Thanks for tuning in to this episode of hell theory sponsored by our friends at butcher box, they’ve got an awesome offer for you, guys in the description below so be sure to check that out. In this episode with Liz Joseph’s burg, we discuss why there’s, a gap between action and intention; the habits that are sabotaging your weight loss goals, how to break free from yo-yo dieting and how technology is changing the health game For the better everybody welcome to health theory today’s.
Guest is Liz Joseph’s burg. She’s, a weight loss, industry expert and celebrity diet, coach, who’s, probably most famous for the unbelievable transformation. She helped Oscar winner, Jennifer Hudson achieve and maintain, and her new book target 100 has been endorsed by such luminary former clients, as Charles Barkley Katie, Couric and Jessica Simpson.
She ‘ S also appeared on a gaggle of media outlets, including Good Morning, America. The dr. Oz Show The Oprah Winfrey Show Katy and the doctors, but what I find most interesting about your approach is that it’s, so mental that you’re, starting with getting people to interrupt their patterns to create new habits.
Why are you so heavy on the mind you know I don’t think that there’s. One person out there that doesn’t know a better food choice. Right, you know, an apple is a smarter choice than a Snickers bar. There is a giant gap between intention and action, worked for countless weight, loss companies for years and years and watched as people were prescribed.
You know a food plan where they sort of just followed. The food plan, but until something broke, and it just it, was the same for me so I was like. I really want to understand what’s happening in people’s minds, and why is it that they can stick to something for a certain amount of time, but then it ends.
So, as I kind of rotated in my career away from you know, working in Weight, Watchers and Lifetime Fitness and some of these larger brands into creating my own company and my own philosophy, my first step was to understand.
Why do we do what we do, because it isn’t that we don’t know what the smart choice is, so I went about so we’re really looking into the brain science behind you know, why would say A woman come in and I’d, weigh her at Weight Watchers and she would you know the funny thing that happens before a woman weighs and is they start just spewing and and almost like a professional.
They say. Oh, I had a really good week until Friday, when I had. You know 37 points left and I ate 39 points and they felt so bad about it. That I ate 275 points and I was like wait. You ate two points over which wouldn ‘
T have made you gain weight, but the something’s happening in the brain, so started to look into the research, and it turns out that any time that we feel guilt or shame about a food choice or inaction, it actually activates the reward center.
In the brain, meaning, it makes us want to [ Music ] absolutely so. The one thing that you’re trying raising, is what it’s, kids to have the emotional reward. Yes! So when we look at the brain under an MRI when the feelings of guilt or shame which so many diet programs right, they they create these boundaries at which, once you cross that boundary, you are somehow bad.
You have somehow broken a line, so this is sort of back to that woman right. She she felt like she had done something wrong. She felt guilty and shameful so that drove her brain into the reward center lighting up and then she goes for whatever it was.
That she was trying to avoid so a gambler is going to gamble more as they’re, losing right. The the shopaholic is going to spend more money and shop more as they feel more guilt and more shame over what it is that they’re doing so.
My entire philosophy and process was: how do I figure out how to move people away from these feelings of you know there’s, a specific program that, if they don’t stick to it perfectly. They therefore are bad.
They therefore have have broken something, and it’s over right, because that was the process that I found myself going through as I would lose weight. There was a fine ending to that. Maybe I reached a weight goal or I or I did something wrong where it broke down, and so I didn’t just go back to like sort of healthy eating.
I went back to the most unhealthy eating. There is in the world right binge eating and overeating, and all of those things so – and I was seeing this with so many people, so I really felt like I really wanted to start to make people understand how their brain is driving them and remove some of Those feelings of guilt and shame and give them the tools and the worksheets and the exercises that would help them to unravel their thought process around this and where they picked up those ideas.
It’s really interesting to me, and I think this is what I found so fascinating about target 100. The way you open the book, like first with your story, which is amazing – and I definitely want to talk about that and then to your point like once – people understand that they’ve, built this unhealthy relationship with food.
Then they can actually get to the cause and begin to unwind it yeah, and I heard you say one time that you know I think oftentimes people are surprised because I have to come to them at the diet level, because that’s.
What they expect that’s, exactly that’s, not where we’re gonna stay. Now that I was so interested that’s exactly right right, like it’s so funny, you know, I have to come at them with what resonates with what they can understand at this moment, but where I take them is so deep And so much further than what they’ve ever thought about their relationship with food, and I have sort of a tagline of like I say I’m, going to return you to a normal relationship with food.
