Self Mastery Techniques to Defeat Your Cravings

I’m doctor Michael Haley This is the doctor Haley Show podcast and today’s guest is doctor Glenn Livingston. He helps people to stop overeating and find a more peaceful long term relationship with food. He’s the author of several books including Never binge again and defeat your cravings, Doctor Livingston’s…work, theories and research have been published in major periodicals such as the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Chicago Sun Times

Doctor Livingson Thank you for joining me on the show And you being here in my hometown you should’ve just come right over

And You should’ve walked right on over We could’ve sat around in a little living room having coffee or something or herbal tea as we were saying Erbal tea Right

Sure it’s funny I funny saying this too because we’re gonna be talking about food and food addictions and it just so happens I kinda know where you are right down the street from one of my favorite restaurants. There’s the beach house down there. Can we have favorite restaurants and still talk about food addictions and

Oh sure. Oh sure. No I mean, the way defeat your craving is my latest book and it’s actually the most scientifically up to date and the one that people should read first if they would. but in that book I talk about the way that cravings work And…cravings are very contextually…bound just in the same way that we know we need to stop at a red light and go with a green light

It’s possible to construct For most people, a set of conditions or rules to bind a particular treat to a particular contact So, I only eat chocolate on Saturdays and no more than two ounces and only after I worked out…And what happens is…the same thing that would happen at a casino, if the slot machine only paid off on Saturday morning at ten o’clock, at sat on Saturday mornings the casinos would be full You’d see all those little ladies standing at the slot machines…Put all week long they’d stop doing that. Because they knew it wasn’t gonna pay off And your brain will do the same thing If you bind things to a particular context most people at least two out of three people, for most treats, can work it out that they don’t have to give them up they they can moderate them

there is that, third person or sometimes fourth person…that has dug such a deep neurological groove or a particular substance and it does vary from substance to substance that they have to give it up entirely maybe just for a while for some people sometimes forever.

so, yeah so it’s entirely possible to have favorite restaurants I think food is meant to be enjoyed…And the idea is to…defeat your cravings not be a slave to your cravings So Most people will tell you they enjoy food more and have a better sense of freedom once they’ve kinda mastered these techniques, not a worse than a full constricted so yeah you we can we can still meet at the beach house if you want to

Okay Sounds good Sounds good Okay Yeah I think I’m gonna tremendously benefit from this discussion because I definitely have my own challenges I don’t know many people in in the audience will as well I do have a question and I’m gonna display my own ignorance here I read somewhere you’re a former psychologist, and I honestly don’t know what the credentials for psychologists are I know you have PhD are there other initials…

Just call me emperor and we’re all good No No I am, I what what I offered today by the way is training education and coaching I don’t I don’t practice anymore under the at least not with food issues I offer training and education because I want you to be a little freer to speak my mind on what I think is the, best standard of care.

I have a PhD in clinical psychology from Yeshiva University in nineteen ninety one. And then you have to get certain number of hours of supervised practice and take a test and keep up some continuing education and things like that It’s…five years after college, plus a certain amount of hours of supervised conduct and supervised practice and then you can sit for the exam

So okay Then the fun starts then the fun really starts was told by some friends that I should let my license go so that I’m not bound by all the rules and regulations and I can freely. I don’t know if you feel that way or not but

Why I don’t even know if a hundred percent that works. Because people could still say you’re practicing even if you’re not holding yourself out to be a doctor

but but yeah so I I have a PhD in clinical psychology i used to be a child and family therapist That’s where most of my training was, but I had a serious problem with food myself which led me on a…twenty five or thirty year adventure to figure out what the solution was And I happened to write a book about it when I got divorced…And it got really popular and I wound up, with a little agency and a couple of thousand clients over, eight or nine years And, learned a lot about helping people struggle with food over the years a long way

I wanna be straight with the audience and I wanna I’m gonna them something new because I’ve always, led them to join different people’s email lists and stuff And I’m gonna tell them what a lead magnet is in this case. A lead magnet is something that, people like yourself myself will use to get you to join our email list. And it might be a free download or something that we would give to you for joining the email list Now the reason I’m telling him that is is because your lead magnet is awesome.

Oh thank you That is

you have a lot of giveaways including a full copy of your new book, which I downloaded yesterday and started reading Plus you had about twenty other downloads that I can’t wait to get to. And your content is awesome I’ve made it easy for my audience to find it If you go to drhaley.com/dyc for “Defeat Your Cravings”. It will go right to your…page where they can join your email list and people do it get the downloads…read an email or two And if you like them Stay subscribed If you don’t you can always unsubscribe…but wow an excellent giveaway and thank you for that

You can also always go to defeat cravings and click the big blue button But yes that’s the book is available for free for free and kindle looking PDF format.

Yep DefeatYourCravings.com Right?

Yeah Yes Yes Yes Yes

And that’s how I got it It was easy to find. so Alright Now they know what a lead magnet is. And there were some recordings on there too I had listened to some things and learned some new things you were talking out

they’ll make more sense if at the end of the interview after we kind of explain how this all works But yeah there’s a food plan starter template and there’s a binge recovery audio hope lots of other things that would be helpful.

I make an awful lot available for free because I know not everybody can afford our, coaching or to pay us for other things And My goal is to help a million people a year to stop overeating So I try to make an awful lot available for free and a percentage of people go on to our paid materials…

Yeah. Now yeah your content seems awesome too When I’m reading your book I see things that are logical…scientific, and presented in a way with a good dose of humor.

