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Love Your Life Show: Personal Growth, Mindset, + Habits for Busy Moms
Food Addiction: Dopamine, Cravings, & GLP-1s
00:48:59
Is food addiction real — and what does it mean for you? In this episode of the Love Your Life Show, I talk with neuroscientist and New York Times bestselling author Dr. Susan Peirce Thompson, founder of Bright Line Eating.
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- [00:00]
A
Hello, listeners. Welcome to this wonderful episode of the Love youe Life show. I am so excited because I had Dr. Susan Pierce Thompson on the show today. And I'm excited for many, many reasons. First of which is I have over in over 350 episodes of the Love youe Life Show. I don't have a single one on addiction, let alone addiction to food. And we dive into it here. Second, this conversation was really personal for me and heart opening it felt. I listen and she just is a wonderfully compassionate human and I really enjoyed talking to her. So let me. Dr. Susan Pierce Thompson is a multiple New York Times bestselling author, an adjunct associate professor of brain and cognitive sciences, and an expert in the psychology of eating. She is president of the Institute for Sustainable Weight Loss and the founder of Bright Line Eating, a global movement that helps people break free from ultra processed food addiction and maintain a healthy weight long term. I'm so excited to have her on the show to speak about addiction, about what happens in our brain with addiction, and then specifically to look at food addiction, what it looks like, what it feels like, and most importantly, my dear listener, if this feels feels familiar to you, to give you some ideas on how to find freedom and relief, listen in. Hi, this is the Love youe Life show with Susie Pettit, certified life and wellness coach. Join Susie as she helps you with your wellness and mindset so you can live a life you love. Let's go, warriors. All right, and welcome to the Love youe Life Show. Susan, I am so excited you're here to speak about something that I have not brought up on this podcast before. And I would love to just get started a little with the listeners who maybe have not. They've been living under a rock and they haven't heard of you and all the amazingness you're doing in the world. Can you start by briefly explaining, explaining how you got here? A woman in her 50s like me, supporting people, humans with food addiction.
- [02:22]
B
Oh, well, Susie, it's great to be on here. Thank you for having me. And yeah, I, I got here, honestly, man, I took the path. I traveled the road of an addict. I mean, I was probably addicted to food and sugar before I ever realized that. I mean, I was before I ever realized that. But the first thing I really got addicted to, where there's no denying it, was drugs. And that was age 14 to 20. Hard, hard drugs. I mean, I started off alcohol, pot, mushrooms, acid, ecstasy, and then I found crystal meth. And then I started smoking crack and I became a prostitute and Then I got clean and sober when I was 20. But then I just went right back to food. And I would go to 12 step meetings and then leave the meeting and go to, you know, jump to three different stores to get all my supplies and just go home and binge all night. And I whacked on a ton of weight. So by my mid-20s, I was living with chronic obesity and my food and my weight were making me crazy. And I tried everything, Susie. I tried everything. And, you know, I. I was doing a 12 step program for drug and alcohol addiction. I tried a 12 step program for food. And what I found was that it just wasn't so clear. You know, if you're an alcoholic, put the plug in the jug, Right?
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A
Yeah.
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B
Right. I mean, it's not easy. It's not easy.
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A
I've done it.
- [03:55]
B
It's not easy, but it's clear. Right. Like, I always know whether I've smoked crack or not. I always had a drink or not.
- [04:04]
A
And you don't need to smoke crack to survive, which is. Yeah, right. Yeah. Or you don't have to have like, what's the plug?
- [04:12]
B
What's the jug? I don't know what I'm doing here by abstaining from. And, you know, so you don't have to eat donuts to live. You have to eat to live, but you don't have to eat donuts to live. But then beyond doughnuts, it starts to get really slippery, you know, and there were lots of times when I felt like I was on a food plan, working a 12 step program for food. But I was doing things that were still triggering me. Yogurt with fruit on the bottom or barbecue sauce on meat or, you know, six cans of diet soda or whatever. And it was really hard to know where the boundaries were. You know, what about honey? What about sugar free cough drops if I actually really have a cough? What about. What about. What about. What about. So I spent eight years still floundering, and, you know, 12 step food programs are interesting because there's, you know, eight or 10 of them with significant membership, and they vary from place to place, city to city, how they're run. And eventually I moved across the country to Rochester, New York. I mean, I should back up actually, and say a difference between drug and alcohol addiction and food addiction is you can function with food addiction, and lots of people do. I mean, you can top up with sugar, flour and caffeine and conquer the world. And after I got clean and sober, that's what I did. I was, went to Community college. I transferred to a, to a four year college, UC Berkeley. I got straight A's. I graduated, you know, summa cum laude, Phi Beta Kappa.
- [05:44]
A
Spoke at the graph problem here. Right.
