Speaker 1: I got a you bloody champs. It's harps. I hope
Speaker 1: you're great. So a few days ago, well, could be
Speaker 1: a long time ago, depending on when you listen to this,
Speaker 1: but a few days ago on Planet Me at the moment,
Speaker 1: Planet Me at the moment being ten thirteen, and the
Speaker 1: am on the ninth of the tenth, which is Wednesday.
Speaker 1: Is it Wednesday? Is it Wednesday? Or is it Tuesday?
Speaker 1: It's Wednesday? Just checking looks at his phone. So I
Speaker 1: spoke about I opened the door on the strength conversation,
Speaker 1: about which I've spoken about a few times over the
Speaker 1: nearly seventeen hundred episode journey that is typ I've spoken
Speaker 1: about the importance of strength training. I've spoken also about
Speaker 1: cardiovashkeellar fitness, and a whole bunch of other health variables
Speaker 1: and wellness variables that impact the way that we live
Speaker 1: and the way that we age and our capacity to
Speaker 1: have a long health span as well as a long lifespan, hopefully.
Speaker 1: I've spoken about food micros and macros and the thermogenic
Speaker 1: effect of different foods and energy in and out and
Speaker 1: all of that. And we've spoken about you know, when
Speaker 1: I talk broadly about health, I talk about the stuff
Speaker 1: that's in our control, and that would be things like exercise,
Speaker 1: how hard, how often, how much, what kind lifestyle, how
Speaker 1: we live, the way we put it all together, how
Speaker 1: much booze we drink, and work and play, and recovery
Speaker 1: and holidays and sleep, and all those kind of lifestyle
Speaker 1: variables that make up the thing that we inhabit. Mindset,
Speaker 1: of course, influences our health and all those things that
Speaker 1: intersect with our mental and emotional state, anxiety, depression, having
Speaker 1: a purpose reason, all of those things, food, as I
Speaker 1: also mentioned. And then there's the stuff that we can't
Speaker 1: control so much, but we can can kind of do
Speaker 1: something about genetics. We can't change our genetic disposition, but
Speaker 1: we can manipulate the way that we optimize or use
Speaker 1: our genetics what we have to work with. We can't
Speaker 1: change what we've done up until now, and what we
Speaker 1: have done up until now to our body, in our life,
Speaker 1: with our choices, behaviors, rules, and rituals, all of those
Speaker 1: things have an impact on what we look foreel function,
Speaker 1: operate think like today, of course, but we can't change
Speaker 1: any of that, but we can change moving forward. And
Speaker 1: also our chronological age we can't change, but as I've
Speaker 1: said many times, we can lower our biological age, so
Speaker 1: my body doesn't need to be as old in inverted
Speaker 1: commas as the calendar says, I am, so at sixty one, chronologically,
Speaker 1: I can have the equivalent physiology and function and biology
Speaker 1: and performance of a person who is ten or fifteen
Speaker 1: or twenty years younger than me, typically in terms of function,
Speaker 1: if I do certain things and optimize what I have
Speaker 1: to work with. And I haven't done a biological age
Speaker 1: test for a while, but I would think I would
Speaker 1: guess that my bioage would be somewhere around a decade,
Speaker 1: maybe a decade and a half. I'm not sure, younger
Speaker 1: than my sixty one actual years on the planet anyway,
Speaker 1: So that's kind of a bit of backstory. But today
Speaker 1: I want to talk to you about food. But I
Speaker 1: don't want to talk to you about the science of
Speaker 1: food and energy in and out in micros and macros
Speaker 1: and recommend the daily intakes, and I want to talk
Speaker 1: to you about essentially our relationship with food and the
Speaker 1: way that we, for one of a more science y term,
Speaker 1: the way that you and I do food. And so
Speaker 1: I was going to call this episode con eating, but
Speaker 1: because it kind of is about being conscious about the
Speaker 1: way that you eat. But I did a bit of
Speaker 1: a deep dive having a look at how a lot
Speaker 1: of people define conscious seeding, and it's a bit more
Speaker 1: woo woo. It's a bit more about being a thoughtful
Speaker 1: eader and eating slowly and savoring every bite and being
Speaker 1: in the moment. It's almost like this intersection of food
Speaker 1: and spirituality and chanting, which isn't really isn't really where
Speaker 1: I want to go. This is more a cognitive and
Speaker 1: a cerebral and an awareness thing. So I'm calling this