Well thank you as well

you’re very transparent about yourself and some of the things that you’ve experienced in life And I was completely able to relate to one area in particular because when I was a kid…well I say a kid when I was in college. Would work out with a friend of mine and we love Sundays because on Sundays, there was a pizza special where you’d get two large pizzas…and two two liters of Coke for ten bucks and we were on a college budget. So what did we do? We went to the gym and when we got back we ordered that and we each ate our own large pizza and drank our own two liter bottle of coke. Yeah. And you talked about, being in that same boat where you just felt at the time if you just exercised because you did you knew you could get away with it and you work putting on the weight, and then eventually what happened?

Well I mean I’m I’m six four and just genetically a modestly, broad shouldered a little muscular. And so if I worked out for a couple hours a day I could eat whatever I wanted to. Just like you’re describing. Whole pizza maybe two boxes of muffins or chocolate or bagels or anything that was nailed down was really fair game.

And…that worked for me until…I didn’t really have the time to work out and I got a little older in my metabolism slowed down. So I was married and commuting two hours each way to go to graduate school and take classes and see patients and then I get home at night and my wife wants her to talk to me or she wants her to talk about the business. And I didn’t have two minutes a day to work out most days is what it felt like. I now know you can make the time if you really want to but at the time it felt like I didn’t have the time…

And…I found that I couldn’t adjust my food intake. It’s like the previous intake had a hold on me and I’d be sitting and working with a suicidal client and thinking about when I could cut the next pizza and, working with couple that just discovered a divorce and thinking about getting to the delicatessen and dislodging my jaw and just emptying the deli tray in there…that actually bothered me more than the weight because the weight didn’t really come on that much at first. It was the obsession. The interference with my ability to be present.

And I come from a family of seventeen psychologists and therapists and…, what’s always been most important to me is being a good doctor That’s always been the most important thing in the world being a great psychologist, but…I mean I never lost anybody and I saw two hundred couples and only two of them ever got divorced so I must have been doing something right but I wasn’t a hundred percent there. I couldn’t lend people my soul and it’s not just an intellectual endeavor. People have to love and trust you enough. To think new thoughts and leave their comfort zone and and try new things. And I don’t think I was giving them as much if I as I could like that.

And so I kinda went on a journey to figure out what was wrong And…from the family that I was in it made the most sense to me that there must be a metaphorical hole in my heart. Right? And if I could fill that hole in my heart If I could love myself thin then I wouldn’t have to keep trying to fill that hole in my stomach. and so I tried And I went to the best therapist and I went to over eaters anonymous went on a spiritual journey, I saw the best psychiatrist I took medication I went to nutritionist dieticians. And I don’t regret the journey It was a very soulful journey It’s part of why I have the compassion that I have and feel like I’m the person that I am, but…every time I would go see someone I’d get a little thinner and a lot fatter a little thinner and a lot fatter a little thinner and a lot fatter.

And…it took three…major…impacts to shift my paradigm And I’ll tell you that the paradigm that wound up working for me was more of a tough love paradigm It’s more of a be the alpha wolf of your own mind rather than a love yourself inner nurture your inner wounded child paradigm…And when an alpha wolf is challenged for leadership it doesn’t go oh my goodness Someone needs a hug. Right It growls and it snarls and it says get back in line or I’ll kill you.

And…what changed my mind what really brought me around after this it was probably about twenty years that I was on this journey. reached almost about three hundred pounds I don’t know exactly because I stopped mining myself. all kinds of medical problems triglycerides and rosacea and eczema and hashimoto’s and all types of autoimmune issues what turned me around? Were three factors…in my life I was consulting…because I had…after graduate school I had some time out of my hand because my ex wife was traveling a lot for business. And I started consulting for some of her clients…which were largely, fortune one hundred fortune five hundred companies in big food and big pharma. And I did an awful lot on the food consulting.

And what I saw…was that they were spending tens of millions of dollars to engineer these…hyper palatable concentrations of starch and sugar and fat and exciter toxins and salt. And…it’s all…geared to hit the list point in the reptilian brain without giving you the nutrition to feel satisfied. And the result of that is you want more You go looking for love in a bag box or container and there’s always some fat cat and a white suit and a mustache that’s laughing all the way to the bank. And…so I said to myself what? This is not this is not a psychological force This is an external force that has nothing to do with what happened to me as a child or that my marriage wasn’t going really well. It’s an external force

When you say that when you talk about that it reminds me of an old proverb It says the satisfied soul loathes the honeycomb, but to one who is starving even that which seems bitter would be sweet. As the…big box nutrition companies food companies whatever they’re selling us, we eat it but it’s not satisfying because not meeting our nutrition…needs…So it keeps us starving, which we’re willing to eat anything. Right?

Yeah And at the same time your brain has been taught that the source of calories is in these bags and boxes and containers…so you go back for more. Because they the…brain is kind of like a calorie acquisition machine. a hundred thousand years ago food was pretty scarce while we were evolving. And so when it learns that there is this concentrated source of calories available for not that much effort, and…today you could buy ten thousand calories at a convenience store and walk right across the street and buy another ten thousand calories probably less for per than less than a hundred dollars. so your brain gravitates of course the easiest most concentrated sources…of calories and almost regardless of nutrition, almost regardless. so that’s part of how the addictive cycle starts. I don’t like to think of it as a disease I like to think of it as an automated habit loop And that’s why it feels so difficult to break because the brain really thinks it’s a matter of survival It’s like your survival drives had been hijacked.

I saw these really powerful external forces. I saw the advertising industry getting really good at convincing us that we needed these things. like, by taking vitamins out of this supposedly nutritional bar and putting money into a vibrant diversely colored packaging instead, which in nature triggers a variety impulse…because we’re programmed we’ve evolved to seek variety because they’re a variety of micronutrients. If you look at a diverse multicolored patch of vegetables, you might see yellow carrots or, red tomatoes or green lettuce or blueberries which is not a vegetable.

