WEBVTT - The Seven Deadlies: Glutton Chops 0:00:03.800 --> 0:00:06.680 Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind from how Stuff 0:00:06.720 --> 0:00:13.880 Works dot com. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. 0:00:13.880 --> 0:00:16.400 My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Julie Douglas, and 0:00:16.440 --> 0:00:21.040 we continue our journey through the seven Deadly Sins. This 0:00:21.400 --> 0:00:26.000 week we're looking at a little something called gluttony. I 0:00:26.000 --> 0:00:27.200 feel like you have to do that every time we 0:00:27.240 --> 0:00:30.360 talk about one of these sins. Yeah. Well, well, of course, 0:00:30.360 --> 0:00:32.040 I don't know if the true glutton would be able 0:00:32.040 --> 0:00:34.160 to like it would be more of a muffled food 0:00:34.240 --> 0:00:38.680 joked laugh right, food falling down the face, kind of 0:00:38.720 --> 0:00:41.960 a you know, wine spilling all over the one's body 0:00:42.040 --> 0:00:45.040 kind of a thing. Wine spilling. Wow, Yeah, I guess 0:00:45.040 --> 0:00:47.480 it does have sort of like a boccus like yeah 0:00:48.640 --> 0:00:51.480 evocation there. Yeah, it makes me think of on Futurama, 0:00:51.560 --> 0:00:54.200 they have a there's a robot called hedonism Bot, and 0:00:54.520 --> 0:00:57.840 he his legs are the legs of like a reclining chair. 0:00:58.000 --> 0:01:00.080 It's like in a reclining state with a bowl of 0:01:00.120 --> 0:01:03.400 grapes on his chest and as a very Roman air 0:01:03.520 --> 0:01:05.520 to him. But yeah, so so gluttony is is the 0:01:05.640 --> 0:01:08.800 sin that's typically associated with massive consumptions of food being 0:01:08.840 --> 0:01:13.679 really into food, enormous feasts, feast without end and uh. 0:01:13.720 --> 0:01:17.959 If we look to the pages of Dante's Divine Comedy, 0:01:18.319 --> 0:01:20.920 we see we see gluttony show up in both Inferno 0:01:21.040 --> 0:01:24.320 and Purgatory, and Inferno the pit of the eternal suffering. 0:01:24.319 --> 0:01:26.920 At the center of the planet, we see a circle. 0:01:27.000 --> 0:01:29.560 This is the third circle, guarded by Cerebus, the three 0:01:29.600 --> 0:01:32.319 headed dog. You know, the dog is a good symbol 0:01:32.319 --> 0:01:35.480 of gluttony, so and a dog with three mouths is 0:01:35.600 --> 0:01:38.600 let's like triple gluttony, right, But but in this circle, 0:01:38.959 --> 0:01:41.399 it's it's kind of interesting because it's not what if 0:01:41.440 --> 0:01:43.679 you're not familiar with Dante, it's it's not quite what 0:01:43.760 --> 0:01:48.240 you might imagine for a punishment of glutton's uh. All right, 0:01:48.320 --> 0:01:51.000 So you have rain hale and snow falling just like 0:01:51.120 --> 0:01:54.120 crazy rain hale and snow, all right, and it's just 0:01:54.200 --> 0:01:57.600 pummeling the gluttons who are just they're just like held 0:01:57.640 --> 0:01:59.880 to the ground by it, and there's just mud everywhere. 0:02:00.040 --> 0:02:03.440 They're they're wallowing like pigs in this mud. That's kind 0:02:03.440 --> 0:02:06.440 of they may or may not be excrement. There's um 0:02:06.760 --> 0:02:10.160 that they're described in very doglike terms. And so this 0:02:10.200 --> 0:02:13.200 is where the gluttons are punished now in purgatory, whereas 0:02:13.240 --> 0:02:15.960 we discussed before, this is the mountain that connects Earth 0:02:16.040 --> 0:02:19.200 to heaven, and souls that aren't quite bad enough for 0:02:19.240 --> 0:02:21.320 hell when they need a little polishing before they can 0:02:21.320 --> 0:02:23.920 get up into heaven, they have to climb this mountain 0:02:24.040 --> 0:02:27.000 terrace by terraces. In each terrace they remove a sort 0:02:27.040 --> 0:02:29.799 of a layer of grimy sin from themselves, so they're 0:02:29.800 --> 0:02:33.880 transcending their sins. Right on the sixth terraces of Purgatory, 0:02:33.960 --> 0:02:38.160 you will find these emaciated spirits with sunken eyes, you know, 0:02:38.160 --> 0:02:39.760 all the way back in the and the sockets and 0:02:39.800 --> 0:02:42.440 their their faces are