it'll just like every week. But as we've talked about, the body is a complex, there's a,
00:41:48.260
there's psychological components, there's physiological components going on. They're
00:41:51.840
all working together. Your circumstances are constantly changing. So weight loss typically
00:41:56.220
isn't linear. How do you, how do you help a client go work through that? If they think they have this
00:42:02.540
mindset, it's got to, if I'm not losing a pound a week, then something's, something's wrong.
00:42:08.900
Right. So the, the first aspect of that has to do with the person's demanding this. I must lose weight
00:42:14.320
or else. And that, or else allows a person to justify all sorts of wacky self-sabotaging
00:42:19.360
behaviors that ultimately led them to us. And so having a, having continuous, really continuous
00:42:26.640
check-ins with what sort of demands are we making of ourselves? We can help attenuate to that sort of
00:42:33.660
mindset of I must lose weight or else. So that I think accomplishes a big bulk of it because what you,
00:42:42.020
you reference essentially what I consider textbook form of demandingness and that demandingness
00:42:47.060
leads to all sorts of wacky behaviors and emotional upset. So we can address the demandingness from a
00:42:52.100
philosophical side and from a practical side, in terms of consulting, it means reinforcing and,
00:42:58.820
and giving credit to actions instead of outcomes. And so it has less to do with, did I lose weight this
00:43:06.800
week and more to do with, did all the decisions I make this, I made this week make sense for what I
00:43:12.620
wanted? And if that ends up checking out, then the, the weight loss or whatever ends up kind of
00:43:19.120
happening as a side effect. And so we have this sort of mantra a little bit on the front end, but mostly
00:43:24.280
on the back end that having what we want comes as a side effect of becoming the sort of person it takes
00:43:29.180
to get it. And so we focus way more on the thoughts we have and the decisions we make rather than our
00:43:35.300
outcomes because we have influence over the thoughts we have and the decisions that we make.
00:43:40.480
And with an operational understanding that outcomes will come over time or that they are
00:43:47.760
nonlinear or stochastic, whatever fancy word you want to use, it makes the most sense to, to perform
00:43:53.080
the gut check every week and ask ourselves of all the decisions I made, did I make decisions in a way
00:43:59.320
that helped me become the person it takes? Does that make sense?
00:44:02.540
No, that makes sense. And I've seen that not only in my nutrition, but like my, my, um, my weight
00:44:07.300
training. There'll be some weeks where you're just like, man, 545 pounds just feels really light.
00:44:15.440
It's like, wow. And then you go into the next week and you can't even pull 405 off the floor
00:44:21.080
during your warmup. And you're like, what happened? But, but I mean, but then, you know, I have a coach.
00:44:26.020
He's like, just try, just do the, do the training, do what you can. It'll be okay in the longterm.
00:44:30.420
And it, it, he's always right. Like just, if you do it, it'll be fine in the longterm.
00:44:35.480
Yeah. Yep. And so it, and in a lot of cases it ends up again, assessing a demand, like I must lift
00:44:42.460
545 or else I give myself permission to act poopy. Well, the reality is that why, why you failed your
00:44:50.340
lift, why you missed the lift means very little in, in the real world relative to how I keep upsetting
00:44:57.620
myself about missing a lift right now. Because if I keep doing this, I may cause way more issues
00:45:03.340
in the future. No, it's true. All right. So this is kind of recap here. So first part of this is
00:45:10.560
again, food clarity, like measuring what you actually, and you make a good point. Like we're
00:45:14.700
already measuring, even if you're not using a tablespoon or a scale, you're probably already
00:45:19.420
measuring your food, eyeballing it. So instead of doing that, like get an actual idea, like use,
00:45:25.140
know what you're actually going in your body. By doing that, you can start making changes naturally
00:45:29.640
just in that part. But then eventually you'll want to make adjustments. So you want to lose weight,
00:45:34.600
but you don't want to make drastic things where you're heavily, you know, limiting yourself what
00:45:39.160
you can eat. And then eventually you want to get to the point where you can actually start increasing
00:45:42.740
calories because there's been changes in your activity level and your metabolism that you can
00:45:47.300
actually consume more food, feel satiated and still, still lose weight. And then, but then along the
00:45:54.040
way, it's managing the, like the psychological component of nutrition. And I think the big
00:45:58.560
takeaway there, um, from listening to you is like, you're going to have to be okay with being hungry.
00:46:03.720
You can do it. It's going to stink for a little bit, but that's okay. You have resources to overcome
00:46:08.200
that. And that's okay. Yeah. And that's okay. Exactly. Well, Trevor, this has been a great
00:46:14.420
conversation. Where can people go to learn more about your work? The best thing you could do is go to
00:46:19.340
trevorcashynutrition.com and you can follow me on the Instagrams and the Facebooks. And I have a
00:46:27.740
public Facebook group called the best nutrition group ever that I will send you a link to.
00:46:31.980
The best nutrition group ever. I like it. All right, Dr. Cash, thanks for your time. It's been a
00:46:35.860
pleasure. Thank you so much for having me. My guest here is Dr. Trevor Cashy. He's the owner of
00:46:40.840
Trevor Cashy Nutrition. You can find out more information about his work at his website,
00:46:44.020
trevorcashynutrition.com. Also check out our show notes at aom.is slash cashy,
00:46:48.180
where you find links to resources and we delve deeper into this topic.
00:46:57.980
Well, that wraps up another edition of the AOM podcast. Check out our website at
00:47:01.260
artofmanliness.com where you find our podcast archives. Well, it's thousands of articles
00:47:04.600
written over the years about pretty much anything you think of. And if you'd like to enjoy ad-free
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episodes of the AOM podcast, you can do so on Stitcher Premium. Head over to stitcherpremium.com,
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sign up, use code manliness at checkout for a free month trial. Once you're signed up,
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download the Stitcher app on Android iOS and you can start enjoying ad-free episodes of
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the AOM podcast. And if you haven't done so already, I'd appreciate if you take one minute
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to give us a review on Apple Podcasts or Stitcher. It helps out a lot. And if you've done that already,
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thank you. Please consider sharing the show with a friend or family member who you think
00:47:28.280
will get something out of it. As always, thank you for the continued support. Until next time,
00:47:31.280
it's Brad McKay reminding you to not only listen to the AOM podcast, but put what you've heard into action.
00:47:35.640
AOM podcast is brought to you by the AOM podcast, but put what you've heard into action.