- [05:46]
B
Yeah, just, I mean, writing research papers at night, eating a box of brown sugar through the night to write the paper, you know, and downing caffeine. And so I moved to Rochester, New York to get a PhD in brain and cognitive sciences. And it was in Rochester, New York, eventually that I found sort of a group of people who, who gave me more clarity about what to do with food. No sugar, no flour, stop the snacking, weigh and measure your meals. And I lost all my excess weight pretty quickly, about six months. I lost £60 in six months.
- [06:25]
A
Wow.
- [06:25]
B
And, and I've kept it off. I mean, I've, I, I went from obese to slender, and I've been in my, I call it a bright body, you know, for 22 years now. Meanwhile, I became a tenured psychology professor. I started teaching a college course on the psychology of eating and the neuroscience of food addiction. And I was sponsoring a lot of people in the 12 step model. And as time went on, it got clearer and clearer and clearer to me that the way I was doing recovery, most people wouldn't do, they didn't want to. No one was coming. All the people I knew who had weight struggles, they were not willing to do what I was doing. And for good reason. It was, it was taking me 30 hours a week to do it all. Like, it was a lot of meetings and a lot of time and very intensive and standing in front of the room. My name is Susan, I'm a food addict. And people didn't want that. And there also was no scientific understanding about it. I was teaching the neuroscience of food addiction in my college course. And in my morning meditation about 11 and a half years ago, January 26, 2014, the universe just laid it on me, just said, susan, write a book called Bright Line Eating. And I just learned about the term bright line. It's a, it's a legal term, actually. A bright line rule in the law is a clear, unambiguous boundary that you just don't cross to get predictable and consistent results. And I just learned that. And I guess, you know, write a book called Bright Line Eating was, was the directive that was kind of the precursor to this global movement that sprung up. I did ultimately write that book and it became a New York Times bestseller. And that's, that's really the backstory.
- [08:20]
A
Oh, there's so much there. I'm just Nodding along with all of it. And I'm so grateful that you did have that moment in 2014 and, and also just shared your experience with, you know, in your 14 to 20 years, when you were 14 and 20. Thank you for that because it is interesting. I guess what's coming up for me is how do we know? Because it's like you would think you addiction hopped is what it sounds like. And I think that is so common when we're not addressing sort of like we have this addictive brain, well, then we just fill it in with something else and bring our misery there also. So how would you know, for my listeners who are, you know, have a lot of thoughts about food and a lot of their days spent thinking about food. How do you know if you're in this addicted brain or if you're just sort of suffering from years of dieting and trauma and growing up in a patriarchal society where we're valued for our weight or, or are they the same thing? Or what's going on?
- [09:25]
B
Yeah, I mean, you could take my quiz. I've got it. This simple five question quiz. You can go to food addictionquiz.com and@foodaddictionquiz.com it'll start off by saying, think back to a time in your life when your eating was at its worst. Not a day when it was at its worst, but you know, a couple few months. Right. Where your eating was really at its worst, and answer these questions as if it were then. And the reason for that is that once fiber tracts are formed in the brain, they never go away. You can stop using them and train yourself to live otherwise and stop the neural energy flowing down those fiber tracks. But they'll still be there. And there's several bodies of research that show basically we do not forget how we used to be. And so if you've ever eaten super intensively, addictively, you're going to have to work a program that is strong enough to. You're just going to have to be more vigilant. Right. Than someone who's never had those issues. But the quiz is really five questions. And it comes down to things like when you start to eat, do you feel like you lose control over how much you eat? And is that happening always, sometimes or never? You know, like, when you start to eat, does it feel like a slippery slope? Are you promising yourself one piece of pizza and then having four and then thinking, how did that happen?
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A
Um, you're sort of hiding from yourself. Yeah, yeah.
- [10:53]
B
And, and I mean, I used to do that over and over and over again. I, I always felt, not always, but really most of the time I would feel like I lost control over how much I ate or I wouldn't even try to control my quantities. I would just eat until I was stuffed all the time. Another sure sign is if you feel like you don't really get full, like other people get full, you eat and other people are like, oh, I'm just full now. And you're kind of like, what do they mean? Because I feel like I could just.
- [11:28]
A
Keep four more of these. Right?
