Willpower vs. Systems: Why Your Diet Fails & How to Fix Your Relationship w/ Food | Sohee Carpenter

Summary

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The Dr. Gabrielle Lyon Show

Episode: Willpower vs. Systems: Why Your Diet Fails & How to Fix Your Relationship w/ Food
Guest: Sohee Carpenter
Date: January 13, 2026

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Episode Overview

This episode of The Dr. Gabrielle Lyon Show features behavioral nutritionist and coach Dr. Sohee Carpenter. The conversation explores why so many people struggle with diet more than exercise, the psychology behind eating behaviors, the limitations of willpower, and the importance of sustainable systems for healthy habits. Dr. Carpenter shares her personal journey through disordered eating, her academic path, and actionable strategies that anyone can use to improve their relationship with food, build better habits, and achieve lasting health changes. The dialogue is practical, evidence-based, and empathetic, making it a must-listen for anyone tangled in the diet willpower trap.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

Sohee Carpenter’s Background & Journey

• Academic Path: Degree in Human Biology (Stanford), Master’s in Psychology, PhD in Sports Science ([03:59]).
• Motivation: Own struggles with anorexia, bulimia, and especially binge eating sparked her interest in psychology and behavior change ([04:29]).
• Cultural Impact: Growing up in Korea and internationally exposed her to intense beauty standards and diet culture ([05:39], [06:02]).
• Online Presence: Started blogging in 2011 to fill the gap in psychology-focused fitness content, noting a lack of female voices in the space ([10:33], [15:23]).

The Real Problem with Diets:

• Diets vs. Exercise: Nutrition is an all-day challenge with many triggers and opportunities; exercise is bounded in time ([00:00], [75:17]).
• “Trying too hard” Backfires: Extreme dietary rigidity led her, and often leads others, to binge/restrict cycles ([17:34], [18:48]).
• Personalization: Generic meal formulas (e.g., "body weight x 10–12") often don’t account for individual needs or activity levels ([20:23]).

Willpower vs. Systems

• Willpower is Draining: Willpower works like a depletable battery; relying on it alone is unsustainable ([38:47]).
• Key Quote: “Willpower feels fatiguing... The key to behavior change is not in relying on willpower willy-nilly with brute force. It’s about being more strategic about when you use willpower... to form new habits.” — Sohee Carpenter ([38:49])
• Forming Habits: The most successful change occurs when willpower is used to build habits, after which those actions become cognitively effortless ([39:02], [39:46]).

Rethinking Restriction:

• All-or-Nothing is Harmful: Dichotomous (“good vs. bad”) thinking correlates strongly with binge eating ([64:33]).
• Reframing Dieting: “It’s about removing as many pain barriers as you can and mitigating how much extra effort you have to exert to see the results you want to see.” — Sohee Carpenter ([33:08]).
• Gentle Nutrition & 'Add, Don’t Restrict': Instead of removing foods, focus on adding nutritious elements (protein, fiber, veggies) to meals ([36:09], [37:24]).

Binge Eating and Emotional Triggers

• Roots of Binging: It's rarely just about food — often triggered by emotion/stress and poor coping mechanisms ([04:29], [56:42]).
• Quote: “When you have poor emotion regulation skills... every time you’re stressed, you’re bored, you’re something, you turn to food as a self-soothing behavior.” — Sohee Carpenter ([04:29], [56:42])
• Breaking the Cycle: Work on diversifying coping tools beyond food (e.g., calling a friend, going for a walk) ([58:18]).

Building Sustainable Habits

• Design for Laziness: Arrange your environment to make the desired behavior the default, and undesired behaviors inconvenient ([48:03]).
  • E.g. Put healthy foods at eye-level; place supplements by the coffee maker.
  • “What can you do to make the default behavior the thing you actually want to do?” ([47:50]-[48:03])
  • Habits stack: Pair new behaviors with existing routines ([49:55]).
• Audit & Start Small: Begin with an audit of current habits, then choose minor modifications that don’t feel overwhelming ([40:04], [40:23], [43:27]).
• Individualization: Honor autonomy and preference when creating new routines ([40:23], [77:51]).

Intrinsic vs. Extrinsic Motivation

• More Than Motivation: Systems, identity, and deeper ‘whys’ are critical for sustaining change ([66:36], [70:05]).
• Five Whys Exercise: Keep probing why a goal matters to uncover deeper motivation ([71:16]).
• Identity Shift: Behave as if you are already the person you want to become (“I’m a runner”), making choices in alignment with that identity ([72:27]).

Intuitive Eating & Food Noise

• Intuitive Eating as a Learned Skill: True intuitive eating isn’t for weight loss, but for freedom from obsession. “It’s a skill. There is actually a growing body of research in support of intuitive eating... But not for weight loss.” — Sohee Carpenter ([35:17]).
• Quieting ‘Food Noise’: Reaching a point where eating is satisfying, not obsessive, is liberating ([34:14]), especially contrasted to the mental burden of restriction.

Nutrition, Exercise, and Evidence-Based Myth-Busting

Nutrition:

• Add, Not Subtract: Rather than cutting foods, add nutrient-dense options (“Have what you want, add what you need” — [37:24]).
• No Need for Perfection: “A 20 minute workout that you can do a few times a week is going to be so much better than the hour-long workout... that never gets done.” — Sohee Carpenter ([93:33])
• Quality of Life Counts: Health is about more than food and exercise; social connections, mental health, and joy matter too ([94:33]).

Exercise:

• Women & Strength Training: There is no single “right way” for women to lift. Circuit training and traditional lifting produce similar results if both push close to muscle failure ([81:11], [85:43], [86:03]).
• Myth-Busting: Do women have to lift heavy?
  • “Heavy is relative... As long as you are pushing close to technical [muscular] failure, you can see muscle and strength gains with a variety of different rep ranges.” — Sohee Carpenter ([81:39]-[82:30])
• Exercise During Pregnancy: When medically cleared, continuing exercise (even training for a marathon!) is possible and can be empowering ([91:08]-[92:10]).
• Training Fasted: No conclusive evidence that fasted training is harmful for women compared to men; practicality matters more ([90:12]-[92:41]).

Strategies for Turning Intentions Into Reality

• Reduce Barriers: Make healthy choices frictionless and indulgent behaviors less convenient ([47:50], [48:03]).
• Accountability & Social Support: Know your preferences — whether you need social exercise, a coach, or group classes ([78:04]).
• Celebrate Small Steps: Slight adjustments and consistency matter more than extremity ([93:49]).
• Flexibility Over Rigidity: Sit in “the gray area,” letting go of all-or-nothing mindsets ([64:33], [64:49]).

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On the Diet Culture Trap:
  “For me, it was about the control of the food to then look a certain way, to then be accepted in a certain way and perceived a certain way.”
  — Sohee Carpenter ([00:00], [29:18]), reflecting on the psychological drive behind her early eating behaviors.

• Willpower vs. Habits:
  “The key feature of habits is that they are cognitively not fatiguing, they're automatic.”
  — Sohee Carpenter ([01:01], [39:46])

• On 'Food Noise' & Liberation:
  “I cannot tell you how freeing it is to be able to eat a meal, feel actually satisfied, and move on with your day without having to think about food.”
  — Sohee Carpenter ([34:14])

• Systems over Discipline:
  “Motivation isn’t the secret, but systems are.”
  — Dr. Gabrielle Lyon ([66:36])

• Reframing Mistakes:
  “My very first thought... was, how can I incorporate the popcorn into your plan? And my next thought was, why can’t that be part of your plan?”
  — Sohee Carpenter ([53:07])

• On Small but Impactful Changes:
  “Any incremental change you can make to your diet... all of that does add up and makes a difference over time.”
  — Sohee Carpenter ([93:49])

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• 00:00-01:15 — The challenge with nutrition vs. exercise, early experiences
• 04:29-06:02 — Cultural pressures in Korea, early disordered eating
• 10:15-15:55 — The psychology gap in fitness, starting a blog, journey from pre-med to fitness
• 17:34-19:26 — Restriction/binge cycles, calorie targets, and epiphany about trying ‘too hard’
• 26:51-28:23 — Cognitive dissonance in binging, honesty about dieting and binging
• 33:08-34:14 — Rethinking willpower, pain barriers, ease and sustainability
• 36:09-37:54 — Gentle nutrition, the “add, don’t restrict” method
• 39:02-39:46 — Using willpower to build habits (not maintain behavior forever)
• 47:50-48:03 — 'Design for laziness' and environmental habit hacking
• 56:42-58:18 — Binge eating and stress coping mechanisms
• 64:33-65:42 — Dichotomous thinking and binge eating
• 70:05-71:16 — Intrinsic motivation and the ‘five whys’
• 72:27-73:21 — Identity-based behavior change
• 81:11-85:43 — Evidence-based approaches for women’s strength training, debunking “must lift heavy”
• 86:03-89:38 — Circuit training vs. traditional strength: both work if intensity is high
• 90:12-92:41 — Training fasted: myth vs. reality for women
• 93:33-94:33 — Sohee’s three takeaways for listeners

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Actionable Takeaways

1. Ditch all-or-nothing thinking: Opt for flexibility and gentle self-correction over restriction and guilt.
2. Use your environment: Make healthy choices easy and indulgences less default.
3. Audit and tweak: Small, sustainable changes based on your preferences and current behaviors go further than drastic overhauls.
4. Build habits, not just willpower: Use initial motivation to set up systems and cues that make the behavior automatic.
5. Know your 'why': Dig for intrinsic reasons to change—these are more enduring than external pressures or fleeting motivation.
6. Add, don’t just subtract: Focus on what you can include on your plate or in your day, not just what you’re removing.

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Conclusion

Dr. Lyon and Dr. Carpenter deliver a profoundly relatable and evidence-based conversation, reframing the typical 'try harder' narrative of diet and wellness. By shifting the focus from willpower to smart systems, gentle self-improvement, and self-understanding, they provide a realistic, compassionate path forward for anyone seeking a healthier relationship with food and their body.

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Transcript

[Sohee Carpenter]

People tend to struggle less with exercise than they do with diet. Exercise is something you do in a finite period of time and then you can move on with your day. Whereas nutrition is. You have opportunities all day long. Eating behavior is so complicated. For me, it was about the control of the food to then look a certain way, to then be accepted in a certain way and perceived a certain way. Another big reason why people struggle with binge eating, a lot of it is poor or stress coping mechanisms. When you have poor emotion regulation skills, every time you're stressed, you're bored, you're something, you turn to food. A big reason why a lot of people will take GLP1s is that it eliminates food noise. I cannot tell you how freeing it is to be able to eat a meal, feel actually satisfied, and move on with your day and going like four or five hours without having to think about food.

[Dr. Gabrielle Lyon]

It's amazing.

[Sohee Carpenter]

It's so freeing. And a lot of people have never experienced what it's like to not have food noise.

[Dr. Gabrielle Lyon]

What is the psychology of when we restrict something makes us course correct the opposite way?

[Sohee Carpenter]

The key to behavior change is not in relying on willpower. I think the smarter way to do it is I'm gonna use willpower to form new habits. The key feature of habits is that they are cognitively not fatiguing, they're automatic.

[Dr. Gabrielle Lyon]

That is fascinating. Sohee Carpenter, welcome to the show.

[Sohee Carpenter]

Thank you.

[Dr. Gabrielle Lyon]

Fun fact I've been following you for. You've been a Coach now, a PhD since technically 2012. Okay. You've had also a very interesting journey.

[Sohee Carpenter]

Yeah.

[Dr. Gabrielle Lyon]

And I'd love to hear for the audience a little bit about you. You studied human biology. Biology, yeah.

[Sohee Carpenter]

Humbyo. Yeah. Very popular major at Stanford.

[Dr. Gabrielle Lyon]

Okay. So no slouchy school.

[Sohee Carpenter]

No.

[Dr. Gabrielle Lyon]

And then just finished your PhD.

[Sohee Carpenter]

Just got your PhD a couple months ago.

[Dr. Gabrielle Lyon]

And one of the things that I thought was so interesting is I've actually been following you for a really long time and you were working and also doing your PhD and all of these things in combination, which is unusual.