Speaker 1: episode eating awareness. And as somebody who has as I've
Speaker 1: mentioned many times, I've had issues with food over the years,
Speaker 1: and that's probably in terms of health and wellness and
Speaker 1: performance and body composition. Food has been my biggest challenge
Speaker 1: the other things I've found because I don't smoke, don't drink,
Speaker 1: don't do drugs, I sleep pretty well overly stressed or anxious,
Speaker 1: so I have a good social life. All of those
Speaker 1: things are pretty good. But for me, the challenge in
Speaker 1: terms of bringing it all together has been food. And
Speaker 1: so I'm coming from I'm coming from a kind of
Speaker 1: an intimate and personal, experiential perspective when I'm sharing the
Speaker 1: questions that I'm about to share with you, and I
Speaker 1: am by no means an expert or an authority or
Speaker 1: a high level researcher in this particular space. But I
Speaker 1: think I am qualified enough and experienced enough, and I've
Speaker 1: seen enough and worked with enough people with similar issues
Speaker 1: to at least have some thoughts and ideas and comments
Speaker 1: about it that you may or may not find helpful,
Speaker 1: empowering and valuable, and you might answer the questions I'm
Speaker 1: about to share and then do something with what comes
Speaker 1: up for you. Right, And so I've just written a
Speaker 1: series of questions that I'm going to unpack because I
Speaker 1: think these are questions that can can lead to some
Speaker 1: kind of positive shift if we use them the right way.
Speaker 1: And so they're really down to earth. They're fundamental, they're
Speaker 1: not complicated. You don't need any kind of, you know,
Speaker 1: academic background in this or education or high level knowledge.
Speaker 1: Question one is, is the way that I eat working?
Speaker 1: Is the way that I currently eat working? So I
Speaker 1: can answer that now and say yes, But for a
Speaker 1: long time, if I was honest, and I probably wouldn't
Speaker 1: have been at times, I probably wouldn't have been because
Speaker 1: I didn't want you to know what I was actually eating.
Speaker 1: There would have been times when you might have asked
Speaker 1: me that question, or I might have asked myself that question,
Speaker 1: and I would have bullshitted both you and me, because
Speaker 1: being truthful would have mean that or would have meant
Speaker 1: that I needed to own up and step up. And
Speaker 1: it also would have meant that I needed to acknowledge
Speaker 1: that I was telling people to do something that I
Speaker 1: wasn't doing myself. I was advising my clients and the
Speaker 1: people that I worked with in the health wellness space,
Speaker 1: in my gyms, in my own gyms. I was giving
Speaker 1: people advice and information and education that I couldn't even
Speaker 1: fucking execute myself. And so this is a real, you know,
Speaker 1: this is a real self awareness, self reflection piece. And
Speaker 1: so when I say is the way that you eat working,
Speaker 1: I mean is it producing the kind of outcomes from
Speaker 1: an energy and from a physiology and from a performance
Speaker 1: and from a function point of view that you want?
Speaker 1: You know, you can get a lot of things. You
Speaker 1: can get another job and more money in another you know, house,
Speaker 1: and another car and lots of stuff, but you can't
Speaker 1: get a new body. And I can't get a new body.
Speaker 1: And I just I worry about people that tend to
Speaker 1: tend to put this stuff on the back burner because
Speaker 1: they'll get to it one day. They know that, they
Speaker 1: know that the way that they eat is a form
Speaker 1: of self sabotage. They know that it's not really doing
Speaker 1: them any good. But they're always going to get to
Speaker 1: it soon. It's not now. It's soon. They're about to
Speaker 1: get in shape, they're about to change their body, they're
Speaker 1: about to overhaul their life and their habits and their
Speaker 1: food behaviors. But it's never now. And this is not
Speaker 1: meant to be a judgment or a criticism, it's just true.
Speaker 1: And as someone who has observed many people wait until
Speaker 1: stuff breaks before they actually make significant health decisions, I
Speaker 1: can tell you with some level of confidence that being
Speaker 1: reactive not proactive, is a fucking dumb strategy when it
Speaker 1: comes to your body. And so the question is the
Speaker 1: question is is how I currently eat? Is it working?