I can get that in a bag of skittles Can I…Okay I can get all the colors.

They’d like you to think that They’d like you to think that Yeah. Yeah I mean I mean so that’s the kind of thing that goes on. And so I said this doesn’t have anything to do with the fact that my mama dropped me in my head or, I as in a bad marriage…

And then to top it all off I actually had learned something in neurology class when I was in graduate school that I totally forgotten. Which is that the reptilian brain doesn’t really know love. The reptilian brain looks at something in the environment Let’s say this is the reptilian brain and it goes do I eat it? Do I mate with it or do I kill it? EAT MATE or KILL like a bad college drinking game.

On top of that is a mammalian brain that says before you eat mate or kill that thing, what impact does it have on the people that you love from or your tribe And then the cortex on top of that says, before you eat mate or kill that thing what impact does that have on your long term goals like weight loss and health and fitness and some music and spirituality and art and your work and your contribution to the world

So the reptilian brain being the most simple…survival…without considering consequences…

Yeah It’s it’s the seed of the survivals response…Fight or flight, flea or freeze, feast or famine. If I don’t fill this if I don’t eat this I’m gonna die.

Right. Yeah Right. And so so that’s the part of the brain that has the capacity in a perceived emergency received emergency, to push your rational thinking aside. That’s what’s going on when you’ve read a diet book all weekend long and you’re all psyched about it And then at three o’clock on Monday afternoon there’s a chocolate bar at the coffee counter, and it’s got your name on it and you hear a little voice in your head that says “you’ve worked out hard enough even though it’s not the weekend You could have chocolate today Just start your silly diet again tomorrow”. That’s why your rational thinking goes out the window. So here’s what I did Here’s how I began to fix the problem personally.

I’m Dr. Haley and oddly, the supplement that changed my health the most was not aloe vera… it was powdered fruits and vegetables. But it didn’t come in capsules. I used to take a brand that came in capsules and I didn’t notice anything. But when I tried a brand where the serving size was a scoop equal to more than 40 capsules, I could feel a difference. That’s where IaGreens powdered vegetables and fruits comes in. And to make it easier for you, this month, April of 2024, you can use the coupon code “IAGREE” one word without any spaces to get 20% off a single can purchase – Normally you have to buy the bundle of 3 to save 20% but I’m convinced you will notice the benefit and come back for more. There’s a good chance you’ll also find a free shipping option. So head to HaleyNutrition.com now and use the promo code iagree for 20% off iagreens throughout April 2024. Now, back to the show.

I set up a kind of a trip wire I said okay Gonna stop trying to love myself thin. I went on this long journey It’s made me into a different person I’m happy with who I am and I’m still fat. And I’m still eating a bunch of crap…I said I’m going to set up a tripwire so that I know when this part of my brain is active Because if I’m gonna take control like the Alpha Wolf I gotta know when this thing is active

And by the way I said to myself, This is just a biological urge like any other Right The urge to eat consume mass quantities or eat as much chocolates as I could or eat a whole pizza. It’s just a biological urge It felt like survival need but it’s no different than having to pee really badly or being really attracted to a woman on the street, It’s something we’re biologically programmed to really really really wanna do.

Yeah And before you before you give it away though I have a question because when you say Alpha Wolf it almost sounds like like the alpha male the willpower the, I can do this thing…

Techniques we use actually reduce the need for willpower…willpower…is the ability…to make good decisions. And it turns out that in many circumstances not all, that willpower is depleted…by the necessity of making decisions

So, for example…in our culture we’re told…that…We should eat well ninety percent of the time and eat healthy ten percent of the time. But we’re not really told how to discern…what the difference is between those two different times As a matter of fact we’re not always told exactly how to discern what’s healthy and what’s indulgent. We kind of sort of know but we’re not asked to make a really clear definition. So what happens then if I say I’m just gonna eat chocolate ten percent of the time I’m gonna I’m gonna avoid it Ninety percent of the time is every time I’m in front of a chocolate opportunity I have to make another decision and exert my willpower.

Mhmm But if I say I’m only ever gonna have chocolate on the last three days of the calendar month, and all of my chocolate decisions have been made for the entire month I’m only gonna have it on Saturdays like we used in the example before. All of my chocolate decisions all week long are now gone I don’t have to use willpower Those decisions have been made ahead of time.

And this is good news for me who has little willpower so I like what I’m hearing…

Well yeah And there are other things you could do to increase your will because there is there is some willpower you have to exert…as you’re extinguishing the craving because the brain extinguishes cravings through discomfort it’s it’s…Let me jump over there for a second…

see, a hundred thousand years ago, It was the people who had the strongest cravings that survived. If we didn’t have strong cravings we would not be motivated to…do what was necessary to hunt and gather, right to to get food and procure it You didn’t bring it back to their family And we wouldn’t we wouldn’t be motivated And so…that’s why we have such strong cravings In the modern food environment, it’s a liability not an asset because food is so available. But when food is really scarce cravings really help to survive.

Yeah. so the the brain create and you could probably take me to task on this I’m sure you know more about it

Or slow metabolism…

Mhmm. A slow metabolism is like an automobile that can go more miles on less fuel. It it’s an asset not a liability

Right Right. Yeah Yeah So a hundred thousand years ago the people with slower metabolism would have lived longer because they could carry more fat to get through the famines…

Right Yeah. so you were talking about discomfort…and we’re talking about willpower. And I want you to explain there is a need to use, some willpower in order to extinguish your cravings.