[Sohee Carpenter]

I was in a really fortunate position where I was in a distance program, a virtual program. I don't know if you felt this way, but I first got my bachelor's degree. Obviously I worked for four years, and then a few years later I was like, I need a bit more. So I went back and got my master's degree in psychology. That was a two year program. By the end of my master's degree, I was so not really enamored with academics. From my personal experience, That I was like, I don't think, I think I'm done. And then I found out that Eric Helms, who we know, icon in the industry was, had gotten his PhD from AUT Auckland University of Technology. And he was at the time taken on PhD students as an advisor. And there was also at the time, which I believe they don't do anymore, they had a distance program, a virtual program. So I was like, wait, if Eric Helms has taken on students, he's willing to take me on. I've met him before, I get along great with him. We have overlapping areas of interest and I can do this while staying in California, staying home, because you know, I was working from home. I was like, this is the only way I think I would ever do my PhD. So I was super fortunate that I was able to stay home, keep running my business, which was a personal decision of mine. I like staying busy, I like having more going on. So yeah, I was running a full time business while also pursuing my PhD at the same time, which was a little bit tricky when it came time for data collection, I won't lie. Especially because the I kind of it was because of pandemic and other variables. I ended up moving quite far away from my satellite school while the ethics approval process was still happening. So by the time it was approved, I was living 80 miles away from campus.

[Dr. Gabrielle Lyon]

So if you are doing a satellite program for Ph.D. and you did it in sports science.

[Sohee Carpenter]

Yes.

[Dr. Gabrielle Lyon]

If we lay out the framework for the audience with bachelor's in biology, then you did a Master's in psychology, which is kind of interesting.

[Sohee Carpenter]

Uhuh.

[Dr. Gabrielle Lyon]

And then did a PhD in sports science. Okay, so take me through why psychology and I do want to touch on, if you're open to it, a little bit of your struggles and how you've helped.

[Sohee Carpenter]

That's. That's where it all stemmed from, was my own personal struggles with especially eating behavior. So to rewind a bit, in my early teens I struggled with anorexia and bulimia for a little bit and then I was able to thankfully recover from the anorexia within a year or so. But I struggled with binge eating for years and years, probably into my early 20s.

[Dr. Gabrielle Lyon]

And you know, we've heard this story, which is fascinating. A lot of entrepreneurial, successful women we hear in their past, it's so common, it's very common, high prevalence.

[Sohee Carpenter]

I think it has to do with a lot of like high achieving, perfectionistic tendencies as well as, at least for me as a teen, I really cared as many people do I cared a lot what other people thought. And as is still the case today, when you enter your teen years, that's when you start hearing more chatter about oh, she's pretty because she's, she's skinny and she's, you know, she's popular. So that messaging or you know, at least where, where I grew up, there was a lot of unsolicited commenting about people's body size.

[Dr. Gabrielle Lyon]

And where did you grow up?

[Sohee Carpenter]

At the time I was living in Korea actually. And even though I know in US diet culture is a big problem, I would say I don't know about now, back then it was in Korea, it was worse. The standards are much higher or different.

[Dr. Gabrielle Lyon]

Is. I was talking to one of our other colleagues, Giselle, and she's from, she's from Shanghai and she was talking about her struggles.

[Sohee Carpenter]

Yeah, beauty standards are different.

[Dr. Gabrielle Lyon]

She was saying that the beauty standards are different culturally.

[Sohee Carpenter]

Yes. And then I would also even argue that a lot of the, maybe like the red flaggy diet culture behavior is, is, is more normalized there too. At least, at least back, back when I was living there, obviously this is now 20 plus years ago. So I don't know how much times have changed since then, but that was my experience growing up there. So there was a heavy emphasis placed on especially girls, women being thin. Where I would have a friend's mom say, oh, I haven't seen you in a while, you look great. You look even better if you lose 10 pounds or like, you know, 4 kilos or whatever, like. And I was 14 years old. Wow, 14 years old. And at the time, of course you're not old enough for your brain. Your brain's not like the level yet where you're like, oh, you're the problem for saying this to me. You think, oh, you must be right, maybe. And then the next day you stop eating lunch.

[Dr. Gabrielle Lyon]

Was it like that for you or did it happen? When, when did you come to the U.S. how old were you?

[Sohee Carpenter]

It was a long story. I moved around so much. I. So I was born in Korea and then I left when I was 2. I lived in my dad, he was in international corporate world. Everyone thinks it's military. It's international corporate world. And he was very willing to move from country to country when I was growing up. So I've lived in probably 17 or 18 different places. So I left when I was 2. I was, lived in Indiana for a while. Then I can go through the whole list. But as long bounced around, bounced around, moved to Chicago, moved out, back to Asia. So Then I moved back to Korea when I was 12 to 15, I think. So I was only there for three years. I was, by then I was. Because I'd grown up internationally and always went to international schools or American schools. I had a very heavy American background by then, so I went to international schools even in Korea. And then When I was 15, I left for boarding school to California and I've been in the US ever since.

[Dr. Gabrielle Lyon]

Okay. And are you an only child?

[Sohee Carpenter]

No, I have a brother. Older brother.

[Dr. Gabrielle Lyon]

You have an older brother? When you got to the US that's when your first encounter. And again, we're talking about how you got really interested in the psychology of health and wellness.

[Sohee Carpenter]

Yes. So I struggled with, I continued struggling with binge eating, as I said, through all my high school years and then even into college. It was less of a struggle. But I was not understanding the importance of behavior change and psychology. And so basically by the time I was 18, I had discovered the world of lifting weights and clean eating. Right. That's usually people.

[Dr. Gabrielle Lyon]

Is that when you started? I'm trying to really think back when I first saw you. And it was, yeah, I didn't start.

[Sohee Carpenter]

I didn't have an online, any presence until late 2011 is when I started my first free WordPress blog. I was a senior in college and I basically had gone through my four years of college trying to be a clean eater and sticking to rigid meal plans that my online coaches had provided for me, but struggling to adhere over and over, working out really hard, forgoing my entire social life, isolating myself, which I think a lot of people can relate to, but not understanding why. Why am I trying so hard? Why am I putting in so much effort when I'm high achieving in basically every other area of my life? You know, I graduated top of my class in high school. I went to a prestigious university. I'm doing well in that regard. But why is it my diet that I am continually struggling with? So by the time I got to my senior year, I, I was like, there has to be something I'm not understanding because I was seeing all this messaging about, you know, fitness is about hard work and sacrifice and discipline. And I'm like, but I am, I am hardworking. I am disciplined. I know these things. Like I wake up at 5:30am to hit the gym before classes. Like, I'm disciplined. So what, what am I missing? And finally I was like, maybe it's like, maybe let me look into some psychology. Right. So that's when I started. This was When I was 21 I started my first introduction into learning more about. Okay, I want to understand what it is about psychology I'm not understanding and help bridge the gap between the, the behavior and application that I'm obviously not getting. Right. So that's kind of where my interest in psychology started from. And then of course, throughout my college years. And I don't know if you remember back in the like, late 2000s, early 2010s era, fitness blogging was very big back then, before Instagram took off.

[Dr. Gabrielle Lyon]

And there were the, there were like the online communities, the threads, there were.

[Sohee Carpenter]

Fitness forums, there was all of. I was, I was a master lurker in multiple different fitness. I would never comment. I was like, I would obsessively read everything. I loved it. And at this point I had actually quit the pre med path. I was pre med, I was on the sports medicine track because I was like, I'm going to be an orthopedic surgeon. Turns out I didn't like it very much. And I was like, yeah. And I. And then I kept coming back to fitness as a hobby. And then, yeah, late 2011 was the first time I had realized, oh, maybe I can do something with this interest of mine.

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[Dr. Gabrielle Lyon]

I'm trying to remember when I first saw you, but it was, I mean it, it was way before Instagram. It was definitely online blogging, Twitter. No, no, it was so. It was WordPress. I'm sure it was WordPress. I'm sure it was a long time ago. Yeah, you had longer hair and I miss my long hair, but yeah, but you were talking about clean eating and macros at the time.

[Sohee Carpenter]

Oh my gosh, how funny.

[Dr. Gabrielle Lyon]

I don't remember if you had opened up about having eating.

[Sohee Carpenter]

Probably I was pretty forthcoming about that earlier.

[Dr. Gabrielle Lyon]

My first question, as I think about it, was there a moment where you were like, you know what, I am gonna share. Cause you were really ahead of your time. So right now you and I are seeing social media and Instagram and maybe for the last, I don't know. When did it get big? 2015?

[Sohee Carpenter]

Yes. I really, I think it took off.

[Dr. Gabrielle Lyon]

But you were doing stuff before that. Before that.

[Sohee Carpenter]

And there I was blogging, I was on Twitter. Twitter?

[Dr. Gabrielle Lyon]

Yeah. There's not. That's not common. No. It's also very exposing, right? Yes, yes. And typically, I mean I remember the first time I posted something, my armpits were sweating. There was a reason that I did it.

[Sohee Carpenter]

Yeah.

[Dr. Gabrielle Lyon]

Did you? Was there a driving reason?

[Sohee Carpenter]

Yes. I think for me again it was the only thing that I came back to interest wise. I was in the middle of. I have no idea what I want to do after I graduate college. I'm bouncing around different career paths. I gave up pre med. That was a really hard decision.

[Dr. Gabrielle Lyon]

Because you didn't like it.

[Sohee Carpenter]

Yes. And it was that, that was, I think maybe towards the end of my junior year. So when I was 20. And I mean it was a several month long decision because obviously, you know, it's very common. You grow up your whole life and I'm going to be a doctor, I'm going to be a doctor. And then you start doing the thing.

[Dr. Gabrielle Lyon]

And you're like, you're like organic chemistry sucks.

[Sohee Carpenter]

You know what it was? It was physical chemistry that did me in. That was the straw last year for me. Physical P Chem. I was like, I absolutely hate this class.

[Dr. Gabrielle Lyon]

Really.

[Sohee Carpenter]

I'm going to. I was like, I'm going to fail. I don't understand any. It was so abstract to me. I hired private tutors. I was getting extra help and, and, but obviously we know it's not one class that's gonna. It's not like you have to know physical chemistry as a practicing medical doctor. And even my aunt who's a doctor, she's like, you will never. She's like, you don't have to know Ochem. You don't have to know P Chem. Their classes sometimes, sometimes they do do classes. They kind of like thin the herd. And I was like, well, I didn't make it. But. But besides that, it really made me think about, okay, am I actually even enjoying this or am I following this? Because I think this is what I'm supposed to do. And a third of my graduating class are all pre med or they're all like, you know, the human biology major is a popular path.

[Dr. Gabrielle Lyon]

And you never had a Backup. It was always, no, I had no backup.

[Sohee Carpenter]

You were gonna be a doctor. When I quit that, I was, I was completely lost. I was like, I have nothing else. And I hadn't considered fitness as a career because again, at the time, having an online career or being something other than a full time personal trainer, which I didn't want to do, wasn't really well known or even well accepted concept. So. So even when I would kind of talk about it, I would get pushback. Not because they didn't understand. They'd be like, wait, you're gonna go to Stanford to become a personal trainer?

[Dr. Gabrielle Lyon]

You know, they're like, you better get a scholarship.

[Sohee Carpenter]

There was a lot of like, why are you doing that? Why are you wasting your. You don't need a four year bachelor's degree from a, you know, a well known college university to do that. Or why don't you become something more prestigious? There's always that kind of pushback. But then I started seeing from all the bloggers that I was following and whatever, I was like, first of all, one, I'm not seeing a lot of females in this space. Female voices, mostly men, which is common. Very male dominated industry.

[Dr. Gabrielle Lyon]

The BRO sphere.

[Sohee Carpenter]

Yes. And two, especially with my budding interest in psychology, I'm like, I'm also not seeing a lot of people talking about the psychology of fitness and the psychology of eating behavior. And even though I feel obviously very new to the space, I think there's a gap there.

[Dr. Gabrielle Lyon]

Is it safe to say that you went to psychology to solve what you felt was your own problem?

[Sohee Carpenter]

I wanted to understand myself better and I wanted to take what I learned and then translate it back to the general public.

[Dr. Gabrielle Lyon]

One of the things that I think is really interesting is that some people, in order to understand a challenge, they learn all about it. There are some people that are like, tell me what to do.

[Sohee Carpenter]

And.

[Dr. Gabrielle Lyon]

And then there's other people that are faced with a challenge and then they want to learn everything about it. They want to understand so that they can overcome it.

[Sohee Carpenter]

Yes.

[Dr. Gabrielle Lyon]

When you decided that you weren't going to medical school, and the reason I'm asking this question is because I think there are moments of transitions and transitions in life. They are predictably difficult. You have always been driven and naturally entrepreneurial, whether you knew it or not.

[Sohee Carpenter]

Yeah.

[Dr. Gabrielle Lyon]

And all of a sudden your path, you know, you're very stoic in terms of the direction I'm picking this. I'm doing this. Got into Stanford.

