From ABC, this is the 10 percent happier podcast. I'm Dan Harris. Hello, I I'll admit, like many people, I suspect, have the potential to get pretty dysregulated around food and body image, a lot of men don't like talking about this stuff, but there is plenty of evidence that this is a truly unisex issue, especially during the holidays when we're surrounded by treats and stress eating because we can't see our family or we can.

And they're making us crazy. This interview you're about to hear changed my life, that's an overused phrase, but in this case, it's genuinely true. I came into this conversation and you'll hear this with a rather hostile attitude toward my own body filled with, you know, not so realistic expectations and unsustainable restrictions, et cetera, et cetera.

Over the course of the interview, you will hear as my mind starts to change. And ever since this interview was recorded about a year ago, I have been working one on one with my guest, Evelyn Tremblay, on these issues. Evelyn is the cocreator of something called Intuitive Eating, which you can think of as the kind of anti diet diets she argues do not work. Worse, they lead us to mistrust our bodies. So when we misread their signals, we don't actually know when we're hungry or when we're full.

Her approach is backed by science and powered by mindfulness. We wanted to repost this episode because twenty twenty one, as you know, is days away, and some of you might be thinking that it's time to completely reinvent yourself or maybe get your body quote back into shape. But like Evelyn, we here on the show are pretty sure that fad diets and restrictions and recriminations and self-loathing are not the way to go, especially after everything we've been through this year.

So we had 10 percent happier. Are doing the New Year thing differently this year. We're actually going to go for the opposite of self-loathing self love. I will readily admit that you can pretty easily sprain your eyes by rolling them back into your head in the face of the unremitting cheesiness of self-love. I will also admit that if improperly executed, self-love can even lead to passivity or self obsession. We, however, are not going to let that happen.

We're going to be kicking off this New Year's series next week with new episodes featuring Chromeo from Queer Eye on Netflix, who, in addition to being a TV star, spent years as a social worker and psychotherapist. We'll also be doing an episode with the psychologist Kris Girma, who is the creator of a wildly popular program called Mindful Self Compassion. And then starting on Monday, January 4th, we're going to be launching a free New Year's meditation challenge on the 10 percent happier app.

You can learn how to put into practice all the wisdom that these brilliant guests will be dropping. Right here on the podcast. We'll have some of the world's most renowned meditation teachers dropping some knowledge in this challenge, including Susan Piver. Twere Sallah and Jeff Warren. If you're at all skeptical about the notion of doing a challenge, check out this quote from a woman named Michelle who participated last year. The twenty one day challenge has given me the structure that I needed to really start meditation.

The bite sized lessons are a great way for novices to ease into the practice.

So whether you're a long time practitioner or you've never, ever sat on the cushion before, come join literally thousands of other people, including me, all participating at the same time. If you want to sign up, just download the 10 percent happier app right now, or you can go to 10 percent dotcom. That's 10 percent one word all spelled out and get the app there. All right, let's dive in now with Evelyn Tremblay. Great to meet you.

Likewise, I'm so excited to be here. Thanks for making time for this. Yeah, absolutely. How did you get into meditation? It's so bizarre.

I have was a Securitas route. The long short story is when my mom was dying of cancer, I had to keep missing sessions with patients and I would tell them why I didn't think I was flaky. And so a patient of mine gave me a book called Mindful Grieving. And I remember looking at it thinking, why the hell do I want to feel my grief? I am a ton of sadness. And it broke me open because I noticed during those times I practiced some mindfulness as I knew it back then, I was just a little baby meditator.

But I was there was times I was neutral. There was time to I actually was happy, even though, no, my mom was dying. And so it opened something up and ended up taking this is this is really funny. I took a professional retreat with someone who is a Zen Zen master and a pediatrician is for health professionals. And I'll never forget the second time they made us meditate, I thought I was going to die. I called my best friend.

They made us meditate two times. And now we're going to go into silence. And long story short, here I am. I fell in love with meditation. I now train with Dan Brown, who's just an amazing teacher for me.

I've never met Dan Brown. He's at Harvard. He's at Harvard. And the thing that appeals to me personally, I'm a skeptic. That's what I loved about your story. I'm a skeptic. I'm always the one asking the questions. And because he's also an academic and a practitioner, he is a very satisfying relationship with my mind, you know, and he's he's just really, really gifted. And and one of the most humble person I've ever met, especially being at Harvard, you know.

So how did you find him?

I oh, I got his book. It's really, really big book about the stages of meditation. Mahamoud Modra pointing out the way and I bought it, put it down. Five years later, I picked it up and it blew me away. And I had the I realized I had the illusion I was meditating, but I was not meditating properly. And I thought, I've got to go meet this guy. I've got to go train with him. And I did.

And that's what just knocked me over.

So would you say you weren't meditating properly, but he pointed out the way to do it properly. What what were the difference? What was the difference there in the technique between, you know, with meditation, your mind goes all over the place.

And one of the techniques he has I won't go into detail since I'm not a teacher, but he really has you practice the awareness of your breath the entire way and really noticing when you leave, noticing when you have partial eyes, concentration in these types of things. And so the other thing I like about him as a teacher, when you go into retreat with him, he's there the whole time. Usually in other retreats I've been in, you have a teacher from about an hour and then but there's constant interaction.

I connected with it very deeply so.

So when you say you went and met him, did you just say, hey, can I get a little bit of your time or do you show up?

No, no, no. I showed up to one of his retreats. I signed up and it was so funny, was held at a monastery. So I was like, oh, my God, I'm going in deep here.

And it was great. It was really, really great. And I have become now you talk about being 10 percent happier. I think I'm a I'm a 10 percent better person, which makes people around me happy.

Were you complex before?

I didn't think I was. I didn't think I was reactive. And now I realized, holy moly, was I still reacted. But the thing that has changed with me, I was telling this with Dan, we just met a couple of months ago, is that I have changed. I actually this is going to sound terrible before I would do the right thing, because you're supposed to. But now, like, I actually genuinely care it. It's hard to put into words what this is, but this connection and this compassion.

And you talk a lot about the stuff, the mushy stuff. And I'm like that. And now here I am talking about the mushy stuff.

And it's like, oh, we have to end all suffering. And so what this has done in my career. Oh, you get it? Yeah. I'm not I'm not a person, but it has lit my my my passion for what I do to a level I didn't expect would happen to put an end to unnecessary suffering as it relates to mind and body, because there's so much unnecessary suffering around eating and body and judgment and shame. And you talk about conceptual mind.

Oh my gosh, the rules and the concepts in the judgments that are out there. It's neat to watch people's lives change. You know, it's there's a technique that we created through intuitive eating over 25 years ago. We've updated it all along. And the cool thing is there's now research on our method and it just it just warms my heart in ways I just can't begin to describe.

We're going to go deep on diet culture. Let's just stay with your practice for a second. Of course. What would you call yourself now? A Buddhist?

I am a Buddhist. I did take refuge here. But, you know, it's funny. I don't talk about taking refuge just for people.

You take a vow that basically, you know, you take refuge in you're just you take refuge in the Buddha, the Dharma in the song and the song.

Yeah. And, you know, one of the most troubling parts of it, this is going to sound really silly, but I'll just show you where I was back at the time, is that they have to have to cut off some of your hair. And I've heard you talk about your own hair. So the idea of losing some of your hair for a ceremony, it was just it was it's about letting go and not having attachment. But the reason I don't usually talk about it is I don't want to be in that other place being different.

I'd rather find what we have in common, because as soon as someone as soon as I say I'm Buddhist, then walls might come up from some other people, you know, but the I consider myself a secular Buddhist, meaning I don't know what happens in the life after, but I love the principles and the philosophies and it's. It's a beautiful way to live without without judgment, without having to recruit other people. Yes. So, yes, that's exactly the way I feel.

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. The way I feel. So what for you?

You know, given your life history was the most valuable application of Buddhism internally. Was it the kind of the coming of the mind that comes with learning how to focus on the breath and then when you get distracted starting again, was it the mindfulness that comes from doing that, where you see how crazy you are and then the craziness doesn't own you as much? Or was it what you were describing earlier, this kind of compassion or a combination of all of the.

I'm going to answer in a different way. It's funny, when I'm meditating, I don't get to all these places that some people do, but I see the meaning of all these experiences meditating, realizing aspects of the mind, what it does for me, it's like this is slow unfolding. All of a sudden I realized, my God, I've changed because I'm not reactive. Oh, my gosh, I have discernment in places. So I call it freeze-frame moment.

I'm going to turn experience on because you might relate to it because of your son. So my son was about three and I was on a book deadline and my office downstairs, I was facing the computer. He comes in and he says, Hi Mommy, I don't even see him. But something caused me to turn around and look in his little eyes and something was off. And I go, Are you OK? And obviously he starts crying. He just watched Goofy goes to college.

She goes, I don't want to go to college and leave you. I can't leave you. And that that scene haunted me, not haunted me, thought I'm so glad I paid attention. This was before meditation, but I called it a freeze-frame moment. So what happens now? Being a meditator, I have a lot more of those freeze-frame moments where I noticed something and I do something with it. I just notice it and maybe I become not reactive.

Or maybe I have more discernment and what I, what I decide to do, it's I have more patients like I've never had and I, I'm kind of a high energy person and pretty er and it's, I've dampened down a little bit.

Wow. What were you like before.

So that's the other thing. I've had some people say, oh they're afraid that they would change if they became a meditator. I said actually I haven't changed as far as my personality, the energy, the passion is still there and but the difference is the compassion and the less reactivity. I'm a better person because.

Right, right. I mean, I've experienced the same thing.