The brain forms a craving and extinguishes cravings in the same way by using dopamine for the most part…When you see a food queue, food queue could be the, dunkin donut sign, it could be…, just not make that sound. Sorry It’s gonna be what

An aroma. It could be an aroma. It could even be the feel of the sun and the air at the beach which makes you want ice cream. It’s any stimulus…that reminds you of the availability…of calories and nutrition mostly calories…

Okay. So let’s go back to a hundred thousand year ago and come up with an imaginary caveman named Thag T-H-A-G. I just like the name. So Thag one day is out looking for fruit or something to eat And he comes across a monkey and he happens to follow the monkey to a banana tree. And Thag is so happy Gorges himself on bananas takes him home for his family. they have a big old banana party.

Thag’s brain takes notice of that and the next time Thag sees a monkey, a food queue, it revs up his dopamine levels to get him all motivated to go follow the monkey. If Thag doesn’t follow the monkey, Thag’s brain…removes the dopamine and makes it less than what it was at resting state to make you uncomfortable. So a high amount of dopamine feels really good and motivating. Pleasurable, a low amount of dopamine makes you miserable and cranky. So it’s essentially Thag’s brain is saying follow that monkey or I’m gonna make you miserable. Right?

Okay. So…what happens is…that, Thag gets motivated to follow monkeys and motivated to follow monkeys And now he’s got,, sees a monkey He’s jonesing for a banana, and he just goes to get the banana and he’s got this this monkey banana habit loop It’s almost automatic It doesn’t even have to think about it…

Then…one day, later in the season, the bananas start to run out, and Thag follows a monkey to a tree and there is no banana…that makes Thag’s brain uncomfortable.

And…People would think maybe Thag would give up and look for some other animal or some other kind of fruit, but that’s not really what happens…because in nature…food would become intermittently available before it would become unavailable. And in a scarce food environment…the…existence of a food queue like a monkey, which resulted in the acquisition of calories, sometimes…eighty percent of the time fifty percent of the time even twenty percent of the time is better than having no food cue at all So the brain is very reluctant…to let go of cravings associated with the food queue and it will put you through discomfort.

As a result…When you first try to give up a craving let’s say I’m passing a doughnut store and having doughnuts every day on my way home from work and I decided this has gotta go I make a rule that I’m just not gonna stop at doughnut stores anymore. Well there’s a tiny bit of relief the first day or two It’s called the honeymoon period. And then all of a sudden, your brain has a little temper tantrum I call it the where the F are my donuts or where the F are my bananas,…It gives you worse cravings than you’ve ever had You feel more uncomfortable than you’ve ever had.

Most people at that point think Oh my god This is torturous It’s gonna be like this forever I can’t do it And they do the exact wrong thing At that point they go back into the doughnut store and have the doughnut Saying I can’t take this forever, not knowing that it’s gonna start coming down if they go through that. But the brain is testing for the intermittent availability of doughnuts with the intermittent availability of bananas. because it would have been better able to survive if it had these intermittent queues available.

what you wanna do is push through, and then your brain starts to let go of the monkeys or the donut store sign as a cue. There are a couple of little little bursts for daily habit, somewhere between the twenty one and thirty day mark You’ll have a couple of little temper tantrums. And then your brain will…label the craving as dormant It won’t erase it because the brain never forgets how it acquired calories…because that’s a survival advantage…but it will label it dormant because the brain doesn’t wanna waste energy either.

And so it’s entirely possible if you choose a particular food queue that’s bothering you, and you don’t want to be bothered by it anymore It’s entirely possible to push through this extinction period, but you do need to have a little bit of willpower initially…just to get through that initial curve.

some things that help with that. So we know that decision making…interferes with willpower Decision making wears down your willpower. So if you can take several decision free breaks over the course of the day See it’s not just food decisions that wear down your willpower It’s…math problems…It’s who’s taking Jenny to soccer practice. It’s what suit do I wear to work today or should I wear a suit or not Every decision you make wears down your willpower So taking a few…five or ten minute decision free breaks, put down your phone walk away from the computer, walk away from anybody that can ask you any questions for a little bit Walk outside take a few deep breaths five minutes Couple of times a day makes a big difference.

it also turns out that…the reptilian brain, reptilian brain is not dominant over our neocortex in ordinary day to day life. But if it perceives there to be an emergency, it has the ability to push your higher brain out of the way That’s where you get the screw It just do it response…yes I made these rules I’m trying to follow this diet I’m trying to do this plan but, oh well what the hell screw it just do it? That’s almost a universal response and it occurs when…you’ve introduced some level of organismic distress to your brain

Organismic distress could be a lack of appropriate nutrition. So if you skipped a meal or two, if you had a meal that was comprised largely of junk or processed food and you didn’t get enough nutrition, if you’re not eating regularly enough. Your brain begins to perceive an emergency Especially it will adapt to that and get used to it But in the beginning it begins to perceive an emergency, and it’s much more likely to push your rational brain out of the way and say…screw it We need calories…Just do it

we’re just kinda talking about ways to take the burden off of your willpower. so there’s a vicious amount of decisions…There’s adequate nutrition. Flood your body with nutrition on a regular basis of a slight caloric deficit if you want to lose weight.

Then…there’s fatigue. When your body is overtired…when your brain is overtired, it’s more prone to want more resources. there’s also isolation. Were a pack animal, in primitive times we were in danger if we were too far from the tribe. And so If you feel too much of a sense of isolation your brain is more likely to perceive that there’s an emergency. there’s dehydration if you don’t have enough water, Right you don’t have enough sleep. all of these things.

So what’s so these are almost like you’re you’re supposed to have these things and your body knows it. And something is missing. And maybe you don’t really know what it is but the easiest most consistent thing is I need food.

