house design questionnaire for clients

meredith:hello everyone, and welcome to cellular healing tv. i’m your host meredith dykstra, and thisis episode 152. we have our resident cellular healing specialist,dr. dan pompa, on the line, of course. today we welcome special guest dr. glenn livingston. we’ve a really fun topic for you guys today. we’re recording now during the holiday season. you probably aren’t listening to this show—you’llprobably listen to this show a few weeks after the holidays.

dr. glenn is an expert on over eating, bingeeating, and all kinds of food issues that a lot of us struggle with, so this is goingto be a really important topic today we’re going to discuss. before we jump in, let me tell you a littlebit more about dr. glenn. glenn livingston, ph.d. is a veteran psychologistand was the longtime ceo of a multimillion dollar consulting firm which has servicedseveral fortune 500 clients in the food industry. you may have seen him or his company’s previouswork, theories, and research in major periodicals like the new york times, the los angeles times,the chicago sun times, the indiana star ledger, the new york daily news, american demographics,and other major media outlets.

you may also have heard him on abc, wgn, and/orcbs radio or upn tv. disillusioned by what traditional psychologyhad to offer overweight and/or food-obsessed individuals, dr. livingston spent severaldecades researching the nature of binging and overeating via work with his own patientsand a self-funded research program with more than 40,000 participants. more important, however, was his own personaljourney of obesity and food prison to a normal healthy weight and a much more light-heartedrelationship with food. welcome, dr. glenn livingston, to cellularhealing tv. dr. livingston:thank you very much.

it’s a delight to be here, and i look forwardto talking to you and your listeners to learn anything that’s going to be helpful to themfor the new year. dr. pompa:we thank you so much. timing couldn’t be better this time of year. we know that so many people—this is thetime of year they just pack it on, right? the older they get, the harder it becomes,supposedly, to take off. i’ve got to jump into your story becauseobviously that’s where your passion came from. so many people that we have on this show,it’s from pain to purpose, including myself.

tell us that. start there. dr. livingston:okay, well that’s the most embarrassing part, so we might as well get it over with. dr. pompa:that’s our goal here, dr. glenn. we just want to embarrass people. dr. livingston:there you go. i suppose when i was younger, i could havebeen diagnosed with what today you’d call exercise bulimia.

what that means is that i eat an awful lotand i exercised it off. i didn’t like to put my finger down my throat. that was always abhorrent to me. i figured out that as a six-foot-four, fairlymuscular guy, that i could eat more or less whatever i wanted to if i worked out enough. the problem was that as i got into graduateschool, and started to have patients, and when i was married, and i had responsibilities,i just couldn’t make two or three hours a day to work out all the time. i started to get heavy because i found thatit wasn’t easy to adjust the food the way

that i really wanted to. i was a real eater. i could eat two pizzas. i could go into a delicatessen and dislodgemy jaw. i had a real thing for chocolate. it was something to joke about at that age. because i’m tall, i wore the weight reasonablywell. it wasn’t having a lot of people tellingme that i looked horrible. i did have a lot of doctors yelling at mefor my triglycerides and telling me i was

going to have a heart attack in my 40s ormaybe sooner. i had bad blood lipids, and cholesterol, andeverything like that. more importantly, i was very obsessed withthe food. i found that as i took progressively moreresponsibilities in my life, like i would be sitting and working with couples who werein the midst of some very serious issues, and i couldn’t be 100% present because iwas thinking about when am i going to get to eat again? when can i get to the deli? when can i do x, y, and z?

that bothered me because my dedication tobeing a psychologist always was first and foremost in my life. i come from a family of 17 psychotherapistsand psychologists. if you say dr. livingston at a restaurant,we all turn around. it’s pretty funny. coming from that family, i went the psychologicalroute to try to figure it out. i was very successful at my practice. i was very successful as a consultant, soi had a lot of resources. i went to some of the best psychologists andpsychiatrists.

i went to overeaters anonymous. i learned a lot about the psychology of eating,and i learned a lot about the personal choices i was making. as a matter of fact, i even developed a study. we wound up having 40,000 people go throughit over the course of several years. not quite as impressive as it sounds becauseit was online, but still. we figured out that, for example, people thatare really craving chocolate tend to be experiencing some sort of loneliness or broken heartednessin life. i really thought when i saw those correlationsthat i was on to something.

i dug really deep inside my own soul to figureout well, where does that come from for me? i kind of figured out that my dad was scaredabout going to vietnam, and my mother was overwhelmed that maybe he was going to go. she couldn’t quite take care of me the waythat she should have when i was really little, no fault of her own. she gave me chocolate or she gave me bosco. she used to keep a little bottle on the floor. if i was crying and i needed her and she couldn’tbe there, she’d point me to the chocolate. i developed a lifelong patter of running tochocolate when i felt lonely.

