The Hidden Psychology Behind Your Food Choices with Matty Lansdown

Published Aug 23, 2024, 2:38 PM

In this eye-opening chat, Paul Taylor sits down with Matty Lansdown, a nutritionist, scientist, speaker, and fellow podcast host. They talk about why we eat when we're not hungry, how junk food messes with our brains, and what we can do to build a healthier relationship with food. From the tricks food companies use to keep us snacking, to the reasons diets often backfire, this conversation covers a lot of ground. Whether you're trying to kick a late-night snacking habit or just curious about why food has such a hold on us, there's something here for everyone.

What You'll Learn:

  • How our brains push us towards unhealthy foods and why it's not just about willpower
  • The sneaky ways junk food is designed to keep us coming back for more
  • Why eating more protein might help you snack less
  • How yo-yo dieting can mess up your metabolism and what to do instead
  • Practical tips for figuring out your emotional eating triggers
  • Ideas for setting up your home and life to make healthy eating easier
  • How to stay motivated when you're trying to change your eating habits
  • Ways to stop sabotaging yourself when it comes to food and health

Main Takeaways:

  • Emotional eating is often about coping with stress or feelings, not just hunger
  • Dieting without dealing with the reasons you overeat usually doesn't work long-term
  • Having different reasons to eat healthy can help you stay on track, even on tough days
  • Sometimes we mess up our health goals because of deeper issues, like rebelling or fear of success
  • Changing your surroundings and who you hang out with can make a big difference in your eating habits

Resources:

Connect with Matty Lansdown:

Support the Podcast:
If you found this episode valuable, please consider subscribing, rating, and leaving a review on your preferred podcast platform. Your support helps us reach more people with important conversations like this one.

Share this episode with someone who might benefit from hearing it—emotional eating is more common than we think, and this conversation could make a difference in someone's life.

The number one cause of weight gain is dieting. And the reason for that is in this Western world where satisfaction, comfort, validation, dopamine is so easily accessible. When you deprive it, it's so much easier to just give up and go towards the things that are helpful. So putting a Heroin addict in a Heroin.

Store, Buddy Linstein, Welcome to the podcast.

Thank you, sir, Paul Taylor. What's going on?

Ah, I tell you, what's going on is fucking technology frustrations. I just said to you, I was just about to do a talk for the Cancer Concil on my internet just completely and utterly shut itself.

Which is lovely, isn't it. When it's three minutes before you're both to start a talk.

There's nothing worse, nothing worse. You open up an app and then something reboots or needs to update, and it's like worse timing.

They were very understanding, and thankfully I know the CEO pretty well.

She's great. So we're just rescheduling, but managed to get it up online for this podcast.

So you are, You're a nutritionist, you're a scientist, you're an international speaker, and you're also a podcast host. I've been on your podcast recently, but you really focus in on the psychology of eating and particularly around emotional eating. But let's really start from the top. Why do we seem to have such a big issue around food in the first place.

Oh, good question, and it pretty easily answered. Dopamine in the short is the really short answer. We're in a world and you are the expert of this world of comfort and discomfort. Right, We're in a world where we don't have to do hard things and we can use the easy option and not be socially judged for it and not be ridiculed. Whereas we think about, you know, maybe several hundred years ago or thousands of years ago, by choosing a different option, you might be outcast from the small family or tribe that you were in and so, you know, whereas nowadays it's if you don't go out and eat ice cream, you're the weird one, right, You're the odd person that's doing the you know, the healthy thing. Whereas now everybody it's sort of socially okay to join in, you know, destructive behaviors, and everybody sort of champions you for that or bullies you into submission for not eating the thing or doing the thing, and so yeah, I think fundamentally it's just that life's hard. Life is overwhelming, it's difficult, it's challenging. People have trauma, and historically the way in which we dealt with that was to either swallow it or deal with it, and we might have had to deal with it head on with a sword or an axe, or nowadays we're so civilized and organized that yelling at somebody or saying what you think or releasing that energy or to talking to somebody about it, it's like, you know, just get on with it. We're busy, we're distracted. So the way that we heal those pains or sufferings or emotions or excessive cortisol and excessive adrenaline in our system, instead of burning it, is that we bury it. And often food is the lowest barrier to entry thing that we can go towards. We can go to the supermarket. You know, it's not like alcohol or drugs where there's a clear line between addiction and you don't actually need those things to live, whereas food you need food to live. So it's a very gray, vague area.

That's a really good I mean, there's lots of really good points that you just brought up.

But people don't have to smoke, they don't.

Have to drink alcohol, but we do have to eat, right, and that's the thing.

And then we have more and more of this ultra processed food, which to go.

Back to your first point about dopamine gives the brill in a nuclear reward that, yeah, our human brand like not all food, I mean food.

Is supposed to be rewarding.

You know, we have those that natural reward in the brain, food, water, sex, nurturing, achievement, all naturally released dopamine, which, as you will know, a lot of people say it's it's the pleasure chemical. It's not really, it's the chemical of motivation and goal directed behavior. And when you have a tim tam, you know you have other chemicals.

In your brain going, oh that's lovely. Dopamine's going worth the rest of the packet, right absolutely.

And I think this is a big part of the issue is that there is so much of this ultra process food that hits the bliss point in the brain right where it is ay this delicate balance of either salt and sugar or salt and fat, or fat and sugar or salt, fat and sugar, Like any two of those things in the right balance hits the reward pathway and Pringles have nailed it right for all ultra process foods. Once you pop, you can't stop.

Yeah, they're literally advertising their addictiveness.

Yeah, yeah, that's right.

But it's really interesting, isn't it, because that when we eat those foods that just tearste amusing, they are Moorish, right, and you do want more of them, and they're designed like that, and we get a reward, We get a soothing of our stress or our soothing of our anxiety, which then reinforces their behavior.

