This Psychologist Engineered Food Cravings, Now He Stops Them

[00:00:00]The reptilian brain, thank goodness, is set up to mobilize us quickly when it perceives there to be a scarcity or an emergency. And so, a 100,000 years ago, that was a really good thing. The ancestors who had the strongest cravings were not sick. They were the ones who were most motivated to go and find food in a scarce food environment. And the reptilian brain would say, "Don't you dare sit around and contemplate that diet that you're supposed to be on. you go on the hunt and get that bison because if you don't, you're going to die.

[00:00:33]>> Today's guest spent years consulting [music] for big food companies, helping engineer food to hit the bliss point in your brain without [music] ever making you feel full. And now he's spent the last two decades teaching people how to beat [music] them. Welcome to the GLP1 Hub podcast. I'm Anna Risdorf, registered dietician and GLP1 user. And today I'm joined by Dr. Glenn Livingston, a psychologist who knows the fight from every side. He was once 80 pounds heavier himself, told he wouldn't live to see 40, and his book on defeating craving cravings has now reached over 2 million readers. We're talking about why the craving control center in your brain has no concept of love or long-term goals. The reason everything in moderation backfires while very specific rules can work. why cravings get worse right before they go dormant and how to use your GLP1 like a personal trainer holding up the bar instead of a wake up skinny pill. And if you like this type of content and you want to stay connected with the JLP1Hub podcast, make sure you're subscribed to the SteadyState newsletter. You can find the link in the show notes below. Now, let's get on to the episode. Welcome to the JLP1Hub podcast. I want to welcome today Glenn Livingston. He is a psychologist and an author and an expert in stopping cravings and overeating.

[00:01:58]Right. So, Glenn, can you introduce yourself?

[00:02:00]>> You did a pretty good job. I guess there are a couple of unique things to know about me. First of all, I'm not just a doctor that wanted to work with overeaters. I had a very serious problem myself. At one point, I was about 80 lbs heavier. And the doctors were yelling at me and telling me that I was going to die before I turned 40 and I'm 62 in a few weeks, you know. And if you stopped at the Woodbury Country Deli in Sioset, New York after me, you'd likely find they were out of Pop-Tarts and pizza and chocolate muffins.

[00:02:27]>> Okay.

[00:02:28]>> So, I I also spent a lot of years I I had married a marketer and she traveled for business during the week, so I had a lot of time on my hands and she had a lot of connections. So, I I wound up doing a lot of consulting in my 20s and 30s on the wrong side of the war, right?

[00:02:44]I was working for big food companies in big pharma and watching them engineer these hyper palatable concentrations of starch and sugar and excyrotoxins and salt and you know all engineered to hit the bliss point in the reptilian brain without giving you enough nutrition to feel satisfied. So I I have that perspective as well. I kind of know what goes on there although it is a long time ago now and I'm trying to make up for it at this point in my life. a real man for you to see that he >> contrite at the end of his life and he I don't think I'm at the end of my life but I think I have a good 20 or 30 years that I could I can make up for it you know and I don't know how much of my story you want because it's a 30 minute podcast but basically from a family of 17 psychotherapists I yeah my mom and my dad and my stepmom and my stepdad and my sister and her husband and >> wow >> everybody if something breaks in the house we run over and ask it how it feels and nobody can fix it but That that perspective led me down a 20-year path to fix the problem of trying to love myself then.

[00:03:48]>> Certain there's a hole in my metaphorical heart and if I could figure out how to fill that that I wouldn't have to keep trying to fill the hole in my stomach. Mhm.

[00:03:57]>> And you know, I went to the best therapists and I did Overeaters Anonymous and I took medication and I cried and I screamed and I confessed my soul and I did all the things a nice little Jewish boy from New York is supposed to do in psychotherapy. And it worked in the sense that it made me a lot more compassionate towards myself.

[00:04:16]It it worked on the self-hatred, which is big. I mean, that's huge. When you're an overeater and you become morbidly obese, that self-hatred is something that's a force to be reckoned with. And it really did help with that, but it did not help me with the eating. Everything a little thinner and a lot fatter. A little thinner and a lot fatter. Long story short, I did some big studies for myself because I was running all these studies for corporations and we can talk about what I found there. But basically, I came to the conclusion that it was really the reptilian brain and not the neoortex that was responsible for food addiction. Okay.