Speaker 1: And you know the answer, And it might be that
Speaker 1: eighty percent of the time it's good, twenty percent of
Speaker 1: the time it's not good. And I'm not going to
Speaker 1: say what the percentages should be or could be, but
Speaker 1: you know, I think that most of the time, most
Speaker 1: of what we do to our body should be mostly positive.
Speaker 1: Let's just say that. My second question is what kind
Speaker 1: of a relationship do I have do you have with food?
Speaker 1: And so when you think about why why we eat?
Speaker 1: I mean, by the way, when I'm talking about our
Speaker 1: relationship with food and eating awareness here, I'm not suggesting
Speaker 1: that you should be some robot that just puts a
Speaker 1: set amount of micros and macros and calories in your
Speaker 1: body and it's like, well, this is this is optimal.
Speaker 1: So I'm eating fucking one hundred grams of chicken and
Speaker 1: seven pieces of lettuce and a bunch of our felfa
Speaker 1: at this meant No, I'm not talking about that. It
Speaker 1: doesn't mean that we can't enjoy food. It just means
Speaker 1: are we doing Are our behaviors with food complimenting or
Speaker 1: aligning with how we want to be and who we
Speaker 1: want to be in terms of our own health. And
Speaker 1: for a long time I had a very tempestuous, volatile
Speaker 1: relationship with food, and as I said to you just before,
Speaker 1: you know I it was my biggest challenge. And so
Speaker 1: we eat for we eat because we're bored. We eat
Speaker 1: because we want to reward ourselves with food. Sometimes we
Speaker 1: even sometimes we even incentivize our kids that if they
Speaker 1: do a certain thing, will take them to a certain place.
Speaker 1: I won't mention the name of any fast food restaurants,
Speaker 1: but so many times kids get taken somewhere because that's
Speaker 1: a reward for doing a thing that a parent wanted
Speaker 1: them to do. And that's not great training, and that's
Speaker 1: not programming, and that doesn't set them up for success
Speaker 1: in the future. Is if you do this thing, I'm
Speaker 1: going to allow you to put shit food in your body.
Speaker 1: We eat because we want a distraction. We eat because
Speaker 1: it gives us that instant gratification, that reward, that pleasure,
Speaker 1: that dopamine. We eat because it's what the situation requires,
Speaker 1: or that's what we tell ourselves. Or while I'm at
Speaker 1: a party, I'm at an event, I'm in an airport lounge.
Speaker 1: I pay for the membership and the food's here and
Speaker 1: so on. Or we eat on the plane. We're not
Speaker 1: even hungry, but we take the food because it gets
Speaker 1: offered to us. And so this is not around this
Speaker 1: point that I'm making here is not around judgment or
Speaker 1: condemnation or criticism, but rather just truly just rather curiosity
Speaker 1: and why an awareness? Why am I actually eating this?
Speaker 1: Why am I putting this thing in my body? Do
Speaker 1: I need this food or do I just want it?
Speaker 1: Like when our body needs food, we have a genuine hunger.
Speaker 1: I'm not talking about a short term craving based on
Speaker 1: some blood sugar resting or some you know, stimuli that's
Speaker 1: just come into our awareness on a TV ad or
Speaker 1: smelling something or whatever. But there's a big difference between
Speaker 1: wanting something because it smells good or looks good and
Speaker 1: a genuine physiological need for energy. That is, I am
Speaker 1: genuinely hungry. And so one of the one of the
Speaker 1: questions that I when I was trying to overcome my
Speaker 1: food addiction, when I was trying to or when I
Speaker 1: was overcoming my food addiction. And when I say food addiction,
Speaker 1: that sounds melodramatic, but for me, that just meant eating
Speaker 1: food food that I didn't need. It meant making decisions
Speaker 1: that were out of alignment with intelligence and health. And
Speaker 1: I was at the point with my food behaviors often
Speaker 1: where I would be eating in secret, I would be
Speaker 1: as I said earlier, I would be telling lies, and
Speaker 1: I would do anything possible for people to not know
Speaker 1: the real me around food because of the humiliation, the embarrassment,
Speaker 1: the damage to my brand and all of those ego
Speaker 1: driven things. Right, And so this is for some of you,
Speaker 1: this podcast will be irrelevant. I get it. It might
Speaker 1: be interesting, but it might not be personally relevant to
Speaker 1: your journey. But for those of you who it is,
Speaker 1: and again, I don't have a three step solution to this,
Speaker 1: I'll give you some thoughts at the end, but there
Speaker 1: ain't no three step universally appropriate, universally effective strategy because
Speaker 1: we're all different. We're all different. But when we start
Speaker 1: to think about what consciously, what am I doing this for?