I mean, I still have many, many, many flaws. It's just that the volume comes down a little bit on the floors. You feel like you have more visibility of them and into them and agency in the face of them. So there's a Tibetan phrase that I've quoted many times on the podcast that for enlightenment, it translates into a clearing away and bringing forth, oh my gosh, we're away. A lot of the noise and junk. And you bring forward that you're you're you're the better angels of our nature or just sort of your better judgment, et cetera, et cetera.

And that's my experience of how this works.

I would completely agree with that. It's hard to put into words and it's a slow unfolding. And sometimes I'm hesitant to put it into words and talk about how amazing I feel because I don't want to have an expectation of someone to be disappointed. This is a slow evolution where you kind of look back off the cushion and go, wow, you know. Yes.

Yes, that's absolutely right. Yeah. So, OK, so how does everything we've just discussed apply to eating?

Oh, I tell you, bear in mind that Kakul you just heard is from a practicing Buddhist. That's a good take away the practice. When I say that with approval, just say thank you.

I feel really validated. Not that I need it, but I do.

So here's one way I'd like to say it.

Just as the practice of meditation is an inside job, it's inside. The practice of intuitive eating is also an inside job, and it's about connecting to your body. And OK, I have to tell you, I'm also a geek. I love research.

And one of the you're going to like this place so you can go, oh, yes, drop as much science as you want. Oh, thank God. So this is going to intersect in a way I think you might like. And if you don't, that's OK, too. So the basis of intuitive eating, it's a self care eating framework and it's it's based off of what does that mean? I want to tell you. OK, so taking care of yourself on a on a superficial level, but on a deeper level, it's based around something called interceptive awareness.

That term, what that means, it's our ability to perceive physical sensations that arise within the body. I know you know that experience through meditation, but let me tell you what's so brilliant about it.

It it reveals states like a full bladder.

People know what to do with a full bladder, thank God, hunger and fullness states. But every emotion has a physical sensation. And so when we're in touch with the physical sensations of our body, we are actually have a treasure trove of information to get our needs met. All of this is happening in the right side of the brain in the insula. And guess what? Meditators have more interceptive awareness, which is kind of cool. I consider it our super power.

So when we're aware of physical sensations, it's giving us information. What do I need right now? I need to sleep. Am I lonely? These kinds of things. The problem in the challenge in today's culture, diet, culture is that people aren't. Or with their bodies and you hate your body at war with your body, you're not listening to the messenger, it's like you're friend, your best friends. Knock on door Hey, hey. I have some information for you.

And you're like, go away. Go away when you respond to that information. It's called interceptive receptivity, but we're saying get out of here. And then when people start down the rabbit hole of all these different kinds of diets, lifestyles, whatever you want to call it, they disconnect from their body and they start to distrust these sensations because we're trying to fake it out. Fake hunger, forgetfulness. You know, it's all this biohacking. Oh, it's biohacking.

Be extra this extra that. When it's like, how about listening to our bodies? What about that?

OK, I have a million questions. Oh, please. Let me just start with the basics. Are foundational questions so intuitive eating with something you designed 25 years ago before you started meditating?

Correct. OK, so you stick by that framework, but you supercharge it with the mindfulness, is that correct? Well, I'll tell you what's interesting.

It's kind of not correct because I'll tell you what, mindful eating, an intuitive eating are two different things. They're very compatible and they're different. And one of the biggest difference is with intuitive eating. One of our biggest directives, there's ten principles is reject the diet mentality. Based eating doesn't doesn't have that. You absolutely need awareness to access intuitive eating for sure. In fact, when we wrote the book, John Cabot's Zinn's book, Full Catastrophe of Living was only out for about four or five years.

[00:15:33]

 It was the first time I've seen the term mindful eating used in the vernacular. And because mindfulness wasn't in the vernacular, we used the description of having conscious consciousness, which now I would say having awareness around it. So I would say anyone coming in from a mindfulness based background or meditation background is going to have more access to this. I get excited when I have meditators as as patients and clients because they can access this a little bit better. But living in diet cultUre, they still have rules and judgements they're not even aware of.It's like, you know, fish and water. What's what's water. Right. You know. Right. Yeah.

So, so mindful eating would just be, in my experience of it, is just bringing your full attention to the process of eating, which if anybody's ever gone on a meditation retreat, you eat slowly, you're doing everything slowly. Yeah. You eat less you find because you're aware when you're full and you're actually tasting your food and putting your fork down between bites. Something I've had trouble doing off retreat. So I understand that, yeah, if I'm if I'm if I'm stating it correctly, you are I you.

So one can do that without having a conscious rejection of the the water that you reference, which is the diet culture in which we all swim. Is that a faithful reproduction of what you just said?

No. Right.

And I will tell you why, because people are not aware of the diet culture. So they might be saying that they're listening to their hunger and fullness. And that's awesome. That's a great start. That part is correct. But if in their mind they're saying I shouldn't be eating this much because that's the rules of diet culture that interferes with the awareness, they're not even aware of that. That's an issue. So sometimes my favorite question to ask, meditate.

I'm going to ask you a question. Can I ask you a question?

Yes, because I've struggled with with this stuff. Oh. So my question to you, Dan, is where does your mind go when you're eating? Oh, I don't know.

Oh, OK. That's what I'm talking about. Most people don't. And so I think mindful eating is an awesome thing. I went to one retreat with a practitioner. I thought if I want to train with someone, I want to really understand the model. And it's beautiful. You're into sensation of eating, taste, texture, all that kind of stuff, how it feels. But working with the mind in terms of where you're going, are you comparing your body with someone else's body?

Are you comparing your food to someone else's food that sitting next to you thinking, oh, my God, they got more than I did when your retreat? That happens a lot, you know.

Yes. I'm sorry. I'm talking really fast. So part of what this is so here's here's the conundrum that I see a lot years ago when I would ask somebody, you know, could you eat your meals without distraction? I used to get a pretty much a yes on to that. And now it's as if I'm asking to give away their first born. Because the question I guess what I do, what I do, because they're so used to the mind being occupied.

And so one thing I will start with as well, could you could you commit to one meal? You know, and I don't want to make someone do what they do. I, I will always respect honesty. If the answer is no, then, OK, we're going to find another way. And where I'm at right now with some people is like, how about can you commit to three bites and having awareness? The first bite, the middle bite, the end bite just to get some connection of what's going on, what's the food taste like, what's your body feel like, you know, all of these kinds of things that go on.

And so what I find that's missing in the meditators that I've worked with is not knowing where the mind goes when they're eating. They think that, oh, I'm eating without distraction. This is really great. And I would say, yeah, that's great. But where's the mind? Where's the mind? And if your mind is in distraction, then you're not really connecting with your body. But the cool thing is you get to the point of effortless effort.

You don't have to be a monk and meditate to get this process down. But when you're in the learning curve, it helps to have more of this awareness. And we know from research on a neuroplasticity for four neurons to rewire together to fire together, there has to be awareness at the time this is coming out of Andrew Huberman's lab out of Stanford.

So I think it's a really cool thing, you know, so I just want to keep pushing it a little bit. OK, keep pushing on the difference. I think I think by this point, the listener will have understood what mindful eating is, which is again, bringing your full attention to the best of your ability while you're eating. Yeah. To the taste of the food, to the sensations in your body, and then when you get distracted, starting again.

Right.

So I think that we've got that down. So what's left for us to do right now is to dive deeper into intuitive eating. Yeah. What the difference is there. Right, right. Right.

So I'll say one more thing and then I'll get into those differences. So a scholar, we were in this great discussion on Facebook on what is intuitive eating and intuitive being poster writing, beautiful things. I wrote beautiful things. I thought on intuitive eating. She comes in and says, well, I think intuitive eating is a framework of self care. Eating and mindful, mindful eating is a skill set. I thought, oh my God, that's beautiful and it's nice and short.

So that's another way of looking at it as well. Very compatible. That's the thing, if anything, that your listeners come away with, this is very compatible. But when you start looking at it from a research base, it's important to know there's a difference in this. So, yeah, so one of the big things is rejecting the diet mentality. And one of my I actually had a debate. I was on a conference panel with some mindfulness experts and I said, you know, my position is it puts people on the path of unnecessary suffering.

If we can already let them know I'm part of the secret. And that is if you're dieting, it's going to hijack this whole process. When you're dieting, the mind goes external. How much in this how much in that? How much do I weigh? What about the macros? And we need to be going inside instead. So it's a path to having less suffering.

But don't we need to know you refer to macros. Yeah. Sorry I did that. Yeah that's fine. That's fine.

But don't we need to have the basics of nutrition down. For example, I went to a I moved, I gave up animal products about, about a year and a half, maybe two years ago. And I had to do a big education with a nutritionist, a vegan nutritionist who taught me how to do this without making myself sick. Yeah. So learning that and getting a sense of like, am I getting enough protein today so that I have enough energy and don't I need to have some external.

Well, here the answer is kind of and here's how I will say it. The tenth principle of intuitive eating is on your health with gentle nutrition. And the reason we kept it, we made it the last principle. At least we both have Master of Science Degree in nutrition. She's your co-author. She's the co-author naming at least Resh. OK, yeah.

And we love especially I'm the. Nerd geek on the team, and I love science and we love nutrition, but what we found is if we introduced that too soon, it interferes with the process of checking in. So it's more of a timing issue. Yes, health absolutely counts. But if we do it too soon, it becomes problematic.

Gotcha. So, OK, so we don't need to go there now. OK, go.

So walk us through the rest of the principles.

OK, so we reject the diet mentality. That's easy. That's easier said than done because it's everywhere honoring your hunger. That's pretty straightforward. Honor your hunger, huh? Don't stifle it if you're hungry.

