 Question is from Rachel Beech. You always talk about the importance of relationships with food. Can you give an example of what a good relationship with food looks like versus a poor one? Well, there's my food to dinner. There's an obvious, you know, there's obvious poor relationships to food, you know, when it becomes medically pathological, you know, anorexia, bulimia, you know, those types of things. So that's the obvious ones. But let's talk more just kind of general average person. I'll say this, a good relationship with food is understanding all of food's total values, not feeling shameful when you're eating a particular way, not using food to medicate or numb yourself. When you're in a position where you eat, what you truly want, I'm going to make a little caveat here, okay, what you truly want after you understand the real total values of food. Most of us only choose, when we think of the foods we want, we only relate it to the foods that we enjoy the taste of or the experience of eating. So when I say, hey, eat the foods that you want, people are great donuts, pizza, french fries, whatever. Okay, no, that's limited, that's a limited experience. That means that you're only picking the foods that you want for the palatability. But there are other values that food provides you. Oftentimes, I will really, really want to eat vegetables. Is it for the palatability? No. I know it doesn't taste as good as other foods, but I really want it because my digestion's off. And I do this sometimes when we travel, we'll travel, and I won't eat very many vegetables, and I'll come home and be like, man, I want to eat some vegetables, or maybe my energy's a little low, or my workouts, and so I'll know I really want some starches for the carbohydrates or whatnot. So a good relationship is, it's a relaxed relationship, you know, it's like any other good relationship. It doesn't feel like it's just crazy stress all the time. Again, you're not shameful, it's not I can't, it's that I don't want to or I want to. And it takes time, and like any relationship, so I want to use the word relationship and apply that to everything. Relationships need constant work. So it's like, how do you have a good relationship with your spouse? You constantly work out. It's something that it doesn't just happen, and if you don't get one and then just leave it alone and it stays that way. It's something that you remind yourself of always. I'll say it even more simply than that. A good relationship with food is pretty simple, what it looks like. It looks like somebody who's in good shape, and good shape is a wide spectrum, not what Instagram considers good shape, good shape off of like health standards, which is a relatively decent body fat percentage. And you don't have to track or really pay too much attention to your food. You're not stressing out about it. Yeah, you don't think about it. You don't stress about it. You're not worried that you decided because we're out at a nice dinner tonight, the four of us, and I decide I want to have a glass of wine with our dinner and have the cream of spinach, and I'm not thinking about it. I just, you know how to navigate around when you make food choices that way, and you know how to incorporate your exercise. That's a really good relationship with food is that you don't really have to worry and stress and think about it too much, and you're able to keep yourself in good shape. If you're way outside of good shape, you probably don't have a good relationship with food. It's just a matter of how extreme that is. You know, if you're in bad shape, you don't have a good relationship with food. It's that simple. You don't know how to regulate yourself on what your body needs. You have just totally disconnected from those signals, and you overeat. It's a fact. And then another poor relationship with food is somebody who's obsessed with it so much that they're constantly tracking, they're constantly thinking about it, and that's still a poor relationship with food. Now, I'm the one on the show that I think advocates for tracking the most, and I do think that's extremely important to learn and figure out what your body needs, but the ultimate goal is to move away from that and to be able to intuitively eat and intuitively train. And that, to me, is what a really good relationship with food looks like. It's like, imagine this, you're at a party, and they bring out the cookies. Somebody with a relationship with food that isn't great would be like, oh, I can't eat those. No, no, no, I can't have a cookie. I can't eat it. Someone with a good relationship with food would say, I don't want a cookie, or I want a cookie. Now, a lot of people listening right now are thinking, what do you mean? I always want a cookie. Okay, and that's my point. You don't really always want a cookie. When we say I want a cookie or whatever, what we're saying is, I want the taste and experience of that cookie, but when you put the entire thing in context, okay, when I eat a cookie, I don't feel too good. Maybe I'm a little gluten intolerant. It gives me heartburn, or maybe, you know, I'm training for a competition, and it's not really going to benefit. It's not really going to benefit me in terms of my competition or whatever. I'm still acknowledging that it tastes good. So if they ask me, hey, Sal, do you think this cookie is going to taste good? My answer's always going to be yes, but if they say, do you want this cookie when I weigh all those things out, and this happens more naturally as you practice this, when I weigh all these things out, my answer's going to be either yes, I want it, or no, I don't. And when I say no, I don't, it does not mean that I don't acknowledge that I'm going to enjoy the taste of that cookie or said food. And so this is a practice, and it takes time. And remember this, be empathetic to yourself, because the way you have learned to value food, if you're listening to this podcast right now, and you're in any, and you're in a developed country, the odds are that you developed your relationship with food based around its palatability and the experience or context or emotion. Those are all the things that you've developed your relationships with food. So, you know, I'm at the movies and I crave popcorn, that's context, or I learned to eat these types of food when I get sad, because they make me feel better. So that's emotion, or I think of foods in terms of what's going to taste the best. That's what, that's, that's how I value food. So that has to do with the palatability or the experience, what is known as the hedonistic experience. But there's so many other things that food provides to us, and those are all fine, by the way. I'm not demonizing all of those. Those are valid values that food can provide us. I'll give you an example. If I'm, you know, like one of my kids' birthday parties, and you know, we make a cake for my kid, and I'm celebrating with my kids for their birthday. I'm going to have the cake for the experience, the context. Maybe there's an emotional component. I'm happy my kid turned however old or whatever. I'm also going to enjoy the hedonistic value of that piece of cake. I'm also going to know that it doesn't benefit me physiologically. It's not good for my body. I'm probably not going to feel as good digestively or whatever, but it's okay. It's okay because I know all the context. Now let's say I'm at home. I'm by myself. I'm watching TV, and I'm like, man, I want to have a piece of cake. I'm craving the taste of a piece of cake. And I think, well, you know, there's really no other value besides that the taste of it. And I'm at watching TV at home alone. I really don't want a piece of cake. So that's the difference between the two and be empathetic because it takes time to understand those things. I remember years ago, I had a client that I've had several clients that didn't like to eat vegetables. And one of the ways that I got them to eat vegetables is I would, first I talk them into having very, very small portions, but then I would have them journal and track how they felt before, during and after, and then how they felt the next day. And what ended up happening with a lot of them is that over time, they started to notice things like my digestion is better. I feel better. Oh, I don't like the taste, but oh man, I start to feel really good. My skin's looking better. And then over time, because they became aware of all these other values besides the taste of it, they actually started to want to eat the vegetables. And so this is people talk about balance with nutrition. This is what balance looks like. So every once in a while or whatever you eat the pizza and in the cake and whatever. And other times you eat all the stuff that's good for you physiologically. I think it was Confucius, but one must go through the cookie to transcend. I don't think he said that, bro. That's some wisdom. I'll leave you with that.