said to resemble the letter M. 0:02:42.480 --> 0:02:45.320 That's how swollen and sunk. Not swollen, but that's how 0:02:45.360 --> 0:02:48.320 sunk in their faces are. And so they're just suffering 0:02:48.360 --> 0:02:51.680 excruciating hunger and thirsts. So in life they had all 0:02:51.680 --> 0:02:54.040 their fill. So if they're going to work off this 0:02:54.120 --> 0:02:56.400 layer of gluttony, they're gonna have to get used to 0:02:56.440 --> 0:02:58.760 the idea of going hungary. I like how Dante just 0:02:59.240 --> 0:03:02.440 dove into the gird task wasn't scared of it. Um 0:03:02.480 --> 0:03:04.359 And but that is part of the human condition, right 0:03:04.400 --> 0:03:08.440 and um as uh Orson Well says, gluttony is not 0:03:08.520 --> 0:03:11.200 a secret vice. You can see it all over you 0:03:11.680 --> 0:03:13.400 and on the surface. You know, we discussed in the 0:03:13.400 --> 0:03:16.040 past with the most recent one, we did envy, and 0:03:16.040 --> 0:03:19.200 we're talking about how India is not a fun sin. 0:03:20.200 --> 0:03:22.760 Gluttony is is one that, at least on the surface, 0:03:22.840 --> 0:03:26.000 seems a lot more fun because because I mean, I 0:03:26.000 --> 0:03:27.840 don't know about you, but I I really like food, 0:03:28.200 --> 0:03:30.359 Like food is not just something I'm just kind of into. 0:03:30.400 --> 0:03:34.520 I really enjoy an excellent meal. Yeah, yeah, absolutely, And 0:03:34.560 --> 0:03:37.000 we're going to talk about the reason why we really 0:03:37.040 --> 0:03:41.240 really enjoy our hardwired yea, and to actually over enjoy 0:03:41.320 --> 0:03:43.800 it sometimes. Yeah. And the thing that gets me about 0:03:43.800 --> 0:03:46.600 gluttony is that there's this level of gluttony that we 0:03:46.720 --> 0:03:50.240 encounter an inferno and impurgatory, this this medieval idea of 0:03:50.280 --> 0:03:53.240 just you know, obsessive feasts and all this, but there's 0:03:53.280 --> 0:03:57.080 like a space age level of gluttony that is only 0:03:57.160 --> 0:03:59.440 possible in this day and age, Like it's a level 0:03:59.440 --> 0:04:05.000 of gluttony that was unimagined in Dante's time well exactly. 0:04:05.000 --> 0:04:08.200 And and and let's even say, like Henry the Eighth right, 0:04:08.280 --> 0:04:11.440 could that's that's someone who could afford to be gluttonous, right, 0:04:11.480 --> 0:04:15.400 had a bunch of resources, master glutton, I wouldn't. I 0:04:15.400 --> 0:04:17.400 would imagine it's fair to say that. I always think 0:04:17.440 --> 0:04:20.080 of him with like huge turkey legs in both hands, 0:04:20.520 --> 0:04:23.280 just waving them around. But in today's world, we can 0:04:23.320 --> 0:04:25.760 all be Henry the Eighth right, I mean, gluttony is 0:04:25.800 --> 0:04:29.640 at our fingertips everything that we've ever wanted, particularly food wise, 0:04:30.080 --> 0:04:33.360 um libations available. You can at least be a glutton 0:04:33.360 --> 0:04:37.360 on you can as far as bad food goes, you can, 0:04:37.520 --> 0:04:41.040 and you could actually be a professional glutton if you 0:04:41.080 --> 0:04:45.360 wanted to. And this would come into play in competitive eating. Yeah, yeah, 0:04:45.360 --> 0:04:47.600 this is what I'm talking about. Competitive eating. There are 0:04:47.600 --> 0:04:50.160 these different levels of your enjoyment of food. There's sort 0:04:50.160 --> 0:04:52.719 of like, I'm eating because I need nourishment for my body, 0:04:53.040 --> 0:04:56.000 and then there's this level I'm eating because I really 0:04:56.080 --> 0:04:58.599 enjoy these tastes and I enjoy the sensation of eating, 0:04:58.600 --> 0:05:02.159 and I'm I'm enjoying the the sun a purely sense level. 