Speaker 1: Am I eating this because I'm hungry and my body
Speaker 1: needs food? Or am I eating this because it's there?
Speaker 1: Am I eating this because it tastes great. It's nothing
Speaker 1: wrong with eating food that tastes great. But if I'm
Speaker 1: putting in twenty five hundred calories a day, for example,
Speaker 1: even if it's healthy food, by the way, even if
Speaker 1: it's clean, organic, bloody, ticks all the right boxes food.
Speaker 1: If I'm putting in, for example, five hundred or one
Speaker 1: thousand calories a day on average, even if the food
Speaker 1: is high quality and nutritionally dense. It's still bad eating.
Speaker 1: It's still bad eating because the volume is too high.
Speaker 1: So I want to try and eat one. I want
Speaker 1: to try and eat quality f food, the right quality,
Speaker 1: and I also want to try and eat the right quantity,
Speaker 1: so that I am meeting my nutritional needs, not exceeding them.
Speaker 1: I'm meeting my energy needs is probably a better term.
Speaker 1: I'm meeting my energy needs, not exceeding them. And when
Speaker 1: you go, well, how do I know how much to eat?
Speaker 1: Cut out the junk, cut out the crap. Yes, easier
Speaker 1: said than done. Reconnect with your body, and your body
Speaker 1: will tell you when you need food. So as I
Speaker 1: record this right now, it's ten twenty nine. I got
Speaker 1: up this morning at about five thirty. I did some work,
Speaker 1: then I met somebody. I did a coaching coaching session.
Speaker 1: At seven o'clock, I came home. Now, quite often I
Speaker 1: will eat breakfast at eight fifteen, eight eight thirty. This
Speaker 1: morning I got home and I wasn't hungry, And at
Speaker 1: eight thirty I wasn't hungry, and at nine I wasn't hungry.
Speaker 1: And then it took till about probably twenty or thirty
Speaker 1: minutes before I started recording this for me to be hungry,
Speaker 1: and I just have my normal oats and nuts and
Speaker 1: stuff bird food as my mum calls it, and I
Speaker 1: love it, and it has a bit of protein powder
Speaker 1: and a few other bits and pieces. But anyway, I
Speaker 1: ate that. But I ate that at I don't know
Speaker 1: whatever it was ten o'clock, because that's when I was hungry.
Speaker 1: That's when, and that's when my body said, okay, it's
Speaker 1: time now. I will probably eat dinner tonight at somewhere
Speaker 1: around seven o'clock. This is not a recommendation, this is
Speaker 1: not a prescription. But if per chance I'm starving at
Speaker 1: five o'clock, I'll eat dinner at five. If I'm not
Speaker 1: hungry at seven, I'll wait till I'm hungry. I'll wait
Speaker 1: till seven thirty. I'll wait till eight o'clock. I'll eat
Speaker 1: when my body tells me to eat. I tend not
Speaker 1: to eat unless I'm hungry. And even if I make
Speaker 1: a meal and I get three quarters of the way
Speaker 1: through that meal and I have an awareness that I
Speaker 1: don't need anymore, I will stop there. And that's hard
Speaker 1: to do, isn't it. When it showed me I understand that.