- [11:30]
B
Yeah, yeah. Or are you looking at people around the table who say, oh, I just want one bite of a dessert. The seven of you, do you want to share a dessert? Because all I need is one bite after dinner and I'm satisfied. And are you thinking, I'm never thinking that when I have one bite, I want another and then another and then another. One bite doesn't scratch the itch for me, it makes it itchier, you know, as soon as I have one bite, I want another bite. That's how it works for me. What are these people talking about? That one bite satiates something and turns off the switch and now they're good, you know, don't relate to that, then that might be a sign. Another one is if you look at how much of your bandwidth, focus, intentionality, time, all of that is taken up by your food and your weight, right? What you've eaten or not eaten, whether you're on your plan or off your plan, how many miles, how many calories, how many pounds? Have you at the gym yet? Did you eat a ton yesterday? So you need to be good today. Do you wake up in the morning trying to remember what you ate last night? You step on the scale and the number determines your feelings about yourself. Does that all feel like it's out of proportion to the life you want to be living? Is it taking up too much space in your head, your heart, your mind, your soul? Like the people who work the program that I founded, Bright Line Eating, who are really on point with it, they will say that all of that stuff, their food, their weight, their program, all of it, takes about 15% of their bandwidth. And in that 15%, they, they're meditating in the morning, they're planning their food the night before, they're making sure that they're eating up the produce that's about to go bad. Produce doesn't go bad in their fridge because they're planning their food strategically. They're making reach out calls to people that love and support them on the path. They're listening to supportive audios and watching supportive videos. They're tuning into an accountability call in the morning that bursts their heart with joy and makes them feel connected and loved. And that's what's in the 15%.
- [13:42]
A
That's shocking because the other. Yeah, otherwise they're spending 85% of their time thinking about food. And you know, when they can have that next cough drop even though they don't have a cough. Like, you just nailed so many of the things I'm like, oh, yeah, I'm seeing, you know, these. Yeah, that is wonderful. Right? Well, and so I guess that's where I just want to highlight for listeners because you do speak of this. I think if listeners are hearing you and they're like, oh my goodness, this is me. And I will definitely put the link to that quiz in there because I took it and it's very enlightening. And then you get a lot of your good emails and it will direct you towards your program and they might feel heavy. That was sort of my first thing where it's like, oh no, this is just the reality. And sometimes when we sort of take our glasses off with ourselves and see what's going on, we're no longer playing the game. It's like, oh no, you've got something going on here. Which is I think on one hand heavy, but on another end. I just want to encourage listeners to see the freedom in it if it's feeling true for them, because it is. You speak very well to this. The shame that comes from when we're thinking it's. It's our problem, that it's like a willpower issue is real. And what you speak to is that, you know, when we're addicted to food, it's a brain based issue issue. Can you explain a little more about that or how that is showing up?
- [15:06]
B
Absolutely. In modern society, food is the hardest addiction to kick. For sure. When I quit crack cocaine, I could drive to work and back and spend all day without seeing any advertisements to smoke crack, without anyone offering me any, without, you know, really having any cues to pick up my drug of choice at all. When food is your drug of choice, all of a sudden your whole day is a relapse pitfall and people don't understand and they're pushing things on you, you know, left, right and center. And it's hard.
- [15:44]
A
So I would say, and you're driving by the restaurants and you're seeing the.
- [15:49]
B
Ads, the logos, the billboards, then you go home and it's on the TV and the commercial. It's, it's everywhere. Now the brain of someone who has a more addictive relationship with a substance like ultra processed food or sugar, flour gets extra triggered by that stuff. It's extra salient for our brains. And what happens is we're suffering from something called dopamine downregulation, which means that by eating a lot of foods with sugar and flour, you know, these foods didn't exist back in the day. You know, there are no natural foods, not one, not one, that have high concentrations of both fat and refined carbohydrate. Like, like all the, you know, not all, but most of the foods that we get attracted to, you know, cookies, cakes, ice cream, you know, all those things, they're combinations of fat and sugar, right? And you know, yes, you can love potato chips, fat and salt, yes, you can love straight hard candy, just sugar. But the combinations especially do us in those are non natural substances. And frankly, neither are potato chips nor hard candy. It's all fake, right? You don't get that stuff in the wild. What have you got in the wild? Blueberries. Really? Like that's, that's the best you can do in the wild. What that means is that these foods are flooding the disease centers in the brain, the addictive centers in the brain. We're talking about the nucleus accumbens, the ventral tegmental area. If the brain is a cue ball, it's almost literally right in the center of it. It's, you know, the brainstem comes up the spinal cord. Right at the top is the brain stem there, and then right above that you've got these primitive centers in the brain that are the addictive pathways. It's the mesolimbic reward pathway. And this is the part of the brain that is designed to make sure that you have enough motivation to get what you need to survive. It's the. I don't have enough. Go get it, go seek it. I need more and I've got it. When the hit comes, I've got to remember what preceded that so I can find it again. Then it's the missile seeking. I've got to go get it and get more things. So dopamine is the molecule of more. And there's a great book by that title, by the way, that I highly recommend everyone read. More, more, more, more. And when we eat, let's just say a donut, any of the foods I've mentioned, really, it floods that area of the brain with more dopamine than it ever was. Designed to handle. And over time, the receptors adapt to