Welcome to lecture 13 behavioral aspects of eating. Now, this presentation could be really super long, really super dramatic and boring. A bunch of other acronyms we could come up with, just because there's so much psychology behind eating. Now you think it just be as simple as filling your gas tank full of gasoline before you go on a trip. Because basically, that's what fuel is right? It's utilized for activity movement, daily ins and outs, etc.

Yet, we use food for so much more. And that's part of the issue with weight management, especially long term weight loss adherence when you've lost the weight with any sort of diet. So rather than being that technical and hard, I'm just going to cover a few key points that I get to talk with some of my wonderful patients. About in the short time we have together that I think really work. Again, it's an overview and it's going to try to tie in a lot of stuff we talked about throughout the series in the first 12 presentations. This one kind of pulls it together before we get to the last presentation, lecture 14 on chew it.

So that being said, let us dive in to behavioral aspects of eating. I always like the term as simple as ABC 123 you know, Michael Jackson, singing that song, actions being bringing consequences and awareness before change that is so important. As living beings we all behave quote unquote. And behavior can be altered either consciously or unconsciously. And what I mean by that is you can generate change for yourself. It takes some work takes practice, as we'll see in just a minute here or change can be generated for you.

I love operant conditioning look at Pavlov's dog, right? behaviors that succeed tend to persist. And that's an important fact if you have a goal and can meet that goal. In other words, if the goal small, simple In short, you'll continue progressing towards future goals or that goals. behaviors that don't generate the desired outcome should be stopped. For example, gosh, dang, I hate waking up in the morning with a hangover, I guess I'd better quit drinking beer before bed at night.

Right? If the behavior doesn't generate a desired outcome, you stop it. You already have a set of behaviors and responses that are in place to all your environmental influences. Some of your behaviors are maladaptive. they persist, but don't help or end in a desired outcome. And many of these maladaptive behaviors were not coming just learned.

And that's, that's a really important fact to know. Because if we know the unknown, we're more likely to generate a positive behavior. So I want to just quickly tell you about a part of your brain called the deep limbic system. It sets all the emotional tones of your mind. If you link, a situation and an emotion, this is a limbic system going on. It stores charged emotional memories.

So this is where that smell brings back a thought, right? That's your limbic system, filters, how you interpret events. So your emotional response to a certain event is based on what's going on in this part of your brain. It modulates motivation. So up and down, it controls appetite and your sleep cycle. it directly processes a sense of smell.

That's why smell is such a powerful inducer of memories. It modulates libido. It's not just testosterone, people, testosterone tends to get all the blame and credit for everything sexual. There's a lot more to it than that. And it also is aware that eating creates a desired outcome. If you find relief from physical, emotional, or social stress from eating, this is your limbic system, so you're not actually hungry.

But if you find if you link that emotion, that good feeling emotion, that emotional tone of the mind or that storage charged emotional memories, with the stress linked to feeling better with eating, than eating becomes a learned unconscious behavior. And that's where we find a lot of people. So how do we manage that well utilize a pleasurable activity to correct unwanted behaviors. I'll use the same analogy but I think it's powerful. If you like to munch while watching your favorite TV show. Don't substitute something you dislike for it because that ain't gonna last that behavior ain't gonna last you want to find something more pleasurable.

Consider activities that stimulate endorphin release that's going for a walk getting out in the sun, sun stimulate serotonin, the happy hormone in your brain. Figure out something that makes you feel good and isn't a punishment for changing your behaviors. That could be listening to music, going to a concert, having a nice plan, a nice romantic evening with your loved ones. Watch a good movie, but just be careful not to mindlessly Munch while you're watching movie or go play a sport or throw a football with your kids. phone a friend that find an accountability buddy. We talked about those A while ago in this series.

If you're sitting there feeling hungry, due to an emotionally charged day, or not even feeling hungry but finding yourself eating, then phone a friend and say help me with this. I have an issue here. Get a good book, get yourself deeply involved, just keep both hands on the book, do not have one hand on the book and one hand in the jar of m&ms, substitute of feel good activity for a feel good food. In other words, really make that pleasurable substitution and formulate a plan. We've talked about that throughout this entire series if you fail to plan, plan to fail, and I'm just going to briefly touch on a rescue plan because we kind of touched on it throughout the series, but I didn't call it a rescue plan. So we'll get back to that.

There is a lot of environmental influences that affect our behavior. Some studies done by a gentleman named Brian Wansink, he was the former executive director of the USDA and he authored the book, mindless eating great book, I encourage you to check that out if you haven't. He showed the large package sizes encourage people to consume up to 45% more food just on the package size. In one study he gave Part of his group half of his group a half pound bag of m&ms, and the other half got a two pound bag. And then they were all instructed to watch a video. Well during that video, those with the two pound bags ate more than twice the m&ms that the others ate.