Yep. I the brain says I’m less likely to die of starvation I’m less likely to die. If I got more glucose in my system

Interesting…I got your one page and I thought this was really interesting And I should have read this at the beginning…It says, if you struggle with food in any way from occasionally eating beyond your own best thinking to regularly consuming mass quantities…I’d like to make you an outrageous promise…judgment long enough to absorb a few unusual techniques and insights. And you can control your cravings forever. Not talking about white knuckle, hold on, or your life control but rather the kind…you can maintain indefinitely…without constant attention and thought

It goes on and says, I know it’s probably hard to believe where you stand right now. But you also won’t need to rely on willpower because you’ll learn to make these eating patterns a natural part of who you are and provided you avoid extreme diets, which we’ve all tried different kinds of diets from eliminating carbohydrates or eliminating fats or one of the major food items it goes on to say providing you avoid extreme diets and…reliably eating enough nutritious food you can defeat your cravings on the food plan of your choice low carb high carb plant based carnivore. Point counting calorie counting it’s up to you.

lastly defeat your cravings is a formula for taking control of your irresistible urges…that derail you from goals and dreams in all life areas…You can use this same formula for a multitude of positive, pursuits like exercise parenting finances…work friendship…romance productivity, and more.

When I read that I say okay Wow And in the book it goes on a section similar to that has a bunch of promises after that. And it’s kinda one of those things where…alright. It sounds too good to be true, but if it is and I don’t pay attention to this I’m an absolute fool…

Well it’s when you put it all together it’s kind of common sense, it’s not commonly experienced because we live in a culture that tacitly agrees to support each other to kill themselves with food slowly. While everybody laughs and often jokes about it and people are getting all the wrong advice about, they think that guidelines are better than rules They think that rules are dangerous They think that…you should just eat when you’re hungry and stop when you’re full even though the food industry has chemicals in a lot of these packaged goods that interfere with your ability to know when you’re hungry and full. or they think they can just eat mindfully there’s a lot of mythology…in the culture that prevents people from really understanding it,

but it’s not too good to be true because…the brain does not wanna waste energy and pursuing a craving that you’re never going to indulge, but even pursuing it conditional even with contextual indulgences allowed, that’s a waste of energy And so the brain lets go eventually be of that extinction curve that we talked about an extinction burst and then coming all the way down.

and so if I were to go for sixty days pushing myself for that extinction curve and taking care of my willpower and fatigue and hydration and all the things we talked about, my brain is gonna get used to it and I’m gonna start to become a person. It’s gonna become part of my identity that I’m just a person who doesn’t need donuts at the donut store. Under the person that drives past the doughnut store. And that becomes part of your character and character Trump’s will power.

so…people don’t really understand the way that we’re told that cravings are a disease they’re not a disease. there’s no evidence of a disease process in place at least none that I’m aware of If there is some please raise your hand to speak up? There’s addictions and there’s habits, but I don’t know that those are disease processes they’re neurological pathways that have formed…

they are things that our body got used to Our body got used to feeling a different way and no one likes change including our microbiome and everything about us So it’s not a disease process There’s physiological, neurological…reasons for these things but disease? No.

Right there’s a difference between…being powerless over something In our culture you’re told that you’re if you have a serious problem with overeating that you’re powerless over food, or that it’s impossible there’s no really human defense It’s an irresistible urge. there’s a difference between something that’s impossible…and something that’s just hard

Like, the way that I view it is there’s a well worn path up a mountain It’s a little bit steep It requires a little bit of work and discomfort. But it’s very well worn There are thousands of people who’ve done it. And you can take one step in front of the next and do it if you’re willing to put in the work to do it And a lot of people aren’t So that’s why the disease concept yet has taken hold…

you were getting to the tripwire…and what was your tripwire and what’d you do about it when you when you hit that

My one was about the chalk And what the tripwire does…is it opens up a space between stimulus and response Right? Because we’re talking about these automated habit loops where you see the banana and you’re off to the races or you see the donut signer before you know it you’ve already paid the lady and put it in your mouth…it opens up a space between stimulus and response. So you’re not on the seafood diet anymore where you see food and then you eat you see food and then you can think for a moment.

I wish I could tell you that immediately that that’s a miracle I was not immediately cured. What did happen was it became a lot less mysterious to me…I did something else which is a little embarrassing as a sophisticated psychologist, I decided to call my reptilian brain my inner pig You don’t have to do that, if this is not something I was gonna teach but I decided I was gonna call up my inner pig

And so I had this rule that said I’m not gonna have chocolate during the week If I was at a Starbucks and there was a chocolate bar in or when I heard that voice that says shift start your silly plan again tomorrow, I would say wait a minute, that’s not me That’s my inner pig. It’s squealing for pig slop Chocolate on a Wednesday is pig slop I don’t need pig slop I don’t let farm animals tell me what to do. It was a crude way of opening up that space but it worked for me because I’d say well I don’t want this thing to be in charge Who’s in charge Or I don’t want I don’t want that thing to be in charge…

so what you do in that space I’m sorry Do you wanna say something

Well I’m I’m thinking for me and I’m sure there’s others that would hear that and say okay Well what if it’s not something that’s like chocolate where there’s…not so much nutrition benefit There’s some healthy aspects of chocolate and cocoa, but the phytochemicals antioxidants…But what if it’s a healthy food and your problem is really just quantity.

a couple days ago I bought twelve avocados I think I have three of them left and I’m probably gonna eat them today And I can I can have four or five avocados in a row or five or six bananas? Mhmm

do I wanna call them that I wouldn’t necessarily wanna say that’s pig slot. Because…it’s good for me too And if I call everything pig slop then what do I eat Is there any Negative programming that happens with that

You you’d make a conditional rule For example I’m like this with nuts…I did not take nuts and seeds out of my diet entirely, but when I had them in an unrestricted way I really got out of control. So I eventually came to the conclusion that I should never eat nuts and seeds by themselves. And so eating nuts and seeds by themselves for me is pig slop Anything that’s off your plan, is pig slop. So you draw the line any way you want to It’s just a way of aiming any bullseye on an archery target and knowing exactly where the the lines are so that if you miss, by how much and in what direction to make the adjustment.

so you could say I’ll never have more than one avocado per day. So that second avocado that’s pig slop but that first avocado is good. Or or whatever the line is that you wanna draw whatever you think is healthy.