that. They, they go, okay, well, I guess this is my new normal. Now I'm getting all this stimulation. They know it's too much, and they respond by thinning out and becoming less numerous and less responsive. And so that the ultimate signal that gets passed on is of the right size, like all this stimulation is coming in, they thin out. So they pass on a reasonable size signal. And that's all fine and dandy as long as you plan to top up with more sugar and flour every hour or two. But you've now rewired the brain so that at baseline, without sugar and flour pumping in on the regular, you now feel not okay. You feel bleak, desperate, restless, irritable. Something's off. You're not sure what, but all you know is you're on your way to the vending machine or the Starbucks or the cafe or the convenience store or the fridge or the cupboard or the freezer, because you've got to get something to feel it, you got to go get it. So that's how it's a brain based issue. Now, the thing that people don't realize is that this is all happening at the deepest level of the brain. What it sounds like to us is maybe a negotiation if we're on some sort of diet, like some sort of trade, you know, like, well, I did work out twice this, three times already this week. And so I can probably just go and have some tea with a little, you know, cream and sugar. And that would probably, you know, it might sound like that. It might, it could sound like any number of things, but it's going to sound like our own voice in our own head, tricking us into having a little something something. That's what it's going to sound like. Now here's where I can give you a really good analogy. It's so sneaky. And we conclude that we just let ourselves down after the fact. We think, why do I keep doing this to myself? Right? But our brains are hijacked, our brain is hijacked. And this voice in our head tricks us into eating something. And then over time, we look at the facts on this side of the equation. I started that food plan, that diet, that program, that gym membership, with every intention to stick with it, to make it work this time, to get this weight off. And on the other end, we see that we just decided to have nachos and beer and pizza on a Friday night because it was a stressful week. And we end up concluding things about ourselves. This is Another piece of psychology that's really fascinating. It's called self perception theory. Darrell Bem came up with this at Cornell University in 1970 something. The basic idea is that we conclude stuff about who we are by watching our behavior. So when we keep watching ourselves betray our most intensive desires for our life for something stupid like I had a stressful week, so I'm having beer and pizza and wings, we start to conclude I must not love myself, I must not trust myself, I must not be trustworthy, I must have deep seated psychological issues, there's something wrong with me. Why am I such a loser? Why? We might conclude that we hate ourselves, that we don't want to be successful and that's what we end up living with, is that belief about ourselves. And then when people start my program and they get the addictive foods out of their system, their brain starts to heal and I teach them to write down what they're going to eat the night before, really commit it, and then the next day eat only in exactly that. Within three weeks we see like 80% of their deepest psychological self esteem issues melt away because they, they weren't real in the first place. That was just what they concluded based on watching themselves not have integrity with themselves, not be able to show up for themselves. And now all of a sudden they watch themselves show up in the way they have always wanted to and suddenly they're like, oh, that's right. I always knew I was a kind, good person, able to follow through on things and capable in lots of ways. And now I'm doing it with my food and my weight. And now I really understand, like there's nothing wrong with me, I love it.
- [23:09]
A
I just want listeners to hear that because that has been my experience. And I guess I, similar to you, I started with alcohol and then read a book, Quit like a Woman where I was alerted to the manipulation behind, you know, that alcohol. I, I didn't have, I wasn't in that thought that I was like an addicted to alcohol. Like I'd have one drink a week or two drinks a week or something, but still it wasn't doing me any favors. But when I sort of shifted my mindset to be like, oh my gosh, big I'm letting big alcohol control my moods because whenever I did drink then I would get a little snippy or I just wasn't my best self and I'm like, okay, so why am I putting the substance in here? That's manual, you know, people are studying how to do this. I felt like a pawn in that. So that was a pretty easy flip switch to flip for me. And then with food, what I just want listeners to hear is that, you know, white sugar, sugar and flour are addictive also. They do things in our brain. They are not natural food. They are manufactured by companies trying to get us to be addicted so that we are, know, increasing their bottom line. And that. That in itself, then it leads us to all these things that, you know, that we're feeling awful about ourselves and we're, you know, whereas it's like, it's not the freaking. It's not you. It's. It's the substance. It is the that we're rel. We're doing exactly what the people want us to do with our brain. I don't know if I'm saying that well, but I really want people to look at the. That the food's made out of food and sugar. And you've done numerous or you've quoted numerous research studies on this, that they are truly psychologically addictive and that we need to be aware of that and not just these sort of like blind pawns in people's.
- [24:54]
B
Face.
- [24:54]
A
That's really been helpful for me to see from this maybe like, oh, my gosh, the heaviness of like, oh, wow, this might be me. But the more there's something for you to do. And it. While it's not easy, it's simple. And that's what I love about your program, the bright line. There are four parts of it there. It's like super simple and that. I mean, you said three weeks. Your research shows 80. I'd say in four days, even one day. I felt better in making a plan, following my plan, and I didn't feel good resisting the urges. I don't want people to get that wrong. But I felt really good about myself at the end of it looking back and being like, oh, okay. And then when you start to get the addictive substances out, well, then that's a heck of a lot easier too. So could you share. We've sort of danced around it. But what is bright line eating or. And how does it make it different than other food?