Right. Yeah, absolutely, And it's a vicious cycle because the other element of that is that whilst I guess you know, do the emotional binge overeating work from fundamentally a psychological standpoint first, there's also the nutritional element, which is this when you put in food and they've done there's a group of I'm going to blank on their names, but there's a group of evolutionary biologists that have done this work in looking at multiple species all the way down to fly locusts up to mammals humans as well. All species over eat carbohydrates to hit their protein quota.

I interviewed the guys on my podcast, two guys from City. Yeah they are brilliant and Russ rush rush Back or something like.

I can't remember their names, but.

I always to give their names.

But yeah, absolutely brilliant than that.

That showing that we all species will eat and continue to eat until they hit the required amounts of protein. And most of the if you look at ultra processed foods, they are not protein heavy because protein's expensive.

Right, And yeah, well it stops you eating the product.

That's right, I say, I know, you know what, I never thought of that. That's true.

Yeah, you get to the end of the bag of a you know, protein field thing and you don't you need less willpower to manage going back, and you're satiated. That's so you don't go back to the for you don't buy another one.

That's the thing, because my go to snack would be different types of build tongue or meat stick stick because I just tried to eat it and then you're good, right, and you don't.

Need any more.

That's a very point actually that I'd never factored in. But I think one of the other things, just before we dive into the whole emotional eating thing.

And you mentioned that the way that we are with society now I is this. It's more than an acceptance. It's almost become an encouragement of larger bodies. And it's well intentioned. I get it.

It's well intentioned, and it's about not body shaming. And I'm one hundred percent behind that, right, So I don't want anybody to misinterpret what I'm saying. But what we're doing is that we're normalizing being overweight and being obese.

And what people.

Don't realize is the multitude of health benefits that come into that. But it's also then that that normalizes over eating, and to your point earlier on and and.

That that then when you get into.

That pathway, it's so bloody hard to get out up right.

Yeah, And and I would agree with you. Happy at every size, awesome, worthy at every size, lovable at every size, you know, amazing, healthy at every size. No, not at all, And that and that number that there's not there's a number that's going to be different for everybody, or a set of compositions or statistics or information that will be slightly different for everyone. But I think we deal these days with such like on an individualistic base, the basis of, you know, don't hurt this individual's feelings, don't hurt this person, don't do that kind of thing, whatever it is. You know, we're protecting the individual. But we live in a society, and so if we don't take a societal lens or a community focus, then we are we are blind to the consequences and the consequences on a bigger scale. And when we get into this kind of macro thinking, it it's hard to relate to. So I get why people don't think about it. But we have a reduction in the productivity of society. We have more sick days at work, we have interest rates and things that go up as a consequence, we have more people that use the system that we pay the medical system of which we all pay tax. Are We're going to get to a point where I get to pay less tax because I'm healthy? Probably not right? And so there's other macro ways that this this comes into the conversation and degrades society. If we champion the healthy at every size and cele obesity celebration with you know, celebrities and role models that just and you know, even I did a podcast yesterday with a clinical psychologist that's in this world as well. And you know the movement on YouTube of mock bang. I don't know if you've heard of it, but it's basically it's, oh, there's people that earned millions and millions of dollars just eating on camera. They just they're like in the most disgusting foul ways you can ever imagine. And it's again, it's this public championing of bigger bodies, terrible food behavior. And sure half the audience are watching because they're saying, oh, this guy's like me, and the other half are watching because they're like, can you believe this is real? Yeah?

Kind of and it's like you're watching a car crash and you can't stop, right.

Yeah, that's exactly what it's like. But this just sort of illustrates that there's this huge movement. And you go onto any of these videos five million views, ten million views, you know they're earning millions of dollars in ad revenue. But again, it's just this normalization and of a greater number of people in society saying it's okay to be like this, and as an individual, you do you as part of if you're going to be part of my society though, I think we should level up.

Yeah, yeah, look, I completely agree on that. And research can I just this week. I mean, it's research that we kind of all get intuitively, but for the first time they have realized, Hi, being on healthy physically damages that bring in and your mind. And it appears to be that all all organs sends signals to each other, and so an unhealthy liver actually creates an unhealthy brain, and unhealthy capancreas creates an unhealthy brain.

And it's through these inflammatory.

Messagers and other metabolic messages that actually changes the way that the brain actually works and drives our whole host of mood disorders. Right, And yeah, you know, I've been talking about the interactions between the body and brain for decades, but now we're starting to see real evidence behind the fact that when you are unhealthy and this is this isn't just overweight, this is unfit as well, that it actually damages organs, and those organs can damage sense signals that damage other organs as well.

So we started to see.

There's this knock on effect at an ecosystem level that is really concerned because then you have neurological conditions, you get neurine generous diseases, but you also get mood disorders. Right, and you talked about productivity. The biggest driver of presenteeism or disability adjusted life here is is actually mood disorders.

Depression is the single biggest, right And so that.

Healthy body equals healthy mind, we have not really seen it. And that when your your body is not healthy and not fit, and that that damages your organs, which then there's this knock on effect where they start to damage each other, including the brilliant.

Well and I think the you know, further down the chain of this conversation of poor mental health, you know, depression, anxiety, mood disorders, that type of thing is is the idea that in the absence of exercise, because a lot of people think exercise is about getting skinny, but yeah, right, well, and in some parts of your journey or the individual's journey, it might be about that. But the other thing is that if we get to the mood disorder conversation and also acknowledged it that all the chemicals and all the terrible shit that's in, you know, in the ultra processed food is also contributing to degradation of the brain and the body. But the absence of physical biological resilience from not exercising, not lifting something heavy is also a contributing factor to that lack of resilience in the workplace or in the environment. And then to sort of circle back to where we were, is this super individualistic, always offended society that has no resilience whatsoever, right, because you know, you can probably tie it all into the same loop. If they've never lifted something heavy, they've never done something hard, and never's a big overarching broad term. But you understand what I'm.

Saying absolutely, and there I am in complete violent agreement. I like to talk about psycho physiological resilience, right, which is this body Brian resilience. And you can't be resilient just by doing positive thinking, Like there's this toxic positivity shit that's.

Out there that drives me nuts.