Yeah. This is actually a normal experience. It lets us know we need to eat. And actually that the sad part is, and I've seen this a lot with my patients, is if you try to ignore hunger and you try to fake it out, guess what happens? You end up into this what I call primal hunger. You cross that line. I don't care. I go eat you. I'm so hungry. And and people have a lot of guilt around that.

And they don't realize, guess what? This is your biology. This is your body really, really working. Well, we've seen that in a classic Minnesota starvation study. I don't know if you're familiar with that. Oh, my God. I'm going to tell you about it. So these guys were college age men who conscious conscious objectors in World War two. And just to be in this study, they had to be super duper healthy biologically and psychologically past all these exams.

And then they were put on a semi starvation diet for a period of months and we saw what happened to them. Predictably, they became malnourished. But what was really shocking is what happened to their mind. They started collecting recipes and cookbooks and all they would do is talk about food. And when I give this talk at universities, I tell them and these men lost interest in sex. And when I say that, they go, oh, they know how profound that is, because the there's no there's no energy.

Then some of the men started binge eating and creating eating disorders. And on average, these guys were getting they weren't starving. They were having around 700 calories a day. So this became the first study on the the psychological consequences of of under under eating. So we've known this. And since then, when we've looked at all the research that's come out on dieting, when you diet, it messes up your mind like, oh, it increases risk of eating disorders.

The act of dieting actually causes rebound weight gain. Most people don't know this, but by year five, it's going to come back. The most consistent predictor of weight gain is dieting going on a diet, regardless of how much weight you started with. Right.

So shout out to Grace Livingston, one of the producers on the show who sent me, and this may be an excerpt from you. Oh, but there is not a this is a quote here. There is not a single long term study that shows that weight loss dieting is sustainable. Study after study shows that dieting and food restriction for the purpose of weight loss leads to more weight gain. Yes, weight gain worse. The focus and preoccupation on weight leads to body dissatisfaction and weight stigma, which negatively impacts health.

Yeah, isn't that shocking? Isn't that shocking? So when I have conversations with doctors, I would say, you know, would you prescribe medication that by your five actually causes more problems? It actually causes heart attacks as opposed to clearing out arteries and they're like, hell no. Then say, why would you prescribe weight loss then? And it's a complex area of science. And so what a lot of health care practitioners do is they follow policy, but they're not following the research.

It doesn't work. So then the question is, what do we do? We can still do healthy behaviors. We it's not a behavior. Weight is not a behavior. And then people have so much shame when the weight comes back and when they're losing the weight, like especially on Instagram. Oh, my gosh. All the before and after. And it's so loud. Oh, look at me. I feel so good. And then when it all comes back, you don't hear a thing you don't hear like I feel awful.

I can't stop being. So binge eating is really common, a common consequence of dieting in terms of in terms of harm, you know.

But is there anything wrong with wanting your body to look a certain way?

You know, it's a really good question. I think in today's culture, the answer is it's all around us, that kind of pressure. So the real issue when I when I'm working with patients that want to do this work is I'll tell them. Can you put this idea of weight loss on the back burner? Because if it's your primary directive, it's going to interfere with the process. And I can't even tell you what's going to happen to your body with intuitive eating.

You might stay the same. You might lose weight, you might gain weight because this is about healing your relationship with food. But it's it's it's a really tough one, I say, especially for women in this culture. But men as well, when you start looking at the incidence of eating disorders, one out of three people with an eating disorders identifies as a man. And the thing I find that's so disturbing is that eating disorder rates have doubled.

A new study just came out in May looking at 90 different studies. They have doubled because diet, in my opinion, diet culture has normalized this unhealthy relationship with social media as part of that as well. I'm sure it is. Yeah.

So so I'll just speak personally after I've mentioned this before in the podcast, a little bugaboo of mine is I I'm forty eight as we record this. I had like a brief shining moment in my thirties where I was single and was very fit, very fit. And for the first time in my life I had like visible abs. And it's created this little hobgoblin for me, this little bug. I don't like, as I've gotten older, that I have more sort of girth around, even though it's not much, I'm just I'm a slim guy and yet I notice it coming up and up again and again in this sort of self-critical loop in my head.

So I wonder are is what you're saying to me just drop that, you know, and is that even doable, dropping the desire to have the body look a certain way?

So my my my short answer is yes, drop it down.

But that's a hard thing to say to anyone when they have that desire, because our culture reinforces this all the time. And so I start looking at how does this make you feel, this constant comparison to a time in your past? So that's the thing I look at. So this is where we use the, you know, the mind of meditation. And that is let's get curious, nonjudgmental. How does it make you feel? Oh, I'm here again.

I'm comparing. Oh, how's it how's it affect your eating? And here's the thing that just kills me, how it affects relationships, especially if you're really pursuing it because you're going out to dinner with your wife or your friends. And instead of really engaging in the conversation, the back of your mind is chattering about, well, I want to look this way. I want to look this way. The diet says this, diet says that. And you're not connected.

You literally just described, like, my last few dinners. Thank you. So that's harm. That's harmful. And so I think that's why I get so many people, unsolicited emails and DMS. Oh, my God, this changed my life. And I think it changes because you're starting to connect with the people that are with you as opposed to playing that game where you're talking to someone on the cell phone and they're they're they're saying the right words. But you can tell they're not there.

It's the same kind of thing.

But but how to you acknowledge to your credit that this is hard to do? So, yes. I mean, the. You know, I pass reflective surfaces on the regular in my bathroom. Yeah, as I'm getting ready and it's just this automatic thing of, oh yeah.

You know, how does the body look? Right. And then it's a spiral into negativity.

No, I've actually done a reasonable amount of work thanks to the aforementioned Grace Livingston, who's who is very interested in this stuff and the work of Christine nephews. Oh, she's awesome. Writes a lot about self compassion. So I have these little mental habits that I've tried to develop that when I noticed that voice kicking in. Right. You know, Kristin Neff has this great three part thing. The first is just to notice mindfully that your God, this sucks.

This is suffering to to to tune into the fact that there are millions of people right now dealing with this exact same thing to sort of widen the lens, your perspective, and three, to send yourself a little bit of good vibes.

I like that.

But I while I found this to be a useful sort of circuit breaker on this habit loop, this habitual self laceration, I still have this question looming of, well, aren't isn't a certain body type, you know, muscular or visible muscles. Isn't that a sign of good health? And therefore, isn't it rational that I should want this?

Well, that's a loaded question. I'm going to answer it many ways, if I may. You can go as long as you want. Thank you. So, first of all, you cannot tell by looking at someone's body but the health of their body. So there's someone who's kind of well-known on Instagram named Latoya Shanthi, who last year got fat shamed at the New York Marathon Mile 21 or 22. She's in a big body. She acknowledges that she's as fit as can be.

So you can't tell by looking at someone's body. But because of all the images we see on social media and then you being in the media yourself, there's a pressure you have that I would say the average man doesn't. Yeah, I got to look at my face on television all the time. Yeah. And so so part of this, I actually do another tick. I love Kristin Neff. We actually adapted some of her work in our workbook to work with these kinds of things.

And so we'll put a link to her interview in the show, notes of. Oh, awesome.

So I think one of the things we have to recognize here, when you were talking about body in this case, you're talking about a belief system and a value system. So this is not just have happy thoughts and it goes away. This is we have to root this out and this is going to take time and practice. So the only time. No. Well, so one of the things I just got really curious was somebody who happened to be like a math genius.

And I said to her, how many when did you start having thoughts about your body? Negative thoughts? I think for her it was age 10. I think she was 40 when I was talking to her. And I said, how many times a day do you think you've had these negative thoughts? And let's multiply it out. It was like fifty million or something like that. So, so much suffering. It's so much suffering, but there's so much suffering.

Absolutely. So you having 50 million hits of body shame versus three hits of a Kristin Kristin Neff technique, which is awesome. But sometimes people have the expectation that I'm going to use some loving kindness and self compassion. I'm going to be all Kumbaya with my body. And my answer is I would love if that was true. But we need to know it's going to take time and space because it's all around us. And so it's going to take these repetitions.

And one thing I would add to this when it comes to bodies is to recognize I am not a body. You have done some awesome things in your career. I think I told you I read your book and it's like, damn, look at all the stuff you've done. You're not a body. You're you're right. You're a dad. You're a reporter. You've done all these amazing things. You are not a body. So sometimes I will have people acknowledge that I am not a body for some people.

Here's a little Buddhism. I ask people, what's your body lineage? And like, what do you mean? I said, Well, what about your mom and dad? How do they feel about their bodies? How about your grandparents and looking how it comes down the family tree, it's like, oh, no wonder this is not so easy just to uproot with a couple of compassionate, compassionate thoughts. It's something we need to do, but it's going to take time.

And then in your case, you know, you've you've got a family. And so one of the things I love to say when I'm working with parents is I would love to stop the legacy in your family. I don't want your son to have these kinds of worries. I want him to go, go, go have fun and play or go to school instead of whatever he wants to do, but not be worried about the value of his body.

Just to be clear, just to emphasize a point you made before, you're not saying be unhealthy, correct?

Oh, absolutely. I'm not saying that, no.

I met just the other day another woman, not the woman you referenced, who is in a big body herself. And she runs marathons. In fact, she runs she's basically an ultra marathon. Wow. That's her. What is it? I've forgotten her name. She was lovely. She was on Good Morning America and just she's radiant human being and just killing it out there. And so if you took I would imagine we didn't do this, but if you went it took did blood tests on her and did an EKG and all that stuff, I suspect you would find she's extremely healthy.

And so that's the measure. I think I'm hearing you say so. In my case, for example, I recently got a workup and all the numbers came back really positive.