0:05:02.880 --> 0:05:05.440 But when you start looking at competitive eating, it's it 0:05:05.520 --> 0:05:08.680 seems devoid of either of those things. It is eating 0:05:08.760 --> 0:05:12.560 purely for the act of eating, like and you hear 0:05:12.600 --> 0:05:14.560 some comments, like one of the dudes we're gonna talk 0:05:14.560 --> 0:05:16.120 about here says that he got into it because he 0:05:16.160 --> 0:05:18.760 really likes chicken, and if he really likes the like 0:05:19.200 --> 0:05:20.880 he likes the flavor of things. But still, there's no 0:05:20.920 --> 0:05:23.479 way you're enjoying the flavor of like thirty eight hot 0:05:23.480 --> 0:05:25.839 dogs in a row, you know, and you're certainly not 0:05:25.880 --> 0:05:28.760 eating that for your your well being. It's something completely 0:05:28.760 --> 0:05:32.320 removed from those two necessities. Well, it's eating to an 0:05:32.360 --> 0:05:36.200 absolute obsessive degree to degree um. And I think most 0:05:36.200 --> 0:05:41.320 people are familiar with Chakaro Kobayashi. He is the usually 0:05:41.320 --> 0:05:43.000 a person that you think of when you think about 0:05:43.279 --> 0:05:45.760 stuffing like three and sixty three hot dogs in your 0:05:45.760 --> 0:05:50.160 mouth and under an hour, um, and getting paid handsomely 0:05:50.279 --> 0:05:53.760 for it. But who the person we're going to talk 0:05:53.800 --> 0:05:57.400 about today. His name, um, well, actually he goes by 0:05:57.480 --> 0:06:00.360 a wing a door and you just refer to him. 0:06:00.400 --> 0:06:04.479 He his specialty are his chicken chicken wings. And there's 0:06:04.520 --> 0:06:07.680 a documentary film by Errol Morris called Elwing a Door 0:06:07.960 --> 0:06:11.480 and like a seven minute deal. Yeah, it's not very long, 0:06:11.480 --> 0:06:13.720 it's actually pretty it's worth checking out. We'll link to 0:06:13.760 --> 0:06:16.039 it on the blogs are on the Facebook, but it 0:06:16.080 --> 0:06:19.120 focuses on this five time champion of the Philadelphia wingboll 0:06:19.279 --> 0:06:24.840 Bill Simmons, and how he prepares for these competitions. It's 0:06:24.920 --> 0:06:27.760 just insane. Yeah. I would be tempted to classify him 0:06:27.760 --> 0:06:30.560 as a power glutton. Yeah, yeah, a power if you 0:06:30.600 --> 0:06:32.360 think about a power lifter, he guess that kind of 0:06:32.360 --> 0:06:37.000 powerlifter vibe, except he's he's only lifting things enough to 0:06:37.200 --> 0:06:40.039 stuff in his mouth right, right, and stuff to the 0:06:40.120 --> 0:06:44.840 degree that it's just purely unholy, unholy. And they talk 0:06:44.880 --> 0:06:47.680 about this actually in the documentary, to to the extent 0:06:47.920 --> 0:06:51.040 that he says that he has almost accidentally eaten one 0:06:51.080 --> 0:06:53.440 of his digits his fingers. Yeah, like he said, he 0:06:53.560 --> 0:06:55.880 claims that his his hands are covered with scars because 0:06:55.880 --> 0:06:58.080 he'll just will get so into the I guess he's 0:06:58.120 --> 0:07:02.920 you know, he's achieving flow. He's a transcendent experience for him. 0:07:03.160 --> 0:07:05.960 But it's to the point where he's biting his hands 0:07:06.240 --> 0:07:09.800 and leaving scars because he's eating chicken wings in this 0:07:10.640 --> 0:07:15.200 state of mind focused. Let's talk about how he trains. 0:07:16.040 --> 0:07:19.400 He eats fifteen pounds of food to day when he's training, 0:07:19.400 --> 0:07:22.040 and he drinks three gallons of water day, just sending 0:07:22.080 --> 0:07:24.840 his stomach, right, that's the point of that. And ten 0:07:24.920 --> 0:07:28.560 pounds of tutsie rolls a week. Yeah, this was especially 0:07:28.600 --> 0:07:30.560 growth test because he's not just eating one and then 0:07:30.560 --> 0:07:33.559 swallowing it. Now, he's he's throwing him in his mouth 0:07:33.880 --> 0:07:37.360 and forming them into a massive baseball sized mass of 0:07:37.400 --> 0:07:40.480 tutsie rolls, A giant tutsie roll cut? Is that the 0:07:40.480 --> 0:07:43.440 word like a like a cow choose its cut. Well, 0:07:43.520 --> 0:07:46.760 then there's some vomiting involved there, he's not doing that, right, Well, 0:07:47.080 --> 0:07:49.040 we don't really know. Well, I mean he's doing some vomiting, 0:07:49.120 --> 0:07:51.520 but not in this situation. So he's he's two in 0:07:51.560 --> 0:07:54.240 these tutsie rolls up in there, his baseball size mass 0:07:54.240 --> 0:07:56.840 in his mouth, and then he swallows that. And he 0:07:56.880 --> 0:08:00.280 says it's all about a strengthening his jaws so that 0:08:00.320 --> 0:08:03.640 he can really chomp and chomp during these competitions, but 0:08:03.680 --> 0:08:07.480 also like widening his esophagus right right, And he likens 0:08:07.480 --> 0:08:10.280 it to a snake swallowing a rat. Yeah, he's like, 0:08:10.320 --> 0:08:12.760 you know, if you're eating for you know, your own enjoyment, 0:08:13.040 --> 0:08:17.800 then you should totally chew your food. But competition different story. 