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Lesson Info

Becoming a Foodist

The way I set up food ist as a principal is basically I wanted to set it up as being the opposite of dieter right? So if you read my book you might notice the first word is diet in the last word of the book is foodists and I did that very intentionally because it's a journey and it's something you become but it takes what you think you want as a dieter you know you think I just wanna lose weight I just want to look good but it adds a factor that was removed from the dieting world and that's pleasure and happiness and that's for me the most important thing so how do we get there? How do we feel great look good and still be happy with our lives and everything we're doing eso again the goal is great food great health tow have a great life feel really proud of it of yourself and really good about what you d'oh the number one way to do this never ever ever diet it it weighed talked for a long time yesterday about how it doesn't get you closer to your goal and get you farther from your goal ...

and it's really, really tempting to diet because on the short term they work you know and when when you're feeling frustrated and you're feeling lost and you feel like you've fallen off the wagon it's our natural instinct to want toe go back to what you know feels like it kind of worked in the past, but the reality is if it really worked in the past, you wouldn't be in this situation again so never diet wastes your energy and waste your time and it generally makes your life suck, which is the opposite of life being awesome. So no diet ever again so glad to get that off cash and the rial what we were talking about yesterday is how tio optimize what we eat and what we dio to create this great life. So one of the general principles of dieting is that there's very rigid rules right there there's uh, you know, a certain number of calories or certain only certain groups of foods you can eat and certain things you can't eat and that is very difficult. And what I'm saying is, if you don't diet, you know, you don't restrict yourself always, but at the same time you don't, you know, lay in a pile of doughnuts and just like stuff your face full of doughnuts, right? It's about balance it's about not it's about finding healthy foods you really, really love and so you're satisfied most of the time and then when you feel like having something more indulgent, you can, you know, it's something that's already budgeted into your health style and and it's just and then it just comes down to a matter of like turning knobs and tweaking the different habits you have until you figure out exactly how often you can indulge what foods work best with you what what healthy foods were best for you which less healthy foods work best for you and howto create a life around you you know a very specific to your own preferences and your own desires and goals what you're going to be different from mine you know so optimizing for you and your own happiness is a key key takeaway and and also focusing on those habits that are going to have the biggest impact right? We talked about that a lot and that's really key because it's really tempting I think for people to get into the minutia of of nutrition and we're going to talk a lot about this today but you know people are going to get get obsessed about different types of fatty acids and different kinds of nutrients and minerals or types of vegetables and that is the type of worrying that doesn't move the needle at all toward health instead I want you to focus on big things that make a big impact like breakfast est which is thirty percent of your meals every single week tio huge impact habit and other things like that so focus put your energy where it matters and don't stress about the other stuff life's too short we also spent a lot of time yesterday talking about our psychology and the limiting beliefs that we have that prevent us from making real progress toward building healthier habits. So did I feel like what were some of the limiting beliefs that you guys realized you had yesterday? Yeah, that I'm going to keep just losing the same ten pounds because I can't do better, right? So you you thought you could never get past that ten pounds because you thought in order to do it, you would have to do these superhuman acts of you're training for a triathlon yeah it's just working out twice today, working out twice a day to three hours a day I don't want to do that and you don't want to do and you do discovered yesterday just actually alternative yeah that's a great that's so great I talked about one of the old my own limiting beliefs that I had which was kind of similar I believed I had to be a crazy dieter you know, I believe that to deny myself gosh, I went years without eating fat. Then I went years without eating carbs and then I only eight like and then we just very specific weird things like leek soup than anybody ever do the week soup diet I hated leagues for, like two years after that s o we all have these things that we believe that prevent us from getting past these issues but they aren't actually true so we learned how to test our assumptions question the things that are holding us back and figuring out a way around them really, really powerful and last we talked quite a bit about the importance of mindfulness so I think sean, you mentioned that mindfulness is one of the bigger things that you took away from yesterday and I loved the point you made which is that mindfulness is necessary to step back and understand when you're being driven impulsively by those like cravings and like dopamine ergic type actions versus you know when you can take a step back and say, you know what? That's not actually going to satisfy me I'm gonna I'm gonna dio something that I know is proven to help like talked to a friend talk to my wife, you know, get some exercise serotonin boosting activities and mindfulness is so important for that but also just being away aware of what we're eating so often it's so easy were cute all the time triggered all the time t mindlessly you know just on you know what? We're going to be getting more into it later but advertising influences how we eat uh the people sitting next to us across the table influence how we eat you know, the vibe of the room influences how we eat and it's you know it's not necessarily about actual physical hunger but were often triggered to make bad decisions and when you're acting mindfully, you have a fighting chance to stop doing that because it's not worth it, right? Like, if you're going to eat something indulgent, you want to be mindful about it, right? You want to enjoy that like the worst is when you waste an indulgence on something that's not worth it, and I think that we forget that so often that it's ok to indulge just make it worth it, all right? So yesterday I loved it, you guys were amazing students today, we're going to get down into the nitty gritty of nutrition so it's funny like yesterday we spent, you know, this is a class about food and getting healthy and losing weight, and we didn't talk about food at all yesterday for the most part, so today we're going to talk about nutrition, what you need to know, and more importantly, when you don't need to know, because it's so easy to get bogged down in all these, all the studies and all the crazy stuff that comes out, so probably one of the biggest just