that’s a very soulful and intriguing thingto understand except it didn’t cure the problem because what would happen—and thisis what i found in my patients also. what would happen would be there’d be thislittle voice inside of me that would say you know what, glenn? you’re right. you’re mother didn’t love you enough. until you figure out how to fill those bigholes inside of you and stop being so lonely, you’re just going to have to keep on eatingthat chocolate. you know what, chocolates kind of like a vegetableanyway because it grows in a cocoa bean or

a cocoa bean is a plant. it would say all these crazy things to justifyno matter what i did, right? some of the other interesting things, as longas we’re talking about that, are people who are craving salty, crunchy things tendto be stressed at work. there are a lot of correlations like that. what i would find is that there was this mediatingvoice. even though you could trace food preferences,and you could find the patterns, and you could learn an awful lot about yourself—and ithink that we all should be compassionate to ourselves, and those are things we shouldfigure out, and we should learn, and figure

out how to fix the loneliness and the stressin our life. it’s not really the solution in my estimationto a food problem. the solution has to do with addressing thatcrazy voice inside of you. unfortunately, it took me until i was about40. i’m 52 now. it took me until i was about 40 to figurethat out. i was about 260 pounds. i’m 200 pounds now. i ran across some alternative addiction literature.

the 12 steps were fascinating, but they didn’treally work for me. i came to understand that they aren’t reallyscientifically backed up. as a matter of fact, the only two controlledstudies seem to suggest that they’re either a parodyparody or worse in doing nothing atall. that frightened me. i looked very aggressively into the alternativeresearch. i came across a book called rational recovery. he’s fairly protective of his books, soi don’t like to say too much about it. suffice it to say that he was talking aboutthis crazy voice inside of you as the really

primary cause of addiction. he developed a methodology for separatingfrom that voice. essentially what it says is that look, thatvoice is the lizard brain. that voice is our survival drive, and unfortunatelyour survival drive has made a mistake. it’s gotten corrupted by alcohol or drugs. he really works with the black and white addictions. everybody else is telling you you need tolove yourself well. when you have an addictive craving, everybody’ssaying well, where is the loneliness? where is the isolation?

where is the stress? how can i love that inner wounded child backto health? he said you know, that’s really the wrongapproach. it’s more like caging a rabid animal. it’s more like getting control of the lizardbrain which seems to overtake us during addiction, whereas all of our goals—you can interruptme whenever you want to. all of our goals, and aspirations, and everythingthat we think of as ourselves—love, and meaning, and relationship, and hugging yourkids, and going to school, and losing weight—those all live in the higher brain, the mammalianbrain, the neocortex.

thankfully, if you would look at a -- andyou could do a much better job at this than i can because i’m bastardizing this. if you look at a map of the brain, the lizardbrain is the earlier evolved part of the neuroanatomy. where we live is later evolved and is actuallysuperior to it and able to control it. all of these notions of powerlessness andthat there’s really no defense against an addictive impulse, it’s just not true. it’s fine to have a spiritual pursuit. you should do that to fill up your life, butit has nothing to do with can you control this addiction.

i really had to study that carefully and makea lot of modifications to deal with food whereas jack trimpey was working with the black andwhite addictions where you can actually quit, food is something where you’ve got to takethe lion out of the cage a couple of times a day and walk it around the block, right? i had to figure out how do you draw this reallyclear line. the methodology has to do with being ableto hear that crazy voice which is coming from the addictive part of ourselves, from thatlizard brain. in order to hear that, you have to very clearlydefine what’s healthy eating and what’s addictive eating.

that led me to a whole series of insightshaving to do with thinking differently than our culture tells us we should think. do you want me to pause for any reason? dr. pompa:yeah, i think pausing right there. i know myself and many of my doctors watchthis program, too. we would all say we have so many of theseclients and patients that are stuck right there. they know they’re doing emotional eating,addictive eating. they know that.

we make decisions in that primitive brain,is what we call it. because of that, it’s so hard to fight. right now, you’re speaking to thousandsof people that battle this right here. just in review, this can absolutely come fromdifferent traumas in our life. i had an episode, i had someone—it was oneof my friends. my son identified this. he had this emotional thing happen in hislife, this moment, and it was girl related, not the point. she made him a bunch of cookies and took thecookies over to him.

my son said now wait a minute, that explainseverything about him because now he was severely overweight. meeting my son, he had lost a lot of weight. my son taught him things, but he still struggleswith that emotional addictive eating. no doubt, i realized, i’m sure that happenedthroughout his life. mom made cookies every time life got a littlehard or whatever. now this thing of struggling in emotionaltimes, he reaches for the cookies because his brain says well, that worked. i feel better.

he associates it with love. that’s kind of what you’re saying. i just put a story to it. is that true? then we want to know the solution. what the heck’s the solution? dr. livingston:yes, there is that etiology. there is that development of the story andthe associations. however, every day we can choose to remakeourselves.

the solution that i’ve found—and i’mnot saying this is the only solution. the solution that i’ve found is not reallyto delve deeply into what was the emotional trauma and then— dr. pompa:yeah, you said that. that’s what interests me. who cares? here’s the solution. dr. livingston:the solution in your son’s friend’s case would be something like well, what would healthybehavior and cookies be?

when specifically do you want to eat them? when specifically do you not want to eat them? don’t feel any judgment from me. this is totally up to you. you can talk to your doctor. you can talk to your nutritionist. let’s say you decide i will only ever wantto eat cookies on the weekends again. you know that if you only have cookies onthe weekends, it would be under control for you.