That you have to condition the body and condition the mind by doing challenging stuff, because the biggest benefit of exercise is that it's a stressor and it stimulates the body to have positive adaptations.

And that's just like the mind. And who was it?

It was one of the stoic philosophers said that, and I'll paraphrase here, but just like liaber is good for the body, dealing with difficulties is toughens the mind as well.

Right, But it is this.

Culture that we're in where it is all about trying to minimize our stress and then about soothing your stress with either alcohol, drugs or food. And I think the issue now is that this stuff is all around us.

Everywhere, right.

I mean alcohol and drugs were always available to a certain extent, but I think the change in the composition of our food in.

The last thirty years is just massive.

I'll just open that up for comment from around that topic, like how big do you think the changing composition of the food and the ultra processed food is as part of our overall problem?

Oh, I would say a huge part of the problem. Percentage wise. I don't know, it's going to be different for everyone. And fifty percent maybe it's fifty percent movement. You know what's going in which also includes unfiltered water, you know, the air that we breathe in cities. You know, there's a whole rabbit hole of detoxification to go down there. But the food is the thing, and this is why I'm sort of in this world of this combination of psychology and nutrition because both of those things are things that are within our reach to do something about, and just as exercises as well. And we've got to eat, so you know, unless we want to just die, we don't have a choice. We've got to We've got to eat, whereas the other things, you know, we've got a choice as to whether we do or don't or you know, et cetera. But yeah, I think it's enormous. The vegetable oils one of the biggest destroyers of the brain and nervous system as well.

Talk us through that, mat so there will be you know, my listeners will have heard me say I'm not a fan of vegetable oils. So talk us through the process by which they can become damaging for us.

Yeah. Absolutely. So there's what's referred to by Kate Shanahan, who for anyone that can see the videos, a couple of her books on my shelf over here. But she's put out Deep Nutrition and Dark Calories. Both of them have several hundred studies. The Deep Nutrition has over sixteen hundred studies in it referencing vegetable oils or if she refers to them, the hateful ache. So we're talking about canola oil, grape seed oil, rape seed oil, sunflower oil, safflower oil, cottonseed oil, and corn oil. And the reason so, first and foremost, all of those minus corn are not vegetables whatsoever. They're nuts and seeds. And that was a marketing decision made in about the early seventies to call them vegetable oils. And then they in order to get any of those nuts and seeds. And if you think about any of those nuts and seeds, if you crush them or bite into them, do you ever produce a liquid?

Now?

No? Right, So it's got to go through a heavy amount of processing to get the oil that is in those out of them. And depending on the manufacture process, it's somewhere between thirty and seventy steps of manufacture, and those manufactured steps three.

To seventy steps.

Yeah, depending on the business and the factory in China and all Malaysia and all insert location.

Whole shit.

But that's because they're not very nice because three of those steps include coloring. So you know, you walk down the aisle of the supermarket the cooking oil and it's just this beautiful golden syrups. You know, it's like it's just amazing. But they have to color them because they're disgusting colors. They're like sludge. When they've gone through the first couple of steps of squeezing the oil out of them, they have to deodorize them because they smell all and then they have to flavor them. They had flavors in as well to make sure that they are, you know, consumable by humans. And of course, slapping on the label that says vegetable oils, everybody gets vegetable, we think health. But along this process it goes through many phases of increased heat, far higher than you would achieve in your kitchen. Yeah, and what that does to the oil is it oxidizes it, so it denages it and breaks it and an oxygen molecule attaches to it, which means now it's not in a helpful form. And many people will have heard of smoke points. And you know, you've got to use certain oils for certain temperatures. That's because at a certain temperature, these oils change shape and they become no longer helpful.

And that can actually be a selling point for them. They have a high smoke point, right, And so that's the whole thing. When they realize that transfats were unhealthy, that oh, well, let's do these vegetables because they have.

A higher smoke point.

But what most people don't realize is they've become a completely adultert to that point that you actually get them so before you even start to cook with them, they are completely adulterized. And the research shows that when you hate an unsaturated fat, it actually gives off toxic aldehydes at a much higher level than a model ensaturate or a saturated fat.

Right.

This is something that people don't really understand absolutely.

And actually many of the bottles of vegetable oil, if you've got one in your cupboard and you're listening right now, will have somewhere on it a line that says that there's not a great deal of evidence that supports the use of these for heart health, which is just wild because it's like in the tiniest writing, there's a random sentence, and particularly in the USA, it's got the FDA comment of like, there's insufficient evidence to say that these are any good for heart health, yet they are promoted by the American Heart association all the time, and so I guess, and then the question becomes, you know, well what next? And then we move towards things that have been used for a millennium. Beef, tallow lard, you know, suet, which you know you can get off making broth or or cooking, but you can buy it from a butcher, that type of thing. Olive oil is good for sort of mid range temperatures. That the place I always moved to the space where there's the least amount of debate in the research and with professionals, and the least in might opinion, the least amount of debate happens with avocado oil as the thing to cook with the hottest temperatures that you can achieve in your kitchen. And actually there's a few my sister's a head chef and there's a few sort of famous French chefs that always cook with avocado oil for that reason as well. That she follows is yeah, it doesn't damage. And because if you're thinking, you know, French cuisine and flavor, when that damage happens to the oil, it changes the flavor, right, It impacts the flavor. The other thing to mention, which is going to sound a bit conspiratorial, but there's been documentaries that that have gone over this. But when you've got food great products that go on the shelf of supermarkets, you don't have to be super clear about what goes into them, and so they have. There was an olive oil sort of test done in multiple locations at ports in the world where giant shipments were coming in and they were finding that some of these olive oil fully branded olive oil glass bottles actually had up to seventy percent cottonseed oil in them, so they'd been diluted to save money. And that's sort of that happened. That's happened in the honey industry as well. It's happened in multiple industries where food grade products, you know, you don't have to be again super honest or clear. And it also can preserve it a little bit longer because once the oil is oxidized, it doesn't have much more changing to do, so it means it's more stable on the shelf last longer, which is exactly why vegetable oils are used in all of the bagger box or canned foods that you can buy anywhere, because it keeps them shelf stable and it does the oxidizing instead of the food oxidizing itself. Yeah.