- [25:47]
B
Yeah, sure. Bright line eating is. It's. It's almost the opposite of any. If you've never tried it, it's probably the opposite of any diet or food plan you've ever tried. We don't think of it as a diet. It's really. When people say diets don't work, you have to change your lifestyle, we dive really into. What does that mean exactly? This is a total lifestyle change. But what it is, basically is it's a program of eating and living that's based on four bright lines. Again, a bright line is just a clear boundary that you just don't cross. Like if you're gonna, if you're a three pack a day smoker and you're gonna quit, you have lung cancer, you're gonna, you're not gonna try to smoke, right, Quit smoking. That's a bright line for cigarettes. Our bright lines are no sugar, no flour, and no snacking. So eating only meals, typically three meals a day, and bounding your quantities precisely. So typically a digital food scale is the way you do that. And so sugar, flour, meals and quantities, those are the four bright lines. And the first. So first of all, what's countercultural about that is probably any program you've ever tried includes snacks. It includes like free foods or a free day or cheat meals or some.
- [27:07]
A
Kind of Weight Watchers. You zero points, you can eat a zero point.
- [27:10]
B
Almost all the food that's on our plan is zero point food Weight Watchers. Like, because you can eat anyway, whatever. But the, but the thing about addiction is it's not just a substance addiction to sugar and flour. It's also a behavioral or process addiction to bending your elbow and putting food in your mouth all the time. Chewing gum, drinking diet soda. The consume, consume, consume, consume. That's an addiction to eating, swallowing, chewing, consuming. It's a behavioral addiction. And bright line eating breaks that. With the last two bright lines, meals and quantities, you bound that you're not eating all day. And what that does is it opens up huge chunks of time now to be productive and get busy with life. It's people take the food out of.
- [27:55]
A
Your brain, like gives you that time back.
- [27:58]
B
Yeah. The minute, the minute a meal is done, the brain stops suggesting that you're going to have any more. It knows you're not. You train it really fast and the brain stops hounding you for more and more and more. So that's what bright line eating is. And some other ways that it's very different from other plans is it's designed to be maximally automatizable. So automaticity is a big part of bright line eating. And this is how we overcome the willpower issue. So the willpower gap is a very real thing from a brain based perspective. The part of your brain that's trying to keep you from eating off your plan, it's resisting temptations, it's got other temptations it's trying to resist. Maybe you're trying to not scroll social media so much. Or maybe you're trying to, I don't know, whatever. You know, drink eight glasses of water. I don't know what you're trying to do, but it's trying to regulate that. It's also responsible for your regulating your emotional responses, your emotional outbursts. It's trying to regulate that. It's responsible for monitoring your task performance. So maybe you're a teacher and you're checking an attendance grade sheet or something like that, or you're Excel spreadsheet and you're trying to. To Maybe you're a copy editor and you're just doing your job, trying to read says and check stuff that's all the same part of the brain. It's the anterior cingulate cortex. It gets very overlooked. Oh, and making decisions, which is checking email, right? Like reply, reply all, file it, label it, save it, leave it in the inbox. What am I doing with this thing? And on to the next one. It's decision, decision, decision, decision. In modern life with traffic and kids and email and all the things, food temptations, this part of the brain is working overtime all day. Now, the problem is this part of the brain only has 15 minutes of good juice at any given time, and it becomes depleted very quickly. And that issue is not going away in our lifetime. And what that means is that any food plan that's going to work is going to have to assume that you have no willpower at any given moment, because you may not. Well, how's that going to work? Like, how do you reconcile, Dr. Thompson, a no sugar, no flour food plan and not eating in between meals with the fact that you're telling us we are not going to have willpower at any given moment? Well, what we do is we wire in your eating using the same part of the brain that you wire in your teeth brushing with. Like, think about how you brush your teeth now, okay? If you're one of the 5% of people that doesn't brush their teeth regularly, I'm not talking to you. Talking to 95% of people that get to the end of the day, whether you're sick, you're traveling, you're grumpy, late, you just brush your teeth before you go to bed. Not because you have a sticky note on the mirror to remind you. Not because you've got extra willpower in your tank, not because you want to, but because it just happens, right? It just happens. And it's cued by a certain script of how you live your day. It's the thing that you do before bed. It's cued by a certain time of day and a certain pattern of the day unfolds. And at this point in the day, this is what I do. And breakfast, lunch and dinner can be wired in that same way. You can wire breakfast into a morning routine, you can wire lunch into that midday pause, and you can wire dinner into an evening routine. And, and no matter how grumpy, how depressed, how angry, how depleted you are, you can find yourself getting out your digital food scale, throwing lettuce into a bowl, you know, finding some protein and putting that on top of that. You already wrote down your food the night before, so you know what it is. You're checking your little book. You're assembling your meal while you're yelling at your spouse, kids, and literally going on.