Yeah.

So maybe that's what I should be focusing on rather than, you know, the how my pants fit. Exactly, exactly, and and to recognize it's going to be a practice to keep letting that go, no how it makes you feel doing some of the compassionate self talk you were mentioning and and remembering, you are not a body.

Much more of my conversation with Evelyn Tripoli right after this.

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So I'm going to give you an example, when we talk about health, we need to be broader. It's not just our bodies and what we eat. It also includes things like our our mental health, our well-being, social determinants of health, all these kinds of stuff. How much sleep you're getting. There was a really profound study published in the 90s. It was, I call it a name. Every study I read, I just it's a habit I have.

So I call it the food where I study. And they looked like.

So the reason that that was an affectionate laugh. I'm not laughing at you. Oh, no. I was laughing back at you. I like to laugh. So I wasn't even threatened by that one. Huh.

I also want to make clear to the audience that I'm enjoying this. Oh, good, good. I like your energy. Thank you. So Paul Rozin looked at four countries. He looked at the United States. He looked at France, Belgium and Japan and the United States. We in the U.S., we worried the most about what we eat and we enjoyed it the least. The French, on the other hand. Oh, my gosh, they love their food and they could care less about health back when this was done in Belgium or Japan or somewhere in between.

And the thing that he said was so profound was, you know, we keep worrying about if food's going to kill us or cure us. We haven't looked at what the impact of that worry is, because when you worry, it raises cortisol. That's not good for health either. And that's what I'm seeing right now, is just too much worry around the eating. Like, let's enjoy our food. Food is supposed to be enjoyable. It's it's a source of pleasure.

And I will tell you, Dan, I was really lucky in my career. I was on a task force with with Julia Child when she wanted chefs and nutritionist to get along. So we'd have to meet once a month and come up with something. And it really impacted me in the message to the dietitians and nutritionists of the world is like when you're planning all this healthy stuff, please, for the love of God, consider taste. And to the chefs, please consider health the idea.

It's not one way or or the other.

You know, I just kind of rocked my head back in recognition when you said the thing about worrying, because it just really ran with me because I spend a ton of time worrying about this. This morning, I'm staying in a we're doing this interview in San Francisco where I'm out here for work and my wife and son came and which is amazing. And I try when we can get into this, try not to eat too much processed grains. They're like bread stuff.

But I love bread. And now that I don't eat animal products, it's one of the few sort of like sinful things available to me. So this morning my. OK, so so she's making a lot of gestures. I'll let you talk in a second. So this morning my wife ordered avocado toast for me. When I got back from the gym, I ate it all.

But was I enjoying it? Yes, but a lot of there was this worry going on in the background. So that's toxicity.

Yes. Yes. Can I say stuff now? Yes, please. Say as much as you want.

So first of all, that kind of worry takes robs you from the joke I can feel in my body right now.

Oh, so. And I want to I want to mention something. And you saw me react. Yeah, that's what I when you said sinful. So when we start talking about foods and moralistic terms, it's problematic. And I try my best noted. Yeah.

And especially with with kids, because kids are so black and white and they're thinking I eat bad food, therefore I'm bad. I'm going to give you some examples. Going to break your heart. It breaks my heart, Dan. So they have some do with kindergartners. It's funny. I have a really cool Instagram feed where people comment and say things that just gives maybe even more energized. So someone's kindergarten teacher removed the homemade cookie mom put in the in the lunch because the kindergarten teacher said it was bad.

Now, this little kindergarten is free to eat this kind of food that mom packs in the lunch, which is to have that fear at five years old. And how about the parent having authority over what they want to pack in their kid's lunch, things like that? It it it makes me sad. I'd rather the worry be somewhere else, you know, but not not with with with what we're eating. We need to get back to the joy of it.

I totally agree. And yet the little voice in my head. Let's hear the voice. Yes. Good. I'm glad you're cool with that. Is saying, well, isn't there empirical evidence to suggest that some food is better for you than other foods?

Oh, let's go there. OK, so here's a really interesting thing about data. A lot of I'm developing kind of a philosophy. You can tell me what you think about this. A lot of the fear mongering, it used to be from the media, from headlines, from nutrition, research, news, and the media would sensationalize it. Now I'm seeing that the universities are putting out press releases that are putting the sensationalistic stuff in there and the media is just merely reproducing it.

A lot of these studies showing, quote, bad effects like what you're describing are something called epidemiological research. Which association? Not causation. Gosh, did they control for exercise in this group? Did they control for smoking? Did they control for sleeping? There's so many things are missing. So these EPI studies, because they're so large in numbers, are thousands and thousands of people, sometimes millions. They get they generate lots of headlines. And these studies have a value that tells us, you know what this is this is interesting.

We should do. A study on on on humans and see what an intervention data make, what an intervention trial make a difference. Will it change the quality of of their life? And so we don't have that much data in nutrition. There's a lot of a lot of soft stuff on there. And so food becomes preached in terms of identity, like it's a religion. You know, it's it's amazing to me how this has happened that people think that they're better than other people because they eat a certain way or that they're that they're not so good because they didn't eat a certain way.

And so this is where we need to really remove the morality from eating, you know?

OK, so I hear you when you say that we should be skeptical of the research. Yeah. Are we not at a point where the research is dispositive on, you know, eating a sleeve of Oreos?

Oh, well, let's look at that. OK, so that sounds so straightforward of a question. Right. And I hear that. But see, here's the thing about the Oreos. Who would want to eat a sleeve of Oreos? Would that feel good? You know, so the people I meet that would eat, by the way.

OK, so that was not without that was not judgment on other people.

So this is even better that its use will go with it. So my experience that when people eat leaves, the cookies are whole boxes and I work with a lot of people that do.

You're sitting with somebody who used to. Yes. Oh, yeah. There's usually deprivation in that background. There's usually like I shouldn't I can't have this food.

And therefore, many of my parents let me have. Oh, my. OK, so. So then what ends up happening is the fight. When they finally get it, get to have it. Whatever. There's an event that comes along, there's an emotional need to say, to heck with it. You eat those cookies and you really know in that moment you're never going to have them again. You're never going to happen again. So I'm don't get them all right.

Now while I can, because I'm right. You're laughing. You get it right. I just call your story. You did. Right. So that's that's the issue. And so when someone says I'm enjoying this interview. Oh, I'm so glad. I'm so glad we'll have to do it again. You're amazing.

I really think, first of all, you I think you're helping me right now in this moment. And I think by extension, you're going to help tens of thousands. That's why I'm here. And I get that from you. Yeah. Yeah. Just a little bit of love in the middle of it.

Oh, thank you. I always take that and thank you. Good.

So one of the things I get is we haven't talked about the third principle of intuitive Vandar or one of them. I know. It's so funny. I don't know the order.

I can tell you what they are. I don't know the optics. I never go in order. I go with what the person needs. But one of the principles, it's the most misunderstood principle and controversy, though, for those who don't get it. It's called making peace with food, which means all foods fit, including Oreos. And the biggest fear question I get is, oh, my gosh, Evelyn, if I let myself eat whatever I want, I would never stop.

That's what I was going to say. Thank you. See, did I call you already intuitive?

And that usually is a reflection for how much deprivation there's been in your life, because there's a permission paradox that happens when you really know you can have the Oreos or whatever it is for the first time. You get to really ask, well, do I really want them? If I eat them now, am I going to enjoy them? And why would I eat a quantity? It doesn't feel good in my body. You know, it changes everything.

It's one of my most favorite things to observe over and over again.

And I have to tell you, I didn't tell you this part. There's a lot of research behind the foundation of intuitive eating. It was research inspired, but now it's you know, it's evidence based now. But our our model is actually based on a lot of the research around kids where they show this phenomenon that if you forbid a kid from having a food, that is the food that they obsess about, that's a food they end up sneaking. That's the kid who at the birthday party is going nuts over the cake and the candy, not the presents and stuffing it in their in their pockets, you know.

And so we see that same phenomenon in adults. So as an example, when someone says, I'm going to make this complex but easy at the same time. So when someone's dieting not getting enough to eat and now they have forbidden foods around, they can't eat this or can't eat that and something happens, they can't stand it. So they eat like a box of Oreos. And in their mind, nothing can explain that except, oh, my gosh, it must be addiction.

And it's like, no, this is a combination of biology. When you're not getting enough to eat, your brain is not craving kale. I have never met a patient yet who said, Evan, you got to make this kale thing. I can't stop eating it. Right, because our brain needs carbs. It's a primary. It's the preferred energy source. But because and I'll say the experience is real. Nothing can explain this this drive and the intensity and the urges that primal hunger.

But when you get to a point that you're ready to allow these foods in first, you need to nourish the body consistently and then allow these foods in. It changes it. So a few months ago on my I just recently debated a scientist I love doing the this on on addiction, food addiction, so-called addiction and to get ready for it. Besides having research, I thought, you know, in my experience, I've had a lot of patients believe they were addicted to food and with time they realized they weren't.

So I posted on Instagram.

Do you believe you were addicted to food and then realized you weren't? Oh, my God. The stories that came in, the stories that came in. So to me is an example of the problem. You start labeling things, calling things when the research isn't there to support it.

Not that's a kissing cousin to labeling something sinful.

Yes. Yeah, yeah. I just realized that change topics on you a little bit on that. Yeah. It's a similar idea. It creates a barrier and it creates fear. And when you have fear around eating, guess what, you're not going to want to trust your body.

Yeah. And I want you to trust that digressions even really, really long ones are totally welcome here. So. Don't worry about it, I so let's just go with what you're on right now, because it's really it's very, very interesting to me personally. One thing I just want to say is. You've basically helped my wife win an argument, many probably in the course of this, but one in particular as it pertains to our son.

