 Aloha, Hawaii. I'm Wendy Lo, and I'm one of your buddies as we journey to take your health back. We are coming to you live from downtown Honolulu from the studios of Think Tech Hawaii. Think Tech Hawaii hosts about 45 very diverse topics of interest each month. Today our topic of discussion will be on take back your health with your fork. Life is so much better when you love the food that loves you back. Isn't that interesting? Today we'll be discussing some of the keys to being able to truly take our health back. This is so exciting. What I would like you to take away from our discussion today will be by tapping into the power of commitment, choice, architecture, and connection we can enjoy and improve quality of life and fulfill our potential. Today we are very honored to welcome a remarkable woman who walks this talk and who has made a definite impact on me with my health journey. Her name is Timory Hagenberger, the nutrition professor. I met Timory as she was an honored guest invited to speak at Hawaii's vegan society. I was so excited to meet Timory and even more excited when I invited her to my home and she and her husband said yes. I showed off my tower garden, grown kale, and impressed her with my abundant supply of Hawaii's best kale. We've since been in touch especially because I purchased her treasure cookbook which I use regularly, weekly actually, to introduce a plant-based diet to so many people of Hawaii. Please help me welcome Timory. So Aloha Timory. Aloha. Yes just really quickly just tell us a little bit about yourself. Well my name is Timory Hagenberger and I am a nutrition professor, that's my full-time job. I also am a registered dietitian and I'm an exercise physiologist certified through the American College of Sports Medicine but more important than that stuff is that I love food. Absolutely love it. And I grew up with Italian family and we showed love with food and at the time we just didn't realize that the food we loved didn't love us back. So now I know even better how to help others begin to love the food that actually takes care of them. That is so important. So important because people just eat whatever is put in front of them and they have no idea of consequence but you actually will share with us the differences of loving food and having that food love us makes a big difference in our lives. So Timory I want to start off by asking you what do you tell your students about luck? Oh yes well we talk about luck and we talk about the idea that the harder you work it seems the luckier you get. And when you take some time to plan you can actually be successful by design. So I don't want them to have to rely on luck. I want them to be successful by design and there's just a little forethought and getting out of their comfort zone so that they can learn new things and how to enjoy foods that they may not even have thought they enjoyed. It's actually a little funny when I talk about a certain food sometimes my students will say I hear them in the back ew and I say oh no we don't say ew. We say hmm that sounds interesting. I don't believe I've had that prepared in a way I've enjoyed it yet. Wow. Then they all kind of giggle and I say no seriously you could be missing out on a food that turns into a favorite just because your previous experience wasn't ideal. Wow. So that's why I like to show my students how not just why. So you're not just a food professor but you're also a psychologist because you're actually teaching them how to think you know rethink life and this goes for not just food but in many things that they're going to attempt in their early years life and this is so true throughout the whole life today we were actually talking about the power which well we were let's get to the the information that I want to share today because there's so many powers and I don't think there's so much so let me just start by asking you when when did you make the connection between food and love when I was tiny I wrote my first recipe when I was six or seven years old and it was for cinnamon toast just in case I didn't know right how to do that again but I have gone on to just become completely enthralled I work so hard at what I do and I love it more every single day I have an article that I write every month for our little local newspaper I did a series a podcast series I have I do a lot of TV work which I'll show you and that is so helpful because all of those my students can access and everybody in the world now because of the internet can access these gems at their own you know on their own time and really start to make this happen for their own lives wow that's so powerful I mean so like you said social media the media all streams of opportunities for us to share this message and to encourage them in a very positive way so how can everyone benefit from the work that you do on TV I know you you mentioned you do a lot of TV and as we are doing today just getting the word out so I put a slide out there for you to share that shows I do a monthly segment right now on a Studio 40 TV it's a live show and then I do segments through California Bountiful and with the Studio 40 I get in the station and I show them how to prepare easy recipes for the California Bountiful we actually start either at a farmer's market or at the grocery store and I focus on one piece of produce and show how to choose and then how to take care of it and then how to cook it so it flashes back to me in the kitchen preparing a recipe with a given piece of produce and I've done over 50 of those different segments and so they're all available on my website the nutritionprofessor.com so anybody can learn