0:08:17.960 --> 0:08:20.800 Like chewing is for chumps. Yeah, chewing is for chumps, 0:08:20.920 --> 0:08:24.240 And and and only that he's such a pro that 0:08:24.400 --> 0:08:28.440 when he masters this, he moves on to dog bones, Yeah, 0:08:28.800 --> 0:08:33.280 masticating them normal when and I'm equating a baseball made 0:08:33.280 --> 0:08:36.720 air tutsi rolls its normal human food here. But but 0:08:36.720 --> 0:08:39.160 but this becomes just too mundane for him, so he 0:08:39.160 --> 0:08:42.160 moves on to his dogs chew toys. And he ends 0:08:42.240 --> 0:08:46.000 up like, what is a five pound bag competition of 0:08:46.080 --> 0:08:49.800 raw hide bones? Yeah, and he says he claims that 0:08:49.840 --> 0:08:51.720 he never gets full and that he feels that he 0:08:51.800 --> 0:08:55.600 has an eating disorder. Yeah, because five pound bags of 0:08:55.679 --> 0:08:57.560 raw high bones like these are the if you've ever 0:08:57.559 --> 0:08:59.080 been around a dog chewing one of these things, these 0:08:59.120 --> 0:09:01.200 are those things that the dog too and it makes 0:09:01.200 --> 0:09:03.640 that loud clacking noise that makes your own teeth hurt. 0:09:04.040 --> 0:09:07.160 That's what this guy works on. Yeah. Yeah, and um 0:09:07.760 --> 0:09:10.719 pops I actually has a really interesting article on competitive 0:09:10.760 --> 0:09:13.640 eating and they're talking about what actually happens when when 0:09:13.720 --> 0:09:16.160 you're doing this to your body, and they say that 0:09:16.240 --> 0:09:19.560 muscle stretch when they relax right in the stomach, and 0:09:19.600 --> 0:09:22.080 when we eat a big meal, our stomach muscles relax 0:09:22.160 --> 0:09:24.000 so much that they send a message to the brain, 0:09:24.040 --> 0:09:25.920 which interprets the signal to mean, hey, you've got a 0:09:25.920 --> 0:09:29.199 full belly. Um that our brain stops is from eating anymore. 0:09:29.280 --> 0:09:32.559 That's what normally happens. But they say a good training 0:09:32.600 --> 0:09:37.080 regimen for competitive eating deadens this communication, causing the signal 0:09:37.440 --> 0:09:39.520 to the brain of the brain itself to become less 0:09:39.600 --> 0:09:42.559 responsive to the large volume of food. And this is 0:09:42.600 --> 0:09:46.520 according to Douglas Seidner, m d. Program director for Clinical 0:09:46.640 --> 0:09:49.120 Nutrition at the Cleveland Clinic. So it's kind of mind 0:09:49.120 --> 0:09:53.680 over matter. Yeah, yeah, it's mind over manning, mind over 0:09:53.920 --> 0:09:58.000 mind over anything. That you eat yourself into a numbness 0:09:58.120 --> 0:10:02.240 and you deaden your urge to up eating, which is 0:10:02.440 --> 0:10:05.600 just incredible, incredible. It is one way way to put it. 0:10:06.480 --> 0:10:08.720 L Wing a door. He's he's pretty amazing and he 0:10:08.760 --> 0:10:11.240 has some or or when he is his I'm not 0:10:11.280 --> 0:10:12.880 sure if he's active at the moment, but when he 0:10:12.960 --> 0:10:16.320 is active sometimes he is accompanied to the eating platform, 0:10:16.559 --> 0:10:18.960 the gluttony ring, whatever you wanna call it by he 0:10:19.000 --> 0:10:21.280 has he has a valets who are called the wing 0:10:21.360 --> 0:10:23.840 at the wing at Yeah, so if anyone is particularly 0:10:23.880 --> 0:10:26.160 taken with this man, you can probably get in touch 0:10:26.200 --> 0:10:28.120 with them and see about becoming a wing at and 0:10:28.200 --> 0:10:31.120 be one of his wing women. Yes. Yeah, and that 0:10:31.240 --> 0:10:32.959 not only do they cheer for him, that they actually 