Interesting.

Now the olive oil, I had read that research and actually the mafia are massively involved in olive oil. And that's why I see the people, you're gonna buy olive oil, which we use heaps of olive oil. We also have avocado oil, and we have large and we have.

Gay and so.

Yeah, and so that's I always say to people, if you're cooking a steak, that's when you need something that is saturated fat, right, because I think helping are people our listeners to understand is saturated means it's saturated with carbon bonds, which means it's more stable under heat. So I always say to people, you're gonna buy olive oil, which I highly recommended you to get extra virgin olive oid, but buy Australian produced olive oil because the import stuff is the stuff that is highly highly I don't know if you've seen anything to the contrary about Australian extra virgin olive oil, but that's the stuff that I tend to buy.

Hopefully tell me that it's diluted as well.

Well. I haven't seen anything though, and I mean not that this is possible for many people. And you know, you and I were in this world of health. But you know, if if the farm's somewhere that you can drive past, or they're a business that has some kind of shop front or open door policy, you know, that's sort of a green flag for me, you know, and sort of you know, we've got brands here in Victoria that allow you to sort of go there and you can go to the farm where the olives are picked, and yeah, and so the more of that that we have, the more transparency in the farming practices, for me, that's a green flag. It's like if anybody can pull off the you know, their road trip and go and visit one of these places and see what's done. Sure, a lot of the time we don't know what we're actually looking at, but it's interesting. But that's sort of a look in the right sort of a tick in the right direction, if you like.

Yeah, cool, Okay, let's not because we could talk about this stuff all day, but I think I think that the basic is is don't buy freaking vegetaboil. It's bullshit, right, And don't listen to all the nonsense that's out there that's not talk about emotional eating, so you're much closer to this than I am.

What sort of incidents of this do we think?

Like?

How common is it?

I mean, before you answer that question, I always say to people when I'm in workshops, you know, when you're stressed, who goes for alcohol? Who goes for food? The people who go for food? Is it salary sticks and carrot sticks?

Right?

And it's obviously not because our brains have worked out to this point how to deal with stress, and my brain basically goes, I'll sort that shit out. Just bring me a bottle of wine and we're all good. Right, But we have those learned responses to stress. Right, But how common do you think it is amongst most males and females.

I think it's more common in females, bus it's equally terrible in men. Like, It's not like it's only one percent of men. I think. You know, a lot of women have challenges in that space, and there's a lot of reasons equally men. Like, we just have to look at the average trading Now, if we get to a construction site upon a time, you know, in the Western world, at least you go to a construction site and that was the big burly men, right, That was the guys that were jacked. They were naturally ripped. They're lifting concrete all day. And now't you think generally you think, oh, I'll go to a construction site and it's sort of the overweight guys. You know, so and you know smogo is you know, pies and that kind of thing. You go to the Hamburgers and whatnot and cans of coke and stuff like that.

The amount of times I go to the airport early and I stop in to get petrol and there's a bunch of treaties coming in and they're buying sausage rolls or pies from those petrol stations and two cans of v or two massive kinds of mother And I'm thinking.

Holy shit.

Yes, yeah, but so I mean, and you could obviously kick off a debate around whether it's emotional eating or whether it's just what we've got access to, which is a fair argument because the system's not working in anyone's favor, right, But yeah, I think it's more common in women. But also, yeah, I got plenty of men reach out. I've worked with a bunch of men in this space, and I guess Yeah. The reason that it is so common, I would say, first and foremost is actually less about human resilience and more about the system that we are a part of. You know, you go to the supermarket, you know, you hit with all of these advertisements and colors, and the supermarket design is laid out by psychologists, you know, behavioral psychologists, so they can successfully, you know, manipulate your behavior there unconsciously. And you know we've got kids shows and billboards and advertising with social media. You know, I am a nutritionist that I put on my YouTube workouts which I've been doing for years, and I still get hit with KFC ads all the time. I'm like, my behavior has not shown in the data in the algorithm, Like why is this relevant to me? But I still get hit with those ads. You know.

Interesting thing about supermarket layer, It's just a little comment. I did a bunch of work with a food manufacturer over in New Zealand. Should remain nameless, but I was working with the leadership team and we're having a discussion which I was privy to you about one of the large supermarkets wanting them to produce very cheap home branded bread. And there was the negotiation around it, and it was like, well, if you do do this for us, we will give your products the best shelf space, and particularly the stuff at the end of the isles, because the stuff that's at the end of the isles is the stuff that sells the most, and those products are generally paying to be placed there. Right, there's so much psychology in the supermarkets, you know, and also that they know that kids are often have the purchasing part, so a lot of the ship food is down at kids'.

High heights as well. Right, There's just there's so much stuff goes into this.

Even Cereal box design. So you'll notice that Cereal obviously has characters, yes, because children related.

Characters should not be selling food.

But if you notice their eyes, often if you look at the boxes, the eyes are pointing down right in the design because the children are looking up right interests. I'm manipulative.

Just ridiculous anyway, So we were talking about emotion leating.

So if somebody does emotionally and and I presume.

There is a continuum around emotional eating, yeah, you know, I just I like to have chocolate because it's nice to This is where I go might go to when I'm stressed. And so talk us through that continuum and where does it really start to become problematic.