I don't know that I've actually we really argued about this because I've just let her go with it, but her view is around desert stuff. Just don't be weird about it. Just let them have, you know, just to get to the point of, you know. You don't want to just give him dessert for every meal, but if he's, you know, asking for something and it makes sense, let him have it. And as a consequence, our son's not that crazy about sugar.

That's that's what I'm talking about. So he's really not Halloween. We came home. He spent the whole evening organizing the the the candy into different groups because he liked the colors or the the kind of candy it was. Didn't want to eat any of it, see.

Oh my gosh. And yet if your wife's wife hadn't been, you know, nudging you in that direction, I would have been crazy about it or he would have been crazy.

I would have made him crazy because my parents maybe I don't want to get down on my parents and my parents. I love my parents. Yeah, they're they my dad used to say this really nice thing to me and my brother before we're going to bed at night. He'd say he would take nobody's perfect, but you're as close as possible. Oh my gosh. And I feel that way about them as parents.

There is no such thing as perfect parents. But my parents were wonderful parents. And yet on this one, I think they because they're physicians and we're trying to make us healthy out of this incredibly positive, loving impulse. Yeah. Limited our sugar intake. And that has, I'm now realizing, made me pretty crazy about you.

Well, and let me also just validate what you're saying. I've never, never met a parent yet who didn't want to be doing the best for their kids. So what we say now is like, OK, you're learning something different and maybe you can do something. So I've got to tell you this story that reinforces what you're saying because it's so visual. I got a call from a parent about her seven year old daughter over a holiday. We had a white dress on chocolate fingerprints all over her dress.

And she said, honey, did you eat the chocolate, whatever it was? And she said, no, mommy, no mommy. And the evidence was ever everywhere. And she said, you know, that was the first time, to her knowledge, her daughter has outright lied to her. And it made her wonder, what am I doing here? Am I making a mistake that my daughter needs to lie to me? So she came in and saw me and long story short, well-meaning.

But they had rigid rules, absolutely no candy. So the only time this kid got candy was at parties. This was like a party kind of thing. And the visual, that white dress with the chocolate. So I gave her similar advice. What I'm suggesting to you is like, let's liberalize the food. We don't we don't have to serve dessert for dinner. But, you know, we don't make it a big deal either. Food has become Switzerland.

It's neutral. We don't put energy into it. And long story short, it changed the whole the whole dynamic. My wife has done a really good job.

Good for her. Good for her. So let's get back to the thing you said before. That perfectly described my mentality, which is so let me just step back on sugar. I went through this long phase where I would just binge it to the point where I would feel awful.

And when I say awful, I don't mean awful, just awful in the moment. I would feel awful the entire next day.

Oh, yeah, yeah. That's how much I was OK. And I have an addictive personality, ok.

And so what I decided to do a couple of years ago was I was it was yet another day where I was texting back and forth with my wife saying I feel awful today. And I just decided, you know what, I'm going to leave it alone. I can't I'm having trouble with moderation, but I'm reasonably good at abstinence. So now I've for the last couple of years, I've gone through the world of with just a policy, as you know, you can make me, as my friend Gretchen Rubin says, you can make me a birthday cake, but I'm not going to eat it.

And it's been reasonably successful in that. I haven't had a day where I felt awful because I ate so much so many Oreos the night before. But now sitting here with you, maybe I have to tweak that success story. And the reason why I bring all this up is you said before a lot of people say to you, if you allow me to have that one Oreo, I'll never stop. Yeah, so that's my mentality.

So given everything I just said, how would I how would you suggest I proceed?

I'm so glad you're asking. I get this question a lot. So first of all, I'd want to make sure that you're getting enough to eat, because the truth is, let's say you had a just a crazy day on deadline that it pulled into a meeting you worked out and you finally get home having dinner at eight o'clock and let's say lunch was at 11 and there was nine hours without eating. If you decided to make peace with sugar right then and there, you're going to eat a Middlesworth and it's not going to feel good.

So I'd want to make sure your body's nourished and that when you have whatever it is that that sweet, that you have it at a time when you can pay 100 percent attention to it. I ask you the earlier, where's your mind go when you're eating? I want your mind to be on the I would love for your mind to be on the process of eating. Note what comes up even before you do it. Fears excitement and maybe being judging the fact that you're excited.

Oh my God, this is about me. I'm so excited. That's common, by the way. Really common. And then even just noticing as you're unwrapping the candy, the sound of the candy, as you you know. Oh, my God, I wish I had it here with you. But like a junior mints are my favorite ones to do a food experience with because you would I would have you smell it. And when you smell junior mance.

Yes. You smell mint, you smell chocolate, you smell hints of vanilla. Then you put it in your mouth. Don't even take a bite and notice what happens to the taste and the texture. Then take one bite without chewing. That's hard. Hard to do. I always say. Pretend I'm a kindergarten teacher. Don't go ahead of me. And then finally, when you feel comfortable, you know, to notice the taste, notice the texture, and then after you finish swallowing, notice the remnants.

So I actually do this in my office, mindful eating right there. But it is it actually is the first lesson in mindfulness based stress reduction. Is the race the race? Yeah, yeah, yeah.

This one sounds much more fun. It is much more fun. So I usually have people bring in their food. And I tell you, this is what just it's a joy to do this work, to watch people's minds get blown like, oh my God, I had somebody I used to binge on candy corn pounds and pounds every holiday when it would come around Thanksgiving and around Halloween.

And she brought them in. We did this thing. She tasted things she'd never tasted before because it was always urgent. Hurrying do this now before no one's looking. Hurry, let's do it fast. Don't taste it. And then feeling like what you were talking about, just feeling awful afterwards. And part of that awful is not only the physicality from the eating, but the emotional labeling. So it becomes enmeshed. This is with this equals now, you know, and we have to separate it out because all along as you're eating and when you finish, do I like how I feel?

You don't have you know, you can stop anytime you want to.

OK, so I suspect that what I'm about to say is, I suspect speaking for many people in the audience, which is, wow, you are really forcing me to rethink my relationship with food. And yet I'm still in this position of wondering how am I going to do this tonight at dinner with my wife and child for the first time in a couple of years, say, OK, I'll have a little dessert. Yeah. How's that going to go?

Even if I've been I've I have a bag of food over there that I'll probably eat between interviews today. So I will be I will be nourished by the time dinner rolls around. And yet I have this fear that I go crazy.

So and that fear is really common. So No. One, I'm glad you're challenging your thinking on this.

I would love that you're challenging my. Yeah, yeah.

I'm glad that you're that you're revealing that it's that's good. But I'd want you to do it at a time that you feel ready to do it.

I see. So like, for example, I've really noticed I have been jet lag the last couple of days. I've done a bunch of sort of like kind of mindless eating. Sure.

That fatigue is one of mine states that can lead to that. So you wouldn't you would want me to feel physically and mentally strong in a good place for us today.

A good place you get you get to decide that. So let me share a little bit of research behind this. It might help with the fear factor. OK, so there's a couple of drivers that we created this principle. One of them has to do with habituation research. Habituation has to do with novelty that when something is new, it's a very exciting. One of the best stories I ever heard was habituation research. You described falling in love.

You're falling in love. And for the first time, you hear that person say, I love you and it's magical and it's awesome and you're on top of the world. Ten years later, you're married. You're a committed relationship. That same person says, I love you and it's nice, but it doesn't it's not the same level of of joy when you get a new car and you get a new computer when new anything. So that's what habituation is.

Novelty wears off. It's like leftovers. It's really the leftover principle. You know, after I used to do some cookbooks and I'll never forget making cakes and all my family, my God, KKK a cake. But by the end of that chapter, I couldn't give a cake away because they knew they could have it. So what happens is when someone's been dieting or have rigid rules like no sugar, what happens is food stays scary and food stays exciting.

You know, you haven't had the habituation effect. You've had the extremes. You haven't had the middle. So what we know from habituation fact, if you want to do this systematically, I actually have a systematic approach. You would choose one food, the same flavor, same brand. So, for example, it was ice cream. Maybe it's it's Haagen-Dazs ice cream, but you don't vary it up with Halo top. It's a very different even if it's vanilla, you know, and because we know with novelty, if you introduce new flavors, it'll take a little longer.

You can do it that way if you want to. You can do it any way you want to. But when someone's really, really scared, I'll say, you know, let's create the optimal situation. What? No. One, what do you need to feel safe? What's optimal for you? Where do you want to do this? I've had some patients say I don't want to do it at my home. I don't want to have a bag of candy or big gallon ice cream calling my name.

Can I go out somewhere? It's like, absolutely, yes, you can. And so it's about building what ends up happening. You don't have to eat through the alphabet of sugar to get this, but once you start having a certain amount of experiences, all of a sudden is like, you know that. And it's it's just a beautiful thing to witness over and over again. Like what you see in your son could be in you as well.

But there's been too much energy and too much rigidity around it, in my opinion, which is why it keeps it exciting. And therefore, with excitement comes fear.

So you would recommend that the abstinence model that I've been bringing to sugar is probably not the wisest approach because, yeah, that's what I would say.

And so that what you're recommending, if I'm hearing you correctly, is pick one super exciting, the most exciting kind of dessert or any kind you could do the safest dessert, maybe something boring like for me, boring for my taste buds would be vanilla wafer cookies.

It's dessert for some people, but it's like now I'd rather have a real cookie. I agree with that.

Yeah, but if we're trying to go for habituation. Yeah. We pick the most exciting. It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter. You just you keep repeating it. So the dessert of the week. My, my. A certain what cookie or ice cream or whatever that happens to be and then do what with it, just eat it slowly. Yeah, yeah. The way you described with the Germans. Yeah.