We have a really strange relationship with food in this country. I think we ‘ Ve lost our way in many ways. I think dieting, and you know all of these sort of extremes that that have have come in and come out.
You know going into a process and sort of slavishly or following you know the rules that somebody else has set out that worked for them right, I always say for my clients I say like let’s, pretend we’re, going to A hat store right.
If you were gonna buy yourself a hat, you’d, try on a whole bunch of hats and if they didn’t look good. You’d, take them off and you would pick up the pieces that kind of looked good about that hat and you’d go to the next, so I’m, always encouraging people to not turn themselves over use these Programs they’re amazing, you’ll, learn something from doing them, but don’t beat yourself up if it isn ‘
T your long-term plan that you’re gonna stick to completely which that’s, where I think this thing gets set up for people. Is they do one of these things? You know they go to Weight Watchers. They stay on it.
For four weeks or so, and then when they can’t sustain it, they feel like a failure and those feelings drive them to overeat so unraveling. That is to try to look at this process from a whole new lens and that’s.
What target 100 is a for me right, so I had to lead them in with I’m, giving you a parameter. I’m, giving you sort of a program to follow, but if you read the book it’s based on the image of me playing doing archery with my sons – and I say I want you to go into target 100 and imagine You know when you go out to do our jury.
You aim for the bull’s, eye right and I had never done it before so here I am aiming I’m, hitting the house off to the left. You know I mean I’m, not doing well at all, but I did hit a couple of the outer circles and it was one of those moments where I was like.
Oh my gosh. This is this is how I want people to approach. They’re, they’re, they’re dieting or they’re. Moving through a lifestyle is that they wouldn’t if they, if they got near it near the bull’s eye.
They would still get points so that’s, sort of the entire ideology behind target 100 is you know, I asked you to kind of limit yourself to about a hundred grams of carbs a day, and I always say about because if you got 93, I’d, be fine and if you did 107, you’d, be fine.
It’s when you say like oh gosh. I missed this perfect mark, so I may as well just go and eat and drink everything off. I’m the face of the planet, so what drives unraveling this, which is the most important thing for people to hear, is that we are just a bundle of habit patterns.
50 % of what we do in a day is simply habit and habits are relegated to a back portion of the brain. Where, honestly, we aren’t even present when we’re doing them, and we do that for a really important reason.
Right. Because if I had to decide how to wash my hair every day, that would that would be exhausting my decisions. For later in the day, so so we have to love our habits, but if 50 % of what we do in a day is have it, then 50 % of the decisions were making about how we feed ourselves.
You know when we do. What are we eating in the car? Are we eating on the go? Are we you know? What are we, how are we feeling our bodies, then 50 % of that is just kind of not we’re, not even present for it, and we’re just being driven to these sort of old easy patterns.
So we don’t have to think so. In the book you break down the anatomy of a habit. That was really cool, walk people through quickly that are watching now that might have a tenuous or unhealthy relationship with food.
They have habits that aren’t taking them where they want to go. They may be blind to those habits. How do they become aware and then, more importantly, how do they create that new pattern? Great, so the anatomy of a habit is simple.
Right habits are just very, very simple: they are made up of three distinct things that happen. There is a trigger. There are a cue of some sort that kicks that routine off that kicks the habit off that habit.
Then gives you some sort of a reward, so you may know that it would be best for you to have a healthy breakfast right and but your habit, isn’t that you don’t know that perhaps having a healthy breakfast would Be smart, it’s that your bad habit as you wake up and use the snooze bar three times in a row making you you know 15 to 20 minutes late every single day.
So you get up all the sudden. You’re running late. You then skip breakfast altogether. You’re completely stressed out. You get in the car you get to the office and there’s. A coffee cart with Donuts outside you say I’m.
Just gonna get coffee, but as humans anytime we see food smell food or talk about food were triggered to eat it. So you see the donut you don ‘ T have any resolve at that moment because you ‘
Ve been eating. The donut habitually for days, but it also releases a big fat dose of serotonin, so you are getting a real feel-good kind of thing. We back it up and we say like so. Why is this happening? Okay, let’s.
Take that alarm clock this trigger. Is this triggers bad this? This lateness is triggering this. This doughnut, let’s, move this alarm clock across the room or stop using your phone as an alarm clock and get an actual alarm clock and put it across the room.