for whatever reason, that’s a balance foryou. now you have a really clear line in the sand. you’ll notice that you could even say i’llnever eat cookies during the calendar week again, during the weekday again. you’ll notice that’s a very, very strongstatement. it’s almost heresy to say something likethat, say i will never do this or i will never do that, because what our culture will tellyou, what the addiction treatment specialists will tell you, is that well, you’re settingthat person up for a binge. that perfectionism is a setup because eventuallythey’re going to screw up, and they’re

going to binge. i think that’s a big problem. now, i do think that people that pursue aperfect rule when they make a mistake, they have a tendency to over castigate themselves,and get involved with the guilt. that can make a binge more likely, but ifyou look at the psychology of winners—let’s take an archer. an archer poises, focuses on the bull’seye of the target, knows exactly where that bull’s eye is, takes every ounce of theirbeing, and poises towards the bull’s eye, sees the arrow going into the target beforethey release it, and then they release it.

if the arrow doesn’t go into the bull’seye, then they do the same thing—and i am so sorry about that. if the arrow doesn’t go into the bull’seye, they do the exact same thing again, and they refocus with determination. knowing where the bull’s eye is 100% allowsthem to purge all that doubt and insecurity from their mind because if there’s somethingthat comes into your defense—well, you might not hit the bull’s eye this time. why don’t you aim a little to the side? aim a little to the side of the bull’s eye.

that’s better because you’re never goingto get to the bull’s eye. that’s not the psychology of winning. the psychology of winning is see the goalwith 100% clarity. i say— dr. pompa:i have to say, that’s a great analogy because if you know anything and maybe some of ourviewers and listeners don’t, but the ability to hit that target really is your certainty,your visualization, and just knowing it’s going there. it really is.

whether it’s throwing a dart or not, itis that visualization. for one second you visualize something else,it’s not going into that target. i’m with you so far. keep going. dr. livingston:i think that there are two separate mindsets required: before the shot and after the shot. after the shot, it’s necessary to be reflective,analytical, and kind to yourself. you wouldn’t say i missed it. i missed the target.

i’m an f-ing idiot. i’m never going to hit the target. there’s something wrong with me, and i mightas well just give up and [00:16:46], right? that’s what people can do with food. in our culture, when they say go for progressand not perfection, have guidelines and not rules, i think they’re telling you go shootat a blurry target. i don’t think that that really works. i think if you aim at the center of the targetwith determination, and you simultaneously know that after the shot, if you happen tomake a mistake, that you’re going to be

forgiving, you’re going to figure out whatyou did wrong. maybe the wind was going this way or that. you’re going to make adjustments, and you’regoing to aim for it again. i would coach your son’s friend to say okay,if you say you never want to eat cookies during the week again, then you can say you’renever going to eat cookies during the week again. that’s your bull’s eye. that’s the first modification that i hadto make to the way that things were done today. dr. pompa:we want to hear more ideas.

basically then, what you’re doing is you’retapping into the conscious mind, the intellectual mind, to basically intellectualize it. you’re saying look, i know if i did this,it’s healthy. darn it, that’s my goal, and i’m goingto hit that goal. it’s simply making an intellectual decision,saying this is what i’m going to do. am i right so far? dr. livingston:that’s a part of it. the enforcement of it is more emotional, butyou do want to use your best thinking and your reason in order to determine where thebull’s eye is.

dr. pompa:absolutely. we actually have something i call diet variation,and we talk about why purposely increasing your carbs one or two days a week can actuallybe a strategy that actually helps you, by the way. we’re talking about healthy carbs, usuallynot cookies. point being, if you’re going to do it, youcan have a very good reason why doing it on this day of the week would actually help you. because there’s a really good scientificreason for that, that helps the process. it helps your brain be more determined todo it or succeed in doing it.

is that what you’re saying? dr. livingston:yes. for me, it’s largely about clarity. for me it’s largely about having clarity. i think people walk around with a fuzzy goal. they don’t quite know where they’re going,and they wind up some place else, like my grandma used to say. dr. pompa:here’s the key, then. i’m not going to eat cookies.

dang it, i’m just not going to eat cookies. i’m only going to eat cookies on saturday. dr. livingston:for some people, never is easier than sometimes, but i purposely use that example— dr. pompa:my point is it could be i’m only eating cookies once a month. my point is it’s specific, whatever it is. dr. livingston:whatever it is, it’s—yes. because if there’s ambiguity, your lizardbrain will barrel through and find the teeniest,

tiniest whole in your rule. the guideline i use—i don’t know if youstudied research methodology, but there’s something called an operational definition. when they’re trying to measure squishy thingslike love, or intimacy, or something like that, what they did is they would get tenpeople to rate the level of love or intimacy using this scale and they’d see to whatdegree they’d agree with one another. the guideline i used for this work is thatif there were ten people that followed you around all month long, using your rule, wouldthey all agree that you followed it or not. i think if ten people followed your son’sfriend around, and your son’s friend said

my rule is i’m only ever going to eat cookieson the weekends again, these ten people would agree at the end of the month because it’sreal easy to see did your son’s friend eat cookies on the weekend or not, right? as opposed to i’m only ever going to eatwhen i’m hungry and i’m always going to stop when i’m full. that’s a good guideline. that’s a good thing to do, but it’s notnever binge again. it’s not this game that i’m talking aboutbecause you can’t measure it objectively from the outside.