[Sohee Carpenter]

Yes.

[Dr. Gabrielle Lyon]

Junior year. Pull the plug on medicine.

[Sohee Carpenter]

Yeah.

[Dr. Gabrielle Lyon]

At that time, big Transition moment.

[Sohee Carpenter]

Yeah. Oh, I was, I had meltdowns. I was crying all the time.

[Dr. Gabrielle Lyon]

So this is my question for the listener relating. Okay, maybe they're in a transition. Did your eating disorder pick up during that time?

[Sohee Carpenter]

I don't know that it did, actually. I think I was, I was, I mean, I was in this. I was struggling, but I think it was a consistent struggle for me. I know that for a lot of people, stress levels do exacerbate disordered eating symptoms or behaviors. I don't think that was the case for me necessarily. I was always kind of like the same binge, restrict over exercise cycle over.

[Dr. Gabrielle Lyon]

And over and over as these things happened. How did you, or how would you recommend maybe first start with how you began to manage it.

[Sohee Carpenter]

Okay. So it was a very gradual process for me and a lot of it was actually before I. I went back to get my master's degree. And it was while I was learning more about habits and understanding the psychology of eating behavior, I started understanding, okay, it's actually not about trying harder like we've been told. So I, I'm not actually the problem. If anything, I've probably been trying too hard and that's been backfiring on me. And I think a lot of people will relate to trying to be too restrictive with your diet, slashing your calories too much or cutting out too many food groups and then not being able to sustain that and then eventually binge eating. So that was my cycle over and over again. And for so many years. I legitimately believe it's because I'm not being strict enough. When I was already so, so strict. So I would keep my target calories really low relative to my body weight around level. So I was, I was like in my like body weight wise in my like 124 was. I was like hovering there for a number of years, which I know for a lot of people is like, they're like, oh, that's really low. But it was a reflection of my binge eating behaviors. But I think it was also offset by how much exercise I was doing too. And I was trying to consume like 1300 calories a day and I thought.

[Dr. Gabrielle Lyon]

That was high and how much, what.

[Sohee Carpenter]

I should have done.

[Dr. Gabrielle Lyon]

Were you training at the time?

[Sohee Carpenter]

Probably like hour and a half, two hours a day. Looking back and from what I learned since then, I probably could have had closer to like 2000 calories a day or maybe even more and still actually lost body fat. But what was happening was I would try and again, this is very common couple days. 1300 calories. 1300 calories. Can't do it. Can't do it. I feel terrible. I'd binge, I'd binge, I'd binge. And then my calorie intake from the days I would binge would be so high that it would then blow me up into either maintenance or calorie surplus. And this continued for years.

[Dr. Gabrielle Lyon]

Okay, so let's, let's talk about this because one of the things that you value very much is evidence based protocols. And we don't, we as a collective, as the show feel that that's very important. Just, you know, scientific integrity is important. The things that we know, things that we don't fake. Science versus the not so good science. When you were designing a program. Yeah. You were eating at. If you just want to kind of take us through how we can think about designing a program, let's say for. Because I know that you were competing, right.

[Sohee Carpenter]

I did for a number of years. I won't do it again. But it was, Yeah, I did.

[Dr. Gabrielle Lyon]

How do you think about designing a plan for individuals for nutrition? Yeah. Or you can maybe start with yourself how you were thinking about.

[Sohee Carpenter]

Oh, back then or now because of their very. They're so different.

[Dr. Gabrielle Lyon]

Tell me back then and then tell me and then tell me now.

[Sohee Carpenter]

So back then, the way that I had learned from other fitness people as well was, you know, there's a body, there's so many different equations. The simplest way was a body weight multiplier. Right. So you take your current body weight times a certain range, depending on your goal. So the, the numbers that I was given at the time, which in hindsight I'm like, you know what, there's actually, it could be actually quite a bit higher. Was your body weight in pounds times 10 to 12 is your calorie intake. So if you're like 200 pounds, to keep it easy, you would consume between like 2,000 to 24. Is that math right? 2,400 calories a day. And I actually learned, it took me a number of years to learn that actually if your activity level is higher, you can actually bump that up by quite a bit and still lose body fat and probably feel better while you're doing it too. So when I had hired coaches, because I would learn a lot by studying the plans that I was provided from my fitness coaches at the the time. And then I'd be like, because I want to understand, right. So every time I'd be like, okay, so that's relative to my body weight. That's like Roughly this number. And then over time I can tell they're dropping the calories because I do the calculations and this and that. And then you can see a pattern. Right. So that, that's kind of what I had learned. And so that's kind of what I used for myself. I was like, okay, like 120something times like 11 because I want to be a bit more aggressive or something like that. And then you get the number that pops out. But then I'd be like, I can't stick to this.

[Dr. Gabrielle Lyon]

So you were having around 1300 calories, which is even.

[Sohee Carpenter]

I'm like.

[Dr. Gabrielle Lyon]

And let's, let's, let's talk about this. When we design diets in our medical practice, we think about. We get an estimate of the resting energy expenditure.

[Sohee Carpenter]

Yes.

[Dr. Gabrielle Lyon]

For people that are listening, resting energy expenditure is the amount of energy that it takes to just live. It's kind of your floor. We don't believe in going below that. And that is the absolute minimum would.

[Sohee Carpenter]

Have been my RMR probably. Right, right.

[Dr. Gabrielle Lyon]

And that is, I mean you should never. No one, at least from our perspective, needs to be that low.

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[Dr. Gabrielle Lyon]

The average American based on the Data eats between 500 and 1,000 more calories than they need a day. So if the resting energy expenditure is the floor and you, let's just say you were basically there. You were there.

[Sohee Carpenter]

Yeah.

[Dr. Gabrielle Lyon]

Not accounting for activity or Anything else that you were doing, you must have been very hungry. Oh, yeah.

[Sohee Carpenter]

But I was like, discipline. You gotta want, you know, all the messaging that we were told. Okay, okay.

[Dr. Gabrielle Lyon]

Soda.

[Sohee Carpenter]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And that.

[Dr. Gabrielle Lyon]

Because if people are listening and let's say now we have Ozempic and GLP1s, which did not exist back then for weight loss.

[Sohee Carpenter]

Yes.

[Dr. Gabrielle Lyon]

Which can you imagine if they did? The generation that's growing up now will not have to experience.

[Sohee Carpenter]

Oh, yeah.

[Dr. Gabrielle Lyon]

Have you thought about that?

[Sohee Carpenter]

They. I also don't have to try to get my hands on that. Even though I'm actually not a good candidate for GLP ones I would have found a way to get.

[Dr. Gabrielle Lyon]

It definitely is transformative for people in terms of appetite regulation. So for someone listening, if you are under eating calories, because that is the first thing that people do, they don't increase their exercise, they reduce their caloric intake. And I did this in college three, four days. And then by the weekend or.

[Sohee Carpenter]

Yeah, like Friday, Saturday, Sunday, I was.

[Dr. Gabrielle Lyon]

At the University of Illinois. There's not much to do there.

[Sohee Carpenter]

Yeah, you're partying or you're so deprived by them that you or you want to reward yourself.

[Dr. Gabrielle Lyon]

I was definitely not partying. I was a nerd. And I sat in the first row because I needed to get an A in Don Lehman's class. I will also say that some of my counterparts who we know, Layne Norton, sat in the back, and I definitely did better than him.

[Sohee Carpenter]

That is so funny. Did you know I used to work for him?

[Dr. Gabrielle Lyon]

I did not know that.

[Sohee Carpenter]

Yeah, I was his. Actually, this is beginning my career.

[Dr. Gabrielle Lyon]

Maybe that's how I found you.

[Sohee Carpenter]

So in 2013. So basically what had happened was in 2012, I was an intern at a strength and conditioning facility right after. Right out of college. And I had been blogging for like six months by then seven months. And I reached out to him via email. This is back when he was replying to every single email on his own. And I was like, hey, I would like to do. I'd like to interview you for a blog post about intermittent fasting. And he replied and answered my questions. So he knew me from there. And then a year later, I was living in New York, I reached out to him and I was like, hey, do you need a virtual assistant? And he was like, yeah. And then he hired me right away. So I was running my online business, blogging, personal training, and doing his admin work for about two years.

[Dr. Gabrielle Lyon]

Well, let's just bust his chops. And he sat in the back and I was definitely a better student than him and certainly Don Layman's favorite and still am Lane. Anyway, so by the third or fourth day, people are starving and they're probably trying this now. Resting energy expenditure is at the baseline. You hit the fourth day, you're doing a refeed. A not purposeful refeed. How did you recover? So let me. Let me say one more statement. Restrict binge, feel terrible. Yeah, go to the gym on that. So Friday, let's say you're overeating. Friday, pizza, you were partying. I wasn't eating pizza and smoothies, whatever. Dorking out. And they didn't even have Netflix. And then were you at the gym the next day? How cognitively were you managing it then?

[Sohee Carpenter]

I mean, there's a lot of cognitive dissonance, of course, because you're like, this is not the behavior that I want to be engaging in. So you'd be like, oh, this is a refeed. You know, you tell yourself, this is a refeed. Oh, I needed the extra calories. I'm gonna do an extra hour of cardio tomorrow. It's fine. It'll burn it all off. You tell yourself whatever you gotta tell yourself, or this is definitely the last time I'm gonna do this, and I'll never do this again. I'll be harder on myself. It's. You tell yourself the same thing every single time. And at some point, at least for me, I was like, you know what? This isn't working. I'm putting so much mental bandwidth into. Into this, and I'm getting with. I'm going backwards. I'm not. I'm not seeing the results that I want to see, and I'm frustrated. And so it wasn't until after I graduated college, and it was a very gradual process where I was like, I'm starting to understand more about the psychology of eating behavior. I think I'm trying too hard. I'm being too strict, so I'm going to loosen the reins. And of course, it was scary. I'm going to. I'm going to be more inclusive with my diet. I'm going to stop.

[Dr. Gabrielle Lyon]

What was your diet like at the time?

[Sohee Carpenter]

I was. I was a. You know, I put in heavy quotes. I was a clean eater. It was like, is this chicken grilled or fried or. What kind of oil did you use? Did you use spray or did you pour the oil on? What kind of rice is it? Oh, this, this, this. These vegetables can't have any oil in it. It was very restrictive. I can have. I can have a Protein shake and four almonds. It was like that.

[Dr. Gabrielle Lyon]

No, I was with you.

[Sohee Carpenter]

Yeah.

[Dr. Gabrielle Lyon]

That's probably how I found you. I was like, wow, what is she doing? Yeah, how did. Okay, so you said it's a very gradual process.

[Sohee Carpenter]

Very gradual process. So I slowly started. I was, you know, I was like, I'm gonna stop tracking my calories. I'm tired of it. It's not, it's not working some. It's not working. So I, I stopped tracking, but I was still eating, you know, like protein at every meal. Da, da, da, da. But what was so interesting is over. I don't know how many months it was, but like, it was less than a year. I stopped trying so hard. I stopped binging eventually. And again, it wasn't fun trying so.

[Dr. Gabrielle Lyon]

Hard for the listener. They're probably thinking, okay, so we've heard other people on your show that have talked about eating disorder. We had. Do you know Michelle McDonald? Joan trained over.

[Sohee Carpenter]

Yeah.

[Dr. Gabrielle Lyon]

She suffered with an eating disorder pretty severely for many years, and she's still very aware of impulses and how to restrain that. But for you, it seems like it's a little bit different.

[Sohee Carpenter]

Yes. And I think the thing I do want to emphasize is that binge eating can have multiple triggers. Eating behavior is so complicated for me, a lot of it, because for a lot of people, it's not actually about the food. For me, it was about the control of the food to then look a certain way, to then be accepted in a certain way and perceived a certain way. The reason why my binge eating persisted for so long for me is that it was the extreme level of rigidity with my diet. So as soon as I let myself actually eat more calories on a day to day basis and also feel less deprived with my food choices, when I started liking the way I ate more, right. And then I felt, because I felt less deprived, I didn't have the urge to binge one away for me. And when I did that, of course, my actual day to day calorie intake actually dropped. And then over the course of like, I want to say eight months or so, I lost like 10 pounds without trying. And this was about 10, maybe 10 plus years ago. And I was so amazed because I was like, I'm actually trying. I'm putting in less effort and I'm getting, I'm, I'm losing weight when I'm trying less. And I was like, oh my God, I feel like I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm. I've understood something that I really didn't get before.