And I would generally recommend not before meal, but to do it sometime after meal. So hunger's not driving it. It's all about the taste experience of it.

And over time you're saying habituation sets in and then I can walk into a holiday party with a cornucopia of. Pastries and not it's not a big deal. They think, oh, my God, what did you I mean, the thing that's so funny in the early days that people didn't know what I do for a living, they're like, how can you do that? How can you only two. It's like I'm full.

And they're like, well, it was no magic.

That's that's what habituation is. But when you watch it in your kids, you're seeing that play out over and over and over again when you watch it.

How long does this habituation take and does it have to do I have to do it systematically by phone? If I do a vanilla wafers, it will it will scale to everything else.

No, it's really different for everybody. I don't have a metric on that. I have some people that prefer to list every single food. They're terrified of eating and create a hierarchy. Sometimes they start with the safest foods, but they, you know, feel safe to them and then they will. Because you know what's really sad now? I have people who are afraid to eat carbohydrates. It's like, no, not the carbohydrates. Your brain needs them.

And so we're starting with basic foods like like bread and those kinds of things.

The carbohydrates is a big category, as I understand it. Yes. Big difference between rice and Wonder Bread.

Yeah, yeah. But it doesn't mean it's bad, you know, Wonder Bread. Yeah. Yeah I know. Right.

Oh and what kind of crisis are you. What are you saying. I look at the French you know the French bread for example. Yes. That's, that's white flour man. They have one of the lowest rates of heart disease in the world. And yes, we can argue that they have other health enhancing behaviors that they do. But it's, you know, one, food is not going to make or break you. One, food is not going in unless you have an allergy to like peanuts.

It's not going to do you in.

So I've done this around bread, too, which is I've made it too exciting. I hated illicit and therefore it's so super exciting when I start eating it. All of those technologies kick in. Right.

And then it because in your mind, I'm not going to do this again. This is an exception because I'm jet lag. So then it's more exciting and now the volume is going to come in because it's opportunistic eating. I'm never going to. Oh my God, this bread is especially here in San Francisco. Oh, my God. So you're going to eat more quantity. And so that drives and they don't feel good and they say, see, I need to have rules around my eating.

This doesn't work.

So, again, what you would recommend is a habituation process. Yeah.

Were you when you feel ready, not when you feel ready. Not when I say you're ready, when you feel ready to do this, you know, to start start adding sweets back in and and same with bread. Yeah. And would you do these concurrently or separately, whatever you feel ready to do.

So for example, I've learned to get out of the way of my patients. I've had patients come in ready to do things I would've never recommended and they do beautifully, you know. So I have I've had some patients that go out and buy every single food they think they can't have and put it in their pantry. That would terrify a lot of my other patients. But if they're ready to do that, I'm not going to stop them. If that feels like they want to do that and they're ready, OK, let's do it.

I have other patients that are terrified and so we start really slow and that's OK, too. They'll buy a teeny tiny cupcake like at Sprinkles or Suzy Cakes or one of those places, the mini ones, you know that they're not the regular size. That's OK. And you could just see what happens and you know what happened. Oh, I don't know. I should tell you this.

Let me tell you the thing that cracks me up. It happens, I would say one out of four times someone has a food, they have this Push-Pull relationship with. They finally give permission to eat it. And then and then they don't like it.

It's not that it tastes bad, but we've removed all the excitement and there's no taste in it. You know, if I had someone who was into chocolate kisses and I said, you know, if you're going eat chocolate, why settle for, you know, there's nothing wrong with kissing the want to go for Godiva or something else. And they said, what a great idea. And then when they had the kiss is they didn't like him at all.

It's like, oh my God, this is like eating a crayon tip. Right.

You know, so and it's a surprise, you know, or I had someone who was a French fry aholic and she made peace with French fries and what she discovered in the past, you would only have them whimp and and limpia for her kids plates, her husband's plates, sneak him in lots, lots that way. And what happened to her? She was no longer willing to eat him that way. She'd only eaten. Oh, so this is another principle of intuitive eating aimed for satisfaction.

You know, it ultimately is not satisfying to overeat and it's ultimately not satisfying to underrate. And what I love about this principle is only you can answer that. What's that feel like to you? What would a satisfying what would a satisfying meal feel like and taste like? And how do you want to feel afterwards?

How do you answer those questions? How do you know we all have to answer them ourselves, but how do we answer those questions?

Well, so first of all, first first I have to start with a question.

I've had patients say I have no idea and crying because they've been on so many diets following what everyone told them what to do, because I will often ask, what's your favorite food? And no one's ever asked me that question. I'd like to see, would they have any joy in eating at all? So looking at what that might be and sometimes they don't know. So we start doing experiments or sometimes they have a history like when they were a kid.

Oh my God, I used to love eating, you know, macaroni and cheese and broccoli or something like whatever, whatever it happens to be. And then ultimately. So here's a classic I used to hear. Diets are like fashion. They come and they go. They come and they go. And so this is when people are like big old salads, no croutons hold the skin off the chicken in ice tea for lunch. And I had a patient say, oh, that was really good.

And I said, was it satisfying? Oh, it was really good. How long to sustain you, two hours as oh, so you had a meal and it only lasted for two hours. It sounds like it's more like a snack to me. Seems like a pain. So looking at those kinds of things and it only you have the answer to that question. And so I consider myself kind of got the tour guide. I can direct you for some fun rides, you know, with eating, but you get to decide if you like it or not.

It seems like mindfulness would be incredibly useful. Oh, it's very, very useful. Absolutely. Absolutely. Having awareness of everything. Awareness is key to all of this. Yeah.

Where are we? Where are you? So in mindful eating, we really slow down while we eat. Yeah. That part of intuitive eating too. Yeah.

And you know what's really interesting? I don't put any emphasis on slowing down because I think it's kind of contrived. I put the emphasis on the savoring aspect of eating because that's actually interesting. Said slow down and be mindless. Yes, you can. You absolutely can.

Because back to that question, what does your mind go when you eat? If it's somewhere else, you are not your mind's not there on the eating. So, yeah. So looking at that and so people have asked, what do I do when I eat then, you know, there's no TV, there's no phone.

It's like that's what you recommend to people to to start noticing. What does it taste like.

In other words, when, when, when people start practicing. Yeah. Sort of eating. You're saying don't do it in front of the TV. Yeah. It's OK to have a conversation with another human being. Absolutely.

But don't be reading your phone or listening to a podcast. And the only distraction would be a conversation with another person. Other than that, you're just eating.

Yeah, and I'm always careful about this phenomenon that we've seen is that when people come from a dieting background, they invariably accidentally turn intuitive eating into a set of rules, you know? And so this is not that's where I was going with this. Well, that's where I'm that's why I'm offering this little bump.

Stop here, Dan, slow down here. You're already way ahead of me. Just stop interjecting.

Oh, no, no, no. This is good because that means other people are thinking the same thing. So I would say, yes, it's a best practice, especially if you're new to intuitive eating. But let me let me give you an example why I think it's important. And my my patients laugh at this. And I love this. This is when I used to read The Wall Street Journal. So at the very bottom, on the front page, sometimes they would trick me.

I know they didn't do it on purpose. I'd start reading a story while I'm eating breakfast and oh no, it's a full length feature, two pages. That meant I had to have more cereal or more whatever that was eating, so disconnected and I'm so full.

I thought, oh, isn't this hilarious? I'm a creator of this model. I know this stuff, but I just got disconnected. So it's it happens.

It's still fall. You still run afoul of your own precepts, you're saying?

Of course, because I'm human. And that's my point. This is not pass or go. So and actually, let's use this as a really great example. So I don't react to that. I don't go, oh, my God, you bad not dietitian. Who do you think you are? Is it's like, oh, I'm uncomfortably full. What I know from my own experience, it means I probably less hungry for lunch and I don't I don't do any penance for it.

I don't do I like I like to see what my body is going to do naturally, you know.

So we're really just riding. We're tuning into our bodies and riding that through the day and letting all of these external factors drive us, including probably been saying this all along and it only took me now to understand it, but that's actually the way it works.

So that's actually you're actually very advanced that you understand it right now, OK? Mean I'm sincere when I say that it's you are actually in charge, you're the boss. And I tell you, my young adult patients love it. I say I work for you. You're the expert of your body. The problem is you have fear around your body. You have mistrust. I can help you, you know, start to cultivate some of these things and the compassion that that's needed when you, you know, make make eating.

I don't make the same mistakes when you eat in a way that's upsetting to you. You know, I'm always like, what can you learn from this experience? What can you learn from this? What were the causes and conditions that this happened? Yeah, you don't feel good right now. I hear that. But what happened and what might you do differently next time, you know?

Well, for example, so what would I do differently around having flown out to San Francisco a couple of days ago and experiencing pretty massive jet lag, exacerbated by having a four year old in the hotel woke up at three fifteen?

I don't know what can I learn from that? Because I can't make jet lag no longer a part of my life. And so I did a lot of sort of mindless comfort eating. How would I incorporate that into my going forward attitude towards.

Yeah, so what do I do with this is like it's like you work with what you know to be true for you, and that is jet lag is a regular part of your your career, that kind of travel. And so the question to me is, OK, this is I call it Heavy Metal Jacket, time for self care. That and I'm in the same way, by the way, I don't feel good when I'm traveling like that. So that means I'm going to do my damnedest to get sleep.

You don't have that option with a kid, you know, waking up at three fifteen. But I'm going to really make an effort to have meals if I can, rather than snacks. I don't I don't my preference and this is not a right or wrong, my body feels better if I can sit down and have a civilized meal as opposed to running from snack to snack, the snack will do a lot of that.