people could never agree. make sense? dr. pompa:absolutely makes sense because they would be saying well—there’s so many rationalizationsinvolved there that you would arguably—at the end of the day, they’d probably tellyou that they always just ate until they were full, but really they didn’t. you can’t measure it. unmeasurable. once a week, once a month, that’s measurable.

got it. dr. livingston:exactly. when i guide people about—let me just finishthe construction of a set of rules. when i guide people about them, i tell themthere are four categories of rules. there’s things you’ll never do, thingsyou’ll always do, things you will do conditionally, the rule that we just came up with was a conditionbecause it had [00:21:35], and things that you’re going to do in an unrestrictive waybecause i think that it’s good for people to know that there are some things they cando without restriction so that they don’t walk around feeling starved.

that’s just a very basic template. we can talk about more. we can find some more templates to use lateron if you want to. the enforcement of this becomes kind of likea game. remember, it’s more like capturing and caginga rabid animal. i like people to give their inner lizard brain,their destructive food self, a name. it should be a name of something that they’regoing to feel a little disgusted with and superior to. you’re actually going to cultivate a senseof contempt and disgust because you’re going

to need that emotion at the moment of impulseto jump back up into your right brain, okay? i call mine my inner pig. it doesn’t sound like a very sophisticatedpsychologist— dr. pompa:inner what? dr. livingston:i call it my inner pig. i call it my pig. i call the things that my pig says pig squeal,and i call the things that my pig is squealing for pig slop. i don’t eat pig slop, and i don’t letfarm animals tell me what to do.

i know this is not what you’re expectingfrom a sophisticated psychologist with my credentials. dr. pompa:no, i get why this would work. i understand how brains are predictably irrational. i get where you’re going with it. go. i get it. dr. livingston:you get it because at that moment of impulse, you need something really primitive.

what’s happening is the lizard brain reallythinks on three levels when it sees something [00:23:10]. the lizard brain sees a stimulus, it saysdo i kill it, do i meet with it, or do i eat it? that’s how the lizard brain is operating. that’s the level at which you have to reactto the lizard brain to get your thinking back in place because when the lizard brain ispowerfully activated, it pushes all this out of the way. you need to be like an alpha wolf that snarlsat a challenger and goes i will f-ing kill

i don’t listen to pigs. i don’t listen to pigs and farm animalstell me what to do. i will f-ing kill you. get back in your cage. that’s the level of emotional response thatyou need to get those microseconds to say wait a minute, chocolate’s not a vegetableor wait, it’s thursday. i can’t have a cookie on thursday. why, because i never eat cookies during theweek. that’s why i’m 200 pounds instead of 260pounds right now.

that’s what’s worked for me. it’s worked for 100s and 100s of people. there are a number of other elements to makingit work. it’s a little bit of an art. that’s what i did, and that’s what neverbinge again is about. i call the book never binge again becausei think if you’re aiming squarely for that archery target, you’re going to say i’mnever going to make a mistake again because admitting the possibility of a mistake isadmitting that little bit of doubt into your mind.

i think it’s— dr. pompa:dangerous. dr. livingston:yep. i define the binge as one step off of yourcarefully constructed food fight. dr. pompa:listen, knowing what i know about the brain, how the brain works, i can see this beingan effective strategy. obviously, you’ve proven it. tell us a little bit about—okay, yeah great. it was 40,000 people online.

what did you get from that study that youdid? dr. livingston:okay, i have not proven this scientifically. i have not had the resources and time to provethat this is scientifically what is necessary to happen. of course, that’s in my plans as thingsare growing. this is now the best seller for eating disorderson amazon, so we’re starting to get some attention. we’re going to be moving in that direction. at the time i did that 40,000-person study,i was looking at the relationship between

food preferences, particularly those thingspeople felt that they couldn’t control, and personality. i had a personality questionnaire. i had a questionnaire about the differenttypes of addictive foods that people are having trouble with. we did a lot of factor analysis, and we cameup with these core set of insights. like i said, it was kind of in the wrong direction. it was a valid study. we had a lot of press for the study way backwhen.

it wasn’t really answering the problem. it was just really interesting. dr. pompa:cool. meredith, i know you have some questions. i’m going to turn it over. meredith:alright. i know i always have lots of questions, andi love this topic, too, because it’s something i’ve definitely personally dealt with alot in my life was overeating, emotional eating, things of that nature.

we can continue that more, but i just wantedto get your opinion, too, on rigid diets and things like that. i’m guessing that you’re not a fan ofstrict diets and people following a specific regime but being a little bit looser aboutit? dr. livingston:it depends upon the person. what i am absolutely against is over restriction. i haven’t seen the scientific proof yet,but i firmly believe that there’s some evolutionary mechanism in our brains that says if you gothrough famine, you must go through feast when food is available.

i’ve talked to so many binge eaters who’vetalked to me about their history of dieting and how thin they used to be, and i’ll tellthem well, i think this is why you are having this trouble now. they’ll tell me that it’s almost likesomeone is putting your gun to your head and saying you have to keep eating. you have to keep eating even if you’re full. i think that that’s an element of the lizardbrain that it loading up on calories and nutrition because it’s anticipating another famine. i think part of overcoming binge eating isa regularity of nutrition and calories.