Yeah, you're totally right, because there's a whole dialogue around is emotionally eating always bad? Right? And I would say no, because culture, tradition, social cohesion, in particular scenarios, all of those things are important. And for a millennia we have gathered around tables and celebrated and welcomed people with food because it's a resource, you know, because humans need it and so it's a value, and so it's important, right, And sometimes we get clients come through our programs that are sort of and I'm just going to use arbitrary numbers, but say I want to lose twenty kilograms. It's amazing, Okay, let's do that. But then we sort of do a bit of the emotional analysis and the Friday night pizza night with the boys or my kids or whatever that is that is not worth giving up. That is such an important social cohesive memory, making happiness, you know, sort of a situation that it's like, well, actually, maybe the goal needs to be fifteen killers, right and so and so that's going to be different for everybody. And so, and as you said, where does it become harmful? Where's the line on that sort of spectrum? And I would say for most people is you know, you need to decide that for yourself. When does it become harmful? Because sometimes it's helpful, sometimes it's harmful. And there's nothing worse than giving the brain two sets of rules for the same food, which is the idea that on Saturday night at a birthday party, cake's okay, but Monday's not. So it's like, hang on, so the same food is bad and good. That's kind of confusing, right, when we're tired, when we're stressed, when we're busy, we don't want those things in the brain. We don't want those confusing scenarios. So my approach personally is basically that we destigmatize all food and we just check in with how our body feels, like do I feel healthy? Do I feel okay? Right, and so that we're not stigmatizing food, because when we stigmatize food, it triggers people's rebellion. You know, a lot of people either had parents that were really restrictive, or they've got a partner that's restricted the way right, yeah, or food is the only place in their life where they feel like they can rebel and break the rules because everything else, or another way to look at it is food is another place where the core human need of variety is being met. Life is I'm stuck in my job that I hate because of the mortgage. I'm in a marriage, it's not going well, the kids drive me crazy. I need some I need someone else, And so food is the access point of variety, right, And it's like, oh, I can have a bit of this today or a bit of that today, but the rest of my life is Monday and yeah, yeah, So there's so many ways in which we enter this conversation because a lot of people here emotional eating and they just think super depressed woman on the couch who got dumped by a boyfriend eating ice cream.

You know, yeah, that's the stereotype.

So when we think of where this thing starts, right, I think we all probably grew up with food as a reward, didn't we. You know, it's that whole you've been good, so you can have ice cream, or you've been good to you can have chocolate.

How much does that play a role in all of this?

And that then subconscious association of food with reward, you know how big is that in all of this or is it just like you know, that's just is what it is.

Well, I think I think it starts one thing and it evolves over time, which is that it starts for some people in that Yeah, that idea of reward and that they've got that means they've got approval, they're doing the right thing, they're moving in the right direction, and maybe that they're you know, we're talking about adults now, maybe they're trying to access that sense of love or acceptance that they felt from their father in that moment, which outside of that moment, he was a very loving And the thing about trying to eat memories is that you can't eat the part right, I love it, so so yeah, you know, it can be the situations like that we were trying to, you know, have the access to these feelings which we once felt before. But you know, we're moving in this space, I guess, of trying to recreate it and instead we're rewarding ourself. But the reward evolves into something new, which is life is hard. So I'm going to reward myself all of the time rather than I did the good thing. Now I deserve a reward and so where it started is maybe not how it's showing up now, but it is this idea of oh, that don't mean hit, or that particular food or that particular wine always reminds me of that this scenario that where I got validated at seven. But now it's got a different meaning, which is that everything is hard and nobody cares about me, and ever I'm ignored. And I hear this a lot from mums because they're they're running the household, they're looking after Hubby, looking after the kids, They've forgotten about, and so the only time where I'm prioritized is when the wine cares about the chocolate cares about me.

Time.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely no.

Before we get into some strategies around emotional leading, because I do want to get into that when people have an unhealthy relationship with food, ninety nine times out of one hundred are going to put on wit and then very often that the an going to go okay, I need to go on a diet, and they go on a diet for a certain mere period of time, realize that that diet is unsustainable, then come off the diet, back to their habits, and then kick the can down. The rule for x amount of time and then we're back on it. Why is that cycle? And we all know these people right who their diet's pretty crap, and then they will just go on a diet or they'll go on the sheiks for a couple of months and then they'll lose with it, and then.

They're back to their original diet again. Why is that a bad idea?

Well, the number one cause of weight gain is dieting, right yeah. And the reason for that is, in my opinion, in this Western world where like satisfaction, comfort, you know, validation, dopamine is so easily accessible when you deprive it in a space where you haven't understood the underlying psychological drivers of your behavior, it's so much easier to just you know, give up and go towards the things that are helpful when you're so it's like, you know, it's like putting a heroin addict in a heroin store and saying don't don't shoot up. It's like good luck, you know. So that's how I think about it, is that when you're on a diet, you're basically walking around to the supermarket, you going to events, going to parties, and you're surrounded by this, you know, this stuff that you really really want, and so you think about it like a spring. You know that you're pushing tighter and tighter and tighter, and then at some point, whether it's a week, whether it's that afternoon, whether it's three months down the track, that spring, eventually the tension seeks release. And that's because we haven't worked on the underlying motivators and drivers, some of which are nutritional, some of which have Yeah, like we talked earlier, you're just not getting enough protein in your diet, which is super common. That happens to a lot of people, even people that you know describe themselves theirselves as healthy eaters. And then the other part of it is the psychology, you know, and that is the why do I go towards this dopamine? You know, when I'm not hungry, when I don't need food, even if I've eaten a steak for dinner, Am I still looking for something sweet afterwards? You know? Was there nutrition missing from dinner? Or you know, am I just so naked and worn out that I need something sort of material? They go to push the biological cortisole back down, you know, rather than do something that's truly coming, which is breathwork or meditation or you know, because a lot of the things we add in, even though in the moment the dopamine and serotonin and that cocktail makes us feel good, they are inevitably just more stress on the pile of stress.

You shit later on, and then you've got regret and all of that. I will never forget to.

My master's Jesus nearly twenty five years ago in nutrition and them talking about a research study from Yale University where they had identified that people who were on diets suffer from and you describe it beautifully with the spring. They are in constant high cognitive dietary restraint, which is a giky academic way of saying, I'm obsessing about the stuff that I'm not eating, and I'm obsessing about it all the time. And eventually that obsession becomes so much that, as you said, the spring just goes bull and then then they're off the diet. Now, physiologically, I think that becomes a massive issue, right because when people go on a calorie restricting diet, they will lose water first, as you will know, Then they'll lose muscle, and then they'll lose some fat, and then when they realize their diet is unsustainable, they put the water on quite quickly, or the water will balance right after a waterless or a really.