[Dr. Gabrielle Lyon]

And that was a moment.

[Sohee Carpenter]

Oh, it was huge.

[Dr. Gabrielle Lyon]

Yeah.

[Sohee Carpenter]

And it really changed a lot of my messaging and I've continued to evolve my messaging since then, but it really highlighted to me, okay, it's really not.

[Dr. Gabrielle Lyon]

About trying harder, which is counterintuitive basically to I think a lot of messages out there.

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[Dr. Gabrielle Lyon]

When you were and you work with people, you have online coaching and you do this stuff, what is it for most people? Is there a, is there a theme that you see if in terms of.

[Sohee Carpenter]

Like the nutrition mistakes that they make?

[Dr. Gabrielle Lyon]

Yeah. So if someone's listening to this and they're going, you know what, I have been trying so hard and I don't want to do a GLP1. I want to do it with nutrition and training and increasing my activity. So back like the old school way. We could call it the old school way. How can they. What would be the first step in beginning to unpack or reposition their mind around dieting to overcome that particular aspect?

[Sohee Carpenter]

Yeah, one thing that. Okay, so this really changed my perspective a lot for me. What clicked for me was understanding it's not about because I Used to believe that the stricter I was, the more miserable I was, the better the results I was going to get. I now think, and this was about 10 years ago I had this revelation. It's not about making things as strict as possible. It's about removing as many pain barriers as you can and removing as many obstacles while mitigating how much extra effort you have to exert to see the results you want to see.

[Dr. Gabrielle Lyon]

Do you think about food now?

[Sohee Carpenter]

Only in like I'm really excited to eat dinner. Like that sounds great. That sounds. But not in. Not in the obsessive food noise way that I had before. So I can. And a lot of people will relate to this and a lot of. A big reason why a lot of people will take GLP1s is that it eliminates food noise. You know. And when I was binge eating, my food noise was constant. I do not have that anymore. Where I can. I cannot tell how you. How freeing it is to be able to eat a meal, feel actually satisfied and move on with your day without. And going like four or five hours without having to think about food.

[Dr. Gabrielle Lyon]

Isn't that. It's amazing.

[Sohee Carpenter]

It's so freeing. And I know and, and a lot of people have never experienced what it's like to not have food noise.

[Dr. Gabrielle Lyon]

Is there sustainability in the way in which you are thinking about nutrition now?

[Sohee Carpenter]

Absolutely. I would say I would describe myself as an intuitive eater now. I wasn't even 10 years ago. I was still heavily macro tracking. I was all about flexible.

[Dr. Gabrielle Lyon]

And that's also anti. But let's. Let's take a pause.

[Sponsor/Advertisement Voice]

Intuitive eating.

[Dr. Gabrielle Lyon]

And again you went to Stanford. Also have a master's in psychology. Also just completed your PhD. Congratulations.

[Sohee Carpenter]

Thank you. Yeah.

[Dr. Gabrielle Lyon]

I have always believed in evidence based. Right. Don has trained me. If I see something wrong, he'll call me like why did you say it that way? And then comes along intuitive eating. Which by the way think about that just conceptually is it doesn't make scientific sense at all. But there is a level of freedom that comes from being able to trust. And I say this cautiously because it's.

[Sohee Carpenter]

A skill by the way. It's a learn skill. Yeah. Yeah. And I think the thing with intuitive. And I used to, I used to be like intuitive eating sounds that doesn't work.

[Sponsor/Advertisement Voice]

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[Dr. Gabrielle Lyon]

Sounds like we need some tarot cards like 50 pounds heavier cards and essential oils.

[Sohee Carpenter]

Yeah. Like Frou Frou. But the thing is there is actually growing body of research in support of intuitive eating. Not for weight loss. It's not the purpose is not for weight loss, which a lot of people say, I'm intuitively eating my way to weight loss. That's not true. That's not intuitive eating. But what.

[Dr. Gabrielle Lyon]

Well, what is intuitive.

[Sohee Carpenter]

There's a really. So intuitive eating. I'm gonna. In the simplest terms, is a huge principle. Is. Is, of course, honoring your physical hunger and fullness cues. But another, there's. There's multiple principles to it. A lot of. One principle that a lot of people do not know about actually is the concept of gentle nutrition, which is one of the last steps.

[Dr. Gabrielle Lyon]

Gentle nutrition.

[Sohee Carpenter]

It's the last step of the intuitive eating process. And that's the part that I think is really important, where you are still actually making choices that honor your health while also honoring your personal preferences. So, for example, have you heard of the concept of ad, don't restrict in nutrition?

[Dr. Gabrielle Lyon]

And I've never heard of gentle eating. Okay.

[Sohee Carpenter]

Okay. Yeah, yeah. Oh, they're great. We're talking about it. So the idea of add, don't restrict. A lot of dietitians love to talk about it. I didn't come up with it, but I love. I'm a huge proponent of it is the idea that they say, have what you want, add what you need, and you. You don't have a food restriction mindset. And so, for example, let's say I want a pizza. We know that pizza is not like the most nutritious meal necessarily, but maybe you'll add. If you're making your own pizza, you'll be like, I'm gonna add some bell peppers. I'm gonna add some mushrooms. I'm add some onions. I'm going to have a side salad with it so I can get in some extra veggies. And maybe, you know, it's got like two slices of pepperoni. I'm going to add some more protein on that. So you're adding in the nutrients that you need. And I love this because from my learnings from food psychology, we want to keep people out of the restriction mindset as much as possible with nutrition. So it's not necessarily about. Actually. So obviously we know people have, like, dietary. Legitimate dietary restrictions.

[Dr. Gabrielle Lyon]

Basically, what you're saying is pizza is not its own food group. This is not your ideal choice.

[Sohee Carpenter]

And that's also, like, not a rule either. So I. I'm like, okay, if you do that, like, a lot of the time and they occasionally you have a cheese pizza, a greasy cheese pizza by itself, that's also fine too, because again, I don't want to have rigid food Rules. But a lot like this is my, this is my approach. This is what we teach our clients. If you have, you know, a wrap and there's one slice of thin deli meat, can you be like, can I get it at some extra protein on that?

[Dr. Gabrielle Lyon]

And this is an ad.

[Sohee Carpenter]

Don't restrict, don't restrict. Or like I'm going to add some, like one of them. I love eating ramen, for example. But we know it's not like I would not recommend an all ramen diet.

[Dr. Gabrielle Lyon]

Yes, she does. Any sponsors for ramen?

[Sohee Carpenter]

But sometimes they'd be like, I'm going to add an egg, I'm going to add another source of protein, like a handful of chicken. I'm going to add some beans to it for the fiber, you know.

[Dr. Gabrielle Lyon]

Okay, so then what is the psychology of. What is it that we're. That when we restrict something makes us course correct the opposite way, more intensely.

[Sohee Carpenter]

There's a lot of different theories out there. The big one I'm gonna go with. And again, it's very complicated My, my interests with all of this. I really honed in on the idea that of willpower. Right. Everyone's. You need more willpower, you need more discipline. The problem is willpower feels fatiguing.

[Dr. Gabrielle Lyon]

Willpower feels fatiguing.

[Sohee Carpenter]

And the way the analogy that a lot of scientists use is that you have one source of willpower, like a battery that gets drained by multiple sources.

[Dr. Gabrielle Lyon]

Do you believe that?

[Sohee Carpenter]

So there's a lot of. So some controversy now. But basically that's why I. And there's also some research saying the key to behavior change is not in relying on willpower willy nilly with brute force. It's about being more strategic about when you use willpower. And I think the smarter way to do it is I'm going to use willpower to do. To form new habits to form the healthy habits that I want to have in my life. Because the key, the key feature of habits is that they are cognitively not fatiguing. They're automatic. So the more healthy habits or the more, you know, pro goal habits you have in your life, the easier it is for you.

[Dr. Gabrielle Lyon]

That is fascinating. How does someone begin to instill a habit that requires a lower cognitive load?

[Sohee Carpenter]

Yeah, there's a lot of ways to do this.

[Dr. Gabrielle Lyon]

So the most effective way that you have seen, especially when it comes to body weight and nutrition.

[Sohee Carpenter]

Yeah. So I would first, first do a nutrition. I would do an audit first of all. Like, because everyone's going to have a different thing. And what I would do is probably identify a few key behaviors we can modify in your life that I think will make a big difference without, like, excessive amount of effort.

[Dr. Gabrielle Lyon]

Okay, give me an example.

[Sohee Carpenter]

Someone wants to lose 30 pounds. They've never, they, they don't know anything about protein. They've never done a proper, like a reasonable diet in their life. They have a history of crash dieting, and they go from extreme diet to completely given up. Right, that's pretty common. And then you're like, okay, tell me about what you eat. They're like, okay, for breakfast, I have a pizza. I have a pizza and I have a venti extra large latte with all the sugar and this and this and this. And then for lunch I have a box of donuts. And then for dinner I have a lasagna and then a tub of ice cream or something like that. And while it does sound extreme, we do have clients coming up to us where that is their normal diet. And I would say, okay, how about this we're going to do. And I think it's important to give them a certain level of autonomy. Of autonomy as well. And be like, okay, here are some, some things that we can do. What do you want to choose? I think, how about, would you be willing to. Instead of 12 donuts in one sitting, would you be willing to reduce it to, to six? And then instead of remove the six donuts and then add in, so you have six donuts, take away the other six. Then we're gonna add in like a protein shake or a meal replacement shake or, or something that's gonna, you know, give them a little bit more protein. Because we know their protein needs work. Their sugar intake is through the roof, fiber intake is like non existent. You know, things like that. You're like, okay, there's so much move for improvement that even the most modest changes will actually elicit a lot. How about instead of your extra large latte in the morning, how about a, a small? You don't. Okay, you don't do a small. How about a medium?

[Dr. Gabrielle Lyon]

I get the picture.

[Sohee Carpenter]

Yeah.

[Dr. Gabrielle Lyon]

How long does that phase last?

[Sohee Carpenter]

Depends on the person. It can go weeks, it can go months.

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[Sohee Carpenter]

My thing is, I don't want to make drastic changes unless I have to. And if we can see, if we can get you to see the progress that you want to see, if we can get you moving in the right direction while things still feel easy, why would I want to make things harder? That's my take.

[Dr. Gabrielle Lyon]

Yeah, I, you know, oftentimes people will come in and again, as people are learning more and listening and getting more information, a lot of people will come in and say, okay, I want the best diet plan. Give me the best diet plan.

[Sohee Carpenter]

Yeah. Or they're like, if it's not extreme, it's not worth doing. And if it's too much, they're like, eh, I don't want to do it. But it was just how I used to think too.

[Dr. Gabrielle Lyon]

Yeah, exactly. Perhaps in order to set people up for success, what you're saying and what it seems like some of the evidence supports is depending on where someone starts the standard American diet. And all of those things that you mentioned are very high in the standard American diet. I think pizza is one of the number one foods eaten. I think that's the number one source of saturated fat.

[Sohee Carpenter]

And it's so good.

[Dr. Gabrielle Lyon]

I don't really like pizza.

[Sohee Carpenter]

Really?

[Sponsor/Advertisement Voice]

No.

[Sohee Carpenter]

I'm a big guy.

[Dr. Gabrielle Lyon]

I don't. But instead of, you know, as I reflect, I think because as we are now, you know, professionals, if you think back to when you started, when I started working with people, actually started working with people by the. Before I was in, was I in.

[Sohee Carpenter]

Med school with their Fitness.

[Dr. Gabrielle Lyon]

Yeah.

[Sohee Carpenter]

Okay.

[Dr. Gabrielle Lyon]

And nutrition, because I studied nutritional sciences in my undergrad.

[Sohee Carpenter]

Okay.

[Dr. Gabrielle Lyon]

And then when I graduated, I started doing programs for people.

[Sohee Carpenter]

Oh, okay, cool.

[Dr. Gabrielle Lyon]

And instead of doing it that way, I would say, okay, here's your boiled chicken. Here's your chicken breast.

[Sohee Carpenter]

Yeah. That was the norm.

[Dr. Gabrielle Lyon]

And it probably would have been so much more effective to start where people are. What I think is very eye opening is that the longer you go in practice like you and I have been, the more perspective we have for all of the patients or people that we have treated.

[Sohee Carpenter]

You look back and you're like, oh, I should have done this and this.

[Dr. Gabrielle Lyon]

Right. And it's this kind of evolving experience.

[Sohee Carpenter]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, you don't know what you don't know.

[Dr. Gabrielle Lyon]

That is one way to do it. So this is the adding, not subtracting.