Speaker 1: But one of the challenges is truly this kind of
Speaker 1: awareness around what is my body telling me. I mean,
Speaker 1: your body, As I've said before, your body is a
Speaker 1: buyo feedback system. We have these two We have a
Speaker 1: billion hormones, a million hormones, but we have two really
Speaker 1: interesting hormones in this conversation, for this conversation. And one
Speaker 1: hormone is called Grellon, which has spelled ghri l i
Speaker 1: N grellin and Grellin is a hunger hormone. And so
Speaker 1: when you're hungry, when your body needs food, when your
Speaker 1: body needs energy, your Grellon levels increase. And so if
Speaker 1: we took a little bit of blood from you and
Speaker 1: we measured your Grellon levels, and if you genuinely were
Speaker 1: hungry your body needed foods, you would have high Grellon levels. Conversely,
Speaker 1: when you are let's say now you are hungry, and
Speaker 1: now you eat and you've had a decent let's say
Speaker 1: you've had the right meal, then we did some bloods again,
Speaker 1: what we would see is we would see your grellon,
Speaker 1: the hunger hormone level go down. It doesn't work like this,
Speaker 1: but instead of being a nine out of ten, it's
Speaker 1: now a one. We'll just use that for understandability. But
Speaker 1: there's another hormone called lepton lptim, which is a sotiety hormone.
Speaker 1: In other words, how satisfied I am, how content I am,
Speaker 1: I'm not hungry anymore. And so as the Grellon level
Speaker 1: goes down, the leptin, the society hormone that goes up.
Speaker 1: So our body knows and our body even gives us,
Speaker 1: you know, clear indicators of when we do and don't
Speaker 1: need more food, and when we take away the emotion
Speaker 1: around food, and we take around the take away the
Speaker 1: socializing around food and the thinking and the beliefs and
Speaker 1: the ideas. And by the way, there's nothing wrong with
Speaker 1: loving your meals. There's nothing wrong with socializing around food.
Speaker 1: It's all about the way that we do our meals
Speaker 1: and the way that we do our socializing. So you know,
Speaker 1: for me, I have because of my lifestyle and because
Speaker 1: of my quite specific rules and issues. Can I say
Speaker 1: issues around food when I socialize, I do it in
Speaker 1: quite a specific way. I still I don't want to
Speaker 1: be a social data. I still want to have fun,
Speaker 1: hang out with my friends, talk shit. But if there's
Speaker 1: you know, if people are having three or four courses.
Speaker 1: That's completely okay, but it's not what I'll be doing.
Speaker 1: I'll be having a main course that I choose, one
Speaker 1: that kind of fits in within my parameters. I'll eat
Speaker 1: that main course generally speaking, I'll enjoy it, I'll love it.
Speaker 1: I'll have a good time. But me hanging out with
Speaker 1: my friends and me socializing and me having fun is
Speaker 1: not dependent on the food. But you and I, if
Speaker 1: you live in Australia, you and I live in a
Speaker 1: culture where it's sometimes everything fucking revolves around food, and
Speaker 1: it's almost like the quality of the experience is only
Speaker 1: about the food. It's we live in such a food
Speaker 1: obsessed culture. And when you consider that sixty seven percent
Speaker 1: of Australians are overweight or obese, that ain't working out
Speaker 1: for us. That's not an insult, that's not an opinion,
Speaker 1: that's not a judgment. That's fucking data. That's data. And
Speaker 1: so you know, this is really about stepping back to
Speaker 1: that you've only got one body, What are you going
Speaker 1: to do with that body? Don't wait till shit falls apart.
Speaker 1: Start to get more or conscious, start to get more aware,
Speaker 1: start to be more real with yourself, ask yourself good decisions,
Speaker 1: don't give yourself a get out of jail card. Don't
Speaker 1: spend the next five to ten years waiting for the
Speaker 1: right time to address this issue. You know, if physical
Speaker 1: health is one of your core values, then a great
Speaker 1: question is how do I need to eat for the
Speaker 1: most part to live in alignment with those core values.
Speaker 1: How do I need to eat to optimize my genetics?
Speaker 1: How do I need to eat to be full of energy?
Speaker 1: How do I need to eat to have a body
Speaker 1: composition that for me is healthy? And so, in winding
Speaker 1: up this brief chat, how can we you me? How
Speaker 1: can we create a healthier relationship with food? How can
Speaker 1: we increase our eating awareness, self awareness around eating, and
Speaker 1: then do something positive about that. I think step one
Speaker 1: is really just to own up, you know, not throw
Speaker 1: yourself under the metaphoric bus, but just don't up and go. Look,
Speaker 1: you know what I'm currently doing shit, which is stupid
Speaker 1: from a health point of view. From I can't get
Speaker 1: another body point of view from a I'm not walking
Speaker 1: my talk. I talk about all this stuff, but I'm
Speaker 1: literally sabotaging my own body, sabotaging my own health with
Speaker 1: decisions and behaviors that just don't align. So it's just
Speaker 1: about being real. It's just about being you know, vulnerable
Speaker 1: and authentic. And once we've done that, then we can
Speaker 1: start to strategize around doing better. You know, I think
Speaker 1: a big part of it is being willing to delay gratification.