It's mindless munching, grazing through a regular bag of candy, you don't know how much you've eaten. Another good study showed that he did. He had two groups given the same amount of candy, but one was a large bag, or several small bags, so same amount of candy just presented differently. When the candy was broken into small sub packages. The the group that had that was forced to make a conscious decision to continue eating. So guess what they did?

They ate less. Just the art of opening that new package every time made him eat less powerful influences from the environment affects our behavior. I love the glass study. We're all very horizontally and vertically. Incorrect. We have an issue with this.

There's an allusion to tall skinny things versus short, stubby things. If I was to give you a 22 ounce tall skinny class like the one pictured, or the exact same fluid ounces, in it a short wide 22 ounce class, people in studies have routinely poured about 32% more into the short wide glass and they estimated they had poured less than in the tall glass. How our minds work powerfully. Same with the we talked about the endless soup bowl in a previous lecture in the series, plate and both sides huge as a dramatic impact on the amount of food consumed. If I was to give you ice cream in a bowl and a huge bowl or medium sized bowl, those of you with the large bowl typically would serve yourself up to 40% more ice cream. Yet they felt they were you would be You'd feel you're getting the same amount as the people in the medium bowl.

That's how our brains work. So being very aware of that, that's why we talked about indirect ways to control calories, direct ways to control calories. The size of the utensils and food, plates, bowls, drinks, has a lot to do with that unconscious behavior we're talking about. So I love cognitive therapy and restructuring, you really can you can't change your weight until you change your mind. Love that same. Eating should be a conscious process, the act of eating, you should think about it prior and that's part of planning ahead.

And that's part of schedule you're eating when you when you are scheduled. reframe events, reinterpretation of event, practice, role playing, if offered a food just just practice saying that so it's automatic. You know how people say even if you're having a rotten days, Hey, how are you? Oh, good. I'm great. Thank you.

I'm fine. That's it. subconscious behavior. That's not necessarily true. But we say it. We all do it.

Now rehearsal and roleplay. If you are offered a food, just say I just say it I'm stuff but I'd love a cup of coffee, reframe it, and practice it. And then always, always present yourself with alternative choices. This we're thinking ahead comes we talked about this one dining out at restaurants, instead of supersizing everything, get the kid size fries, it's cheaper, it is cheaper people, you're not going to save money by getting more food. Back chaining is another great way to help you change behavior. So first of all, identify the chain of behaviors which leads to an outcome and then find the newest behavior close to that outcome, then imprint backwards down the behavior chain, always linking the newly learned technique with other newly learned behaviors.

So let me give me an example. I like to eat candy when I watch TV. Before the last step of unwanted eating, such as picking up candy and turn on the TV, make a different choice. Maybe pick up some apples or nuts and practice in the least potent situation. What I mean by that is do it while you're watching something you don't like the news or, or a political debate or something terribly painful like that, rather than your favorite program. And then this is so important after one changes in place, you need to practice it about 30 times.

You really need to repeat the behavior over over and over consciously, so it becomes more subconscious. Once you've done that, then step back on the chain and figure something else out such as turning on TV only after walking around the house for five minutes, or practice walking then obtaining apples and nuts while watching your TV. The idea is to uncouple the unconscious chain of behavior change that limbic system. behavior modification components consists of reinforcing Good Behavior or extinguishing bad behavior. Give yourself rewards, such as ribbons or pins, not treats, treats are not food is not a reward, and it shouldn't be a reward adverse stimuli if you need and this is where I'll bring up that drug I mentioned in the last lecture and lecture 12 when I asked you to get your doctor involved with your long term weight loss maintenance plans, or real estate gives you loose stools, diarrhea and stay in your underwear.

That's adverse stimuli, right? If that's what you need to change your behaviors then do it. Relaxation training so important we subconsciously because we're stressed, overworked, overburdened, underpaid, etc, etc. So music or ocean sounds, progressive body relaxation, learning, yoga, doing polities meditation, prayer, so important. That's why I talked about the HPA axis. The big picture of health and weight loss you've got to control cortisone Stress, Stress Reduction, squeeze and remove all just simple examples, and desensitization increasing exposure to a behavior.

So, if you practice having apples and nuts when you sit down and watch TV when you finally get to your good TV show, your favorite one, it's going to be unconscious. You don't have to think about it as hard. You need to strategize. Avoid food triggers, that's difficult and work type situations. That's why I encourage you to bring your own snacks and foods to work rather than eating your neighbors. Avoid situational triggers by buying tempting foods.