0:10:33.040 --> 0:10:36.839 sort of ore backup counters for him, right, don't they 0:10:36.960 --> 0:10:39.959 sort of? From from what I remember, they actually are 0:10:40.120 --> 0:10:42.800 counting the amount of food items that he's stepping down 0:10:42.880 --> 0:10:46.960 his gullet, helping to corroborate his win. Yeah, because you're 0:10:47.000 --> 0:10:48.959 gonna need somebody to keep track of that. I mean, 0:10:49.000 --> 0:10:51.440 like when I'm swimming or doing yoga. You know, it's 0:10:51.480 --> 0:10:53.240 like I can't keep track of how many laps or 0:10:53.240 --> 0:10:55.080 how many sin citations have done. It's like I need 0:10:55.080 --> 0:10:57.440 somebody else. Does tell me now we're at number five 0:10:57.440 --> 0:11:00.000 because I'm gonna get wrong. So you need some lamb ats? Yeah, 0:11:00.320 --> 0:11:04.240 I need some. But the reason why I bring it 0:11:04.280 --> 0:11:06.880 competitive eating is because this actually sort of informs the 0:11:06.960 --> 0:11:11.400 conversation on gluttony, and not only just gluttony, but obesity 0:11:11.520 --> 0:11:16.000 and um, how our body actually responds to eating. It's 0:11:16.040 --> 0:11:20.839 really pretty fascinating. Physician Jane jack Wang of Brookhaven National 0:11:20.880 --> 0:11:25.360 Laboratory and his colleague Nora Volcal observed that ABC and 0:11:25.480 --> 0:11:30.160 drug addiction alter the same brain circuits UH. In their studies, 0:11:30.160 --> 0:11:33.000 Wang and Volcal found that both drug addicts and obese 0:11:33.040 --> 0:11:37.000 people are usually less sensitive to dopamine's rewarding effects. So, 0:11:37.120 --> 0:11:40.840 as we all remember, dopamine is a neurotransmitter. It delivers 0:11:40.880 --> 0:11:44.520 the high that we feel um our brain perceives when 0:11:44.520 --> 0:11:48.439 we eat food or we were to say, if you 0:11:48.520 --> 0:11:51.600 have drug addic or to have some cocaine. Um. So 0:11:52.080 --> 0:11:56.280 this means that both drug addicts and um obese people 0:11:56.400 --> 0:11:59.559 have to chase after a stronger dose of food or 0:11:59.640 --> 0:12:02.480 drugs in order to get a decent bump of that dopamine. Yes, 0:12:02.520 --> 0:12:05.000 that whole trait chasing the dragon type thing, when we've 0:12:05.000 --> 0:12:07.880 all heard examples of it with like an extreme case 0:12:07.920 --> 0:12:10.920 like like heroin, where you an individual individual have that 0:12:11.040 --> 0:12:15.280 first taste of heroin and it'll be this amazing, just 0:12:15.840 --> 0:12:19.080 overpowering experience, but they never get that same experience again, 0:12:19.240 --> 0:12:22.040 like the rest of their lives then is assuming they 0:12:22.160 --> 0:12:24.680 I mean and hopefully they're able to get away from it, 0:12:24.679 --> 0:12:26.599 but if they don't, the rest of their lives is 0:12:26.600 --> 0:12:29.240 about chasing that high, chasing that that dragon that they 0:12:29.400 --> 0:12:31.600 met that first time. Right, And it's really interesting to 0:12:31.600 --> 0:12:34.319 see this in food and obesity, and and see that 0:12:34.320 --> 0:12:39.400 that's increased or excessive stimulation just creates more decent citation 0:12:40.000 --> 0:12:43.120 with dopamine. And then yeah, again that vicious circle kicks 0:12:43.160 --> 0:12:46.640 in and you've got increased desire and decreased payoff at 0:12:46.640 --> 0:12:48.360 the same time. I have to say I did have 0:12:48.400 --> 0:12:50.920 a really good, like brunch sandwich of this place, and 0:12:50.920 --> 0:12:53.160 then they caught it a Napoleon complex. I don't know why, 0:12:53.240 --> 0:12:58.440 but but it had breathe and bacon or Canadian bacon. 