So you have to get out of bed and let’s. Stop being late because that extra 10 15 20 minutes allows you to then go to the kitchen where we trigger other things right, where I put post-it notes of like okay.
Today’s, breakfast is X, Y & amp Z, so you don’t have to think you just have to start to create this new pattern. Once you do something about three to five times. It begins to become this new fledgling habit and it’s, not as painful.
I think in that anatomy of habits. I think no one ever has talked about the emotional difficulty that ensues from changing a habit as well. I just I like to tell people to be aware that there will be so many emotions when you try to change something that’s so comfortable and you don’t have to think about.
You will be mad. You’ll want to stomp your feet. You’ll, feel angry. You’ll feel sad. You’ll, feel you know all of this anxiety. It’s just that your body wants so badly to not have to think about these sort of less than important decisions that it feels very painful.
But if you will repeat those things, as I say three to five times, they become this fledgeling habit and you just need to sort of fan the flames of that habit soon enough. That becomes the comfortable thing and all of a sudden breakfast is knocked out.
Like all the sudden you’re, like oh gosh, you’ve got the stuff in the house and eating breakfast. Every day I’m, not getting over hungry. I’m, not eating the doughnut. That starts to lead to actual weight loss that change of moving the alarm clock across the room.
One thing that I like that you talked about is refusing excuses, so I can hear people they’re hearing the story and it’s. Like yeah, I’m gonna move the alarm clock across room, no problem, and then something happens in they’re up late and it’s like I just need to.
You know snooze it a little bit and they allow themselves the excuse of breaking the habit, which then immediately reverts them back to the way that they were behaving before. How do you get people to? Because you said you can train this? How do you get them to get better at refusing excuses? Yeah? Well, I think, probably, as I said, 50 % of what we do in a day is is habit.
More importantly, they estimate that 80 % of the thoughts we’ve. Had we’ve had already it’s, recycled, thought that goes around and around and around right and it’s. Never positive! We don’t, have like happy good thoughts that go round and round around right.
It’s like this is never gonna work. You know it’s, always the negative right. So one of the things I think is really important is beginning, and one of the pillars in the book is beginning to understand.
Sort of stress, relief and meditation to be able to sort of begin to clear those thoughts. I was shocked that you said that meditation is your number one weight loss. Yes, yes, most of the eating and / drinking in the society that we live in now is due to literally being so stressed out and not having control over those thoughts that you were talking about right and meditation allows us to be in the moment to take The action, whereas, when we’re, stuck in the 80 % tornado, we can’t do anything.
I was always a person who would sneak eat right. I didn’t want anyone to see me eating. It was a really bad habit, and even when I got married like I would like you like, a lot be right, bring it right up, honey and then end up in the pantry like sneaking some little bit of food, because I didn’t want Them to see me eating right.
It’s, a bad pattern. I’ve, worked on it. I’ve eradicated it like 95 percent right, but every once in a while. I will just find myself in there because burned into my neural pathways. Is this old habit of behavior? They never fade away completely.
They live there and that’s. Ok, it’s. Ok, if I can eradicate it, you know 80 to 95 percent. I’m, really gonna be able to live at a healthy weight, but when I understand that it’s still there and it happens – I don’t need to feel guilty or shamed, but I just need to immediately Go back to right! So if you hit that snooze button the one day you’re, it’s.
Not over you, didn’t. Do anything wrong. You didn’t. Do anything bad it’s. Just that this pathway still lives there and you want to go over and reiterate the new pathway that you’re working on. I’d, really like to hear your story because it’s.
Super powerful. You open the book by saying I don’t, think anybody knew the words body-shaming back in my elementary school when I was growing up in the 80s, I think it’s really interesting that you’ve, been able to Unwind that you said that you were bullied mercilessly by weight and as a child of the 80s, there weren’t a lot of heavy kids, and so when there was one they got targeted, pretty fast yeah.
So what was that like? And how on earth were you able to unwind the narrative about being somebody who is overweight, yeah that that is such an important piece of this? Because you know whether we have been shamed like I was out by outside sources.
Most of the people that I work with are shaming themselves worse than anyone outwardly has ever done. I was just literally again habitually putting myself down based on what had been given to me externally, but what I was also coming up with internally about me, being less than and less worthy and and and ugly fat.
All the things that that that I came up with that became my identity. That became just a running narrative right. It was almost like if you had a radio on in the background, and you just stopped noticing that you’d left it on.