[00:04:50]>> The reason that's important is that there isn't love in the reptilian brain.

[00:04:54]By and large, 90 when the reptilian brain sees something in the environment, assume this is the brain stem, the reptilian brain, it says, "Do I eat it?

[00:05:02]Do I mate with it? Or do I kill it?"

[00:05:04]>> Right?

[00:05:05]>> Like a bad college ranking game, right?

[00:05:07]It's it's the neoortex and the mamillian brain on top of that that say, "Wait a minute. before you eat mate or kill what impact does that have on the people that you love and your tribe and your you know your connections >> and the neocortex says what about your longer term goals >> so I came to the conclusion that it was really this thing that was taking over so all those years when I was focusing so much on loving myself more and focusing up here but the problem was down here and I developed a kind of unique method for setting alarms to wake me up when this thing was getting active.

[00:05:46]>> Okay.

[00:05:47]>> Very specific about how I was justifying breaking my own rules and figuring out how to disempower those justifications and then later on including self-regulation and you know just kind of balancing out your whole nervous system to be able to manage the cravings in the first place.

[00:06:05]>> With that I wound up publishing it. It got over two million readers and I wound up working with 2,000 paying clients in the last decade. And so I like to think that I'm someone who knows something about how to stop overeating. So >> Sure. So >> yeah, >> that reptilian brain is kind of black and white. It's like eat go after it for whatever it is, right? Or this is a danger and I have to kill it.

[00:06:30]>> Well, and I'm sorry. Go on then.

[00:06:32]>> No. So how how do you like address that?

[00:06:35]because it seems like it's almost like impulsive, like almost visceral to some extent, right?

[00:06:40]>> Well, this is the core problem in food addiction. Yes, absolutely. You're correct. It the reptilian brain, thank goodness, is set up to mobilize us quickly when it perceives there to be a scarcity or an emergency. Key word is perception. And so, a 100,000 years ago, that was a really good thing. The ancestors who had the strongest cravings were not sick. They were the ones who were most motivated to go and find food in a scarce food environment. And the reptilian brain would say, "Don't you dare sit around and contemplate your naval or think about, you know, that diet that you're supposed to be on. You, you know, follow that monkey to the banana tree or, you know, go on the hunt and get that bison because if you don't, you're going to die."

[00:07:25]>> Yeah.

[00:07:26]>> And that's the mechanism that we're fighting, that automation of the pursuit. And so everything you do to fight food addiction in the beginning, this is the key, it's only in the beginning, is set up diametrically opposed and has to fight that that impulse to just dislodge your jaw and stuff as much food into it before anybody gets hurt.

[00:07:47]>> Mhm.

[00:07:48]>> And so, you know, we talk we talk about developing routines that you practice beforehand, before you're in that state of screw it, just do it, I don't care.

[00:07:57]Give me the chocolate.

[00:07:58]>> Sure. We talk about developing mechanisms like um you know long slow breathing things that tell your reptilian brain that there is no emergency right now. There is no hungry bear that's chasing you. It's okay to rest and digest and think about your longerterm goals and make better choices. We talk about making very clear and specific rules and this is controversial. People don't like to do that by and large in our culture. We're told not to. But without a very specific bullseye to aim for, this doesn't mean that you torture yourself if you miss it. But without that very specific bullseye to aim for, you don't know when you're about to miss it when there's this reptilian brain, call it your food monster that's bothering you and saying, you know, don't aim for the bullseye.

[00:08:48]It'd be a lot more fun to go a little bit to the side or even off the target, right? You can just start your silly diet again tomorrow. And without that very clear bullseye, you don't know when you miss how to make adjustments cuz you don't know by how much and in what direction. So you can't act like the Olympic archer, who by the way misses the bullseye 60% of the time. You can act like the Dinci Olympic archer and with a very cool head assess what happened during that mistake and how do I make adjustments? As a consequence, our whole learning mechanism is interfered with. We're all playing blind archery. You should just kind of sort of aim with progress, not perfection. Do the best you can, which is the right attitude once you've made a mistake. You were human. You were practicing. You need to forgive yourself with dignity.