Yeah, the latter.

The writers and actors and I do that in my office and I have busy, crazy days. But I think the reason I'm not so impacted, I don't have the jetlag or other things going on. I think there's something about the act of sitting and taking the time out that it does something for my mind besides the actual eating aspects of for me, that's something that really, really works. It might mean I'm not taking on an extra project during that time period.

It's going to be. Yes, but not now or later or just going to be a flat out no. You know, so I look at those kinds of things. So when you're having what I call these really vulnerable times, what foundational self care needs do you need? And that's not a bunch of woo woo. I've had patients call me on that like I want to get a manicure. I don't want to. It's like I'm not talking about them.

Talk about the boring self care, like sleep, you know, like having downtime. Time for yourself, time to have a meal. And sometimes you can't and you're going to be my one of my best out of body experience is not our body awareness experience. I am driving. This is a crazy day. I'm, I'm fighting off a cold. I have a cough. This is multitasking while eating a cough drop on one side of my mouth and I'm eating a bagel on the other as I'm driving to work.

And I thought I wish I had a picture of this. And the reason I love telling that story, sometimes it's the best we can do. And that's. I was OK with that. Do you?

I mean, so this is instructive because your example is instructive. And I know that's why you shared it is one can have a sense of humor as opposed to sort of inner sort of militaristic attitude toward the mistakes that we are ultimately going to mistake.

Many might not even be the right word, learning experience, learning experiences that we have on this course, because as you said earlier, we are human. We are going to over eat or eat until we're uncomfortably full.

Yeah, absolutely.

Your terminology and you your approach, which you just modeled, is laugh at it and learn from it as opposed to go into some crazy self laceration.

Exactly. And that's the part that actually hurts mental health, all of that, the expectations and the rigidity. And that's what I find for a lot of people. If they when they struggle with this is sometimes they have this rigid mindset that eating needs to be the certain way. It's like, no.

And that toxicity that you've the cortisol you've released into the system almost guarantees that you're going to do it again.

Well, that's actually a really good point. If you're being stressed out about your eating decisions and then and then you're a stress eater, you've just loaded yourself up. Absolutely. Absolutely.

So so let's go back to the you're you're the I have the ten oh gods of intuitive eating.

We've rejected the diet mentality. We've honored our hunger. We're making peace with our food. Four here is challenged the food police. Oh, yeah, this is a good one, friend, you have jumped out of order because a couple of others say, I told you, that's all good. You know, this is what I do in session, too.

It's like, what is the person need? This is the model. But you don't have to go in order. When you write a book, you have to go in order. But yeah. So Chow is the food police is working with the inner critic, the inner bully, in your mind, you know, is the collective food police that tells you how to eat and those kinds of things like. So I like to ask, where did your rules come from?

What food rules do you have and where did they come from? And I'm not even so much concerned about the rules. I'm looking more at the rigidity on them. And I'm looking at what happens if you so-called violate one of your rules. How does how does that impact you? And that's the interesting conversation right there.

Where do my rules come from? I mean, they come from random bits of well, actually, you know, I have a nutritionist who actually is quite soft in his approach, even though he's a.

Vegan bodybuilder, OK, but he's pretty sort of he has a sense of humor is not, I think, very much understands the utility of shame, but I guess, yeah, him or just random conversations I had with people who look really healthy.

Yeah.

And so then we start looking at some of the rules. So let's say it came from a person of authority. Well, where did that information come from? It's really interesting when it's deconstructing sometimes the our own myths, it's like, well, who said that? Who made up that rule?

You know, to what end to is it serving me right now? Is it serving me or is it I once had a patient. I love this. It's a mundane example, but the brilliant one. And she said, yeah, my rules, I have to have protein with me. It's like, OK, what happens if you don't? Because I'm kind of disappointed. And I said, well, I should go because I know I'm going to be hungry.

Hungrier later. Go. That's you know, so that was great feedback. She's not rigid about it. She's in touch with her body. I didn't work with her very long because she she was really in a really good place.

Well, protein's interesting because I keep it in mind, in part because it it's a little bit more challenging to get protein when you're on a plant based diet. And I like to exercise and you need a certain you know, you don't know as much as the culture is telling you. Yeah. But as I've learned. But you need a certain amount of protein to perform at your best. So I do try to keep that in. But that is a guess, a rule.

And there are can be a good if if it's so if it's a guideline and a preference, that's not a big deal. It's going to look at the rigidity of it. I see. You know, and especially when it involves restricting, that's when I get really concerned, Gocha, that you're eating less. All right.

So that's four or five and respect your fullness, which we've done. We've done. Yeah. Six is discover the satisfaction factor which we've done. Yeah. Seven is and I don't think we've done this one on or your feelings without using food. Yeah.

And so, and I want to, I want to clarify on this, it's, it's normal to use food with feelings and we celebrate when we have a wedding there's going to. Oh did you have wedding cake.

Dan go. Yeah. That I had, I was eating OK.

Those kinds of things that make me sad when there's a life event that we have a tradition as a culture and you opt out for whatever reason, you know what I mean?

I am rethinking the whole sugar thing. I'll get back in touch with you after this. And that's how it goes.

That's awesome. So it's about expanding your toolbox for coping mechanisms, you know, so like when you travel and you're constantly exhausted, you know, what are your coping mechanisms to deal with, with the emotional fatigue and then the physical fatigue, looking at those kinds of things? So I use a kind of a two point technique there. You know, when eating is feeling like it's beyond you, that you're eating in a way that doesn't feel good to your body, it's a way of coping with emotions.

What are you feeling right now? That's not a hard question to ask or answer, but the one that stops people every time is what do you need right now? It's related to that feeling.

What do you need right now?

You know, so if I'm bored. Yeah.

And I'm reaching for something that I know is going to make me feel crappy. Yeah, because it has in the past OK, or actually it's not so much the thing, it's the quantity of the thing. OK, it may be asking myself, what are you feeling and what do you actually need?

Yeah, the face of this board.

Yeah. What kind of stimulation can I have other than does it need to be food. Yes. You know, I've got I have this growing list of things. I start with a couple of foundational suggestions. I get people and then we grow from there. So my my top two right now are people are curating puppy videos and then what's the other one? Llama videos, a little baby lummus. So because it's just something to do that's kind of engaging and you can look at it later, does it has to be whatever is meaningful for you.

Do you know meditation. Meditation. There you go. Eight respect your body.

Oh that's a big one. And we kind of we alluded to it a little bit at the top. And that is this idea that you're you cannot tell by the look of someone's body what their health is and that all bodies and I mean all and I'm really careful when I use words all or never. And I mean when I say all all bodies deserve dignity and respect, period.

And that's a tough one for a lot of my patients. A lot of my patients have grown up with shame around their bodies or not even shame persay, but that the only way that you can be successful in the world is to have a certain kind of appearance, you know, and they're spending all their time and mental energy around that and in pain and suffering. And I do see a lot of patients with eating disorders. And I think part of the reason we're seeing eating disorders double is because of all of this appearance based stuff we got going on with our culture, in part with social media and in part with diet culture.

Well, what do we do about the fact that we we have we can stipulate, I believe, because you've said it to the fact that people will judge you often based on how you look. So given that many of us want to navigate the world of it, I'm on TV. So people, if I put on a bunch of weight, may notice, I may not tend to look, this is very unfair, but there tends to be way more scrutiny on the females, on TV, the males.

Yeah. But nonetheless, maybe they'll notice and maybe I'll be less successful or whatever. Should I not take that into account.

So we're talking about a big issue right now and has to do with weight stigma. And that's that's a problem that I want to help solve. But it's systemic. Yes. You know, and I'm OK. I'm going to be really vulnerable. But here now, I am the one and only time as an adult that I thought about dieting was when I made my debut on Good Morning America. I was four months pregnant, postpartum, rather post pregnant.

Yeah, this is back in back in ninety five.

And I thought if I'm ever going to diet it be now and I thought about it and I couldn't do it from being aligned within my values. But the point I'm saying is I felt that that, that urge because of the perception stuff. And so what we need to do this is easier said than done is we need to work past that. You know that you're more than what you look. It's interesting right now to be seeing more diversity in media, more diversity in magazines and women's bodies and sizes.

And and we need that. So it's there's not an easy answer on that. But we see the harm of weight stigma in health care where doctors are looking. And there's these have been documented medical journals where they look at someone and they say, oh, I just just lose weight. You'll be fine. There was a woman who died a few years ago in Canada, was a feeling often went after doctor, doctor, doctor. They said just lose weight.

She finally saw a doctor that saw more than her body, did a workup. She had a stage for cancer and died just days later. So in her obituary, she put that in there so that no one would go through the fat shaming that she had.

It's a really big problem in our culture, you know. Wow. And yet it not sure really answers what we should do as individuals if I'm on the hunt for a new job and I want to look my best in my interviews. Yeah, I this is a systemic problem, right. I can't solve that myself. And yet I still need the job. So should I not be restricting my eating or.

No, absolutely not. Doing double sessions at Barry's Bootcamp in order to lose the weight.

No, I think and I actually I have worked with people in the entertainment business where that's part of I mean, I'm talk about actors and I used to work in the movie industry and I've been there seen that. And the problem is and when I look at is what this does to you in terms of your energy, all your mind now is going to on this this diet thing, you if you're acting, you can't even emote properly because you're you're a little dull, you know?

And so it's about really connecting with what you bring to the table, what your value set is, period. And I would hope, hope, hope where you're at in your career right now, that that's what really matters for you and that maybe you can start being part of that message. Dan?