- [31:51]
A
Right?
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B
It's all still going on. And the, the assemblage of the meal is happening on autopilot and you're sit there and eating your big salad because it's what you committed and that's what you're having for dinner. And you're living in your right sized body.
- [32:05]
A
No drama. That's what I, I guess I just love, as someone who has this addictive brain, that there's it just the freedom that that provides. I want listeners to hear because if anyone on here has taken alcohol out of their life, and at the time you're thinking, I could never do this, this would never work. And then now it's, you know, four years later and you're like, I'm not even thinking about wine at whatever time. That's what the bright line, smoking, Right.
- [32:33]
B
I'm a former smoker.
- [32:34]
A
Yeah. Like, I'm not sitting here, like, when am I getting my next cigarette? You're like, over it.
- [32:39]
B
It's done. It's hard at first. Once in a blue moon, I have a thought of a cigarette and I know, I know enough to brush it off, right? That's like a dragonfly that lands on your shoulder. If you fondle it, nurture it, pay attention to it, it grows into a dragon pretty quickly. You don't let that happen. You brush it off. No, I don't think about cigarettes. Nope, that's not what I do anymore. I am a non smoker and that's what happens with food. And you're right, it's very, very freeing. It's.
- [33:08]
A
Well, and I'm sorry to interrupt, but what you just said about the cigarette, what came to my mind is not for you. Like, that's not for me. Like, cigarettes aren't for me. And that's. I know. That's one of the things that I read in your book, like the not for me food or the not for me drink. That helps me a lot with just some of these things, like sugar. And that speaks to how this is different than diets too. It's not me restricting myself. It is a lifestyle change that's really aligned from this inner love of self. That is how I care for myself. So how do I care for myself? I care for myself by not that sugar is not for me or snacking is not for me. Because if I snack, then I've alerted that part of my brain that now for the next three days is going to be like, oh, okay, but you did it yesterday, you know, and it's like, no, no, I don't want that in my head. I just want to be doing this, like I'm brushing my teeth. So that. That is the part that I want listeners to hear because I imagine some listeners are like, oh, that's too much, or it's too rigid or too. And to that, I'd say that's that inner voice that you were speaking of earlier. That's. I did a podcast episode once and talking about the inner voices, we have our inner coach, inner critic, and an inner rebel. And that is the inner rebel that, like, you know what you want, but you've got this inner voice that's about talking, talking you out of it. Like, so that voice, just put it on the back burner for now and think, well, what if it wasn't too rigid? What if this is where the freedom is? What if this is my path forward? Because, I mean, that is what your research has found.
- [34:35]
B
Yeah, yeah, we've asked. And at the end of our boot camp. So we have a 10 week bright line, eating boot camp that introduces people to this way of eating, this way of life. And at the end of it, almost everybody says that their peace and serenity with food has gone up. So it sounds like a very rigid way of eating and living, but actually what happens is it's liberating. It's so freeing. People are not finding that they're obsessed with. With food, with dessert anymore. They feel liberated. They really do.
- [35:03]
A
Yeah.
- [35:03]
B
Well, and circle back to what you just said about the inner rebel.
- [35:06]
A
Yes.
- [35:07]
B
Because you mentioned the inner rebel earlier in a brilliant way. You were talking about how you harnessed your inner rebel when you quit alcohol to say, I don't want to be a pawn in big alcohol's advertising game. Right. I don't want to be a positive line on their spreadsheet. Yay, they hooked me. And you can do the same thing with food. So yes, an inner rebel will say well that sounds really restrictive. I don't want to not eat sugar. I don't want to naughty flour. But you can take that same inner rebel and say so what you want to just be upon then in big foods literal scheme to take over our brains and keep us hooked on their food. Because they are taking us and putting us in FMRI machines and testing commercials and snack food formulations on our. That part of the brain. I was talking about the addictive centers of the brain. They look and see how strong it lights up with this flavor or that flavor, this advertisement or that advertisement. And they know they have us hooked up. They know it.
- [36:09]
A
And listeners. I just want them to because that like follow the friggin money. Like do I like again, do I want to be. So they're getting me addicted for what? So that they're the companies that are selling this sort of stuff. But then also what happens when I'm addicted and then I'm obese and I have all these. Well then I'm feeding into. I'm helping big pharma in a really big. So I just not to get political here but I just don't like being a pawn. So that is the inner rebel and that control of self. And coming back to you know, what did our great grandmas eat? These weren't even an option. That's what's fascinating to me. Like when I think of my grandma and I think this generation, we are the ones. It's so convenient. It's so easy to get our dopamine hits in so many areas of our life. My grandma, what did she have in a can? Like maybe tomatoes. But like there was no, you know, I mean it was all right like whole Foods and whatever. And then now here we are. It's like we can just so quickly with an app we can get it delivered. We don't even have to leave our house to get this addiction sent to us. Can you tell me Because I know different people react differently. So I just want to. If the listener's listening and they're like this isn't me, then we're going to take that food addiction quiz. But about how many people are food have a food addiction Since a lot of the food that we're eating is addictive. Like I'm just like I just.