Low carb diet.

But the water comes back on, then fat comes on and the muscle doesn't come back, and then you get back to your normal weight eighty ninety kilos whatever it might be, but you're proportionally more fat and less muscle. That means you're resting, metabolic rate is lower. So you go back on the same habitual diet and you actually put on some weight and then you end up at a higher weight eventually after the diet, and then you go through the bloody cycle again, right.

And we end up being really low.

In terms of our muscle, and that caused a cyclopenia and nostropenia, which in themselves are horrendous. Right, So people are just by constantly going through this cycle that are actually making their body composition worse and worse as the ege and then they hit friggin middle age and then the wheels come off.

Well. In that process, you're also disregulating your thyroid, which regulates thirty sixty percenty of its metabolism.

Grant points do a bit of a dive on the thiret because there's a lot of people out there who go, I put on with it because my thyroid is not working properly.

Word does it all start?

Yeah, Well, the thyroids responsible for a significant portion of your metabolic rate, and so if you start sort of pushing it to extremes, it starts to downregulate your metabolism and the reason which makes it harder and harder to lose weight as you go. And you know, that's sort of the group of people that I work with've often been on a diet for somewhere between ten to thirty years in some variation, and each time you come you go into a hyper restrictive calorie diet, you tell the thyroid and the evolutionary sort of markers in your body that, hey, we've been here before historically in our genome, and whenever there's a famine, whenever there's not much around, we need to lower the metabolic rate to save the fat that's on the body. And this might be the person that's like, every time we go on a diet, I don't lose anything. You might be at that point, right, because the thyroid and other parts of your body are sort of saying we need to hold onto this as long as we can, because if we're going to go through a famine, then you know, we need to survive it. And then you add back in all of the food when you decide to either give up or you're sick of the restriction, or you've changed your mind on what you want to do. And then in this lower metabolic state, we've just added tons of calories that are also saying to your system, hey, the famine's over, quick, grab everything, put it in storage so that we're not here again in this situation. And so so that's why we gain the weight back so suddenly, and often more than when you begin at the beginning, and over that time you can really damage the thyroid and end up meeting you know, drugs because you're T three T four are sort of out of whack, and the common tests that GPS will do these days because so many people have thyroid issues.

Yeah, absolutely, And then you're add in psychological stress into that as well from just life in general, and in psychological stress about my wit, and that then further impacts hormones and all sorts of stuff.

Now, this has been very depressing to this point.

For the listener, right listening just to rip on about how people are completely destroying themselves. So let's let's throw our listener a rope so that they can clamber back out.

So where do you start with people ryan who have issues around food that are largely psychological, which which most people's issues with food are generally yes.

So simply getting them to change nothing in the beginning, which is that you take a little bit of a stop take of the normal life. Because the way I think about it is if you pull over and you know your car's smoking from the bonnet and you don't lift the bonnet up, you don't know what's wrong. You don't know what we need to fix. You're just like, oh, my car's ruined. And it's like, well, is it your car or is it the fuel pump? Right? And so we need to we need to figure out where the fuel pump is in your life, which is we need to document food that I eat, What do I eat? You know, this doesn't matter what you eat, it's just we're documenting it. And then we follow it up with where was I what's the location, and what are the emotions that I'm feeling? And many people in that phase will realize they don't actually know what emotion they're feeling. You know that then often not in a situation or have never been in a situation where they have been guided to feel their stuff and know what is like, is it anger? Is it sadness, is it happiness? You know what's going on? So we want to collect that location food emotion because first and foremost we want to identify where the problem, Well, where is the problem? What is the problem because Saturday night cake, birthday party probably not a problem, but Tuesday morning, Wednesday morning, Thursday morning cake might be unhelpful. Yeah, right, And so we need to figure out where that problem is. And then once we know what it is, and usually in that first couple of weeks of just self awareness practices, people start to realize they're like, oh, I always eat chocolate when I'm tired. Well, I always drink wine wine when I've had a bad day. And you know, we're trying to make these patterns really obvious, and then we sort of dig into the why the wine or why the chocolate is the solution, and that could simply be circumvented, like we've already talked about by getting the lunch or the meal before correct or diving into all of the emotional reasons why chocolate's a good idea in that particular moment. So it's very methodical in the sense that we look at the past, find what's broken, deep dive on that, and sometimes, to be totally honest, that can end up at I was sexually traumatized at five. That can be some really heavy stuff. But I'm not one of those people that's like everyone's got trauma, we're all broken. Sometimes it's like, Oh, I just got this idea from Cabury Marketing and it's happened for forty.

Years, you know, and it's so lovely, I can't stop.

Yeah. Sometimes that's it, you know, and I won't even argue that's that's sometimes more difficult to work on because there's not much to heal there, you know. But some of the deepest stuff we can make significant shifts with because once we start reconciling and healing and just giving voice to some of this stuff which has been suppressed for so long that food we're using food to suppress. Literally, the physical action of eating is like stopping words from coming out of our mouth. If we think about that, more like in a philosophical sense, we're plugging the whole. That would verbalize the problem. And Freud talks a little bit about it as well in regards to, you know, the fixation that we have with the mouth and putting things in the mouth to stop things coming out, and so yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, there's some really great psychological analyses on that obsession with our mouth. But anyway, but yeah, so we start look at the past, figure out why it's here, learn a bit of emotional literacy, and start getting people to connect with emotions and understand their emotions and give sort of labels to their emotions, which helps people feel much more in control of themselves if they can identify what is happening inside me.

That near it to temid thing.

Right, we're acknowledging an emotion and actually saying to you either saying out loud if there's not people around here going to think you're bonkers, or just saying it in your head what emotion you're actually feeling. Actually reduces the intensity of the emotion.

Right, So I love that.