0:12:58.559 --> 0:13:00.559 I'm not sharing like fig spread. It't was sounds like 0:13:00.600 --> 0:13:03.040 this really nice toasted bread. The first time I had 0:13:03.080 --> 0:13:04.839 it was amazing, and then I went back to have 0:13:04.920 --> 0:13:06.760 it again and it was it was it was all right, 0:13:07.240 --> 0:13:09.840 and then it's like each time it's like a little 0:13:10.480 --> 0:13:14.280 a little further removed from that original experience. My own 0:13:14.840 --> 0:13:19.720 meager comparison to that was the sandwich on stilts or something. No, 0:13:20.120 --> 0:13:21.640 I'm just trying to figure out why I'm telling it 0:13:21.679 --> 0:13:24.840 that the Napoleon I don't know, it's really At one 0:13:24.880 --> 0:13:26.080 time I had to order it and there was a 0:13:26.080 --> 0:13:27.880 short person at the table and it was really kind 0:13:27.880 --> 0:13:30.160 of weird because I was like, I'll have that sandwich, 0:13:31.000 --> 0:13:33.520 you know, and he just made it even more like yeah, 0:13:33.559 --> 0:13:35.679 and then it became even more of a thing. The 0:13:35.720 --> 0:13:38.679 server was like, what sandwich? That sandwich? Oh, the Napoleon, 0:13:38.880 --> 0:13:42.840 the really short one. Stilts to make it feel better. 0:13:44.080 --> 0:13:46.520 It would be cool if it were on stilts. But well, yeah, 0:13:46.679 --> 0:13:49.199 My point is the sandwich was dope, and that it 0:13:49.320 --> 0:13:54.440 actually I mean, yeah, nice, nicely done. So um Whang 0:13:54.600 --> 0:13:58.680 looks into this problem of obesity and addiction and he 0:13:58.760 --> 0:14:01.280 actually asked him of his while tears in a study 0:14:01.320 --> 0:14:06.559 to come hungry. The torture experiment horrible. It's horrible. He 0:14:06.600 --> 0:14:09.679 has them to describe their favorite meals while he heaps 0:14:09.800 --> 0:14:13.240 up that meal in a nearby microwave so that the 0:14:13.600 --> 0:14:16.840 waft of the smell of it, let's say, the Napoleon sandwich, 0:14:16.960 --> 0:14:20.680 is clearly being transmitted to their brains. And then they 0:14:20.720 --> 0:14:23.840 show a pet scan of the volunteers brains during this 0:14:23.880 --> 0:14:26.840 whole process, and they see that the motivation part of 0:14:26.880 --> 0:14:31.520 their brain goes nuts, okay, and then the orbital frontal cortex, 0:14:31.600 --> 0:14:35.360 which is implicated in decision making, also lights up. And 0:14:35.400 --> 0:14:38.120 then they find that the in the brains of obese people, 0:14:38.160 --> 0:14:41.200 the regions that regulate sensory information from the mouth and 0:14:41.240 --> 0:14:44.200 the tongue are even more active than than other people. 0:14:45.080 --> 0:14:49.280 And they figure out that sensory processing is elevated. Um, 0:14:49.280 --> 0:14:51.520 this is the oh that tastes good part, right, but 0:14:51.560 --> 0:14:54.480 the reward sensitivity is a lower So now this reminds 0:14:54.480 --> 0:14:58.560 me a lot of our podcast about children and Halloween 0:14:58.560 --> 0:15:02.080 candy and about how darn experience sugar in a in 0:15:02.120 --> 0:15:05.360 a kind of different sensory realm than adults do, and 0:15:05.360 --> 0:15:08.160 then most adults do. And in this the experiment that 0:15:08.240 --> 0:15:12.280 really highlights this this idea that that obase individuals or 0:15:12.320 --> 0:15:15.440 individuals with this sort of with this heightened appetite. I mean, 0:15:15.520 --> 0:15:18.040 they are experiencing the food in a different way, which 0:15:18.040 --> 0:15:20.720 which is which I think is a helpful way to 0:15:20.760 --> 0:15:22.760 look at it, because it's easy for someone to to 0:15:23.280 --> 0:15:26.440 look at someone else's problems with food, um and or 0:15:26.520 --> 0:15:28.760 weight and say, oh, what's the matter with you? Why 0:15:28.800 --> 0:15:30.760 can't you control yourself? Why why don't you eat just 0:15:30.760 --> 0:15:33.400 one such the piez instead of four? You know, But 0:15:33.400 --> 0:15:35.480 but if you if you think of it in terms 0:15:35.480 --> 0:15:38.840 of a different sensory experience, it becomes harder to really 0:15:38.880 --> 0:15:42.000 have that kind of judgmental attitude. I think, yeah, absolutely. 0:15:42.040 --> 0:15:44.880 I mean understanding that the brain is actually getting rewired 0:15:45.160 --> 0:15:48.720 so that it has less control um in these situations. 