Maybe maybe maybe two.

Okay Two Okay Well sure And would it instead of calling that pig slop would it say any more than that is gluttony…

If that works for you, yeah. Yeah That’s that’s fine…the point is to have something immersive that you don’t want to associate yourself with so that you wake up and you have the opportunity to remember why you made the rule in the first place.

But then there’s one more thing you can do in that space that was really helpful to me and this is how I recovered…You can disempower…Well first of all you can you can disempower the reptilian brain and get back into your rational mind again by…breathing out for longer than you breathe in If you breathe in for a count of seven and out for a count of eleven, your reptilian brain will kind of come offline and your higher brain will come back online…

because…when you…if if you were running from a hungry bear, you wouldn’t have time to breathe out for longer than you breathed in. Right You’ve been going…all your emergency systems would be activated They call it the sympathetic nervous system. If you breathe out for longer than you breathe in I’m not doing it now because it takes some time But if you did that, you bring your parasympathetic nervous system back online which is what slows you down and says it’s okay to rest and digest and strategize and think and plan. And that’s where you want to be to make the right decisions about food.

As soon as the tripwire goes off, you bring your rational brain back online with your breath. That’s often enough to stop you from doing what you were gonna do. But after that, you can examine the logic, the voice of justification…that was gonna make it okay to have those extra avocados. oh, they’re healthy omega fats and I gotta get my calories from someplace. And I still have enough calories left for the day I could have five of them today It’s no big deal.

Then…you want to ask yourself…what’s wrong with that line of thinking We call it a squeal a pig squeal. And I’ll be a little less good at disempowering this line of thinking but I would say just because something is good for you in small amounts doesn’t mean it’s good for you in large amounts, I have…plenty of omega three There are plenty of omega threes in two avocados…I will feel less sluggish…My blood sugar system will function more optimally if I don’t overload it with that today And…therefore your line of thinking is wrong mister Pig. So you can you can take away the pig’s excuses.

the example I usually use is when the pig says you can just start your silly roll again tomorrow. That’s actually not true It’s not just as easy to start tomorrow because if you have the craving today and you have the thought just start tomorrow and then you reinforce…both the craving and the thought by actually…eating the chocolate or eating the avocado? Now you have two habits to break.

Yeah. Right And and and then because you you’ll have the habit of saying just start tomorrow Again So you’ll be more likely to say just start tomorrow tomorrow, and be more likely to have a deeper craving tomorrow So if you’re in a hole stop digging use the present moment to be healthy.

I like that I call that a a rational refutation, and it…it takes away your excuses…and it it makes a previously greased shoot, and to more like something with sawdust and sandpaper and and glass and broken glass on it makes it painful to go down It doesn’t make it impossible to go down but it makes painful to go down And that’s a lot of the battle for a lot of people.

Yeah I’m getting a lot from this when you talked about the trip wire and creating space and it’s funny because I’m also thinking that that breath is also creating…space and…never really thought about switching it from a sympathetic to a parasympathetic, response and getting to a…better place and more…less reptilian. I forget what the levels were in the brain. The reptilian being more

My reptilian mammalian and Neo cortex I’m I’m an amateur neurology guy I’m not a neurologist so someone could take me to task with that but that’s how I understand it.

No Well it makes sense it makes sense that in the most basic primitive level of thinking it’s survival And then there’s, care for the family and the people around you and relationships and all those other things and how does this how am I gonna feel tomorrow? how does this affect the people around me So it makes a lot of sense.

Yeah. when you were talking about the deceptions of the food industry, I actually thought of a study that I had done years ago, not a big scientific study because all it involved was watching TV. And I had watched enough TV to count the commercials and using more simple numbers this is what I found I found about every hour of TV there would be about five breaks commercial breaks and each commercial break would have about five commercials in it. And most groups of commercials would have like at least we’ll say one drug commercial, one fast food commercial, there were there there was a pattern there So we could watch TV for about an hour and see probably five fast food commercials. And and five drug commercials.

They suggested that the average person was watching twenty hours of TV this this is going back now It’s YouTube And of course there’s advertisements on YouTube or there’s social media and you get bombarded with advertisements it’s the same thing just a different media now.

But if we were watching twenty hours of TV, per week we would say okay And let’s use simple numbers I didn’t watch twenty hours I’m not I’m not the average American I watch only ten hours. Okay So, fifty little brain washings…related to whatever that is, times fifty I took two weeks off of here So keep the math easy and say you know two thousand five hundred brain washings per year And if you’ve you’ve been watching TV for for a decade or four decades, Now we’re up to a hundred thousand brainwashings in each of those particular areas

Wow. Yeah. And it’s no wonder why our brains will automatically…finish the jingles like plop plop fiz fiz… Oh what a relief it is. How do you spell relief? R o l a I d s and and we haven’t heard these things in years but they’re still imprinted on our brain or the nighttime sniffling sneezing coughing achy stuffy head fever so you can rest. Nyquil. and in the same thing with food, have it your way. “at Burger King”, I don’t know if those jingles exist Now we’re getting “bada bup bup bup” you know other things where you you hear that you just think quick satisfaction…and we are being…programmed. To take that in.