That was just always going on and I didn’t even realize it was on. I started this book by giving you a program right that you could understand that you could stick to that starts with looking at your environment.
Right starts with you being able to clear out your house and some of these foods and starts so once you once you just do these things in your environment level, which it’s, really simple, to kind of go through your environment say like wow.
Those ice cream bars, they got to go cuz. I’m, not gonna do well. For me at Chardonnay, you can’t have Chardonnay in the house. Open bottle. Chardonnay is not gonna make it through the night in my house that’s a trigger for me.
So I clean up my environment and I start behaving differently right once you change the environment, you begin to behave differently once you behave differently. You start to actually feel like. Maybe you are capable of this.
You know as long as I don’t have the Chardonnay wow I don’t drink it, so I’m, capable of keeping it out of the house. I and that that capability begins to make me believe in myself just a little bit and I go wow, so I I believe I could lose this weight.
I believe I could be different once you believe in yourself. The very final piece is the identity piece. It’s at the kind of the core of that that those levels of change once you get to that identity, piece that’s, where the real work starts, that’s, the unraveling, and that for me, came through.
You know learning to meditate learning, to quiet my brain learning, to understand the voices that I was telling myself and I lost weight so many times over the course of my life. First, it was 30 pounds about five different times and then that escalated to 50, then that escalated to 65.
When I realized my entire identity was, was a yo-yo dieter, I could lose the weight, but I couldn’t, keep it off. As what I told myself, and once I heard myself telling myself that, then I could begin the work to say like okay.
What is it that’s that I want to see happen now, but until you do that sort of internal work journaling, you know meditating talking to two friends who’ve known you for a very long time examining where you picked up These ideas about yourself this is going to persist.
That makes a lot of sense so going back to as you’re beginning to build yourself out of this, you talk about people having their urge to quit, whether it’s exercise or whether it’s, something more long-term.
How do we exercise that muscle? How do we begin to push farther to not give in to that urge to quit, and maybe, most importantly, how do we begin to earn that credibility that you talked about with ourselves? Well, I’m, a huge proponent of baby steps.
Everything in my teaching and in my philosophy is about going. You know just the tiniest bit further than you did and then literally cheering yourself on. I think those two things are under rated in this process.
How do you cheer yourself on people? Ask me that question all the time and I think it’s so yeah? Well, I think it’s. This change over into one of the big principles, additionally to kind of quieting guilt and shame, is that we now know that gratitude and just the practice of gratitude in when we look again at the brain under an MRI, scan gratitude, releases, serotonin and endorphins in the Level of almost like a low level antidepressant and so learning to kind of practice, gratitude and learning to be proud of yourself and grateful.
I make people laugh because it is always for me Chardonnay, and you know there have been nice around like you know what I’m just it was New Year’s Eve a couple years ago, and I was like you know what I’ve had enough.
This has been a December to remember. I need to like cap it tonight. It’s New Years Eve. You know I’m just gonna wait at like 8:00. I’m gonna have a couple glasses of wine tonight, but it’s just gonna, be it’s.
Gon na be a low-key night, so friend invited us over for a brunch. We literally knock on the door and she opens the door and she’s, holding mimosas at noon, and I was like well this wasn’t in the plan, and you know I made the conscious decision that I was gonna enjoy The mimosa that she handed me number one I was aware of it.
I made the decision right. I was there. I enjoyed that and then I ended up drinking, probably four more drinks throughout the rest of the day. So I did not hit my target. The old me when I opened my eyes that next morning the old me would have literally been berating.
How did you you said you weren’t gonna? Do that you’re, a loser. You’re! This you’re that before I even open my eyes, I feel like there’s, a forty hundred pound weight on my chest. Cuz I’m now just a bad person.
The new me literally, I opened my eyes and I was like at least it was five drinks and not six love. You girl, you did good, you drank some water too. You’re awesome. Waking up like versus waking up with that weight on.
You allowed me to then sort of skyrocket into that next day. It’s, being it’s, so counterintuitive in the diet world. It’s, all about beating yourself up and shaming yourself, and you’re, not good enough and you didn’t do well enough.
I want you to to literally be grateful and appreciative and and nourish every good choice that you make and let go of the bad ones, because when we focus on that negative, when we just keep berating ourselves, we can’t go anywhere.
We’re stuck. I think people are afraid to do that because they think I ‘ Ve got to kick the horse harder to make. It run faster. It’s, the absolute opposite, so it isn’t that you didn ‘ T know that this was a healthier me.