the particular diet that people have used—youknow, i have people who have just used behavioral rules like i will always get up from the tableand walk around outside for two minutes before going back for seconds. everything is really about stimulating mindfuleating, but they draw these lines in the sand to make sure that they are mindful eating. i have other people who’ll say i will nevereat sugar, or flour, or chocolate, or candy. they have a long list of things that theyjust never eat. i don’t really see a problem with that unlessthe things that they’re never eating are really essential nutrients.

usually they’re industrial foods. in all the years that i worked for the foodindustry, the biggest thing i’ve learned is that there’s a lot of money putting alot of calories in a small space, getting a really pretty package, and spending billionsof dollars to advertise that it’s good for i think that’s how we all got messed up. there were no chocolate bars in the savannah. there were no potato chips in the savannah. if people want to get those out of their diet,i don’t see a reason why they can’t cut those out of their diet.

if people want to enjoy them once in a while,i think that’s an artifact of society that’s not getting them into trouble then what’sthe big deal? dr. pompa:i was just going to say i have to admit that people that—my clients even that have hadeating disorders, when they say i’m just never eating that food again, i find thatthey actually succeed in doing that. they literally have never eaten it again. it’s almost like the alcoholics that succeed,right? i’m just never doing it again. then they don’t.

if they did once, then they’re probablyback on the wagon. dr. livingston:there’s this phenomenon where—i run into people who try 17 different ways to conditionallycontrol something. i’m only going to have chocolate on theweekends. i’m only going to have it after a big hike. i’m only going to have it when i’m withmy wife. i’m only going to have it after a meal withsome type of a glycemic slowdown. for a year or two, they go through all ofthese different permutations, and it just keeps kicking their butt.

eventually they say you know what? it would just feel like such a relief notto have this at all, and it works so much better for them. there are a lot of people like that. dr. pompa:there are. i’m sure it’s not for everybody, but thereare people like that. go ahead, meredith. you had something. meredith:what do you think about specific diets?

i’m curious about the paleo diet or theketogenic diet. do you have any thoughts on that because thatcan really affect—when you’re eating so much good fat in your diet, it can reallyaffect your satiety which can really decrease binges and cravings i’ve found personally. what are your thoughts there? dr. livingston:i’m weak on medical knowledge. i do read an awful lot about nutrition. i kind of know things. i have opinions about it.

i’ve taken the position that i’ll helpyou with any diet. if it’s nutritionally complete and sound,i’ll help you with any diet. i will tell you that i tend to get two campsof people that want to work with me, or read my stuff, and hang out on my forums, and stuff. one camp are paleo people, and they do verywell. they tend to need to be really strict, i find. i find that when the paleo people are movinginto processed sugars and grains and trying to do that conditionally, it doesn’t seemto work for them. i don’t really know why.

i think maybe it triggers a carbohydrate cravingthat’s just too strong and they’re not going to have enough something. i don’t know. then i get the whole foods, plant-based people. if you read my book, it’s no secret i’ma little bit more on the whole foods, plant-based side myself. those are the two camps that i get. i try not to judge the specific diets thatpeople are going through because i’m not a medical doctor or nutritionist.

dr. pompa:i don’t think that’s your point because in any of those groups you have someone whofails because they end up binging or does some emotional eating. you’re point is let’s stop that and thenyou’ll be successful at whatever diet seems to be working for you or you like for whateverreason. dr. livingston:what i do find is that whether or not you include animal foods that the emphasis onwhole foods and the elimination of industrial processed foods tends to correlate with success. i don’t think we’re meant to have thesehyperpalatable foods that industry has created.

dr. pompa:i agree. look at what these processed foods are. there’s even chemicals in them that stimulatedopamine receptors. come on. it’s like saying i’m going to take thesedrugs and not get addicted. if you’re still eating processed food, you’reasking for trouble. it’s highly addictive. pure sugar is highly addictive. shifting to just wholesome food is step one.

one of the things that i talk about, dr. glenn,is diet variation meaning that i don’t need to make the argument that this is the perfectdiet for everybody. we use and i teach how to use ketosis, howto use what i call a cellular healing diet, no grains. different diets, moving in and out of differentdiets, actually creates adaptation at the cellular level that’s amazing. i believe if you look at every ancient cultureon the planet, they ate different diets at different times for multiple different reasons,for whatever reason: they ran out of certain food, seasonal changes, droughts, environmentalpressures, what’ growing, what’s not.

i can go through many reasons of differentreasons why ancient cultures were forced into diet changes, just even getting sick of certainfoods because they had to eat it in the winter and now they have different, more carbohydratefoods in the summer. point being is that i think getting away fromthis is the diet that everyone should be on isn’t the argument. i love what you’re saying because i don’tcare what diet you’re on. there’s emotional reasons, primitive reasons,that we all fail. we’re all pulled into these bad foods, andyou’re giving us a strategy on how to deal with it.

dr. livingston:that’s very interesting what you’re saying. you advise periodic bouts of ketosis in orderto trim the body fat and then varying the diet so that you’re not in long-term ketosis. is that what you’re recommending? dr. pompa:i fell into it. i have a love for studying ancient culturesand history there. we put people into ketosis, which you’reforcing the cell to burn fat as its primary source of energy. how could someone not lose weight?