Yeah, I mean, it's really I'm really there's so much here that's electrifying.

Yeah. This is a big one. An important one to know. I'm not I'm referring to everything you're saying.

Oh, thank you.

One thing that's particularly on my mind right now is just thinking about how much energy I've wasted on this. Yes.

Oh, you know, I will tell you, I can't tell you how many tearful sessions I've had with people around that. The amount of time spent, the amount of money spent postponing a vacation or not going to an event because they want to blow their diet. This one this I'll tell you this when I hear a lot from parents is how cranky they were and yelling at their kids in a way that wasn't aligned with their parenting values. You know, and I don't say this to guilt or shame anyone, but just to shed the light on there are consequences when the body's not getting enough to eat our body.

You know, we have this illusion that we have 100 percent control over what we eat. It's kind of like breathing. We can do all this stuff with the breath you can do in meditation, but you can also choose to stop breathing. But you also know the moment you stop to choose breathing, your body will finally make you breathe. You'll pass out. And when you come to, it'll be you're going to inhale the whole room. And the same thing with eating.

If you stop eating enough food or restricting to a certain level, there gets to be a point where your body mind can't stand it. You're going to be thinking about food more. It's in in the brain aspect and there's going to be a drive. And when you finally eat, you're going to inhale it. It's not a little polite, you know, snack here.

So nine exercise feel the difference. Yeah.

And actually, it was interesting. We have our fourth editions coming out in June. Twenty twenty. We're actually changing the word to movement is that of exercise, because so many people have had a lot of shaming around that in terms of the militant kind of stuff. But the idea is that you move in a way. It feels good, so having the the joy of movement, you know, is so, so key and, you know, I don't know if you know my athletic background, but I'm someone who naturally likes to move.

I I ran on the boys track team because I didn't have a girls track team when I was in school and then competed in college and then Olympic trials in the marathon. So I'm I'm someone who I like exhilarating movement, not because of what it's doing to my body, but I love how it makes me feel during it and then afterwards.

Wow, well, I have to admit that, you know, I exercise most days and I do like the way I feel afterwards, but I think that very often I'm doing it not because I'm enjoying it in a moment, but I'm doing it because I like I want to make sure that I'm healthy and I want to make sure that and I have some goals either stated or unstated internally about the way I want it to show up on my physique.

Uh huh. So and what happens, at least with some of the people I see is when when the exercise or movement is mainly about the calories burned or physique oriented, it's easy to burn out. And number two, if someone's on some kind of weight loss diet and they're exercising, I don't know how to do that. That's hard to do. And so a common pattern I see is they stop the diet and they stop working out and they have a lot of shame.

And my answer is, I know how you do that. A Ferrari is not going to go if there's no gas in the tank, it's not going to go around the track. Right. And your body doesn't doesn't want to go.

How do we uproot those? So I'm not doing that. I I'm not on a diet, but. Yeah. I do all different forms of exercise, and I really like the way I feel good and a little bit how I look afterwards, yeah, but I don't often enjoy the doing of the thing. Yeah. So you saying I should just totally orient toward exercise that I actually enjoy in the moment for the most part.

But sometimes, you know, I'll give you an example. Maybe meditation is a better example for me to use. I often don't enjoy it while I'm doing it. I enjoy the aftermath of it. I enjoy the quality of my life. But sometimes it's a pain in the butt for me to go sit on the cushion. It's just, you know what I mean? And so that can be that way sometimes for for movement as well. But knowing that you get these other secondary benefits, I think that's fine.

So fine.

So, yeah, I mean, I swam a bunch this morning and it was a little monotonous, but so I might not have loved it in the moment. But I do like the way it makes me feel.

And if I'm tuning into that, yeah, there's the power. Exactly. Exactly. I will say one thing I've mentioned Grace Livingston, who's one of the producers on the show. She's also helping me. I'm writing a book right now about kindness, and she's sort of my partner in crime on that as a heading up a lot of the research and also giving me feedback as I go. She refers to herself as a book therapist. Oh, I love that.

Really. It's really cool.

And she knows she had this suspicion that maybe there was a little bit of difficult energy around my approach to exercise and gave me a suggestion to occasionally drop in the notion while working out of gratitude. Oh, I love that.

So I'll be working out and I'll notice that I'm on some big jag of, wow, I'm not doing enough or this is not going to be enough for the day or this isn't going to make a difference on whatever metric I want. And just to the best of my ability. But just be grateful that I have a body that's functioning at this level, at this age, et cetera, et cetera. So many people don't. And I found that that to be a pretty pretty close to a silver bullet.

I have to drop it in a bunch into my mind, as I did during swimming today. Wow, this is boring. Hey, but you can do this thing. And, you know, I was able to get swimming lessons not long ago so that I can do it correctly, but grateful that I had the means to do that so that anyway, I just share that as well.

I think that's a really good point. And then I think what I'd add to that, too, that it's OK to take a day off if you're not feeling good, if you're not feeling it, you know, because you want to get injured.

Also, that was the hardest thing I ever learned how to do, is that rest is just as important as training, especially if you're going more intense activities. I just recently I'm going to tell you my aspiration is to be a ping pong player, ninja style. I actually have a ping pong coach and I love it. And one of the reasons why, besides fact I love it, is I don't see many injuries around at all. You know, I want the longevity of doing this.

My other sports, I've been injured. And so, yeah, let's do the last.

OK, the let the tenth of your pillar's here, OK, which is one that we've mentioned. But I think it's worth digging in again because I can hear skeptics out there asking this question in their heads over and over again. Honor your health with gentle nutrition. Right.

So in other words, you don't beat yourself up over how you ate. And it's more about looking at your pattern of eating over time. And the biggest kick I get is when someone asked me when can I start eating healthy, Evelyn? And my answer is any time you want to. But usually they're coming out of the rabbit hole of dieting. They're making peace with food and don't want to go back to the rigidity of which they had, you know, and so it's looking at those kinds of things.

It's looking at. Yeah, adding some more vegetables into your eating and those those aspects. And so one of the things I like to stress is intuitive. Eating is actually ten principles. You can't cherry pick them and just say it's it's just make peace with food. If you go on to Instagram and you look at the hashtag of intuitive eating, all you see are pink donuts. I think because people are so excited they can eat these things. That's what they write about.

They don't write about the on your health, the general nutrition, but that's still a part. And you get to a point. You don't apologize or explain what you're eating, whether it whether it's doughnuts or whether it's a salad with with kale and tofu grilled into it. It's your body, your business, you know.

OK, so if people find themselves at the end of this conversation and in the position which I find myself right now, which is really intrigued.

Yeah.

What are the next steps? What they want to do, I want to do their program. Oh, my gosh. Wow. So so we do have a workbook, the intuitive eating workbook.

They could that's one way it's it's more intense in the book. There's a lot of questions in there to really help you get kind of read the book, get the workbook, get the workbook for sure. For sure.

We have a free online community, the intuitive eating online community. You can follow me on on Instagram. And so the way and I say is this, that most people can actually do this on their own. But what happens sometimes is they when you have a long history of shame around your body, around dieting, it might you might need some help with that. And so we have trained people that that are trained in our method. And you could check that out.

So you may have somebody locally. Who. Your counselor.

Exactly. A certified intuitive eating counselor. Yeah, that's excellent, because it sounds like I just to repeat what you just said, and I'm thinking this may be even true for me, that as as exciting as listening to a conversation like this may be or as exciting as a book in a workbook may be, you may need an accountability partner or something.

You know, and I got to tell you. OK, so can I just, I guess, go tell you this. So we have we have over 900 people in 23 countries trained in this.

So I just finished training three groups of Ukrainian psychologist. They want to train because the Moscow the Moscow psychologists got trained, which I think is great. But it's it's really neat that that they're you want to use this method. Do you know what I mean? Because imagine if every health professional that you saw your doctor, you saw your trainer, you saw your nutritionist, and you're getting a similar message, I think we'd be we'd be in a better place in this world.

I'm going to do it. Oh, that's awesome.

Inclosing, is there any point that I didn't give you a chance to make during the course of this interview?

Oh, my gosh. I feel guilty by not giving you some answer to that question, something profound.

Do you feel satisfied at the end of this meal? Oh, my God, I feel satisfied at the end of this conversation. I actually do. I feel heard and understood, which is actually really a really great feeling. The fact that it's opened up your mind to some possibilities is thrilling to me.

I can guarantee you I got more out of this than you did.

Oh, wow. Okay. Thank you so much. Yeah, thank you. Big, huge, hearty thanks to Evelyn. She's in my life on the regular, so she knows how grateful I am. As I've made clear, that conversation had a huge impact on me. And I continue to talk to Evelyn all the time. As you heard, one of the foundations of Evelyn's approach is self compassion instead of the self loathing and social comparison that fuels the diet culture to develop this skill of self compassion, I want to remind you to join the New Year's meditation challenge, which I mentioned at the top of the show, in which we're going to help you take all of that wisdom and put it into practice on a daily basis.

Plus, we think challenges we know challenges really help people put up resuscitate or reinvigorate their meditation habit. Challenge starts on Monday, January 4th. Download the app today and get ready.

Big thanks as always to the team who work so hard to make this show a reality. Samuel Johns is our senior producer, DJ Cashmeres. Our producer Jules Dodson is our A.P. Our sound designer is Matt Boynton of Ultra Violet Audio. Maria Wartell is our production coordinator. We get an enormous amount of insight and input from our colleagues such as Jan Point, Nate Tobi, Ben Rubin and Liz Levin. And of course, as always, big thank you to my ABC News comrades Ryan Kessler and Josh Cohen.

We'll see you all on Friday for a holiday bonus episode.