Oh you got to the restaurant. You’re. Like I don’t, know cheeseburger or salad, I’m, not sure which one no, but can you be like? Can you use these new skills of planning a little bit before you get there? Can you begin to understand that there will be urgent? You were asking about this.
This urge to quit right urges they. They happen for us all day, long, not just with food, with all sorts of things. What I think has happened in this really rough environment that we live in. Is we’ve stopped? You know understanding how to reduce these urges towards food, and I think another thing I would love for people to hear is that, just as human beings, every time we see food, smell food or talk about food, we are driven to eat it.
We have this sort of secondary hunger system that kicks in and when we see it, even if we just ate a meal, our bodies are going to make us actually feel hunger, sickness, symptoms, mouth-watering, stomach grumbling.
You know it ‘ S probably happened to every single person who’s, gone to a restaurant and overeating a little bit and said oh candy and another bite until they bring that dessert card around and all the sudden you’re like I got a second Stomach where’d, I get the second stomach.
I love it, so we are prehistoric in that. When we see food smell food or talk about food, we can eat more food, so understanding that and understanding the environment. We live in right. So if you’re gonna go now to any sort of clothing store.
They didn’t used to sell food in clothing stores, but they sell food in clothing stores now because they know that by making you walk through that maze. As you wait to pay for your purchases and get more stressed out by your children, asking you can, I have, can I have you’re going to be driven to eat that food and they’re going to make money off of You buying those foods at the checkout that they’re, not even making on the clothes the margins better on the food for them, because that food can sit there till 2027 and the clothes are out of style in six months.
So they they know what they’re doing. If you can start to navigate this very dangerous environment that we live in and say like okay, I understand that I’m staring at a candy bar. So of course my mouth is gonna water.
That doesn’t mean I have to eat it. Once you understand your physiology and your physical response to just the seeing of food, you can begin to navigate and control. Those urges a little bit more, I think, urges as well the one place and the the chapter that it seems to really just blow people away.
Is that my I’m a personal trainer. I’ve, you know spent years exercising. I want you exercising, because that’s, the one place where you finally practice day in and day out, you practice pushing through the urge to quit, because there will be a moment in your exercise where you ‘
Re like there might be a moment before, where you’re. Putting on the shoes or like I don’t have time you’re gonna. Have all this mental junk come up at some point, whether it’s before, during or after you’re gonna have to deal with some sort of urge to not do what you’re doing.
I love in the book how you talk about that exercise is really about exercising the mind even more than it is about exercising the body. I think that’s, so astute, and I think that people really miss that a lot and going back to the notion of earning credibility with yourself.
What does that process? Look like yeah? We are all day making promises to other people right. I have children and you know if I tell my child that we’re going. I’m gonna show up for them. You have to believe I would literally walk across fire like I would walk across fire for that child.
But what I realized was I wasn’t ever doing the same, loving thing back to myself. I had become completely disposable. I was you know, making a promise and then breaking that promise to myself, which made me not trust or love myself, because would you trust or love an external person who continually broke their promises to to you so establishing integrity with yourself becomes probably one of the Greatest things you will ever do you’re, going to gain life skills that that make your work better and your family life better and your love life better, because once you can look at yourself in the mirror and say I do what I say.
I’m going to do for me in that vein, I think establishing integrity with self goes back to that baby steps principle right, I think really saying. Okay, I want to establish. I’m going to exercise more this year.
I think that that’s, a giant statement that no one can even quantify right. What does that mean? I think you have to go to a very micro level with yourself and say, like okay haven’t exercised in two years.
I don’t even have a gym membership. I don’t have shoes. I don’t know where I would go. I think week one you don’t set foot in the gym week, one it’s. You. The only promise you make is that you’re, going to spend 30 minutes to an hour, calling your friends to say.
Where do you go? What do you like put it out on Facebook? I don’t know, put it on Instagram. I’m. Looking for ideas and whatever lands with you next week, you have to book a class and get your clothes for the following week, so it’s, just booking that class and getting the clothes week to so you can.
You can actually achieve this. Someone who just says I’m gonna work out and has to figure out where they’re going buy shoes. Do this? Do they’re, never gonna? Do it’s, not realistic? It’s, never gonna happen, so back it up, break it down into manageable chunks that you can keep the promise.