yet there will be people who go into ketosisand they don’t lose weight. as a matter of fact, worse than that, theydon’t even get into ketosis, and yet they’re eating 20, 30 grams of carbohydrates a day. how is that possible? the mitochondria is that broken. i would take them out and just say okay, let’sgo back to the diet we had you on, by the way, wasn’t working for weight loss either. all of a sudden, they start losing weight. they even feel better.

how’s that possible? what changed? then let’s do that for three months, andthen let’s go back into ketosis. now all of a sudden we put them back in, andnow all of a sudden they go into ketosis. they even lose more weight. there is something in the diet— dr. livingston:could you fix the mitochondria? dr. pompa:– a change that actually became the magic. now we have a group of doctors doing this.

even this, people could be in ketosis fora long time. there insulin starts getting so low that theirbody takes on almost a starvation thing, and they start to gain weight or this weird, oddfat around their belly, or they stop losing weight, either one. then we throw in these carbohydrate days,healthy carbs though, more fruit maybe, more berries, whatever it is, maybe more potatoes,sweet potatoes, root vegetables, something like that. all of a sudden, boom. they start kicking weight loss again justby randomly throwing in some days.

any type of variation creates some sort ofadaptation that gets the body more efficient at the cellular level of using— dr. livingston:makes sense. that makes sense. dr. pompa:anyway, it’s part of a strategy that we use not just for weight loss. it’s a part of a strategy that we use forfixing the mitochondria. even putting people in feast and famine cycles,we fast them for periods of time and then we bring them out of fast.

then again the feast cycles where we havethose days where we eat more, all healthy whole foods. i agree with you. then we have the days, even once a week, wherewe fast them. feast and famine cycles is what ancient culturesdid. it forces adaptation. bad cells die. we always say bad cells don’t adapt. good cells adapt.

we just interviewed seyfried, thomas seyfried. he wrote a book called cancer as a metabolicdisease. they discovered with cancer same thing. it’s this forced cycling that actually worksand creates bad cells not to adapt. with what you’re saying really goes withwhat we’re talking about here because it doesn’t matter where you are in that process. getting addicted and binge eating is goingto ruin it. dr. livingston:yeah, so what i’m teaching would help people to stick with the instructions that you’regiving them.

i imagine when people say doc, i really believeyou, and i want to follow this, but it’s just a little bit too hard to stay with, thiswill give people more power to do that. dr. pompa:we all deal with it. all of our doctors, we all deal with peoplewho really have good intentions, but they fall into their wicked ways, if you will. having a strategy for them, this show becomesreally important. as a matter of fact, so important, the strategy,i want you to bring it again with a different scenario and a different direction. people need to hear things several times toget it.

i know our listeners right now are going okay,i kind of get it. bring it another way so they get it. let’s give them another strategy or thesame strategy a different way. dr. livingston:the way that people get this best is to think about their single worst food trigger or—there’sa really bad echo on my side for some reason all of a sudden. dr. pompa:maybe turn down your volume a little bit. dr. livingston:turn down my volume. dr. pompa:i’ll turn mine down.

dr. livingston:okay. yeah, that’s better. am i too low? dr. pompa:no. dr. livingston:okay, if people could think about one food or one eating behavior, for some people it’seating in the car or eating in front of the tv—if there was one thing that they wantedto change that would make a world of difference. i know that there’s this voice inside ofthem that says you can’t do that. if you ignore that voice for the moment andimagine what if you got that out of your life,

whatever that means to you. maybe it’s overeating on the weekends. maybe it’s only at social events. what if you got that out of your life entirely? imagine what would be different in a year. think about how your weight might change,how your health might change, how your confidence might change. what about your thinking? like i told you, i was much, much too obsessedwith food early on.

would you be thinking less about it? would you be more likely to be present withyour spouse and your kids? would you be more likely to take on more workprojects, do more fun things outside? really flush out the entirety of what yourlife would be like in a year if you could only follow this one rule. what that does is that really anchors youmore in the upper brain because what your pig is going to be telling you, or your lizard,or your troll, or your b-i-t-c-h as a lot of women like to call it—they’re goingto be telling you that oh, you can’t do that.

you’re going to feel too deprived. that’s awful. it doesn’t tell you that there’s two typesof deprivation. the second type of deprivation is what you’redepriving yourself of by continuing to indulge. it’s that whole future that you just laidout for yourself. that’s what i find people really get iswhen they think about the single worst problem they have and they allow themselves to imaginethat they really could be rid of it even though there’s this voice in their head going onand on that says you can’t. then what are you going to deprive yourselfof if you don’t fix this.

now let’s listen to that voice really carefully. what are all the different reasons that thisvoice says that you can’t? let’s challenge those reasons. let’s see what’s going to be necessaryto ignore those reasons. that’s how i take people through and getthem to get it on a more gut level than all the theory and intellectual stuff we talkedabout today. dr. pompa:it’s really like you said. it’s caging the animal. it’s really just taking control of it.