Speaker 1: You know, there's those moments where there's that thing in
Speaker 1: front of us and we know we could grab that
Speaker 1: thing that we don't need, but we know it would
Speaker 1: taste amazing, we know it would make us feel good.
Speaker 1: We know it's got the fat or the sugar or
Speaker 1: the salt or the combination that is just fucking yummy.
Speaker 1: No one's looking, I get it. But it's in those
Speaker 1: moments often when no one's looking, when no one cares
Speaker 1: and it's just you and that thing. It's in that
Speaker 1: moment of being able to not do that, of being
Speaker 1: able to not put that thing in your mouth that
Speaker 1: you don't need, not open the fridge door, not open
Speaker 1: the pantry door, to be able to delay gratification even
Speaker 1: when in the moment that delayed gratification doesn't equal anything
Speaker 1: positive in the moment. And this is one of the challenges,
Speaker 1: you know, isn't it. It's like you know, when I
Speaker 1: was the morbidly obese kid, I'd eat the pie and
Speaker 1: I'd feel fucking amazing for about five minutes, and then
Speaker 1: i'd feel shit. But if I didn't eat the pie,
Speaker 1: I didn't get instant weight loss. So I'll eat the
Speaker 1: pie and i'll start tomorrow. I'll eat the sausage roll
Speaker 1: and I'll start tomorrow. I'll drink the chocolate beer and
Speaker 1: I'll start tomorrow. And this was my perpetual story for
Speaker 1: a very long time, is that I will start soon.
Speaker 1: I don't like how I look or feel. I don't
Speaker 1: like my weight, I don't like that I can't run,
Speaker 1: I don't like being obese, but fucking hell, this cake
Speaker 1: tastes great, and I'll start soon. And that just became,
Speaker 1: for way too long a cycle of my own bullshit
Speaker 1: that kept me trapped in a holding pattern, if not
Speaker 1: a holding pattern, a going backwards pattern. So, you know,
Speaker 1: having some accountability, having some plan, having some structure, involving
Speaker 1: potentially involving another person, be that a coach or a
Speaker 1: mental or a dietitian or a doctor or a trainer
Speaker 1: or an exercise physiologist, or just a friend that won't
Speaker 1: always tell you what you want to hear an unreasonable
Speaker 1: friend and someone who will call you on your own bullshit.
Speaker 1: Maybe that's the kind of accountability that you need. And also,
Speaker 1: I guess on a really fundamental level, there needs to
Speaker 1: be a shift in our thinking. You know, same thinking,
Speaker 1: equal same choices, equal same behaviors, equal same outcomes. But
Speaker 1: when we go into something like where we're trying to
Speaker 1: change our relationship with food, we're trying to be more
Speaker 1: aware of how we are around food, you know, and
Speaker 1: we start to think, Look, I'm not going on another diet.
Speaker 1: I'm not temporarily changing my behavior. I'm not looking for attention,
Speaker 1: I'm not looking for accolades. Look at me, Look at
Speaker 1: what I'm doing. Here's a fucking photo of another salad
Speaker 1: that I ate on Instagram. Tell me, I'm all that
Speaker 1: bullshit has got to go. All that bullshit has got
Speaker 1: to go. Because as long as we're dependent on validation
Speaker 1: and approval and a round of applause and a trophy
Speaker 1: every time we go for a walk or every time
Speaker 1: we do something good for our body, and then we've
Speaker 1: just now created a new addiction and new dependency. It's
Speaker 1: what we do most of the time. I believe what
Speaker 1: we do most of the time when no one's looking.
Speaker 1: That matters most over the long term. So not a
Speaker 1: new diet. You're not just rolling the dice and see
Speaker 1: how it goes where creating a new operating system with food.
Speaker 1: We're creating a new forever relationship with food. See you
Speaker 1: next time.