0:15:49.000 --> 0:15:51.560 And in fact, this was explored even more by a 0:15:51.600 --> 0:15:53.520 New York Times sort are called called the Fat Trap, 0:15:54.200 --> 0:15:57.560 and what they found is that weight loss and weight 0:15:57.600 --> 0:16:00.600 control depends. It still depends of us on the simple 0:16:00.600 --> 0:16:03.680 equation of eat less and exercise more, right, but for 0:16:03.720 --> 0:16:06.360 some people it's a lot more complicated. Right, So we 0:16:06.440 --> 0:16:09.680 talked about the brain being changed in that instance. Um. 0:16:09.840 --> 0:16:12.440 They were talking in this article of the Fat Trap 0:16:12.600 --> 0:16:16.640 about something called post diet syndrome, and it's essentially a 0:16:16.720 --> 0:16:19.440 state that your body enters once it's lost at least 0:16:19.480 --> 0:16:23.560 ten percent of its body weight. It becomes biologically altered. 0:16:23.800 --> 0:16:27.400 It's really fascinating. There's a guy named Joseph Proyeto and 0:16:27.520 --> 0:16:29.760 he's a physician at the University of Melbourne and he 0:16:29.840 --> 0:16:33.240 kept wondering why his really really motivated and committed patients 0:16:33.280 --> 0:16:35.880 would gain back at least eleven pounds of the on 0:16:36.040 --> 0:16:39.000 average thirty pounds that they had lost. And these guys 0:16:39.040 --> 0:16:43.040 were like super diligent. Um. The patients that he was 0:16:43.080 --> 0:16:47.600 working with, they had food diaries. Um, they still exercise, 0:16:47.840 --> 0:16:50.000 they did all of this stuff, um. And they were 0:16:50.040 --> 0:16:53.280 on a localori diet essentially at first. But you know, 0:16:53.320 --> 0:16:54.920 they followed up with him for a full year and 0:16:54.920 --> 0:16:57.240 he kept thinking to himself, why do they keep gaining 0:16:57.240 --> 0:17:01.600 this back? Um? And journalist Herapote Parker Pope, who wrote 0:17:01.600 --> 0:17:04.159 The Fat Trap, started to think about this too in 0:17:04.240 --> 0:17:07.439 her the context of her own life, and she started 0:17:07.520 --> 0:17:10.120 to look at all these different factors, um, that could 0:17:10.160 --> 0:17:13.720 be responsible for the inevitability of weight gain. You know, 0:17:13.800 --> 0:17:16.640 no matter if you're abuse or not. But it makes 0:17:16.640 --> 0:17:21.000 it incredibly difficult for people who are obese to maintain 0:17:21.040 --> 0:17:23.760 their weights throughout their whole lives. And we'll talk a 0:17:23.760 --> 0:17:26.000 little bit about why that is when we come back. 0:17:30.960 --> 0:17:34.200 All Right, we're back talking about the post diet syndrome. 0:17:35.520 --> 0:17:38.399 The body has has realized that something is a miss, 0:17:38.880 --> 0:17:43.080 and it's trying to replenish the stores and it breaks 0:17:43.119 --> 0:17:45.680 down in an interesting way. It's the research has found 0:17:45.720 --> 0:17:49.080 that there's a gastric hormone called grillan, often dubbed the 0:17:49.160 --> 0:17:52.520 hunger hormone, and it's about higher There's another hormone associated 0:17:52.560 --> 0:17:56.600 with suppressing hunger called peptide double y, and it also 0:17:56.680 --> 0:17:59.840 ends up leveling out pretty low. Levels of lepton, a 0:18:00.080 --> 0:18:03.720 hormone that suppresses hungered increases metabolism, also remain lower than expected. 0:18:04.000 --> 0:18:06.320 And then you have a whole host of other hormones 0:18:06.320 --> 0:18:09.520 that are associated with hunger metabolism and they're all significantly 0:18:09.600 --> 0:18:12.760 changed compared to pre dieting levels. Yeah, it's sort of 0:18:12.800 --> 0:18:17.520 cocktail that your cocktails of hormones that get messed with 0:18:17.600 --> 0:18:20.520 in this post diet state, right, so that that grayllin 0:18:21.119 --> 0:18:24.399 is higher, that hormone that tells you that you're hungry, 0:18:24.440 --> 0:18:28.360 so you're more activated in terms of like, hey, I'm 0:18:28.400 --> 0:18:31.600 feeling kind of hungry in your post diet scenario. And 0:18:31.680 --> 0:18:35.360 again the left in and the peptide why why are 0:18:35.600 --> 0:18:38.320 both decreased, and those are the things that helps suppress 0:18:38.359 --> 0:18:42.200 your appetite. Another odd finding is that in some post 0:18:42.200 --> 0:18:46.200 diet subject, muscle fibers were acting like slow twitch muscles. 