[00:09:38]After you turn guilt into responsibility and figure out what to do differently, but it's not the right attitude when you're aiming at the target. Because progress, not perfection, when you're aiming at the target, really means I'll try for a little while until I don't feel like it anymore. Cuz you know what?

[00:09:51]It's really yummy to go off the target.

[00:09:53]And so we really have to aim with perfection and forgive ourselves with dignity. I get all excited about this.

[00:09:59]I'm over talking you. So I'll let you.

[00:10:01]>> So give me an example of what like the target is. Is it like I don't eat donuts or you know I need 100 grams of protein.

[00:10:09]Like is it like that specific?

[00:10:12]>> Yeah, it could be. It could be. It can also be something that supports mindfulness, but in a very discreet and concrete way. Like I always I always put my fork down between bites or I I never eat other than at the table without screens. Right? Now, I'm not saying everybody has to do that. I I find that it's better for people to identify their own addictive tendencies and figure out what they have to regulate for themselves rather than follow a pre-prescribed plan by some doctor or or a program guru. So I I like to say that my plan is diet agnostic. Um it usually starts with one simple rule. And my first rule was I will never eat chocolate on a weekday again. And on the week on the weekends I will have no more than two ounces and only after a workout. And what that does is it sets a very specific trip wire so that if I'm, you know, if I'm in a coffee shop and there's a chocolate bar at the counter that's calling to me and I hear this voice in my head that says, you know, it'll be just as easy to start your silly diet again tomorrow. You worked out hard enough. You're not going to gain any weight. I'll say, "Whoa, wait a minute. What's going on here?" That was not my intention when I had the fortitude and resilience to sit down and write out the rule. It's not my best intention. That's not my higher self.

[00:11:29]That's this food monster inside of me.

[00:11:32]>> And then I can start instituting those behaviors like breathe in for a count of seven, breathe out for a count of 11.

[00:11:39]That'll calm down your emergency response system. Kind of gets you back into the your right brain. Then you can say, "What's wrong with what my food monster is saying?" It usually wins by telling a halftruth with a bigger lie.

[00:11:53]So the halftruth in that case is it really does seem like it would be just as easy to start tomorrow. And if I had one small chocolate bar, perhaps 2 ounces, my sister can like take out 2 ounces from a piece of chocolate and say, "I'm going to put the risk back for tomorrow." And I I can never do that.

[00:12:08]Some people can. But generally speaking, if you have a craving to break your plan to break your rule today, I'll just have some chocolate a day and start my no chocolate on a weekday again tomorrow.

[00:12:20]And then you say, "I'll just start tomorrow." And then you eat the chocolate. You reinforce the craving and you reinforce the idea that you can just start tomorrow.

[00:12:30]>> So you're going to have a stronger craving tomorrow and you're going to be more likely to say start again tomorrow.

[00:12:37]So if you're in a hole, you better stop digging. And you can only use the present moment to be healthy. That's an example of what I would call a rational reputation where you're really what happens is the reptilian ring gets active. It gets excited by, you know, some hyper palatable food stimulus in the environment like the chocolate bar and it says we just need a little excuse to get by the upper brain because remember >> the the our physiology favors the reptilian brain when it feels like there's an emergency. So we just need a little excuse to do that. So this rational reputation, you can't start tomorrow, you can only use the present moment to be healthy. It takes away that excuse and it restores that cognitive dissonance, that little bit of discomfort that we actually need. It's like the like the pain that you feel when you touch a hot stove. If you don't have that pain, you don't know where the stove is and you don't know how to repulse it next time. Right.

[00:13:30]>> Right.

[00:13:31]>> So So calm down. look at what's wrong with what the pig is saying and then we ask ourselves, well, why would I feel happier or like a better person if I stayed with my plan as opposed to listening to to my food monster, >> right?

[00:13:45]>> Well, in my case, it was that I would be free of cardiovascular worries. I would get to be a tall leader in the world. My energy would remain calm. I would sleep better. I would be able to be more, you know, present for my dogs and my work and the people that I love and be a good role model for my niece and my nephew.

[00:14:05]>> So, I've got a whole list of reasons that I want to stay with the planet and that that's essentially how I recovered.

[00:14:10]That's essentially what what worked for me.