So as people are going down, this road, I know for a lot of people can be very overwhelming, especially with diet. What should I eat? Why shouldn’t? I eat you have a pretty simple, straightforward way for people to begin to make good choices going back to that notion of it’s better to be sort of directionally correct.
You’re still getting some points rather than you know, just throwing it all to the wind, and I don’t know what I’m doing, and so you, just don’t, make any effort. How can people begin to plan out their meals yeah? What I discovered after working with so many thousands of people is, we basically eat the same thing over and over and over again, and I have a worksheet in the nutrition chapter.
That literally, is called the five five five worksheet and it’s. What I do with a client, a private client. I sit down on that first meeting and we go through like five healthy breakfasts that they like not that I like not, that came from some other person but that they would actually eat you know.
Maybe they hate eggs, but I love eggs. So we’re, not gonna put eggs on your meal plan, so we go through and we designate five breakfast five lunches and five dinners and five snacks that we know are really good choices, but they also really like.
So if you’ve designated these meals and you have things on hand that will you know, get make making those meals easy. You always know you’re kind of set. My program is meant to be the moderate, loving gentle expandable program, because I know about all of that junk that’s, gonna happen in their head.
I’m trying to get them to a place where it doesn ‘ T need to be so hard like I, don’t want to count for numbers 2/10 to get another number. I think simplicity and understanding that were very habitual creatures, understanding and leveraging the habit habit patterns that we were talking about.
Leverage, your hat don’t don’t hate, your habits, don’t, be mad at your haven’t, create new ones and leverage it. So there’s, sort of a moat around your castle. Like you just kind of wake up – and you make one of these great five healthy breakfasts and you don’t even think about it anymore.
I always call it the beginning of your healthy meal repertoire because we’re, just gonna add to it right. So your friend calls and says: let’s, go out from executes and you’re like, oh god. Oh god, what am I going to? How am I gonna? Do this and you kind of do a little bit of research, and you realize that I’m gonna get the fajitas I’m just gonna eat one tortilla and get the rest of it over salad.
I’m gonna try that see if it works right. Try on that hat see if it works. It works great. Now I know every time I go to Mexican, I ‘ Ve got this sort of go-to thing: that’s, really yummy and I like it and it works with my program.
So it’s like that understanding and doing things that are right for you in your life. Very important word that you used around that that I liked a lot was fluidity. You talked about how part of what makes your program work so effectively.
Is there’s? Just a fluidity – and you were saying that I’ve – never seen anyone ever stick to a diet where they had to give up their favorite food yeah. I thought that was pretty interesting. How do you work with people to incorporate that when you know it’s? You have a slight number system, but it’s, really pretty light very light, very light.
You know coming out of the Weight Watchers world right, which is a low-fat, almost no fat diet, and they started to really disagree with it about five years ago, and I’m trying to help the Weight. Watchers members, who’ve, been stuck in this mentality, sort of gently teach them about moving into high-fat foods and not fearing them, because you know I get to work with these people face-to-face.
This is real, like people are stuck in the 80s, I’m, not kidding like they’re stuck and they’re like where are my snack Wells man like I’m, like yeah, you shouldn’t be eating that, like how do I move you so yeah? This is a very gentle movement and fluidity and in eating the things you love and learning to manage the things you love is the key like that is like for me.
I drink wine like I drink wine and yes, I’ve. I’ve, definitely fallen on my face with that. Literally more than you know, I’ve. Had my issues learning to manage it, but I came up with a personal system that really works right.
Like I, don’t have it in the house before I can have a glass of wine. I have to have a glass of seltzer in between every glass of wine. I have to have a glass of seltzer that spreads out my drinks. Now that’s habitual.
If pizza is your thing, if you make it taboo over here, it’s, now bad right. What do we, what happens when something’s bad and we feel guilty or shameful overeating? We’re gonna highlight that reward system.
We’re gonna go overboard with it. So I’m trying to get people to say like okay, I am gonna look at my week and on Friday night we are going out for pizza and I’m going to have it, but I’m gon Na have a salad first right, I’m gonna.
Do some behavior. I’m, going to shift some behavior around that food to see how that impacts me, I may still fail not fail. It’s, a terrible word, but a stick. I may still not do as well as I was hoping.
I would like my mimosa day, but I learned something and I I’m gonna keep chipping away at this thing. That has become something bigger than food right that is now bigger. That pizza is now not just pizza.
It’s like it means so much more, so you’ve, got to kind of chip away at that and try different behavior around it. I love that you stopped yourself from saying the word fail. Yeah. It was like, oh, that’s, so strong know that words matter.