0:18:46.359 --> 0:18:51.159 A slow twitch muscles are actually responsible for less burned calories. 0:18:51.560 --> 0:18:55.360 So you're seeing this other weirdness happening in the post 0:18:55.440 --> 0:18:58.560 diet scenario. And then there's again going back to the 0:18:58.560 --> 0:19:01.879 brains of post dieters, um they were studied by researchers 0:19:01.960 --> 0:19:06.639 Rudolph Libel and Michael Rosenbaum at Columbia University and f 0:19:06.840 --> 0:19:08.760 m r I was used to track the brain patterns 0:19:08.760 --> 0:19:11.080 of people before and after weight loss while they looked 0:19:11.080 --> 0:19:15.359 at objects like grapes, gummy bears, chocolate, broccoli, cell phones, 0:19:15.760 --> 0:19:17.920 and yos, just to put in a couple of non 0:19:17.920 --> 0:19:21.240 food items right and after weight loss. When the dieter 0:19:21.359 --> 0:19:24.080 looked at food, the scan showed a bigger response in 0:19:24.160 --> 0:19:26.399 the parts of the brain associated with reward and a 0:19:26.440 --> 0:19:29.120 lower response in the areas associated with control. Again, that's 0:19:29.160 --> 0:19:31.399 the same thing that we were talking about before, and 0:19:31.480 --> 0:19:34.560 the implication is that the body induces cravings by making 0:19:34.560 --> 0:19:37.800 the person feel more excited about food and giving him 0:19:38.000 --> 0:19:41.840 her less willpower to resist high calorie treat a body 0:19:41.920 --> 0:19:45.280 wants to reset at the higher weight. So I mean, 0:19:45.440 --> 0:19:48.200 how this actually susses out is that it really gives 0:19:48.240 --> 0:19:52.119 someone who's in a post diet scenario caloric disadvantage. And 0:19:52.160 --> 0:19:54.560 what I mean by that is that you could be 0:19:54.680 --> 0:19:57.760 subject a for instance, who is two hundred and thirty 0:19:57.760 --> 0:20:01.520 pounds and you're eating three thousand pounds or three three 0:20:01.560 --> 0:20:03.199 thousand pounds. That's a lot that's even more than l 0:20:03.200 --> 0:20:06.639 winger um three thousand calories a day. But then you 0:20:06.720 --> 0:20:10.560 drop down to one and in order to maintain a 0:20:10.560 --> 0:20:13.560 weight of a hundred and ninety pounds, you eat twenty 0:20:13.600 --> 0:20:18.040 three hundred calories a day. Your counterpart who has not 0:20:18.200 --> 0:20:20.880 been in a dieting scenario, who is weighs a hundred 0:20:20.960 --> 0:20:24.320 ninety pounds, actually could have two hundred and fifty to 0:20:24.440 --> 0:20:27.879 four hundred calories more per day than you to just 0:20:28.000 --> 0:20:31.119 maintain their weight. So that's what this is. This is 0:20:31.160 --> 0:20:33.800 how this is all sort of shuffling out, is that 0:20:33.920 --> 0:20:37.000 you know, when you're in this post diet state, which 0:20:37.040 --> 0:20:39.960 by the way, it could last up to six years um, 0:20:40.000 --> 0:20:42.400 your body really is not going to burn as many 0:20:42.440 --> 0:20:46.119 calories and automatically wants you to reset as opposed to 0:20:46.119 --> 0:20:50.200 your your your counterpoint who isn't dieting at that same weight, 0:20:50.680 --> 0:20:53.639 so you have to burn more and more calories. And this, 0:20:53.800 --> 0:20:56.200 I think is is the sticking point of why people 0:20:56.359 --> 0:20:58.760 continue to creep up on the scales throughout their lives 0:20:58.840 --> 0:21:02.080 or yo yo diet because your your body is sort 0:21:02.080 --> 0:21:04.760 of working against you. Yeah, and it really really becomes 0:21:04.960 --> 0:21:07.560 an issue of like sort of knee versus body, and 0:21:07.680 --> 0:21:10.520 which is which is kind of a false idea because 0:21:10.600 --> 0:21:13.600 we are our bodies and as we discussed before, what 0:21:13.680 --> 0:21:16.040 our guts doing affects what our brain is doing to 0:21:16.160 --> 0:21:18.399 a level that you can't just cut one off from 0:21:18.440 --> 0:21:21.640 the other. But it's also not this situation of um, 0:21:22.359 --> 0:21:24.159