- [37:33]
B
Yeah, no, that's a great question. And the answer is Very, very nuanced. I could talk for a long time about this. Okay, so if you include everyone, it looks like about 24%. If you look at non clinical samples, meaning people with no overweight, obesity, or eating disorder issues, it's about 4 14%. Now, here's the interesting thing. The current gold standard validated test for food addiction is the Yale Food Addiction Scale, and it's based on the DSM 5. And there's 11 criteria for substance use disorder. And to have a mild substance use disorder, you only have to have two of those criteria. And these are things like, you know, I feel like I lose control once I start. Once I have one, I have more. I've tried over and over again to cut back or try to quit and no lasting success. I'm dealing with health problems or other types of problems based on my use. Like, a lot of people answer yes to a lot of these questions around food, right? But to actually have an addiction, you have to have another factor has to be there, which is you have to have a clinically significant level of impairment or distress. You have to be distressed about it. You have to be like, it has to be bothering you.
- [38:56]
A
Okay. You have to be annoyed by it. Like you're noticing clinical distress.
- [39:00]
B
Like. Like, this is my food, and my food slash weight issue is. Is really bothering me, or I'm experiencing a clinically significant level of impairment. Now, people might say, I'm not experiencing any impairment. But then you're like, well, how's work going? Well, I'm not working. How come? Well, I'm on disability. Why? Because I need two knee replacements, because I'm £300 and blah, blah, blah. He's like, well, isn't that impairment?
- [39:26]
A
Oh.
- [39:28]
B
So what's interesting is that the average person in our society ANSWERS yes to 2.38, but they don't say yes to the clinically significant impairment or distress. So what that means. Let me just finish that sentence. Is realistically, let's say 15 to 25% of people have clinically significant food addiction. Most people, but not everybody. I would say 2/3 to 3/4 of people have an addictive relationship with food.
- [40:09]
A
Okay, That's. Yeah.
- [40:11]
B
And that's just a couple of these symptoms. But it's not so much that they have impairment or distress. And I would say about 25 to 33% of the population, a quarter to a third, do not have this issue at all. These are the people who are like, I just want the one bite of dessert who wants to share?
- [40:30]
A
And they're not Thinking about food during.
- [40:31]
B
Their day, they're not thinking about it afterwards. They get full really easily. Foods they have to remind themselves to eat sometimes maybe set an alarm midday because they'll forget. And there are a lot of people like that. And it's about a third of the population, roughly. On my quiz, when you take food addictionquiz.com Basically, it's a number from 1 to 10 that you're going to get. The ones and twos and threes are the ones who just don't have any at all. The fours, fives and sixes, they've got enough addiction on board that if they also have genes for obesity, they're going to find that the addiction that they have, the slightly addictive relationship with food, keeps them from being able to take their weight off. And if you're 7, 8, 9, 10, now you've got an issue that is, you know, probably only the nines and tens would actually test for clinically significant food addiction, but sevens and eights are going to have a lot of trouble, too.
- [41:26]
A
Well, and I also just, you know, depending on the age of the listener that's listening to this, I think it's important to look at how maybe the amount of time you're spending thinking about food. So we're thinking like, am I impaired and not working? Okay, no, I am working, but. Or maybe impairment. And, you know, the slippery slope is like, are you spending so much time thinking about your body size and eating and food and you're not looking at, you know, your marriage now that your kids have left the house, or your fulfillment in things other than, you know, like, oh, my God, I ate the right amount of calories yesterday or my, you know, jeans from when I was whatever fit, or just that sort of. Is food, are we. Is food becoming a distraction from the life that you're living? Is something that comes up often in my show. And I, I really appreciate how you did finish the sentence there and saying that, like, yeah, we, some of us might have a clinical diagnosis of food addiction, but the addict, addictive relationship to food. And also speaking like if cigarettes, we brought up nicotine is addictive. And I'm pretty sure that if I started smoking, I, I would be suddenly in that addictive behavior loop with nicotine. So then if I'm eating these addictive substances like sugar and flour, wouldn't I also be an addictive because of what I'm eating?
- [42:45]
B
Well, that's the, the third of people that I talked about. They're not addictable.
- [42:49]
A
They don't have that's amazing.
- [42:51]
B
No, no. They have a cigarette at a party and then they don't think about one.
- [42:54]
A
And they're never concert.