They do talk a little bit about that like. How do you help people begin to change the language of how they refer to themselves or how they think about food and how important that actual words are it’s critical, I mean I just think again like the way I would speak to my Sister, for example, who I love dearly if she came to me and said like I did, I went out for pizza and I wouldn’t ever speak to her like there’s such a failure.
Why’d? You do that you know so it’s, a best friend a sister, even a child, like. How would I have this funny thing in the book of, like you know, as your kids learn to walk right? They like kind of pull themselves up on a coffee table, and they take a tenuous step.
That would be like me, walking over and shoving that kid down and saying: well, you didn’t, walk across the room so down with you right that’s, that’s. The way we treat ourselves – and this is the other thing – every action that we take has a positive intention right.
So even a drug addict taking heroin is just doing it because they’re. They want to feel better right than they do at that moment same thing with food. You know you’re beating yourself up all day, you’re, getting a pretty powerful hit of serotonin every time you eat.
So you’re, not you’re, not dumb! You’re, pretty smart! You’re, making yourself feel better when you can look at yourself from that lens and say like. Oh, I’m. So nice to me I love me. Oh, I was all that time with those sixty-five pounds I was, I was trying to make myself better.
I just was doing it in the wrong way. That kind of language towards yourself is a total change. You can actually progress from that spot of loving yourself enough to say, like yeah I don’t, like the result that I was getting going down this road.
I think I want to try Kido great go ahead. Try it let’s! Work, let’s, work through Kido and see how that feels. For you see if that works. For you, if it doesn’t, let’s, see what pieces you picked up like.
Oh, I can add avocado to absolutely everything and it’s delicious. So you’re very clear in the book that there’s, no one-size-fits-all approach, but you have a couple sort of broad-stroke things that you would say.
I think most people, if not everybody, would benefit from what are those sort of broad strokes. So target 100 is based around the number 100 sort of a metaphor for you being you’re 100 % right like not mine, yours as they say, the book is filled with worksheets for you to kind of chisel down on a lot of what We’ve been talking about, but it’s built on six pillars, so one would be nutrition number one would be that sort of looking at reducing carbohydrates and again it’s, a gentle movement away from processed foods into About a hundred grams of carbs a day which is by no means a low carb diet, it’s.
You know, Atkins is 50 kilos. 2025, like you’re, not low-carb, but it’s. Giving you just enough of a push to say: let me look at this meal and see what I can do to judge it into higher protein a little bit more healthy fat and lots more vegetables.
I think the pillar that blows people’s mind the most is that hydration, I’m, asking you to get a hundred ounces of water in in a day which, to me is nothing at this point. I’m, like oh yeah I blow through that no problem.
Most people, 75 % of America – is walking around critically to hydrate it like critically to hydrate. So none of their systems – we’re 65 % water with our brain and our heart being up to 78 % water, your brain in your heart or your to metabolic powerhouses.
So if those are completely empty low on gas, not functioning, you’re, not going to feel your best. You’re gonna mistake, thirst for hunger, so hydration is a huge movement. So I separate movement and exercise as two pillars.
People are often like I don’t understand right. I’m trying to get people to understand that we are hunter-gatherers. We need regular, just movement. Walking doing you know the dishes doing the laundry gardening.
Those kinds of things are essential for our bodies, so I’m, trying to get people to add a hundred minutes of movement to their week. So that could be you know. Five 20-minute walks with friends walk breaks.
I often counsel clients to get a headset and when they have calls, I have them trigger themselves to stand up until it becomes a habit where every time the phone rings they stand up and they pace during their calls.
Because we need to not be in this position for so many hours a day. We have restricted blood flow to the legs. We have a lower heart rate, things that don’t help us, so movement exercise is just a hundred minutes of exercise.
Again, I’m coming from a gentle move from maybe no exercise into a hundred minutes in a week now that could be just three thirty thirty five minute sessions during the week of you know getting that heart rate pumping and starting to stress the Muscle, you know skeletal system, you know gently starting that and then pressing further with that once that becomes your habit and stress so a hundred minutes of stress relieving exercises so that could be learning to meditate for 10.
You know 10 15 minutes a day. That could be getting massaged. That could be even yoga. Some restorative yoga, that relieves stress it could be reading or knitting people. Just don’t understand the stress response in our body and we are in horrible environment at this point right.