[Sohee Carpenter]

Yep. But when it comes to fat loss, specifically the way that you would use the add. Don't distract, not subtract, or the ad. Don't restrict the. The goal of that would be addition by just displacement by addition. Right. So you displace the calories by adding in more. More filling, like protein and veggie.

[Dr. Gabrielle Lyon]

Talk to me through that a little bit. And we're talking about changing habits. So basically, when it came down to. So what you're doing is you're integrating the science of nutrition plus the behavior change.

[Sohee Carpenter]

Yes. Right.

[Dr. Gabrielle Lyon]

And the habit is not to completely obliterate someone's plan, because the reality is, it's like, if someone wants to start a workout plan, maybe they shouldn't start CrossFit as their first ever workout.

[Sohee Carpenter]

Or if they. If they. If they're like, I really hate sprinting. And you're like, well, too bad. You're doing sprints day one and every day. They're. They're not going to stick to it for a long time. And the same idea applies to nutrition, where the norm is to cut out all their favorite foods because they think they're automatically bad and have to go. And I'm like, no, I want you to keep your favorite foods as much as you can. But can we be a little bit more judicious about. A little bit more intentional about our portions?

[Dr. Gabrielle Lyon]

So step one is really repositioning portioning as well as adding in, for example, protein.

[Sohee Carpenter]

And then the other easy thing you can do, too, is again, when you talk, when you do an audit, you're like, oh, I see. You like to eat this handful of the candy bowl at your desk when you're working. Are you even paying attention to the candy. When you're. They're like, no, I'm in a meeting and I'm putting it in my mouth because I'm bored. And you're like, okay, so they're actually mindless calories that you don't even enjoy if. If you're not going to miss them. If we take it away, why don't we get rid of. Why don't we move again from a behavior. Behavior change standpoint? Why don't we move the candy bowl to somewhere that is more inconvenient for you to access? Even simple things like changing it from a clear bowl to an opaque bowl and putting it at the back of the closet where you can't. It's not an arm's reach anymore. Where you have to stand up, open the closet, grab a step stool, da, da, da, da. If you make it harder for you to get to, the easier thing is to not eat it. So why don't you make the default behavior the thing you actually want to do and the thing you don't want to do less of? How can you make that behavior more inconvenient for yourself?

[Dr. Gabrielle Lyon]

How can you make that behavior more inconvenient?

[Sohee Carpenter]

Yep, that's.

[Dr. Gabrielle Lyon]

That is a good strategy.

[Sohee Carpenter]

Yeah. Do you have another.

[Dr. Gabrielle Lyon]

Another habit changing tip or a way of thinking about it?

[Sohee Carpenter]

So basically what you want to do is. This is not my quote. You want to design for laziness. Okay.

[Dr. Gabrielle Lyon]

My husband will love hearing.

[Sohee Carpenter]

Yeah. Yeah. So there's an example. This is not mine. I think I read it in a book that really. I was like, oh, that makes complete sense. So there was a anecdote of a guy who wanted to practice his guitar more often. And he was like, oh, I'm doing like 20 minutes a day. Da da. It's great. He put the guitar in his closet. That was enough for him to completely forget that it was there because visibly there's. There's no. The visual cue is gone. Right. So the way a habit works is you have. You have the habit loop, right? You have the cue or the trigger or the prompt. This is the thing that says, do this now. So if you pick up your phone, it might be because someone's ringing you. Right? That's the trigger in terms of the. The guitar playing that he needed the visual cue of like, oh, I see it. He. He didn't have the cue. He put it away. He forgot it was there. So because the trigger was removed, the behavior doesn't happen. And he was like, okay, this isn't happening. What am I missing? Okay. What I did was okay, I, I pulled the guitar out of the guitar or sorry, out of the closet and I put it in the living room where I would pass it every day. So now I can see it. I became a lot better at remembering to practice because the cue is there. So what can you do to whatever it is you want to do? For example, if you are in the, you you wanna get in the habit of taking daily medication but you always forget because it's in the cupboard. What I do with my prenatals right now because I'm pregnant.

[Dr. Gabrielle Lyon]

I didn't know if we were going to talk about.

[Sohee Carpenter]

Yeah, it's fine. I was like, I may as well. I'm going to use my own example. Okay. I went a period of time where I was so spotty with my prenatal daily intake and I was like, duh. I can use my own knowledge of behavior change to make this better. I put it on my coffee machine because it was away in the cupboard.

[Dr. Gabrielle Lyon]

You mean you put it on your coffee machine. Look at your coffee machine. You can only have 200 milligrams of caffeine a day when you're pregnant. In case you are listening or if someone is pregnant, which is the biggest mistake ever. And then what I did from my perspective because.

[Sohee Carpenter]

And then what I did was. Now a very popular term is, it's called habit stacking where you pair a new behavior that you want to turn into a habit with an existing daily habit. Right? And what do I do every single day at home is I'm in my kitchen either making breakfast or making lunch. So as I'm getting ready to make, make my meal and sit down, I see my prenatals and I'm like, I'm going to take those out and sit down with me and I'll pop it in before I eat.

[Dr. Gabrielle Lyon]

So someone thinking about how they are going to change their diet, would you have them pretend it's not a supplement? Right. What if it's, I mean, you're not going to put a chicken breast on the counter. But how would they start to think if they are someone who is not really interested in eating healthy. But we know that we have to get them there.

[Sohee Carpenter]

Okay. So I'm going to tell you about two really cool studies that kind of, that illustrate this point. So there was one study where they took a hospital cafeteria, okay. And what they did was, all they did was very quietly, they changed the placement of bottled water versus soda and other no calorie laden drinks in the cafeteria. So they moved the water bottles to the front or they had them in the back where you had to open the fridge and literally go like this, reach a little bit more to access the water. That was enough to significantly change water bottle, water consumption, fluid consumption. There was another study where there was, you know, those ice cream freezers where you. There's a sliding door and whatever, leaving it open, people grabbed more if you leave it shut and they have to.

[Dr. Gabrielle Lyon]

Do this, they're like, eh, we are really simple people. We're simple not people. We are simple creatures.

[Sohee Carpenter]

So this is what I mean when I say designed for laziness. And it sounds negative. It's really not. How can you use that to your advantage? Okay. How can you. In your fridge, can you make the foods you want to eat more of? Put them at eye level. And marketing psychologists know this already. Put it at eye level, put it where it's easier to reach, not behind the, the, you know, the fried food and this and that, or the sodas, put them in front. Your protein shakes readily. As soon as you open your fridge, I want to see it right away. So there's the visual cue. And it's also easier for me to, to grab it. Make it more likely. If I have my protein powder, you know, on my counter, I'm more likely to meet my protein target versus if it's in the back of my pantry. Because I think of it, I'm like, I don't wanna do that.

[Dr. Gabrielle Lyon]

If someone has tendencies towards, let's just say binging or they, for example, Friday night comes along and they have done really well all week and they have movie night with their kids. It's like popcorn movie night.

[Sohee Carpenter]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Love it.

[Dr. Gabrielle Lyon]

It's not. I know, totally. And it's not on their plan.

[Sohee Carpenter]

Yeah.

[Dr. Gabrielle Lyon]

And they fall off their plan. Okay, how do you reorient people to get right back on there? Because now we haven't taken them in a very restrictive way, which I, I can really appreciate that. And it takes a lot of pressure off of people. And then they don't. They're not failing all the time. Yeah, yeah, right.

[Sohee Carpenter]

My. Okay, so my very first thought when you were bringing up that example was, how can I incorporate the popcorn into your plan? And my. And my next thought was, why can't I be part of your plan? You know, and so there are ways to small things like, okay, you can have your popcorn, but does it have to be a bucket size? Because we know that the more of a certain meal that you eat, the less you enjoy it over time.

[Dr. Gabrielle Lyon]

Okay. That is. Yes. Can you pause there? Because I want to tell you a little story, which I've never. I've never even.

[Sohee Carpenter]

Okay. Oh, I'm interested.

[Dr. Gabrielle Lyon]

I don't even know if I'm going to keep it in the podcast. When I was in college, I. I competed. I competed in fitness.

[Sohee Carpenter]

Okay.

[Dr. Gabrielle Lyon]

And after a show, you're. At least for me, I was like, off the rails 100. I had dieted down so low, and I. I wouldn't even say it was this dysmorphic association with my body. I'd, like, starved myself. So I went. Do you remember insomnia cookies?

[Sohee Carpenter]

Yes, I think.

[Dr. Gabrielle Lyon]

Do they still around?

[Sohee Carpenter]

Yeah.

[Dr. Gabrielle Lyon]

Okay. I probably got 12.

[Sohee Carpenter]

Yeah.

[Dr. Gabrielle Lyon]

Okay.

[Sohee Carpenter]

Yeah.

[Dr. Gabrielle Lyon]

And sitting in my room in college, totally feeling terrible that I'm eating. I got to three, and then by four, I was like, this doesn't even. I can't even believe this. Number one. It's not even enjoyable anymore.

[Sohee Carpenter]

Yep.

[Dr. Gabrielle Lyon]

My stomach hurts. I'm still eating it. It doesn't taste good. There was diminishing returns.

[Sohee Carpenter]

Yeah, I fully relate to that.

[Dr. Gabrielle Lyon]

Okay. What is that?

[Sohee Carpenter]

I don't know the answer to that, but I would be curious to know. I wonder. It has to do with dopamine responses or something similar, but it's. It's. I mean, I think we can all really, like. Oh, I get that.

[Dr. Gabrielle Lyon]

Because if we know that's going to happen, then that fourth cookie, it's not gonna make you happy.

[Sohee Carpenter]

Yeah. But I think there's a lot of all or nothing mentality there where you're like, well, one, I've already committed to this. I've already bought all this, whatever. Two, tomorrow, I'm never gonna. I'm not. I'm gonna go right back to my strict diet anyway. So this is my last chance. Last chance syndrome. Right. This is my last window of opportunity to. To eat as much as I can. So even if I'm not enjoying it, I should eat it, because this is my window right now. And I think that's a very, very calm. I had that I would. I would remember in the middle of a binge, I had this logical thought where I'm like, I'm not even enjoying this. This isn't even yum. This is dry. This is stale. Da, da, da, da. But tomorrow I can't eat it, so you'd better eat it now.

[Dr. Gabrielle Lyon]

I did that too. And I wonder, you know, I'm curious for the people that are listening, I would love to hear if you guys have experienced this, because maybe it's an age thing when you're in your 20s. I don't know. Do you have more mature clients that suffer from this now?

[Sohee Carpenter]

Yes.

[Dr. Gabrielle Lyon]

You do?

[Sohee Carpenter]

Yes.

[Dr. Gabrielle Lyon]

Okay.

[Sohee Carpenter]

Yeah.

[Dr. Gabrielle Lyon]

So it's not necessarily just an age thing and it can be a restriction thing.

[Sohee Carpenter]

Yeah. But I do think that in general, I would say mindless eating is a huge problem. And especially if you're. There is research when you're distracted, you are more likely to eat a higher calorie intake.

[Dr. Gabrielle Lyon]

Is there any data or have you had any experience or would you have any advice for someone who is in the middle of a binge or a behavior and they just happen, God willing to turn this podcast on or watch it on YouTube and they're listening to this and they're kind of in an out of control cycle. Do you think, is there something that we could tell them to stop them in their track?

[Sohee Carpenter]

The thing that's so hard about binge eating is that when you're in the middle of a binge, there's almost no reasoning with you. You're not being logical and you know it and you, it. It almost feels like an out of body experience. I would describe it as for me, I felt like I was watching myself from above, like an aerial view and I had no control of what, what my body was doing. Right. And so even you can say all the logical this and that you want. No, you're in this mode. It's hard to snap out of it. But when you're, when you're not binging, you know, when you're not actively binging but still struggling with binge eating, it's easier to be like, okay, let's get to get to the root of why you're struggling. One, you're not the problem. Which can be really validating for people who continually think why am I so weak? Why am I like this to another. Another big reason why people struggle with binge eating actually has something to do with food itself. A lot of it is poor stress coping mechanisms. When you have poor emotion regulation skills or non existent emotion regulation skills and every time you're stressed, you're bored, you're something, you turn to food as a self soothing behavior, right? So we go back to the habit loop. We have the cue or the trigger. In this case, the cue is an unpleasant emotion. The behavior is the binge eating. You turn to food as a distraction. The reward is that you're temporarily. You don't experience the negative emotion temporarily, but of course it perpetuates the problem because. And the problem in this case is that the cue is always going to happen. I don't think it's ever realistic to say never be sad again.