Now I’m in business, and I’ve always thought if I wanna be successful…what do I do What kind of product do I have? Something that people have to keep coming back for more or wanna keep coming back for more something that tastes good that they enjoy consuming something that is slightly addicting I mean if you can nail these aspects of a product down you’re gonna keep people coming back forever. drugs do that Fast food does that a lot of the things that we’re being marketed to have those qualities and we are getting hooked and programmed.

So I like how you made mention of that and the “why” and bringing in the colors and the different things that make our brain say I need that I want that. it’s fascinating.

I that that’s a fascinating study and I applaud you for taking the time to do that. You’ve got you’ve got a

Well you’re doing something similar too And when I signed up for your E list there was a question something about like what do you…struggle the most with or what what’s your temptation I think was related to food I don’t remember the exact question

Worst craving?

Worst craving Okay And for me, unfortunately, it’s not a particular food It’s dinner My wife makes everything good. And it it’s super healthy but it’s just hard to stop eating because it’s so amazing delicious

But I’m wondering what you have learned from all of the answers that have been submitted to you And I understand that years ago you also did a similar study related to that same thing of collecting data. What have you learned from that

well what I learned from the answers to the opt in question…about people’s worst cravings We we actually did a more rigorous national survey with twenty eight hundred people to figure out what people’s worst cravings were going to be. I thought it was gonna be chocolate I was wrong.

chocolate’s easy for me to say no to I don’t feel good when I eat it and it’s easy for me to think about when I when I am putting that to my mouth how am I gonna feel in an hour or how is it gonna affect my sleep tonight And it’s not good That’s an easy one for me to say no to And I understand that you were programmed a little bit differently in that way on chocolate.

I I eventually had to give up chocolate entirely. I started just eating it on the weekends but that I’m one of those people that actually just didn’t work for.

so what I learned was that only eleven percent of the people say they can’t stop eating chocolate. Twenty eight percent of the people said they can’t stop eating pizza. So it’s it’s like more than two and a half times as difficult. to stop eating pizza as it is to or more than two and a half times as common for people to be addicted to pizza than to the chocolate So that that kind of surprised me.

The prevalence of salty chip addiction. Salty chips and salty nuts was also higher than chocolate which surprised me I guess the…the substance that…is your poison is your poison So it seems seems like the whole world revolved around chocolate for me But that’s not how the world actually is

So I learned that…the study I did way back when It took me about five years when internet clicks were cheap in the 90s and early 2000s…I intersepted people when they were searching for stress management solutions. I asked them what they’re stressed about and what kind of food they had trouble, controlling when they felt stressed. And I found three things none of which led me to the solution I talked about today They they actually kind of led me to realize that I was going in a wrong direction but there were three interesting things anyway.

One of them was that people who struggled with chocolate like me tended to be lonely or brokenhearted or a little depressed. people who struggled with…salty crunchy things They tended to be stressed at work So potato chip eaters and and or nachos or, salty crunchy things They tend to be stressed at work and people who struggled with soft chewy things like pasta and bread and bagels they tended to be stressed at home. So I thought that was really interesting.

I actually…had this whole conversation with my mom. And I said well, look, mom I I really can’t stop eating chocolate. I felt like I couldn’t at that time And I know I do it when feel lonely or depressed and I’m not in the world’s best marriage but, where did this come from How did I develop this habit?

And she had this whole story about how…when I was one year old in nineteen sixty five, that her husband was my dad was in the army, was the captain and they were talking about sending him to Vietnam and she was terrified. At the same time her father had just gotten out of prison, at my grandfather. She had no idea he was guilty and she had idolized him So she was almost suicidally depressed and almost catatonic staring at the wall and she didn’t have the wherewithal to love me and feed me.

this is how I discovered the little pig inside me. She didn’t have the wherewithal to love me and feed me so she kept a big bottle of Bosco chocolate syrup…in a refrigerator on the floor. And she said go get your Bosco. I go running over and I’d open the bottle and I’d suck on it and go into a sugar, chocolate sugar coma and leave her alone and she could stare at the wall.

And…you’d think that if my personal psychology really had a lot to do with why I was addicted to chocolate, that at that point, we’d have a big cry and a big hug and a catharsis and we’d, we just I never have trouble with chocolate again. And it was a really good conversation…I did have a metaphorical hug with my mom over Skype. And, I’m glad we had the conversation because I hated myself less after that And I learned a lot about my mom after that also.

But my chocolate eating got worse at that point because there was this stupid voice in my head that would say something like you know what Glenn…Our momma didn’t love us enough and she a great big chocolate sized hole in your heart. And until you can fix the marriage or get out of the marriage and find the love of your life you’re gonna have to go right on eating chocolate Yippie let’s go get more that voice of justification.

And that’s when I decided well that’s my inner pig That’s the thing that I have to beat…And, just like a fire in a well contained fireplace…If there’s something poking holes in the fireplace, the fire is gonna get out and burn down the house But if you can fix the fireplace you don’t have to fix the fire You don’t have to fix all those emotions. You just have to prevent them from burning down the house. So that’s how I really switched my paradigm I started looking at opening up that space and disempowering…the rationalizations and everything else that we’ve done all these years.

Wow That’s pretty neat. What’s one of your favorite testimonials related to what you do.

Oh god We get them every day isn’t that the best? It it’s really the best…My favorite testimonials are not the ones of oh I lost a hundred pounds and you saved my life or anything like that Well we get enough of those. But I really don’t think this is about weight loss I think it’s about self control and self mastery…and the elimination of food obsession.

and so my favorite testimonials are people that say…I have the presence to be with my kids. I have the…energy to work on those projects that I’ve been putting off I’m doing better at work I’m making more money you know, I’m making love for my husband again I’m just a lot more present I haven’t lost all the weight yet.