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[00:15:15]Right. So, reframing and getting those reasons. So the GLP1 kind of suppresses some of those reptilian thoughts.

[00:15:24]>> Yeah.

[00:15:25]>> To some extent, which is why I think it's like being, you know, researched for addiction and other types of things outside of just food. So for those of us on GLP1 like and are still maybe struggling with some of that, like I've I've gotten in this habit of going to get me a hot fudge sundae from McDonald's. I don't know if it's like a food addiction. which probably not something I really need to be eating that often, but I just love that hot fudge Sunday. I just love it. So, when that craving comes up, because it comes up a couple times a week, like what do I do with that even though I'm on a GLP1?

[00:15:56]So, most of it's controlled just every so often.

[00:15:59]>> Well, first of all, thank goodness for the GLP ones because the way the food addiction process works, it's it's a learning process. The neurological groove that you're digging every time you have the chocolate bar or you have what was it? a donut that you >> hot fudge Sunday.

[00:16:15]>> Hot fudge Sunday, man. Okay, high five to hot fudge Sundays.

[00:16:19]So, every time that you have that craving and you eat it, you're digging that groove a little bit deeper and it starts to feel like it's impossible to undig.

[00:16:28]>> Mhm.

[00:16:29]>> And for a lot of people, there are many more pieces and parts of this that are common mythology in the culture that makes people feel like it's impossible when it's really just hard. What the GLP1 does is it really dulls those physiological cravings. There are other things that dull those physiological cravings also. Eating relatively low glycemic will help dull those and that's either protein or beans and greens or something like that. That will help d those physiological cravings. So too will sleeping enough. So too will reducing the amount of decisions you have to make on a daily basis. Not just food decisions, but how many emails are you processing and who's taking Jenny to soccer practice and how are you going to talk to your husband about XYZ? you know, you kind of have to start to regulate your your homeostatic stress load >> and that will start to reduce the cravings also. But you can think as the GLP1s as kind of a um of like a personal trainer who's holding up the bar a little bit as you take your reps, right?

[00:17:32]>> Yeah.

[00:17:32]>> You you still have to do you still have to do the reps. You still have to concentrate on the form. You still have to be present and work out. But thank God there are these people called personal trainers and playing card that there are GOP ones for people who don't have the strength to stand up with the bar until they get stronger. And I always tell people that the GOP1 is not a binary decision. It's not really a yes no because they wear off after some time and they they become or they become less effective and so your doctor will have to increase your dosage. Sometimes they have to switch to a different medication. They they try to keep you on them and keep it working, you know, forever. But I don't think that we should think of them as wake up skinny pills. I I I think that we should think of them as personal training assistants and understand that there's no way out of needing to work on diet and lifestyle. I understand that it didn't work for you before. I I understand it's hard to believe me that there are some simple adjustments in terms of the attitude and approach that you have that could make a difference and assist you to get rid of that food noise in the absence of the GOP ones. But if you start to study these kinds of things and use these techniques while you're on the GLP ones, you could then talk to your doctor about gradually reducing. Maybe you never come off them, but they could possibly gradually reduce it. And you could rely more and more in these diet and lifestyle interventions, which didn't work for you before, but I'm telling you, you were most people are not privy because there's a lot of common misunderstanding in the culture about what's what's causing this.

[00:19:02]There's Oh, am I over talking? Do you want to >> No, you're great. The the other thing is that people misunderstand the scientific basis of cravings and extinction.

[00:19:11]>> Okay.

[00:19:12]>> So, let's say that you decide let's say you're having your hot fudge Sunday on the way home from work every day. You you pass this particular store. You got, "Oh my god, I thought I could not do it, but I'm running into." Do you make a rule that says, "I will never have a hot fudge Sunday on the way home from work."

[00:19:28]and we implement all types of cognitive supports and plans and you know reinforcement for you to be able to drive past there. But the bottom line is that it's not going to be like this.