when you go through that process, you’recontrolling it. i think the way the human brain works, ifwe feel that we have control, we will be successful. if we feel that the beast has us, then wefeel like we’re going to lose. you’re basically giving them reins. if you have reins, you’re going to be ableto ultimately be successful. dr. livingston:the key to those reins is the language that you use. it has to do with purging all the sense ofdoubt and powerlessness. what i’ll typically ask people if they saywell, i will never eat cookies again except

for the weekends, i’ll say well, how confidentare you. they’ll say well, 20%. where’s the other 80% coming from? then they’ve got a whole list of reasons:well, you know, christmas is this weekend, or it’s new year’s, and i screwed up thelast few years, i’m going out with my girlfriend this week, and she makes these great cookies,and i don’t want to offend her. it’s this long, long list of reasons. we go through those reasons, and we say well,how can you handle this situation? how can you handle that situation?

how confident are you now? then they’ll say something like you know,i’m actually about 60% confident. how come not 100%? they’ll come up with more reasons. eventually they get towards 80% or 85% wherethey can’t give me any more reasons. i explain to them that that’s because yourpig is always going to be lurking in the background. you can’t cut this part of you out of thebrain. it’s the part that you live on top of. there’s always going to be this sense ofdoubt.

what you want to learn to do in this gameis assign that doubt to your pig. the way that you do that with language isyou say i’m 100% confident, but my pig has other ideas. the moment that you’re willing to do that,it’s not going to feel 100% confident, but you can be. you can declare yourself 100%. the moment that you realize that and you realizethat all of the doubt and insecurity is coming from your pig, you’ve inserted an algorithminto your brain that will keep pulling apart you and your pig.

you’ll hear your pig better, and better,and better. i’m 100% confident that i will never bingeagain, but my pig has other ideas. dr. pompa:part of that, too, is part of that even identifying when you ask them those questions. really, they’ve already planned to fail. when i go to my girlfriend’s, they alreadyknow that that’s going to be a failure. basically you’re targeting here’s whereyou just planned on failing. until you get them to 100%, you’re almostgoing ahead of them and giving them victory. where else are you going to fail?

i fail here. now you have victory. again, you’re talking to the animal. dr. livingston:that’s exactly it. that’s exactly how you do it. you’re changing the person’s identity. when the person is willing to say i’m 100%confident, that’s who they are. every day we decide who we’re going to be. every day that we decide who we’re goingto be and we act in concert with it, we’re

a little more confident that that’s whowe are. this is really a game of character. it’s a game of character building. it all starts with i’m 100% confident, butmy pig has other ideas. it all starts with that separation. dr. pompa:alright, meredith. what was your pig? meredith’s successful. she’s disciplined, but she wasn’t, obviously.

meredith:yeah, well, oh that’s funny. yeah, i had some other things, too. yeah, just to share personally, too, i definitelyfor many years struggled with my weight, and overeating, and dieting. it’s better now, for sure, but i still don’tfeel 100% fixed. it’s just been christmas, and i definitelyhad some binges on cheese and chocolate in particular. it was really interesting earlier in the episodehow you shared some of the specific correlations between specific foods we crave and bingeon and then the emotional components to them.

i think you had said that chocolate can beconnected to— dr. livingston:loneliness. meredith:– need for love and loneliness. that’s really interesting. i definitely feel like i have made massivestrides towards that. i don’t binge much anymore, but i’ve alsocreated an environment where i’m set up to succeed. i don’t keep junk in my house, in my cupboards. it’s just not even there at all.

another component that i’ve really workedon that’s really helped me is not just what i eat but how i eat it. i wanted to ask you about that, too, if youdo coaching in that area. for me, i try not to be distracted when ieat: sitting down, possibly even lighting a candle, playing music, but really honoringthe food, and paying attention to cues of satiety and fullness. i’m trying to not eat in the car or on therun but really focusing on food. can you speak to how we eat and how that canimpact binging, overeating, satiety, things like that?

dr. livingston:all of the work in mindfulness is very accurate. if you’re not really present while you’reeating, then you’re not really going to have the experience of being nourished, andsupported, and loved by the food. the more that you can create situations inyour life where your food intake is in a mindful and loving environment, the less you’regoing to crave more, the more you’re going to be aware of whether you’re full, whetheryou’ve had enough, when is enough enough. i took an interview with the guy from cornell. i actually interviewed him. he does all those mindful eating studies.

what’s the name of his—i’m going toget that for you because i think your readers would really like it. he’s really quantified most of what you’resaying. this is perfectly complimentary with thatbecause you can set up structures that support i will always breathe before beginning eating. i will never eat in front of the tv. i won’t eat in the car. you started to talk about it as you were describingwhat’s worked for you. it’s just stepping back and memorializingin written form what it is that you believe.

how could ten people following you aroundall month know whether or not you were doing it or not? everything you say, i couldn’t disagreewith anything. it’s wonderful. meredith:great. i just wanted to follow up, too, with theconversation with diet variation and how that’s been so helpful for so many people, too. it’s adding in a carb day, possibly a protein-loadday, having some lower carb days. it also adds in a fasting day.

how do you feel about fasting, dr. glenn? how does that fit into the paradigm? do you think that that can be helpful? from a health standpoint, of course, dr. pompaand i feel that it can be extremely beneficial. how does that work from your approach andfor those who really struggle with— dr. livingston:from my personal study of nutrition, i do believe in it. i do periodically go through a day or twoof fasting myself. i do believe in it.