They they estimate, even just the lighting in most of the large you know. Big-Box stores is so stressful to our system that we are in a huge fight. You go into Costco fight or flight. The entire time like, though just that particular type of lighting, so in the fight-or-flight scenario, very simply your body is grabbing a tiny bit of fat to power.
Your run away from whatever danger is coming your way, once your body grabs that tiny little bit of fat, your entire system says all boy we’re, losing our body fat. We got to make her hungrier, so she eats more.
So we can restore that body fat so that we’re safe if the nuclear winter comes right, so your entire system, if we don’t, learn to kind of quell the stress response. We’re gonna keep being driven to overeat, driven to overeat, driven towards high-fat, high-salt high sugar foods, because those are the ones that release the serotonin and get the stress down.
So stress is a big piece and sleep which I think is again another place that most people, especially you, know, working one-to-one with people. We’re like a mess, and that is when we detox, that is, when our bodies kind of restore and get ready and renew.
And if you miss sleep, you’re, going to be hungrier. You’re gonna have about a 30 % gap between this ghrelin and leptin. Right, so ghrelin tells you to go. Eat leptin tells you to stop eat. We got a big gap there and ghrelin is winning.
When you haven’t had enough sleep, so those are the pillars that I’m, really trying to get people to think about. I was trying to expand the conversation right. So all the other diet. Companies are really just talking food.
That’s. All you hear here’s. Your here’s; your food system, like oh, my god, like that’s like one little tiny piece kind of really interesting that you’re. Also super involved in like wearables and Technology and stuff, like that, what are things you think people should be tracking what are wearables, or I know you’ve got this really interesting scale that you got involved with, which is fascinating, like what are some Of the the cutting-edge technology things that people would do to further themselves in this journey, yeah I’ve, become really passionate about technology, because when you’re trying to break habits, technology can be that great trigger right.
Your phone can trigger new habits, so I you know at the very smallest level you don’t have to buy anything. Your phone is tracking your steps for you as long as you have it on you. I think tracking your steps, even for a short amount of time, is so important right.
So we go back to that movement pillar. The majority of people are walking between three and five thousand steps in a day which is unbelievably low, unbelievably low right. That’s, just like almost not moving at all, and I give like a whole outline of a woman in the in the book of like her day and she was like no, I’m so busy I’m.
Oh, my god, no! I’m on my feet all day when we really attract it. She was on her feet for like 12 minutes cuz. She’s in look. Yes, she’s busy. She doesn’t. Have five minutes to herself, but she’s, jumping from one thing to the Train.
She sits on the train. Then she goes to the office. Then she sits at the office and she comes home when she drives her kids for two and a half hours, so people are busy, but they’re, not moving. So I think understanding that you’re, not moving, even though you think you are what’s, the number of steps you think give us a day in four.
We aim for 10,000 secretly I’d, love 12. I mean we are Moo, we’re meant to be moving and there’s. So many as I say, little ways that you can get this in, but again creating habits around it. You know I have so many people who, just you know they’re.
It’s, just their habit to jump in the car and drive to the train, even though the trains only 0.5 of a mile, and so we, you know kind of working on like that baby steps right. We kind of start to leave the house 10 minutes early.
You know like getting you to think like okay, this is a non-negotiable. I’m gonna. Do this or I’m gonna get out, one train stop early or whatever it is so secretly about 12,000. I think tracking, your sleep is fascinating.
It’s really important, because I think again, people like now, I’m good, and then they realize like that, these little things are getting in their way. You know they’re, getting on their phone right before they go to bed and they’re, getting wrapped up in social media, and then they’re, getting stressed out because she’s doing better than me At work – and I’m falling apart – oh my god, and then they don’t fall asleep, or the quality of their sleep.
Isn’t good. So understanding that and changing, I would say, like the two biggest places I work with people are their nighttime and their morning time habits right. So we we look at that and say we leave that phone downstairs at 10:00 and we go upstairs and there’s just no more getting on to social media or something like that can be like this very impactful thing again.
I didn’t talk to you about food. We just moved your phone, you know like, and that impacted the way you ate the next day, so tracking that I think really. Interestingly, I think you know tracking your exercise and some of these new, these new programs that are emerging things like an orange theory where they’re, helping you to understand and tracking.
You know how many times you’re showing up there. You know what is your heart rate and what is your max heart rate and they’re, helping you in a really user-friendly way to understand things like peloton, I mean changing the world to be able to gamify and make a community in your own