[00:19:39]It's not going to be a straight down um diminishment of cravings. It's going to go more like this. You're going to have a little honeymoon period and then you're going to have a worse craving than you ever had before. Tell you why in a minute. If you get through that, and the way to get through it is just push through and not tell yourself that this is going to last forever. Because when you do get through that, then your brain will start to say, "I might be wasting energy pursuing this ice cream sundae every time I pass the store because I don't seem to be getting it anymore." And so then you start on this extinction curve, but before your brain gives up on that, it's going to try a couple more times with a much lesser craving. And then at the end, it's going to say, "Okay, I better label this food queue." Cravings come in Q response pairs. So there's the ice cream shop that you pass on your way home from work and then there's the craving for ice cream. It's going to say, "Gosh, that ice cream shop used to work. I used to have this availability of all these calories which was keeping Anna alive when when she passed that ice cream store, but it doesn't seem to work anymore. I better not waste our energy on that." And so it doesn't erase the craving. Your brain will never erase something that it believes is keeping you alive. What it will do is label it as dormant so that it doesn't bother you. Hm.

[00:20:54]>> And um I mean there's one more thing about it, which is that it the the association that it labeled dormant is very specific to the ice cream store that you're passing. Or maybe it's ice cream stores in general, but it's not specific to everything that causes an ice cream craving. Maybe you know your daughter's birthday party every year you always have a slice of ice cream cake with her, right? And so then you go to her party 3 months later, you haven't been bothered by a craving, you know, to pass the ice cream store forever. But then you're at this party and you're like, "Oh my god, what happened? Did I fail? Is the cra Did I not extinguish the ice cream craving?" No, you succeeded at extinguishing the store as the cue for the craving, but you haven't yet extinguished your daughter's birthday party as a cue for the craving.

[00:21:39]So >> situational.

[00:21:42]>> Yeah. Yeah.

[00:21:43]>> So as a practical basis, you have to make a list of all the things that that cause you. You might have to set up some additional support for your daughter's birthday party, like an email to arrive the day before and say, "Okay, this is the reason you've decided you don't want to have ice cream at your daughter's birthday party. Here's what you're going to have instead." You know, maybe maybe that day you have, you know, some extra almonds or maybe you're going to have some extra fruit or maybe it's just that you're going to listen to this song that always inspires you, that always puts you in a good mood and gives you another dopamine hit. Or maybe you're going to take the morning off from work and go to yoga or take a walk in the sunshine, but you're going to need some extra support to get through that point so that you could eventually label all of the cravings as dormant.

[00:22:26]>> So, what if you want to live a life where you sometimes have an ice cream sundae? Like, you don't want to live a ice cream sundae free life, but you also don't want to be like controlled by having to go and get it every single day. I believe a ice cream sundae, >> it's a beautiful thing, right?

[00:22:43]like, >> "Yeah, >> but not every day."

[00:22:45]>> Yeah. Well, so if I was working with you, I would ask you how often you want to have it.

[00:22:49]>> Mhm.

[00:22:50]>> And then, so let's say you told me, "Well, I want to have it once a week."

[00:22:53]And I would say, "Well, this is going to work a lot a little better if we can bind it to a particular context." So, you know, maybe it's on Saturday morning while you're sitting with your husband at a particular shop. Or maybe it's only when you're out to dinner with the kids or I I don't mean to assume that you have kids and a husband.

[00:23:11]So, it's it's akin to putting your food monster on a long leash rather than letting it out of the cage entirely to just run free. I I tell people cheat days don't really work. But specific loosening of the boundaries with with very specific boundaries, even though it's going to be looser, works much better. Here's why. Let's go back to this extinction burst, right?

[00:23:38]The reason that exists in the first place is to test for what we would call try to make a more plain English word the random availability of the reinforcer. So you know 100,000 years ago maybe Thagad caveman t h a g maybe he followed a monkey to a banana tree and he got a bunch of bananas and that was really good for Thad because now he can follow monkeys to banana tree so his brain motivates him with all this extra dopamine as soon as he sees the monkey.

[00:24:07]get him in hot pursuit. And if Thag decides not to follow the monkey, he that's rain drops dopamine, makes him miserable. So Thag is really conditioned to go follow the monkey. And then one day later in the season, the banana treat has dried up and he follows the monkey and there's no bananas. This is kind of akin to you passing the ice cream shop and not stopping on your way home from work. Well, it turns out that it's much more adaptive. It's much more of a survival advantage for Thag to try even harder at that point because having a monkey that leads to a banana tree 50% of the time is much better than having a monkey that doesn't lead to a banana tree than than having no monkey at all.