[Dr. Gabrielle Lyon]

Do we become more resilient to the cue?

[Sohee Carpenter]

We want to expand our toolbox so we're better able to handle the emotions. So the goal is not to never feel the emotions again. The goal is to have better tools in our toolbox. So if I'm stressed, I'm not immediately turning to cookies. Maybe I'll call a friend. Maybe I'll go for a walk. Maybe I'll go do a hard workout, something. And then you have multiple options that way. It's not always. Every time I'm stressed, I eat 2,000 extra calories.

[Dr. Gabrielle Lyon]

Do you think there's a way to lower the salience of the stressor? Meaning your mom is annoying? Not my mom. Mom. I'm not talking about you. But when you're in college, just say you get a family member annoying call in your 20s. It could throw you off.

[Sohee Carpenter]

It's a huge deal.

[Dr. Gabrielle Lyon]

It's a huge deal.

[Sohee Carpenter]

You have a big reaction to it.

[Dr. Gabrielle Lyon]

Huge reaction. Eventually you hope that over time you mature out of that. And that's just one example. How can someone change the interpretation of the cue?

[Sohee Carpenter]

Yeah. So the reframes are super important. Right. And basically. Okay, so going back to that, it would be like the trigger would be, you get an annoying phone call from a family member, your reaction is huge stress response. And if. How can you reduce the stress response? Is. Is going back to the reframes. And I think one thing too. You can say, okay, you're having all these thoughts in your head. So we have what we call cognitive distortions. Right? We have them all the time. There's all different types of cognitive distortions.

[Dr. Gabrielle Lyon]

I never do. That's a joke. That was funny. Okay.

[Sohee Carpenter]

Where you have, for example, like, I'm not. I never get the pronunciation right. Catastrophization. Right. That's an example of one. I am great at it. Right?

[Dr. Gabrielle Lyon]

Tell us what that is. Yeah.

[Sohee Carpenter]

You know, you know what a catastrophe is, is when you, in your mind, you're like, oh my God, everyone, whatever this is gonna happen. And this and this. You blow your perception of something completely out of proportion. Or like, you know, if I don't get a straight A's on my report card, my world is gonna end. Life is not worth living anymore. Big, big, big reactions. Right? There's also, there's a lot. But like another example is like monkey mindedness or believing that like you, you know exactly what other people are thinking about you. Everyone hates Me, they're all judging me. They hated my talk. They're this and that. You're like, you don't know that that's true. Right. So what you can do is what are your thoughts in your head? What is the evidence that that's true? And when you do a little bit more digging all the time, you find, okay, I'm actually making this up. Where is this coming from? Oh, it's because I'm sensitive to this and that I really care about what other people think. You think that, you know, you think Dr. Gabrielle hates you. Why do you think that? Oh, because of this. Okay, but what other evidence is there? There isn't really.

[Dr. Gabrielle Lyon]

Have you ever read Byron Katie's work? The work?

[Sohee Carpenter]

I know, I'm familiar with her though. Okay. She.

[Dr. Gabrielle Lyon]

I'm probably gonna get this wrong, but I'm gonna just go. It goes something like this. You. And there's, you know, it's a, I think it's a four step process, but it is the statement, okay, Dr. Gabrielle, you know, doesn't like me. And then the, the statement is, do you know it's true? What evidence do you have?

[Sohee Carpenter]

Yeah.

[Dr. Gabrielle Lyon]

How would you respond if it wasn't true?

[Sohee Carpenter]

Yeah.

[Dr. Gabrielle Lyon]

And then there's one more thing. There's like a turnaround.

[Sohee Carpenter]

Yeah.

[Dr. Gabrielle Lyon]

If people do that, do you think that then that lowers that cognitive load of the cue?

[Sohee Carpenter]

Yeah, I think it can. I think it's easier for some people than others, depending on, you know, how much of a hold that has on them and how willing they are to change. And I think it can be like a several year long process for some people. And another thing too is, you know, taking a step back and having a bit of more of a bird's eye view of life in general. Like, is this really that big of a deal in the grand scheme of things? Like for example, for me, a huge something that used to trigger a huge stress response is if I didn't get to do my workout exactly the way that I planned. Like for example, if I. Something happened in my day and I had 20 minutes less for my workout that I wanted, I would have a meltdown. Right. And then that might then maybe turn me to like, I'm not gonna do my workout at all. I'm gonna turn to food instead. Whatever. Right? So obviously now you've self sabotaged, you've had a, you're, you're, you're very upset, you're snappy, you're moody. I was, I would get very moody, you know, and I didn't do any of the things that I wanted to do, so how can I break myself out of that? So then I realized, okay, it took me a long time to learn this. A 40 minute workout is still better than 0 minutes, even if it wasn't the full 60 minutes that you wanted. And really learning to under accepting that good enough is still good enough. And you can actually get quite far with good enough consistently done.

[Dr. Gabrielle Lyon]

Yeah. And when you were studying psychology.

[Sohee Carpenter]

Yeah.

[Dr. Gabrielle Lyon]

Did you have these breakthroughs or were these things that. Because your PhD is. Why don't you tell me what your.

[Sohee Carpenter]

PhD is in resistance training in women. Yeah. It was not psychology.

[Dr. Gabrielle Lyon]

There wasn't a psychology.

[Sohee Carpenter]

Yeah. I kind of switched. Yeah.

[Dr. Gabrielle Lyon]

I mean, listen, you probably mastered. Do you know, I did psychiatry for two years and then.

[Sohee Carpenter]

Amazing.

[Dr. Gabrielle Lyon]

I was very interested in the mind as well. And over a period of time, it either becomes the path. Right. So maybe you go become a psychiatrist or maybe you become a therapist, or you use that in your toolbox to then really help people begin to find their strongest, most resilient self. Was there one thing that you really learned? So it sounds like the habit reframe was huge, huge for you in terms of how a habit is formed. So it's a cue response. What was after that?

[Sohee Carpenter]

Reward.

[Dr. Gabrielle Lyon]

Reward. And then the cycle, and then it goes again. Was there something else or anything else in your studies or something that is like, man, I wish I had known this and I wish everybody knows that.

[Sohee Carpenter]

So actually my master's thesis was on dichotomous thinking towards foods, which is the all or nothing mentality towards food. And again, stemmed from my personal interests and from my own personal struggles for years and years and years. And I administered a survey, analyzed survey, and the conclusion was, and people who have gone through this will not be surprised, the more all or nothing mindset you have towards food, the higher the likelihood of binge eating. We want to be more flexible. We want to sit in the gray area. I like to say the gray area more.

[Dr. Gabrielle Lyon]

This makes me worry about the diets that we're seeing, the novelty. So there's the carnivore diet. It just makes me think for those that are on the carnivore diet, that is really restrictive. And all of these diets are potentially, if what you're saying is true.

[Sohee Carpenter]

Yeah.

[Dr. Gabrielle Lyon]

Gonna set people up for a really rough patch.

[Sohee Carpenter]

Yeah, it's. There's a lot of things happening that are quite concerning nowadays. But in general, I'm very skeptical of diets that exclude food groups, barring medical restriction. Like if you have an Allergy or something that's obviously different. And obviously, if you have a genuine preference to not eat something that's also different. Right.

[Dr. Gabrielle Lyon]

Because there's a difference between, like the vegan diet.

[Sohee Carpenter]

Yeah. Like, there's a genuine preference between, like, I difference. There's a difference between genuinely not wanting to eat something. Like, I don't really like, for example, like, I'm not a dark chocolate person, so if I never eat it again, I'm not going to be sad about it.

[Sponsor/Advertisement Voice]

Right.

[Sohee Carpenter]

But if I am, if they're like, you could never have lattes ever again and I'm like, oh my God, then I'm going to feel deprived. Right. So for me, it's about minimizing the feelings of restriction, not about what are you actually excluding from your diet. That to me is really important is how are you doing mentally? And also how mentally satisfied do you feel from your food?

[Dr. Gabrielle Lyon]

That is a really good perspective. You know, on this show, we talk a lot about the evidence based. You know, Don and I talk all the time. We talk about this study, we talk about the anabolic threshold, but we don't talk very often about the psychological infrastructure that is required for people to be successful.

[Sohee Carpenter]

Yeah.

[Dr. Gabrielle Lyon]

For the long term.

[Sohee Carpenter]

Yeah.

[Dr. Gabrielle Lyon]

And one of the things that, that you've said before is that motivation isn't the secret, but systems are. Can you.

[Sohee Carpenter]

Yeah. Yes. And by motivation, I'm specifically, we're referring to, there's different types of motivation. I'm referring to extrinsic motivation. Right. So when we're like, I don't want to do my workout, but let me, let me go pull up this, this, this YouTube video that's going to get me amped up and whatever. Like, that's just a form of extrinsic motivation.

[Dr. Gabrielle Lyon]

Does it work?

[Sohee Carpenter]

Does that work short term? It can work short term. Or if I'm like, I really hate the style of workout and I hate this diet, but I have this huge, really important gala coming up that I want, I want to fit into this dress for this event. And so I'm gonna do this thing that I don't enjoy for the sake of this other goal that's more being as translatingly motivated or extrinsically or extrinsically or I'm going to the gym only because my, my, my friend is forcing me to go and I don't want to be there.

[Dr. Gabrielle Lyon]

Right.

[Sohee Carpenter]

She's forcing me to do it. Versus we have, again, different levels of intrinsic motivation where I'm like, I love the way it makes me feel I genuinely like the exercise by itself. Or I have a deeper why it's more than about, like, I want to fit into these jeans. It's maybe like, for example, for me right now, I have. Even though I've been exercising consistently for over 20 years, my motivation for exercising is even more meaningful now because it's about a healthy pregnancy too. Right. We know exercise is so good for pregnancy. And so it's yet another reason for me to keep doing what I'm doing with my resistance training and with my running. And so I'm like, my why is so, so deep. Right.

[Dr. Gabrielle Lyon]

And I want to just pause on that. It's extraordinary how much we're able to do for someone else, not ourselves.

[Sohee Carpenter]

Yes. Can I tell you something?

[Dr. Gabrielle Lyon]

Yes, please.

[Sohee Carpenter]

I had exactly to your point. When I was doing data collection for my PhD, my training study, right. I was studying resistance training in women, as I said. So I would go to the campus lab and train women. And I had one participant in particular, she said at the end of the study, she said, you know what? I was really struggling with my exercise adherence before when I was by myself. But as soon as I heard about your study and I volunteered, it was really easy for me to show up because I was doing it for you. She said, I was contributing to your PhD and to your research, and it was so easy to show up for you. I couldn't show up for myself consistently. I thought that was so interesting, even though I had never. I didn't know who she was before. She only knew me from online. And she was like, oh, I'm doing this for the greater good of someone else.

[Dr. Gabrielle Lyon]

I think that that's where community, you know, in medicine and in health and wellness, and maybe it's just human behavior. There's a lot of division, but the division, you know, if we really think about what it is that we're doing, we want a better, stronger world. Right. It's not about dividing. And I think that it's so much easier when we show up for others and a movement, you know, like what we're doing here for House of Strength.

[Sohee Carpenter]

Yeah.

[Dr. Gabrielle Lyon]

It's not about. I mean, you girls are working really, really hard and you're pregnant, so you're also working exponentially hard. But it's easier because you're showing up for other people. How do we move to intrinsic motivation like that?

[Sohee Carpenter]

I don't think extrinsic motivation is useless. It's still useful. For example, obvious example, you're in a race, you're in a 5k, whatever you're getting tired. You're in the last like little 100 meter sprint, whatever. And you're like, I want to give up. And then you see, you see your parents, you see your boyfriend, your husband, whatever. You see people in the crowd screaming your name and all you get this burst of energy, right? You're like, ah, you have this heroic dash to the finish. That's extrinsic motivation. It is helpful, but it's not enough as lasting for lasting behavior change to happen.

[Dr. Gabrielle Lyon]

Right.

[Sohee Carpenter]

So the intrinsic, it's more about, I think, getting people to be a little bit more introspective. And sometimes they have a deeper why, but they don't know it.

[Dr. Gabrielle Lyon]

About what matters about why they're doing.

[Sohee Carpenter]

And for a lot of parents, a huge part of it is I want to be around for my kids. I want to be able to keep up with them as they grow up. You know, I want to be able to chase them up and down the stairs, run across the field with them. That's super meaningful.