My tagline is the back and door to weight loss. Because we really emphasize…getting control, being able to follow starting with one simple rule, flooding your body with nutrition at a slight caloric deficit really living a much more…balanced even life with food so that you can let go of the, existential angst that says, just hand over the chocolate bar nobody gets hurt. It’s um, you kinda…I mean anybody who’s probably lost I lost a war with a chocolate bar in nineteen eighty two and I didn’t come up for thirty years So…anybody who’s been through that twenty years anybody who’s been through that knows what I’m talking about and those are my favorite testimonials they’re the one that are about I gave them their mind back They can they can think and breathe and be present for their loved ones.

Wow That’s great. how many books have you written?

I’ve written 8 books, “Defeat Your Cravings” is the one to read You can read the other ones after that but that’s the most up to date comprehensive rewrite of everything that we’ve done., The books kind of wrote themselves like after I’d seen about a thousand clients I worked with ten other coaches over the years and we have coaching groups and this is not all individual one on one by me.

But after I’d been exposed to about a thousand clients, I realized there were all these specialty topics like what are the binge triggers And there are all these different things that trigger a binge. And what do you do about the specific triggers and what about people who struggle with nighttime overeating? what about know one of them was a workbook the interesting tricks we found about nighttime overeating…

I have not seen one case of nighttime overeating solved unless they’re willing to eat breakfast. And most nighttime overeaters tell me that they don’t want to have breadfast. They’re Usually intermittent fasters often, and they don’t wanna have breakfast And I’m not seeing one case solved without

Well that’s interesting because Coffee is probably not breakfast so you probably nailed me on that one.

I have one more kind of awkward question and then there’s I know you needed thirty seconds. The awkward question and I’ll go first on answering this one is…what’s in it for you Now Mhmm.

For me, the answer would be because I have a company and people buy things from me. I create content I give a lot of information away what’s in it for me? The number one thing the best pay that I receive and you kind of alluded to this already, is the thank yous I get from my customers…thank you for having for having these products available there’s nothing like this thank you so much for what you do.

The pay that I get that helps me feed the family and stuff That’s important It’s beneficial…I love the fact that I’m doing something that I love to do and it’s helping people.

When you’re writing books and and people are signing up to your email lists and things like that what’s in it for

very similar to you I I get to make a difference while I make a living. I’ve had money I’ve lost money Always have the ability to make enough. I don’t have kids I have family but I don’t have kids We don’t have a lot of expenses. I can live on not that much

This this doesn’t actually make a lot of money People are gonna say well, you have a coaching program for fifteen hundred dollars They have no idea how much it costs to advertise and put it all together And there are months when I don’t take a salary at all. I can make a lot more money if I went back into corporate consulting but I feel like that’s the wrong side of the war.

there have been times when it’s a struggle to keep it afloat because I don’t sell pills or potions or powders which would be an easier way to make money here. we sell coaching we sell books and tapes That’s basically what we do. So what’s in it for me is to make enough to make a living while I make a difference or make a difference while I make a living. what’s in it for me or the testimonials that told you about

Right I also get to work with this group of really amazing coaches. Like and they they teach me stuff all the time Like it’s not just me, out in the front lines figuring it out there They’re out in the front lines figuring it out also And they’re my Captains, right If I’m the General, they’re my captains and they…it’s just lovely to be able to work with them And I look forward to the meetings every week So that will send it for me

Yeah Yeah That’s good That’s good. Anything else that you wish I asked do you’ve mentioned that you needed thirty seconds at the end?

Well no I just want you told them in the beginning. I’ve got three things for you at defeatyourcravings dot com Click the big blue button to sign up for the reader bonus list. Get the lead magnet which is a free copy of the book in Kindle Nook or PDF format There is nothing held back in the book. You do have everything you need to implement this in the book It’s a very comprehensive book.

Some…people like coaching. Some people who go to look for the free Kindle Nook or PDF format book decide, no I’m gonna buy the audible version or I’m gonna buy the paperback Those are at traditional charges But anyway the the book is free in electronic format.

If you…Also do that, you will get a set of food plan starter templates. So this is a diet agnostic program…I personally am a plant based person, but I work with people on ketogenic and, point counting calorie counting, whatever your program happens to be It doesn’t matter as long as it’s not too extreme. I can’t help you if you want to be a breatharian I can’t help you if you want to have five hundred calories of protein shakes per day because you’re gonna be starving and your brain is going to override your your best judgment. most any…rational plan we can help you with.

I wish people would stop arguing so much about plants versus animals and instead focus on getting the processed junk out of the system…That’s my background and what I know is doing most of the damage.

You’ll also get a set of recorded full length coaching sessions. A lot of this sounds, both harsh and a little overwhelming in the abstract…But when you hear it implemented with real people, this is all free, then you’ll see how you can go from feeling…powerless and confused and overwhelmed…and pessimistic…to feeling optimistic and enthusiastic and confident about food and in just one session really.

and it’s all at DefeatYourCravings.com There’s a lot more there but would take me forever to explain the twenty bonuses So the big blue button to sign up for the reader bonuses. have a listen See see what you think.

Awesome For those listening, I will have links below the video…Below the podcast make them easy to click to get to Doctor Livingston’s website and…to download the freebies…Doctor livingston…thank you so much for joining me I love and appreciate you You I can tell you’re making a huge difference in the world and I just thank you for what you do and for making this so available.

Thank you for having me so much.