[00:24:48]>> Sure.

[00:24:48]>> Right. Because you're in a scarce food environment. Okay. So, how does this relate to your question? Well, when we give in randomly, when we have a craving, we're telling the brain that it was correct, that it really should be trying harder because the reward has become randomly available. This is how slot machines work. This is why you see all of Okay. So, all the little old ladies are all lined up at the slot machine all week long. Got to be there.

[00:25:10]Got to be there when it pays off. Got to be there when it pays off. What do you think would happen if you only set the slot machine to pay off in Saturday mornings at 10 between 10 and 11:00.

[00:25:20]>> Lose the excitement because you know it's going to be the next one. It's going to hit.

[00:25:24]>> So, the casino would get empty during the week and everybody would show up at 9:58 on Saturday morning.

[00:25:31]>> Mhm. Your brain works the same way if you make very conditional contextually bound rules. I will only have ice cream Sundays on Saturday morning with my husband. Your brain will learn that that specific set of cues is the only thing that's worth pursuing. So you will go through this whole extinction curve for like 30 to 45 days depending upon how frequently you're having an ice cream sundae. But you'll only go through it when those specific conditions aren't present. Mhm.

[00:26:00]>> On Saturday mornings at, you know, 10:00 when you're allowed to have ice cream with your husband, your brain's going to light up and say, "Okay, this is our time." And I we like to say that that's your ice cream sundae. That's not your food monster's ice cream sundae, >> right? Cuz you're in control of when you're doing it and that kind of thing.

[00:26:18]And then you can enjoy it. So, while you're on the GLP1, do you recommend that people if they've been struggling with food addiction in the past that they kind of engage in some kind of process like this to try to >> I do extinction things with the help of the GLP1 since you said it's kind of like somebody holding the bar.

[00:26:35]>> So, be careful because I'm I'm not a physician. So, a GLP1 is a decision you need to make with your doctor. If my sister came to me and said, "I'm going crazy with food addiction. I'm thinking about taking a GLP1." I would probably say, could you read this book and try some of these things first? Because there are side effects. Uh when you go off the GLP1s, you gain weight about four times faster than if you were just going out on a diet. So, I would try without it first. That doesn't mean it's going to work. I think if you're already on a GLP1, then don't come off or at least don't come off without your doctor. and add these techniques and you know mindset tools while you're doing this because uh there are benefits to them even if the GLP work one works perfectly forever this will give you more control than you wanted also like this is a non-invasive methodology there's no surgery there are no pills you know it's it's fairly inexpensive compared to the cost of being on a GLP1 forever and so if you would like to eat within your own judgment if you're someone who even still sometimes eats beyond your own judgment, then this set of tools can add the edge to to do that.

[00:27:44]Just got to say one more thing. I lost it. I'm sorry.

[00:27:47]>> Sorry. And so, how would you get started with this? I mean, you have a book. What is the name of the book >> called Defeat Your Cravings? Defeat Your Cravings because that's what people need to do.

[00:27:56]>> Yeah.

[00:27:57]>> And the book is free at defeatyoucravings.com in Kindle book or PDF. When you go there and you click on the big blue free reader bonus section, you'll not only get the free book, but you will also get a set of recorded coaching sessions because I know it's kind of weird that just to show you how you can go from feeling hopeless and just staring in one session to feeling optimistic. And I have a set of food plan starter templates because like I said, and this is all for said this is diet agnostic which means that we have a set of rules you might want to consider for vegetarian versus carnivore versus pointing versus chocolate. Call it a starter template because it's really up to you. I actually try to start people with one simple rule. What's something that you could and would do that's not too ownorous but would make a big difference if you implemented it for a few weeks would just really point you in the right direction.

[00:28:51]>> You want to set the bar really low to start with because you want to be able to do it every day even those days when you wake up without your mojo because most people start on a diet and they say I'm going to be really really good now because I was really really horrible before. But if you start really slowly, I always put my fork down between bites.

[00:29:09]Or I'm not going to stop eating fast food, but I'll never go back for seconds. Or um, you know, I'm not going to eat anything after 8:00 at night at home. If you do one small thing that would really tell you that your higher self is in control and it would make a difference, then you start to develop a winner's identity and that's what you really want to do. Mhm.