i don’t recommend it for my clients. it depends upon how serious a problem theyhave. if i work with people who say i eat untilmy gums bleed, and my entire life is sitting by the refrigerator. i can’t leave the refrigerator. i’m sitting there with a chair, and i wantto kill myself. this is not someone that i’m going to encourageto have a fasting day. dr. pompa:i would agree. dr. livingston:i work with a lot of people that feel like

binge eating is overtaking their whole lifeand so on. i’m very cautious. my general philosophy is look, let’s justnot binge. let’s get a regular intake of food going. worry about fasting and cleansing in fiveyears or something like that when you’ve really got this thing totally under control. it scares me for people who really strugglewith binging or anorexia to go through fasting even though i know on a nutritional basisit really gives the body a break and allows us to cleanse.

it’s something that i personally do. i’m very, very careful about that with peoplewho have trouble with that button in the brain that says dislodge your jaw and put everythinginto it. meredith:that makes sense, just easing into it, as well. you can’t always jump in fully with everything,especially when you have such challenges. those dealing with such extreme conditionswith the over eating and the binging, definitely slow, slow and steady can win the race. dr. livingston:what would be close to a fast, though, would

be a day full of berries and melons or somethinglike that, wouldn’t it? something that’s really quickly digestedbut provides some calories so that you’re not necessarily triggering the binge response? i’m asking, i’m not saying. dr. pompa:yeah, a partial fast, partial fasts work well, too, honestly. i’m thinking even that could be a little—forthe person who binges. again, it’s the person in front of you,you have to know that person, right? even then that could be a little bingy forsome people.

who knows? meredith:many, many different styles of fasting modification, that’s why it’s so important to work witha practitioner. if anyone’s watching, really strugglingwith the binging eating and the overeating. having that trained practitioner to guideyou along the way is so priceless, really important. what i’m just wondering, anyone who’swatching who’s been struggling maybe for years or maybe a short period of time withover eating, binging—what are some key tips and techniques that they can walk away withafter this show, implementing really quickly

into their life to see a difference? dr. livingston:the most profound thing i could say is to really simplify the whole thing: that allyou really need to do to never binge again is never binge again. it sounds crazy, but it’s all you need todo. you need to draw these lines very clearlyin the sand about what that means. you need to start listening for that crazyinner voice that talks you out of your best-laid plans. you need to stop trying to love your innerwounded child and kill your inner wounded

child to fix this problem. you can do all that to fix other problems. determine that you’re disgusted, get goodand disgusted, with that lizard brain part of you that keeps talking you out of yourplans. that’s the most fundamental tip that i cangive people is to realize it’s a lot more simple than you think it is. kathryn hansen, who wrote brain over binge,is a good friend of mine. she puts it like this. she says you just have to think of all thoseurges as neurological junk.

it’s a miswiring of the brain. you would know about nerve plasticity, butbasically he says whatever fires, think of the wires together. if you start dismissing those urges, thenthose urges will weaken over time. in plain english, we don’t really cravethose things that we know we’re never going to have. if a prisoner has no hope, then the prisonerstarts to calm down because there’s no sense banging your head against the wall of a cage. it’s a real simplification, a switch ofparadigm from loving your inner wounded child

to caging your rabid animal. i’ve got all sorts of free resources onmy site if it’s okay to say that, and you give me the word. today we’ve talked a lot about theory. i’ve recorded a lot of full sessions soyou can hear how i actually implement this with people. i’ve set up a whole bunch of food plan templatesso you can get a sense of the kind of rules that work for people and the rules that don’t. it’s all free.

the book is free also, by the way. you can download it on— dr. pompa:give the resources. dr. livingston:it’s all at neverbingeagain.com. if you go to neverbingeagain.com, you hitthe big red free button, and you sign up for the free reader bonus. you’ll get everything we just talked aboutincluding the link to the free book so that you can get a better sense of what we’retalking about and all that stuff. yeah, neverbingeagain.com

dr. pompa:yeah, that’s fantastic. look, i know you’re going to get a lot ofpeople going there because so many people that watch and listen to this show to somedegree, different for everybody, but to some degree struggle with this, right? it’s part of it, no doubt. dr. livingston:it’s a very empowering philosophy because it supports your independent thinking. it get’s that negative part of you out ofthe way that says that you can’t do this and you’re powerless.

it gives you a new sense of hope that youhaven’t had before. find one rule. play with one rule. see how that works. listen to some of the sessions and see howthey do it. you’re going to be very surprised as towhat your brain can do that you didn’t know it could do. dr. pompa:dr. glenn, thank you. i think you’re really going to get a greatresponse from our viewers.

thank you for coming on the show. dr. livingston:thank you for helping me to reach more people. dr. pompa:yeah. meredith:yes, thank you, dr. pompa. thank you, dr. glenn. such a message of empowerment for those ofus who have struggled for so many years with these challenges, but to know that with theright tools that this doesn’t have to be a challenge that we live with forever andthat we don’t have to have this food prison as you called it.

i think that’s a really powerful message. there’s hope. dr. livingston:yep, [00:54:26] myself. thank you. dr. pompa:thank you. dr. livingston:bye. meredith:thanks so much, dr. glenn. thanks, dr. pompa. thanks for watching, everyone.

have a great weekend, and we’ll see younext week.

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