That's why we talked about going to the store in the right condition and how to shop clean your covers of empty calories. If there's crap in there, throw it away. It's going to go to waste or it's going to go to waste. Substitute things do not use food as a reward a treat now I don't know about everyone else out there. I'm a big dog fan. I have two cocker spaniels.

And one of the words they know better than their own name is the word treat Charlie and bear their names and I say, Hey, you guys want to treat? And their little ears perk up their tails wag so hard, it moves their whole, but they just get so excited when I say the word treat well guess what you do too. So do I, we like treats. So find something pleasurable to to trade that treat him. But not don't do laundry instead of eating if I need to. I'm gonna go do laundry.

That doesn't sound fun. Or I'm gonna go scrub the toilets. That's painful. Of course you're going to choose eating over that. Find something pleasurable to do remember that deep limbic system we talked about you need to restructure and reinforce good behavior. Plan and create structure again, plan plan plan is probably the word I said more than any other word in the Last entire hours of lecture series here, planning create structure.

Find a specific time and place to remember when you're scheduled. Schedule your eating. have appropriate supplies on hand how to shop what conditions shopping, make sure there's protein at every meal, right? how and when to shop. Go so important. Reduce distractions.

Remember if mindless eating if you're watching TV, looking at your iPhone watching YouTube crash videos, you're just going to munch munch munch. Cut that out. Remember, go back to the second one, have a specific time in place to eat. And don't do it in mindless situations. Rules for the road work travel vacations, we've talked about that and how to survive those situations and prepare for specific events, parties, visitors holidays, we had a full presentation on that and how to plan ahead so you don't fail. All we've covered and it's all about cognitive bias.

Behavioral restructuring, very powerful. Now some people do great with this some don't I think I want to add it just because I've seen people to do it you do very well. Keeping a food and physical activity diary. It really does prevent food amnesia, it's surprising how much we wind up eating when we really look at it. It decreases over estimate estimation of physical activity. I'm not a big fan of those devices that count your calories.

Maybe a pedometer might be okay. But honestly, nobody uses those very long. So they're not long term but keeping a food diary for a few weeks is every few months, maybe very beneficial to help you restructure that. It also helps you when, where, why and how much and get the data. I'm a big data fan. I like to see data and numbers, time location, food eat and types of activity amount, energy level, stress level emotions, all the associations with that food if you start seeing that they You can start reframing and retraining that limbic system in your brain to succeed, very powerful.

Making a rescue plan is so important. Create it right away and change it as you need. Plan for unexpected scenarios laughs as relapses that's why I talked about protein in every meal. So I talked about eating a protein filled meal 30 minutes before a party or or a big event. You got to plan ahead but have a rescue plan. If you fall off the wagon, don't beat yourself up.

Don't throw in the towel. We are all all or nothing, but try not to be on this, retrain that limbic system to be not all or nothing. Right? See that was a double negative, but don't allow it to do that to you. Plan a schedule break and I tell you what the schedule break in your rescue plan, maybe unplanned, maybe something happens and you just go Okay, I have to do this. This is going to be my scheduled break.

You get your phone out. You schedule it right there and you go to it. Just change the future one, really making a rescue plan does work. It also is part of that cognitive retraining. Your reset your brain allows you to relearn what you're doing. And it's reinforcing by doing it.

So I really encourage a rescue plan. So be aware of behavioral aspects of health and weight control is absolutely essential. It's not a mindless game. It's not just something that happens. If you have kids. Remember how they learned to walk, begin to reward their self esteem.

By showing them they can do it. They learn to balance alone, they make small hesitant steps accompanied by Dad Mom cheering and excited for himself and then before you know it, they have their wheels they're walking. Now that may be much to your chagrin, once those little ones get wheels, but it's the same thing that doesn't occur overnight. You watch the process of them learning to walk going from simply getting the strength to push up on their legs. lift their little bodies up. It says Same thing with eating.

Go slow, practice it time and time again, at least 30 times. Another thing that I like to point out if you don't like vegetables, this, the studies have been done in kids, that it takes kids 15 exposures to broccoli, for their taste buds to actually change they like them. So things take time. And that's why it's so important that you understand the behavioral aspect of eating and long term weight loss maintenance. That kind of sums up everything we've talked about these last few hours. So my last and final lecture, I'm going to present to you chewy, chewy is my little doggie here who teaches kids how to chew your food, don't drink it.

I think you really enjoy that little presentation. It has some offerings at the end for if you're interested. And again, as always, questions, anything you might want to talk about. rephrase help to understand better, don't hesitate to email me D OSI at Dr. wi LL. E y comm or better yet, leave me a voice message on the website. Until the next presentation.

Presentation number 14 coming up next