- [42:57]
B
And they literally won't think of one until they have a cigarette. Another concert. These are the people that drink coffee in the morning and if, if they're at an Airbnb and suddenly there's only decaf, they're okay.
- [43:07]
A
Yeah, yeah. Or like, they'll have their, like sugar is what I'm thinking. And then they won't have that. It won't be on their mind or they'll. Yeah, they're not thinking about it. That is neat. They're out there. Yeah.
- [43:20]
B
They go home after a back surgery with a Vicodin prescription. They'll take it every six hours. And they're not. They don't become addicted. They're happy to get off it when it's time to wait. Profit. They're not addictable.
- [43:33]
A
Yeah. I just had a heart thing and they were trying to give me some form of OxyContin or whatever, and I was just like, no, I'll take Tylenol, thank you very much. Because I just, I don't trust myself and I. And just trust the addictive part of my brain. So. Thank you. I. I guess I just, I, I really. This is a place. Good place to finish up. But I do want to ask if there's anything that you can offer to someone who's feeling discouraged or defeated sort of in hearing this right now, that sort of. That soft heart, I think that is like, oh, totally.
- [44:10]
B
I mean, I am you. I've struggled with my food and my weight my whole life, really. Because, you know, after I lost my excess weight, I went into relapse after years after that for back and forth for a bit. And, you know, there is hope. There is a solution. You might be thinking about weight loss drugs. Everybody is these days. I should probably speak to that for a second. The thing about weight loss drugs is that they're not going to solve our obesity pandemic. They're really not. And the reason is that 85% of people are going off them within two years. 85% of people within two years. But let me explain why. You know, some of that is side effects. 16% go off because of side effects. Some of that is cost. But let me explain why. Exactly. And some is actually there. There are some people who just find that they don't want to live in a world where they don't get pleasure out of food and beverage. They just. That's not a world they want to live in. But let me describe the weight loss results. So what happens is you get on Ozempic, right, A wegovy, and you, let's say you're a woman, you're £200 and you think you should be £130. Like that's what feels like your right size body is 130 pounds, but you're 200 pounds right now. So you have 70 pounds to lose. That's your, that's your frame of reference, right? What the research shows is these weight loss drugs, the weight loss is going to be slow in the first couple months because you're just building up the dose. And then you're going to lose weight pretty rapidly for about, you know, the first year and three months, you're going to lose about 30 pounds on average, 15% of your weight. Fifteen percent of 200 pounds is 30 pounds. So you're going to drop down over one year and three months from 200 pounds down, down, down, down to 170. Now, you might be paying 2, 3, 4, $500 a month for this, right? Every month. Let's. And in the United States, it's gonna be 500 bucks a month. 500amonth. 500amonth.500amonth. Now you're 15 months in, a year and three months in, and you go a whole month without losing any weight, 500 bucks. You go another month without losing any weight, 500 bucks. You're 170 pounds. You think you need to lose down to 130. You go four more months without losing any weight. 500 bucks. 500 bucks. 500 bucks.500 bucks. The next month you gain 2 pounds. 500 bucks. The next month you gain two more pounds. 500 bucks. Are you staying on that drug?
- [46:51]
A
I'm not, no.
- [46:54]
B
Right now the research shows that what happens is you lose 15% of your body weight and then you regain a third of that. You regain a third of what you lost. So with our numbers you get, you go from 200 pounds down to 170. And now you're going to climb slowly back up to 177. And if you do stay on the drug four years out, you're going to be up at 177. So what I want to say is these drugs are a tool. If you want to work a program like Bright Line eating and your cravings and your obsession are so bad. Well, first of all, Bright line eating, the cravings and the obsession, just do bright line eating first. We have the same weight loss results as the drugs except people don't regain weight, so. So try a natural solution first. But some people do fall into a pattern of chronic relapse or their cravings never go away. Then the drugs can be a tool so that you can work a program.
- [47:54]
A
You get over that mind chatter initially or.
- [47:56]
B
Yeah, that's right, that's right, that's right.
- [48:00]
A
But yeah, I often say I'm like, you know, pills without the skills is. Is in terms of whatever, you know, because I'm a mental health coach. So I'm like, no, like if you want, if you need to take the pills initially to help you with the get over the bump or whatever, but if you're not learning the skills, then you just need more and more and more pills and it's not solving your problem. So what I'm hearing with this, it's like you just. And then if it stops working. Yeah. Well, I'm so appreciative of what you've shared. I will put all the links to how to do the 10 week boot camp, how to do where to get the books, how to take that quiz in our show notes. Is there anything left that you think I've missed out or that you want to say?
- [48:40]
B
Ah, no. It's been a great conversation. Thank you so much, Susie. Really wonderful talking.
- [48:45]
A
I'm so grateful for the work you're doing in the world. You're helping so many people feel so much freedom and lightness in something and helping us live our lives, our love, which is what the name of this podcast show is. So thank you very much for coming on.