You bring that in and then around the whole built environment, right, what are your tips around out? They'll give you a little story just to give you a bit of time to think about this, because these.

Questions are not scripted at all. Right, we're free wheeling.

But years ago when I was boxing, and my longstanding issue never really been an issue with food, but alcohol being arison ex military, right, which again gives you an excuse to do the stuff that you shouldn't really be doing. But alcohol was the thing that I really had to cut down. And I found that changing the way that I walked home was really important because I would walk home past Dan Murphy's and there would be times that I'd be walking home. I even had a boxing training session feeling really good, and I'm walking home when I walk passed by Murphy's and then all of a sudden, I find myself walking out of the shop with a bottle of wine without even thinking about it. Right, So that habit chill thing. And then I took it a step further of just getting alcohol out of the house, and then it became a kes of, well, if I want to drink, I've got to really really want to drink, because I've actually got to go out of the house and go and get it. And I would only buy enough for that evening, right, so that kind of lands in that's leading the wetness a little bit. Around strategies for people around their built environment to help them to manage food. What sort of things do you do or recommend.

Yeah, exactly what you described is changing the way that you walk home, changing the way that you drive to and from work. You know, if you drive home past KFC and you smell that, you smell it and you're just like, oh, you know what, amazing, let's go when you're tired and worn out, you know, you've got to go a different way. Maybe even things like changing up the way that your house is laid out. And I know that sounds silly, but if you've been in the same house and same environment where the problem happens for twenty five years or even three years, it might simply be rearranging the lound room, you know, so that you're psychologically it's a different space. It's a new chapter. We've changed something. I like that.

That's cool.

Yeah, And that extension goes to the bedroom. It even goes to And this is like a big concept or like a big step. But some people, during this process of going through the work that I do, a lot of it is sort of reclaiming themselves is that they've been violating their boundaries and not respecting themselves for a long time. And what comes with that sometimes is the cutting out of family members or people that are really destructive, that are, you know, not being nice to you. And sometimes that can lead to people finding their voice and saying something they've never said to someone for twenty years. And you know, because now we're pack animals and fundamentally we want to have a sense of belonging because that means evolutionary safety, survival. And so once you build up a bit of courage, and also you're starting to identify your values with a new group of slightly healthier people, you might think, oh, I actually don't need that person that's been, you know, by whoever it's been bringing me down my entire life or telling me that I'm awful or that good things will never happen to me, or my abusive husband or you know, and sometimes they're the reasons why we're eating, you know, is that we're just perpetuating the information or the belief that they've pumped into our head. So rearranging our physical location, the relationships of life that might need attention as well, because that just there's another layer of our environment, could be finding a new job. You know, maybe you're unexcited, you hate your job, and so the excitement you get is at you know, ten am and three pm when everybody walks down to get coffee and cake. You know, that's the excitement of the.

Day, right, yep yep.

Another interesting little tip is to put healthy food right at the front of the fridge and the pantry, because the research shows you're much more likely to reach to eat the first thing that you actually see. So hiding this that you know, ideally you'd have most of that shit out of your house. And by the way, stop fregging blaming your children for your compulsion of buying shit food.

Oh, I buy it for the kids. The kids don't frigging need it any more than you do.

Right, there's so many people, Oh, I'm buying this for the kids, but it's actually they're buying it for them, but they're just justifying it for the kids.

So well, the other just one other little thing I was going to mention the food thing in the fridge, is that a lot of people associate healthy with boring. You have to put a little bit of time and energy into figuring out two three four meals two three four snacks that are genuinely delicious. Thing, Yeah, you look forward to eating like you you put it in your mouth and you're like, oh, like this is awesome. I love this and it's healthy. How amazing is that? You know? Yeah?

Yeah, no, that's a very good strategy actually, because if we do still need to enjoy our food, right, that's the key thing. You can't live a life eating bland stuff. Well you can't, but you've probably got authorexia, which is another different conversations. So high then, So that's a little bit of guidance around people setting up the built environment.

There's lots you've.

Talked about about really understanding the levers. A couple of things I want to talk about.

Now.

You did mention the word values.

I'm massive on this one, and look for me to again to to to throw out the alcohol example.

The one thing that has massively.

Lowered my alcohol consumption to the point where I might have to give up my Irish passport is connecting to the value of authenticity. So being authentic is a dig beheld value of mind. I talk about a lot of this stuff in front of people, but For me, it's about I can't stand up and talk about the stuff if I'm not doing the behavior.

So for me, it's being authentic.

Is the stuff that drives me to get out of bed at half past five in the morning, like I did this morning, jump into my freezing cold swimming pool before getting on call.

Right, But it's also.

That authenticity was the stuff that actually made me significantly cut down. So what do you How much do you do on values and do you have any guiding principles for people around unlocking their values and helping focusing on those and on their journey.

Yeah, except we do it through a lens of motivation. And what I mean by that is that when I get people to do at the beginning is to do it sort of a hierarchy or a pyramid sort of if you imagine a pyramid of a hierarchy of motivations. And the way that I think about it is that some days you'll wake up and you'll want the abs, you know, you want to lose weight, and you're like, today, I'm going to the gym because yeah, I want to look good, I want to look hot, you know, I want to have some good sex. Whatever it is, you know, and for the woman it might be something similar, or it might be I want the bikini body. Let's go, and then you'll wake up tomorrow and you know and be like, you know what, fuck the ABS, I don't care, right, And so this hierarchy of priorities is that the idea here is that on the day that priority one doesn't work or motivation one doesn't work, is that you go to the next layer of depth. And for me, so the thing one is like fit, healthy, attractive body, right, that I'm proud of and that other people can look at and be like, oh, MATI is a fit guy. Right. And layer two when I'm like, who cares about abs? Like it's you know, that's so superficial, Matti, like get deeper. But day two is about my mental health, right yeah. And it's like it's like, Okay, sure, don't care about apps today, but I know that for long periods of time of not physically exercising, I can go to some pretty dark places in my head and so awesome. Then level three might be you're the host of the how to Not Get Sick and Die podcast, like you can't be seeing which is the authenticity one, right, Yeah? And So this is what I get people to do is layers of motivations. And it's like, when the other five motivations don't work, what gets you out. It might not be a weight loss, right, that's yeah. It might not be weight loss. It might not be mental health that day, but it might be that if I don't do this for my kids, I'm going to have sick kids. You know that'll die young. Right, But another day it might be the weight loss that gets you motivated.