complaints and questions I get from readers, especially those who are skeptical of what I do is yeah, you know, I would love to be healthier, but like how could anybody possibly know what to eat? Nutrition is so perkin confusing, right? There's, just so much to worry about so much to think about. You have this highly respectable person over here telling you one thing, another highly respectable person over here telling you the exact opposite and it's enough to make you want to, like, just crawl in a cave and die like it's, just completely baffling. And so what most people dio as they go, screw it, I'm done like I'm just whatever or maybe they'll just find one simple thing that works for them sort of, but not really and, you know, or there's the people who are obsessed and just jump back and forth and I try to keep up that's the worst that was me, that was what I was like, oh, shoot carbs, oh, shoot sugar, oh, shoot like and I was all over the place, and that is, trust me, no way to live it's really, really stressful, and you always feel like you're playing catch up, you know, like you don't know where to go, so I just want to spend a little bit of time talking about why nutrition is so confusing and I want lots of questions on this because I know that you guys are going to be you're going to have questions on going to talk about a lot of different things so feel free to interrupt me and online people let me know if anybody's like got some exciting may one ask and we'll get right into it so I think the most common point of interaction we have with nutrition science is usually the media right you'll read a headline and it will say eggs are worse than smoking anyone see that couple a couple months ago totally flies in the face of all the other data we know but it's a very compelling headline and it made it to the news and then everybody who is eating eggs gets freaked out and stops eating eggs uh just you know, a couple months before that the exact opposite headline came out think eggs are fine no worries cholesterol doesn't matter whatever um and this is understandable but it can be a source of great frustration for people because who do you believe like what do you believe all right so so let's let's just get it let's talk about little bit why it's so confusing? So headlines really sound definitive right? They sound like gosh, this has been figured out like now we all know this is the truth but the truth is that science itself is actually very, very nuanced you know s o a study for instance may imply some particular outcome in a particular situation for a particular group of people uh but that isn't necessarily true and at for everyone right doesn't necessarily apply to you it doesn't necessarily apply to me and it doesn't necessarily impact how you should think that you should change your behavior it doesn't apply that you should change your behavior it's just another piece of information and other scientists are completely comfortable with this level of uncertainty because we have the luxury of having the having read the context that the I mean nutrition science has been going on for you know a century or more in the detail like molecular type studies and that got creates you know that's what this is like you know, we like to think tight once to the media likes to take one study and act like it's like then don't be all but the reality is there's probably hundreds and this needs to be fit into the context of all those other things so and unfortunately you know I know they try very very hard but a lot of journalists I don't necessarily know the whole context because it takes decades of training to get that and you know when you're in the lab you have ah good sense of what a good study looks like what a not so good study looks like or what one type of study can tell you for instance an epidemiological study which is those big huge population studies where they follow a big group of people for a decade or more that tells you that can tell you something about you know you know it's called an observation I'll study it can give you correlations but it can't prove causation causation you need a much more controlled study and like scientists are aware of these things journalists are mostly aware of these things but you know it can get dicey really quickly especially in something as confusing and as such a big topic as nutrition so what do you guys is experience with with media headlines like any particular jump out at you lately that really confused you kale one that the woman who juice kale every day for for years and then had thyroid problems yes right so we so we that's a great example I read that one tio we were told you know everybody's like kale's the new super food right as the last two years it's super popular I think the lovely greens quite delicious uh and what's funny is us as humans we think that's good I should devote much of it is possible right? And so people go nuts about a new super food and they focus on eating it and then there's also rumors I bet this fueled the woman's actions there's these rumors that you can't like that it's healthier if you don't cook it that somehow you lose enzymes and vitamins and nutrients, if if it's if you cook it so all cooking is bad, no to the problem is that's not true either eso when you but turns out that cooking does a couple things I mean, yes, there's a benefit of raw food, but also there's a benefit of cooking food. And there are there are chemicals inside a certain cruciferous vegetables, like kale bok choy cabbage, that if you eat too much of iraq, it can interfere with thyroid function absolutely true, but but then then then take home message from the lady gets thyroid problems from drink juice, and kale is, oh my gosh, you should number of jews kill right? Like we want to go to the other extreme, and the truth is, kale is fine, quite quite healthy for you, both cooked and raw, but in large quantities in a particular raw state when you're drinking it like we were really never meant to drink ale, but when you are in that sort of situation, you're in a situation we have, we're putting down a couple pounds of kale raw a day, and then you start running into problems. So this is exactly what I mean, does the online community have anything to say, any questions about the media? No, not yet. I mean, people are talking about different things, you know, guess there's a discussion about gummy vitamins exception. That was something that was in the news recently and then brand cereals all of these things and then saying, is it good? Or is it not because it's actually process just write really confusing? Yeah, really, really confusing. Um, yeah, it's actually that's worth talking about what we'll get into that in the next segment? Actually, um right, so and then and then what happens is if you see this enough right kale's good kills bad eggs are good, eggs are bad, fat is good, fat is bad dairies good dairy is bad, it's very common. And I think not unwise like science is confusing and probably broken, and I'm not gonna believe anything, right? Like it's it's. Easy to be like I don't believe anybody. I don't believe any of this stuff it's clearly not true. They change their mind every other day. So this is a source of frustration and it actually causes people to give up a nutritional together, which is a horrible it's, a horrible tragedy. Don't do that, don't don't give up on, we'll get to the bottom of this.