[Dr. Gabrielle Lyon]

It's not motivation. In order to have this desire, this ability to take the next right step, the discernment, you have to understand where it's coming from because you'll always be able to fall back on that.

[Sohee Carpenter]

Yes. And there's one exercise that you can do which a lot of people are like, this is really annoying. But I'm like, but it can be really eye opening is. It's called the five whys. Sometimes I pull it back to the three whys, where you say, you're like, I want to lose 20 pounds. Why? Because I look in this dress. Why does that matter to you? Because I will get compliments from others. Why does that matter to you? Why is that important? You need to keep going. You keep going, you keep going. And sometimes they get down to the root of whatever it is. Then my mom will stop whatever, my mom will stop criticizing me. Or we know, who knows what it is. It's always different for people, right? There's always a reason.

[Dr. Gabrielle Lyon]

Do you use it?

[Sohee Carpenter]

Yes. And I, I always kept, I'm like, you might roll your eyes at this, but bear with me. Let's do this together. Because some people are like, this is stupid. Why would I? Stop asking me these questions. But it's uncomfortable because you're forcing them oftentimes to think about their reasoning at a, at a level that they're not used to. You know, they're not used to that level of introspection.

[Dr. Gabrielle Lyon]

And again, what you're talking about is something we haven't really Talked about this in, I don't know, We've been podcasting for three years or so. We. I mean, I've touched on psychology, but not really. This is good. This is really good for people.

[Sohee Carpenter]

I mean, there's. I mean, there's so many directions I can go in. Another one you can do to instill behavior change without relying on discipline is where you change your perceived identity of yourself. So you say, yeah, like, I want to be a runner, right. I want to be a marathon or whatever, as an example. And you're like, cool. What does a marathoner do? They do XYZ things. Cool. They will plan their workouts in advance. They'll lay out their clothes tonight before they'll eat in this. And that way they'll plan out. They're like this. These are my running sessions I'm gonna do on these days of the week. Okay, cool. Then you go do that thing. So the next step is, okay, if you say you want to be a marathoner, why don't you now identify? You identify now. I'm. I'm someone who runs a marathon. I'm someone who trains for a marathon. You're that person now, even if you're not there yet. If you already perceive yourself to be that way, you're more. You're more likely to act in alignment with that identity.

[Dr. Gabrielle Lyon]

That could be actually very fun.

[Sohee Carpenter]

Yeah, it's really effective. If you. If you tell yourself, I'm not a morning person, you're more likely to hit that snooze button. If you say, no, I'm a morning person. I love getting up before the sun is up, you're more likely to do it.

[Dr. Gabrielle Lyon]

You know, I heard a quote a long time ago, and it was, if you can talk yourself out of something, you can talk yourself into it.

[Sohee Carpenter]

Yes, it is absolutely super effective.

[Dr. Gabrielle Lyon]

We're gonna switch to exercise.

[Sohee Carpenter]

Cool.

[Dr. Gabrielle Lyon]

Because you've been studying exercise for a really long time. And you and I were talking at dinner, which was very fun, and we were talking about women and training and strength training.

[Sohee Carpenter]

Oh, yeah. So important.

[Dr. Gabrielle Lyon]

It is important because you did your PhD in this. And I want to talk about what is important for women to know about strength training. And that's. I know that it's very wide open, but I do want to touch on it from an evidence based. An evidence based perspective, because it's so important for women. I mean, arguably, it's so important for everyone, but for women. Yeah.

[Sohee Carpenter]

Well, we're definitely on the same page with our views on resistance training for women. Everyone should be Lifting. The good news is there's no one specific type of lifting you have to do. You don't have to do non stop circuits if that's not your thing. You don't have to train like a bodybuilder if not that, if that's not your thing, as long as you are doing some form of challenging your muscles on a consistent basis. And I know you had a question the other night about like how, how often does that mean? Obviously that's, there's like a lot of variables involved, but I would agree with you that probably like two to three days a week is a really great starting point. And even if one day a week is all you can do, you will still see health benefits from one day a week. So. Yeah.

[Dr. Gabrielle Lyon]

And do the same mental tools work when you're changing a diet for nutrition, do they cross over to exercise?

[Sohee Carpenter]

Yes. I will say from my personal experience and my practical experience, my observation is that people tend to struggle less with exercise than they do with diet. I think part of it is that exercise is something you do in a finite period of time and then you can move on with your day. Whereas nutrition is. You have opportunities all day long isn't turn off. That's my thing. And also a lot of people actually do enjoy exercise.

[Dr. Gabrielle Lyon]

Right.

[Sohee Carpenter]

And they, and they might feel less resistance to it now. Of course it doesn't apply to everyone. Doesn't apply to everyone. Some people still struggle, but there's a lot less, there's a lot fewer complex feelings with exercise a lot of the time.

[Dr. Gabrielle Lyon]

That's fair. Yeah, that is really fair to say that, you know, in the nutrition space and in food is very emotional for people. I mean, I guess one would say exercise can be emotional, of course, but it is less complex if someone. And I'm sure some of the strategies for good habit building work make it easy. Avoid. You know, I guess people talk about putting your shoes out and your.

[Sohee Carpenter]

Yeah, those things can help.

[Dr. Gabrielle Lyon]

Yeah, those things probably help.

[Sohee Carpenter]

Yeah.

[Dr. Gabrielle Lyon]

Do you think there's anything else?

[Sohee Carpenter]

Whatever your mental resistance is to exercising, consistently reduce. Do whatever you can to reduce that barrier. If there, if the barrier is. I am afraid of being judged by people at the gym watching me. Several solutions. One, can you go, do you have the flexibility to go when it's less quiet? Can you train at home? You know, can I do. Either set up a home gym situation or carve out a corner of your living room where you can do it without people watching you or if you.

[Dr. Gabrielle Lyon]

Are into people watching you, you could probably set that up, too.

[Sohee Carpenter]

Yeah, that too. Or if you're like, I'm a woman and I'm intimidated by these loud, grunting men. Can you join, like, a women's group class? You know, where you feel safer and less judged or whatever. There's so many different ways to tackle it. If time is your barrier, which is a huge one, is I don't have time, or the perception of I don't have time. And you're like, tell me more about it. What do you think is enough time? Oh, I think I need to drive 30 minutes to the gym and spend an hour in the doing my workout and then drive 30 minutes back home. Okay. You're like, okay, one, is there a closer gym you can go to? Two, if there's not, let's. Can we make something work at home where you can get rid of the entire commute? That way you get a whole hour back, maybe more of your time.

[Dr. Gabrielle Lyon]

Do you find from a behavior perspective people will stick to that?

[Sohee Carpenter]

Yes. But sometimes it takes some trial and error to find the best system that works for the person. Which is why I'm a huge fan of individualized one on one coaching. But on an ongoing basis, it's really important.

[Dr. Gabrielle Lyon]

I have. I have a coach.

[Sohee Carpenter]

Yeah.

[Dr. Gabrielle Lyon]

And I've been training for a lot. I mean, since I was 17, so just yesterday. But yeah. Because I know my weaknesses and I like to do things as a team sport.

[Sohee Carpenter]

Yeah.

[Dr. Gabrielle Lyon]

I like to have friends. I like to talk to people. I'm very social.

[Sohee Carpenter]

Yeah.

[Dr. Gabrielle Lyon]

I don't want to train by myself. Versus, that one's huge, too.

[Sohee Carpenter]

The accountability or. So that's my mom. She will train if it's social. She will exercise. She will go golfing with her friends. Right. So she's walking a ton. She'll train if it's with me or my dad, you know, but she will. She will not do it on her own. She'll go to a Pilates class if she's in a group. Will not do it on her own. So whatever the barrier is or the sticking point is, for what? They're different for everyone. Right.

[Dr. Gabrielle Lyon]

So you have to know your weaknesses and you have to acknowledge it because they will show up.

[Sohee Carpenter]

Yes. Okay. All the time. Let's address the barrier. Let's reduce the barrier.

[Dr. Gabrielle Lyon]

Yeah.

[Sohee Carpenter]

Whatever that is.

[Dr. Gabrielle Lyon]

Lots of myths out there. Oh, by the way, I got to tell you, do you know I created a national holiday?

[Sohee Carpenter]

What is that?

[Dr. Gabrielle Lyon]

Are you ready for it? I don't know if you're ready for this. And this is. We're announcing it. Right now.

[Sohee Carpenter]

Okay.

[Dr. Gabrielle Lyon]

And this is a real thing. I applied and we have a legitimate National Muscle Health Month.

[Sohee Carpenter]

I didn't know you could do that. I did it.

[Dr. Gabrielle Lyon]

And it's November.

[Sohee Carpenter]

That's incredible. Coming up.

[Dr. Gabrielle Lyon]

So you Adidas.

[Sohee Carpenter]

Yeah.

[Dr. Gabrielle Lyon]

Is gonna help bring awareness to muscle health and is. Listen, you can have Movember. Mo. Movember.

[Sohee Carpenter]

Yeah.

[Dr. Gabrielle Lyon]

And Mo. Muscle. There has to be a moment that we recognize the importance of skeletal muscle beyond strength, beyond which is so important. Beyond strength, beyond just all the external or, you know, physicality. But really as the pillar of health. Yeah. And hopefully. Which I think in the next five years, it is going to be so impactful. We are entering. Don't you think that we're entering in the era of strength or muscle.

[Sohee Carpenter]

Muscle health in some ways? Absolutely.

[Dr. Gabrielle Lyon]

Especially for women.

[Sohee Carpenter]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. We know that the percentage of women lifting weights is. Has been increasing.

[Dr. Gabrielle Lyon]

What is it now?

[Sohee Carpenter]

Depends on the survey. Depends on the paper, I would say. And it depends on the country.

[Dr. Gabrielle Lyon]

Right, I know.

[Sohee Carpenter]

And the demographic, but I can tell.

[Dr. Gabrielle Lyon]

You the data that I have. But, you know, again, the research usually.

[Sohee Carpenter]

Puts at somewhere between like, 20 to 28.

[Dr. Gabrielle Lyon]

I had 17.

[Sohee Carpenter]

That's low. Yeah. You can say like 1 in 5.

[Dr. Gabrielle Lyon]

Or 1 in 4 for the US for resistance training.

[Sohee Carpenter]

Yeah. And then also that. That. It also depends on how you're defining consistent adherence. Oftentimes it's two or more times a week of resistance training. And if you have, like, spotty adherence, they won't really count you there. Right. So anyway, proportion is low. But, you know, 20 years ago, when we were in the gym, you're probably the only one of the only women in the weight room. For sure. Yeah. I was a freshman at Stanford, like, surrounded by a bunch of dudes early in the morning in the weight room, you know, and they're like, what? They'd always be like, what are you training for? And what do you bench? I'm like, I'm not lifting like that. Like, you know, but for them, it was so novel.

[Dr. Gabrielle Lyon]

Universal chest.

[Sohee Carpenter]

I'm like, I'm lifting for myself. And they're like, you're not training for whatever. I'm like, not. Not necessarily. I don't know. And obviously, I did eventually go on to compete in bikini and whatever, but it wasn't an ongoing thing. But I. But now. Now you go to the gym, you see way more women on the gym floor.

[Dr. Gabrielle Lyon]

Can I ask you a couple? I don't want to say true or false, but questions that I think are important.

[Sohee Carpenter]

Okay.

[Dr. Gabrielle Lyon]

Number one, do women have to lift heavy.

[Sohee Carpenter]

Heavy is relative to the individual. Right. I would say the, the way that it is, the maybe the way that you're interpreting is different from the way that I'm interpreting it. We actually know that you can see a lot of muscle and strength gains from a variety of different rep ranges. So in terms of heavy, like do you have to lift a 1 rep max or a 3 rep max? No. But even if you are lifting lighter weights for higher reps, you still want to be pushing close to muscular failure. And that is the key. And that's also what my research, my PhD, one of my, the chapters, my manuscript found, that as long as you're pushing close to technical failure, you can see muscle and strength gains with a variety of different rep ranges and a.

[Dr. Gabrielle Lyon]

Variety of technical or muscular failure.

[Sohee Carpenter]

I was actually, I would say muscular.

[Dr. Gabrielle Lyon]

Okay.

[Sohee Carpenter]

Muscular failure. And I believe, don't quote me on this, on the exact number I want to say it's. There's research showing that you can stop like 2 to 3 rep shy of failure, 1 to 3 rep shy of failure maybe, and still see significant gains. Which is nice because who wants to train a failure every set?

[Dr. Gabrielle Lyon]

I've seen the same research and I also get concerned. The reason I asked you that question is, and I appreciate you expanding on the nuance, is do women have to lift heavy? And the answer is no.