Classic self determination theory by Dakie and Ryan right crossing the Threshold of autonomy.

I'll tell you a little story on this one.

The best one I've ever seen is that some leady stopped me in the street years ago and grab me and went Paul Taylor, and she went, you made me cry in front of about three hundred people. And I started apologizing and she's like, no, no, no, it's all good. And it turns out she'd work for a big life insurer. I'd done a workshop and we were talking about behavior change, health behavior change, and I asked if there was anybody who was struggling to change the behavior and was happy to do role play, and she jumped straight up, and so went me, and I went, okay, so what behavior you want to change? And she said I want to stop smoking. I'm like, okay, why is that important to you, right? And she said because it's not good for my health. And then I dug and I dug and I dug and then she just burst into tears and she said, my two kids, who are eight and six, came into my room last week in floods of tears because the eight year old saw on ad for her own TV that says smoking causes lung cancer. And she said they had been to my mother's funeral three months ago and somebody had talked about her dying of lung cancer. So the eight year old made the connection told this little brother, mom's going to die. And they both came into the room and going, Mum, we don't want you to die. And I said to her, bingo, there's your why, because I was talking about finding your why, right, And I said, you need to remember that every single day, right, and get up in the morning.

Go just for today, I'm not going to smoke and remember your why. And you know, she showed me.

She tattooed her foot and it said remember your why, and she had the insieles of her two little boys. And she said she she tweaked what I'd advised her. And she said she'd stand in the shower every day in the morning and she'd look at her foot and she'd go, just for today, I'm not going to smoke. And she said she started wearing open top shoes to work, and she made a deal she was allowed to smoke if she looked at her foot first. And she said, on at least one hundred occasions she went for the cigarettes, remembered her deal, and that's when she looked at her foot, right, And that's so impressive, right, So tattoos people, tattoos by the way ahead if you want to change your behavior.

Oh, that's alsome. And it's the same, do you know? But but my theory with the sort of hierarchy is that sometimes the core why isn't powerful enough Because you're tired, because you you know, because you're tired, because the kids are annoying, because work sucks, because bad luck's coming your way, whatever. So we need multiple that might need to leverage you up to sort of be like, all right, with a bit of this and a five percent of that one and ten percent and fifty percent. Yeah, all right, I'll do the healthy thing.

Yeah, and sometimes you probably don't need to roll out to big guns, right, sometimes your first level one.

That's why I really like what you're saying about having that that hierarchy of motivations because it's different levers that you can pull at different times.

Okay, so big question. I know with what we don't have much left, But I got to ask you this million dollar question. So many people self sabotage. What are some of the things that people can do to help them not to self suppotize?

And why do we do it?

That's that is the million dollar question. Why do we self sabotage? Why does any human do anything that's not helpful for themselves? Right? Because any animal that is not under human control is one hundred percent looking after themselves or the tribe, right, So we're one of the only animals that's self destructive in that way. But I think there's a lot of psychological reasons why we do it. Some people grow up with the narrative that they're you know, they're not good enough. Yep, Yeah, that's a huge one. Sometimes it can be social. I can't be seen to be doing too well Australia is really bad for toppy syndrome. So we bring ourselves back down, you know, we want to make sure that again we belong and we fit in and that we're not judged. And if you stick your head up too high, you might get a chopped to hoff that type of thing. But I think the main thing is that we need to create an enviiral where it's okay to succeed or we're celebrated for progress. Another little strategy for self sabotage. And I'm not sure if you've heard anyone talk about this before, but is that there's somewhere in many people's core needs or drivers for their life is like rebellion and fighting against the system. And that might have been I'm a really oppressive parent, and I would say that that's me, right. I'm the person who is naturally extroverted, like really sort of out there, challenging every boundary, pushing everything. And so I have learned that if I do not have an outlet for that rebellion, it comes out in my relationship, in my food. And so what I literally gave this to one of my one on one clients yesterday. I said, go and put together a list of ways in your life, anywhere in your life or anywhere in the world where you could actively engage in rebellion that allows that part of yourself to be nourished. For me, leaving the medical system and running a podcast called House and Not Get Sick and Die is my rebellion. Racing go karts every Wednesday night is part of my rebellion, right, And so when I scratched that rebellion itch, it doesn't come out in unhelpful, unhealthy ways in my day to day life.

That is super interesting. You know, my wife Carlie's going to be listening to this and going, that's you.

He's talking about you, right, because for me and then it's linked to rebellion. Novelty is a big fan of novelty. And I'm always wanting to move house every few years.

I want to move house. And we're in a freaking great house a minute.

And I was a couple of years ago agitating to move house, and then Carly said to me, can you just piss off and satisfy your novelty gene in some way other than us having to uproot and completely move our house.

And then I realized, actually, yes, I do.

I love a bit of novelty in there, so I'm finding it in different ways.

But that's really interesting.

Right, So, Maddie, I could go on all day because this is a super interesting conversation, but all good things must come to an end. But I think all of our listeners would have got a great amount of value out of this. So tell us where can the listeners go to find out more about your products and offering and any courses that you might be offering for the public.

Yeah, so, just similar to this podcast, I've got to show how to Not Get Sick and Die, which you've been on before, Paul, So whichever podcast app you're on, check that out how to Not Get Sick and Die. We're always the four hundred episodes, which is pretty cool. Also my website Maddie Lansdowne dot com. And yeah, we run an emotional binge and overeating program called Mind Body Nourishment, which is for anyone that's sort of done ten twenty thirty years dieting back and forth, back and forth, and can't figure out why they won't do the thing they know that they should. So we help help that kind of person man or women. So feel free to reach out