[00:29:31]>> I think all of these methods are fantastic in terms of like managing those cravings, like getting that reptilian brain under control, but I think that like it's things that take time and people want fast results.

[00:29:44]>> Yeah.

[00:29:44]>> So, how do you address that in your in your work?

[00:29:47]>> Well, the fastest way to lose weight is slowly. I I've I mean, I've worked with 2,000 people and I I see it again and again that, you know, some people say, "Well, I have to fast." Well, if you're fasting, could you wait six months before you start that again? Because what you're doing is telling your reptilian brain that it's living in a scarce food environment and as soon as you make food available, it wants wants to hoard it, right?

[00:30:09]>> So, I find that people do best, you know, a pound at a time, pound and a half at a time, maybe five times a month. In the beginning, maybe it's 10, but maybe five pounds a month. And most people that come to me have a history.

[00:30:22]I'm not disputing medical benefits with fasting. Most people will tell me that's the only way that they can lose weight.

[00:30:27]And I say, "Well, it's probably not. You probably have a history of doing this fasting and then binging and that combination doesn't work." But slowly, steadily, regularly staying on a nutritious food plan at a slight colog without binging, without breaking, that takes weight off like nothing else I've ever seen because it helps you to keep it off in the long run. Yeah. So, you know, this is one of the reasons I'm not more popular these days because as my earlier book had a much more aggressive title. And as I learned more and more, I felt like it wasn't really ethical to do that. So, I changed it to I changed the new book to defeat your cravings to incorporate the idea that, you know, you can wake up thin, but not tomorrow, next year, you know.

[00:31:12]>> Yeah. I mean, I think that there's a lot of benefits to taking it slow, not just for learning to control the cravings and to work through some of these things, but muscle loss, right? Nutritional deficiencies, starving yourself is just going to lead to issues regardless of the binging and all that other stuff, but just nutrition wise and health-wise even. So, I think that's good advice, but you know, we want it all today.

[00:31:37]>> Yeah. Well, and you're if you're taking a GLP1 to kill the food noise, if you start starving yourself, you're going to rapidly ramp up the food noise. Not not right away.

[00:31:48]>> Yeah.

[00:31:49]>> Not right away because you get fat adapted and, you know, things even out for for a while, but eventually it really starts to you're working a counter at cross focuses if you're if you're doing that. So, I tell people, look, it's really hard to lose 100 pounds, but it's pretty easy to lose one pound 100 times. So just focus on the next pound.

[00:32:08]>> Yeah.

[00:32:08]>> And usually people's mindset and confidence is related to the direction, not the speed. So if they see the scale going down slowly month after month after month, they're saying, "Okay, things are no longer out of control. I don't have to panic anymore. I'm going to get where I need to go." Socrates was apparently once asked, "How do I get to Mount Olympus by some boy on the side of the road?" And he said, "It's simple.

[00:32:33]Just make sure every step you take is in the direction of Mount Olympus. You'll get to Mount Olympus. And that's what it means to lose one pound at a time.

[00:32:42]>> Absolutely. So, where can people get the book again, Glenn? Or where can they connect with you?

[00:32:46]>> Defeatyoucravatings.com.

[00:32:48]The featured cravings.com and everything else starts from there. So, >> awesome.

[00:32:53]>> Groups, the coaching, the social media, it's all both of them.

[00:32:56]>> Great. Great. And and thank you for making that free to people. What a useful resource. I really appreciate that. was the bane of my existence for 20 years. So, I I'm I'm on a mission.

[00:33:06]I'm on a mission.

[00:33:06]>> Awesome. Awesome. Well, I appreciate you being here and thanks for this lovely conversation.

[00:33:10]>> Thank you, Anna.

[00:33:12]>> Thank you so much for listening to this episode of the GLP1Hub podcast. I think that thinking about our habits and our addictions is a big [music] part of this GLP1 journey, especially around food.

[00:33:24]And if you're loving the podcast, I would really love it if you would leave a review either on Apple Podcast [music] or Spotify. It really helps the show grow and helps other people [music] find it. And I look forward to seeing you in the next episode.