[Sohee Carpenter]

But, but heavy relative relative to the rep range that you're doing?

[Dr. Gabrielle Lyon]

Yes. And it is not a. I wouldn't want my mom doing three to five rep maxes also.

[Sohee Carpenter]

There's no reason for her to do that.

[Dr. Gabrielle Lyon]

Right. But I think this space, and I'm not sure where it's coming from, the idea that we have to. I have never lifted that heavy.

[Sohee Carpenter]

I used to. I did, I did two powerlifting meets, which is so funny because I'm like, my squat is so average. But like, for example, I don't enjoy pushing my warmer max. I would hate trying to do a three or max back squat. So then that would be a barrier to make me not want to lift, if that was what I do.

[Dr. Gabrielle Lyon]

And that's why I wanted to ask you that question because we do hear that. Are you hearing that in social media that women have to lift heavy?

[Sohee Carpenter]

Yeah, sometimes.

[Dr. Gabrielle Lyon]

Yeah, I hear it a lot. And I don't think that that's true.

[Sohee Carpenter]

But I'm like, but if you hate it, why would I try to force you?

[Dr. Gabrielle Lyon]

But what I'm worried about is as women are postmenopausal, getting more, you know, I trained in geriatrics once they're injured, it takes them out if they have not been somewhat of a lifelong athlete. And again, I'm not talking about from a data perspective. I have seen thousands of patients. They're, they're done.

[Sohee Carpenter]

You mean mentally?

[Dr. Gabrielle Lyon]

Both mentally, because they, so let's say they're listening and they feel that they have to lift heavy. They go and they tear their leg room or they tear up their shoulder or bust their knees.

[Sohee Carpenter]

Because they injured from lifting.

[Dr. Gabrielle Lyon]

Yes, because they are hearing that they have to lift heavy.

[Sohee Carpenter]

Then there's, then there's the fear factor then. And now they don't want to even try anymore.

[Dr. Gabrielle Lyon]

So this is what, so this is what I have seen. Your answer was no, but, but heavy is relative and you're talking about two to three reps in reserve. Yes, totally agree with that.

[Sohee Carpenter]

It doesn't have to be heavy per se, but it should still be challenging. And I think the thing I see, and I probably, you'll probably agree, is that with a lot of women, and even the women that I trained in my study, even though they consider themselves trained, experienced lifters, almost every one of them would say, and I, I would say, I watch your set and I say, you can lift a lot more than that. You can go heavier again relative to the right range, and you can go closer to failure. And they would say, oh, I wasn't sure about my form and I didn't want to get hurt. So I was being conservative, I was being cautious. And so a lot of women, or they simply don't know how hard they're supposed to push. And so what they do is they end up leaving so much in the tank. So even if they are being consistent, maybe they're not pushing themselves to the level that they should.

[Dr. Gabrielle Lyon]

And that's highlighting an important point because we, it sounds like we both agree that that does happen. And that's where training with a friend or a coach or someone to be able to feel, to get to the point where you're like, we're like, that's.

[Sohee Carpenter]

How it should feel.

[Dr. Gabrielle Lyon]

That's how it should feel.

[Sohee Carpenter]

Or that's how your rep should look, you know?

[Dr. Gabrielle Lyon]

Yes. Do you want, do you have a myth that you want to dispel?

[Sohee Carpenter]

I heard growing up, and I would repeat this because I heard it so much, that circuit training is not effective for body competence.

[Dr. Gabrielle Lyon]

Oh, talk to me, talk to me.

[Sohee Carpenter]

Goose and I, and even a couple years ago I had a friend say that to me and I was like, I have research, I have, I'm doing data collection. And we're not seeing that actually. And so what we found was we compared circuit training with traditional strength training.

[Dr. Gabrielle Lyon]

Can you define it for those?

[Sohee Carpenter]

So we specifically actually did is we called it high intensity or high resistance circuit training where you would do exercises in a back to back fashion. Right. Let's say you have, we have six exercises. You do exercises 1, 2, 3 with little rest, back to back to back. Then you go back to 1, 2, 3, 1, 2 3, then you rest right after you complete all sets of those three exercises can be four, can be five, the exact number doesn't matter. And then you go four, five, six. 456-456- you rest. That's what our heavy or circuit training group did. Heavy high intensity means as I was mentioning, every set was pushed close to failure. So it wasn't like I'm casually lifting this and we're having a convers. I'm laughing. Haha. It wasn't like that. That which is what we see a lot. Then we compare it to traditional strength training where it's the same six exercises but they completed every exercise one set at a time. They would do leg press, one set push close to failure, rest three minutes, set number two of leg press rest three minutes, set number three of leg press and then they fully finish that, they move on to the flat dumbbell bench press, same thing, one set rest, one set rest, and so on. So one, the obvious thing is there's a huge time difference, right? Duration difference. So the circuit training group, they were done roughly 20 to 25 minutes faster which is significant when we see that time is such a big barrier perceived barrier to exercise adherence. They were done faster. 2 surprisingly we saw similar gains in muscle and strength. We did a 3 rep max testing pre and post and DEXA scan pre and post similar, similar gains in both groups which I thought was pretty remarkable. And really to me it's really good news. Okay. That means from a practical application perspective you don't have to do one modality over the other. I think. Okay, a couple variables, a few variables to consider. One is your personal preference. I am not a circuit training person. I don't like it. I would much rather if I want to do. If I want to make my lifting a bit more conditioning style, I'd rather do. I'd rather do a speedrun intervals, right. I want to separate it. Personally I enjoy the longer rest periods way more. So I would be like I'm a traditional truth.

[Dr. Gabrielle Lyon]

See I don't like it at all. I love circuitry really.

[Sohee Carpenter]

But the good News is you're like, you're not going to get inferior results. Now we know as long as you're pushing your stats close to failure. Okay, two is your work individual work capacity. Do you have the level of fitness to keep up that level of fast paced, low rest circuit training while pushing every set close to failure? Not everyone does. It's very taxing. It is a lot more metabolically demanding, of course, when you have such little rest. Okay, and last thing is, from a logistical standpoint, does your gym setup allow you to even train in a circuit fashion? Because you might be at a busy gym and you're like, I can't take up three pieces of equipment at once. Now of course you can get creative with your exercise selection where you're like, all I need is these two pairs of dumbbells in this corner and I can make work. Absolutely you can do that. But even then you're still a bit more restricted with exercise selection and whatnot. So take those factors into consideration. You can also. The other option too is you can do a combination. Right. You can do like your first two or three exercises is more traditional style and then you finish with a short, a short circuit.

[Dr. Gabrielle Lyon]

I've done that for many years.

[Sohee Carpenter]

Yeah. So that's also a vial. You know, obviously we didn't study that, but I think it's not a big jump to then say that's probably fine too.

[Dr. Gabrielle Lyon]

One more question and then you're off the hook.

[Sohee Carpenter]

Cool.

[Dr. Gabrielle Lyon]

Fasting. You hear women. Have you heard this? Women should not train fasted.

[Sohee Carpenter]

Yeah. I actually addressed it in my talk today. Was it really is. I was like, this is one of the common misconceptions that I do want to address. I think there's a bit more nuance to that than what is often preached online. So I don't know. So my take in general is that there are fewer exercise differences between men and women than we have been led to believe. Leave again, to me, this is good news. Okay.

[Dr. Gabrielle Lyon]

Yes.

[Sohee Carpenter]

We have more similarities than differences. Okay. Even our training recommendations are very similar when it comes to training fasted. I'm not aware of research that shows that training necess training fasted necessarily needs leads to negative health outcomes. I will say I would not recommend training fasted on a two hour run, but does that.

[Dr. Gabrielle Lyon]

Is it a sex. No difference.

[Sohee Carpenter]

Right? It's not, it's not specific to women. That's. I would not recommend that for. It's not a smart strategy for anyone for obvious reasons.

[Dr. Gabrielle Lyon]

Yeah. And also training for any kind of two hour runs Not a good strategy. I'm just kidding.

[Sohee Carpenter]

I have a long run tomorrow. I'm like, I should be.

[Dr. Gabrielle Lyon]

And by the way, you are pregnant, and I took a video of you, and here's you. You're coming.

[Sponsor/Advertisement Voice]

I was on my run.

[Dr. Gabrielle Lyon]

Yeah.

[Sohee Carpenter]

I'm training for a marathon right now, and well done.

[Dr. Gabrielle Lyon]

I'm.

[Sohee Carpenter]

I'm still. I'm like, all I need is, like, what are we at? 16 more days, and I need to cross the finish line. I'm so close.

[Dr. Gabrielle Lyon]

It's amazing.

[Sohee Carpenter]

So that's the goal. I think it's cool. And I think my, my. And I have a lot more to say about that. And I won't get into it too much, but I think it's really important to show women that even when you're pregnant, you are very capable. And if you are, you know, medically cleared, you don't have medical combinations, and you want to do something like a marathon and you have a level of fitness for it, do it.

[Dr. Gabrielle Lyon]

Pretty awesome.

[Sohee Carpenter]

So cool.

[Dr. Gabrielle Lyon]

It is. It's breaking a barrier. It's very cool.

[Sohee Carpenter]

Yeah. And, you know, there's a myth out there that exercise, even, like marathons, are harmful to the baby. That's actually. We've. They're actually quite resilient. And also, people think your baby's bouncing around in there. They're actually not. They're sitting there. They're floating in your amniotic fluid. They're not doing this for four hours straight. Which is another. I get that comment a lot, too. Babies bouncing around. No.

[Dr. Gabrielle Lyon]

And you've probably spent a lot of time researching, because you love to.

[Sohee Carpenter]

As soon as I found out, I was like, can I still run the marathon? Let me find out. And there's lots of women who have completed marathons and been fine while pregnant. And I think it's so cool. And again, if you don't want to do it, no one's forcing you to do it. But this is something I really want to do.

[Dr. Gabrielle Lyon]

I think it is. You know, I trained throughout both pregnancies.

[Sohee Carpenter]

Yeah. Amazing. Yeah.

[Dr. Gabrielle Lyon]

But everyone's like, oh, I don't know. You're squatting a lot. It's like, nah, listen.

[Sohee Carpenter]

And it's great.

[Dr. Gabrielle Lyon]

It's great.

[Sohee Carpenter]

And I think it's inspiring. And I also think, on a side note, it's really important for the mom to continue doing things that make her happy. Would you train fasted? No, you should not train fasted. If you are doing a hard workout, a very long and or very intense workout session. Absolutely not. If you're Going for a light jog in the morning, you're fine.

[Dr. Gabrielle Lyon]

You are not going to have negative metabolic consequences as a woman if you're training fasted.

[Sohee Carpenter]

And I think the thing that people forget is when you wake up fasted, you have food in your system, you have glycogen stores from the day before, you know. And when we talk about post workout and recovery nutrition, your pre workout food impacts your post workout recovery as well. So I remind people, I'm like, you don't wake up completely empty. You're not an actual car. Like people like to use car. You know, fuel in the tank is analogy. I'm like, that can work in some ways, but it's not like your tank is completely empty every morning.

[Dr. Gabrielle Lyon]

So he carpenter, this has been really fun and I want to close it out with three things that you want everybody to know. And it could be habit, it could be.

[Sohee Carpenter]

You pick it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. First thing that came to mind is a 20 minute workout that you can do a few times a week is going to be so much better than the hour long workout. The perfect looking workout on paper that never gets done.

[Dr. Gabrielle Lyon]

I love that.

[Sohee Carpenter]

Any incremental change you can make to your diet to, I like to say, nudge yourself in the right direction because it seems a bit more gentle and less aggressive. Whether it be having an extra, swapping your coke for a glass of water, or adding a serving of protein to one meal, or adding a half cup of vegetables to one meal, all of that does add up and makes a difference over time. Last one is health is about more than what you eat and how you exercise. Your relationship with food and your body also is vastly important. Your quality of life matters too. Your mental health matters too. Your social support has a huge impact on your health. And so it's important to look at health from a more well rounded holistic view rather than food and diet only.

[Dr. Gabrielle Lyon]

Yes, very well said. This was a blast. And hopefully after you run your marathon, have your baby, you probably won't take much time off and then maybe we talk about pre pregnancy, post pregnancy.

[Sohee Carpenter]

Oh, that'll be super fun. Nutrition. Yeah.

[Dr. Gabrielle Lyon]

All right, my friend, let's do it. Thank you so much.

[Sohee Carpenter]

Thank. You.