and then try it at home wow this is great news I mean I'm thinking if you know I'll talk to our tech guy here Eric I'm going to say hey Eric maybe she can have her own show and just run all your videos and we have 50 shows Wendy can take a break but so what we're going to do is we're going to try to get you on as much as possible so that we can share your heart and your passion for what you are doing and I can hear it I can hear your heart and so this is your success tool for reaching others and getting the message into their hearts but how could someone benefit from visiting your website I know that you are very active on that as well yes so I write an article each month and I feature a recipe so this last month in January I did a seven layer dip which is a favorite for our family not just during the Super Bowl but during any time of the year and there's all different varieties and variations that you can make and there you also have access to the Foodie Barway which is my cookbook that you were talking about in the intro that is there's a little caricature that you can see on my website she's in the book as well and so I tell my students no you can't live with me and no I can't live with you but you can take this little one home and she can help you in order to be more confident in the kitchen well this is my cookbook and I brought it here with me today and I as I said I have a dog geared according to what recipes I have used and I enjoy and you know we make a little bit of variations with the local diets here but everything is pretty much plant strong and what you're teaching me here is so valuable because I very much use it and I share this book the only thing is I have to track it that it comes back to me or now I'll know that I can just send them to your website right yes definitely I have a print copy and an e-book version I know a lot of people like to use it on their iPad you know or their laptop and so it makes it easy so there's both versions available but that's the whole premise behind the Foodie Barway and I think we'll get to that a little bit later yeah I'm so excited so how can someone find the power to truly take their health back I mean you just nailed it with the topic or the title of my talk that you know taking your health back with Wendy and now we got take your health back with us both so I'm so excited how do you how do you teach this all right so there are many different powers to tap into so there are what I wanted to focus on with our little bit of short time we have today is to tap into the power of commitment of choice architecture and of connection so let's start with the first one the power of commitment so this is interesting because a lot of people end up getting stuck in indecision oh I don't know what to do there's so many different diets out there I'm not sure which one I should follow and so-and-so is doing this one and then I have an uncle that's doing this and they lost weight on this and so they don't do anything because there's just too many choices but when you look at the predominance of evidence we see that whole food plan based is the way to go and the biggest thing you can do for yourself is then to make that commitment so if we pull up the slide I wanted to highlight a couple of things regarding the commitment like I said that once you commit then you can feel peace and freedom because you're not going back and forth that indecision I don't know about you Wendy but when I am struggling making a decision it's exhausting it is it is you know and you just ah you you hit it right on the nail I mean the commitment part just saying you know like um every year everyone starts the new year off at resolutions that's kind of like attempting a commitment but of course I would say 90 95% of them fail in that commitment and so I think what we'll we'll need to do is kind of just train the brain and give them the right tools to help them to decide like you said it's a lifestyle we're not asking anyone to go on a diet we're not asking them none of that that's the wrong word wrong absolutely right yes so we just want to change or have them think about lifestyles and choices of lifestyles yes and when if you look back at we'll bring that slide back up when you make that decision and you feel that peace and freedom then your mind can shift from why it won't work you know and all the different excuses to how it will and that's just how the brain works when you put a question in your mind and the focus is how are we going to make this work then all of a sudden answers come out of the woodwork right you know I meant to my students if you know you came across a situation where there was a child stuck under a car you could sit there and do all the calculations about the pressure on the skull and how it's probably not good but you don't you do anything you can to figure out a way to lift that car up and you get very creative and that's how it works when you make a commitment and it doesn't have to be oh my gosh I'm never going to you know make any changes but it's right now I am all in right and I think that's really key that I'm all in and that I have a big why right I love that I love that explanation because when you make the commitment and you see and you feel the results and then let's say they take a backward step and then they feel the results of that and that's when the commitment becomes solidified that it now becomes lifestyle but they need to take that forward step and some do take the back but then they can realize for themselves but that's so key Tamarayan you know right now we're just going to take a 60 second break and we'll come back with more absolute lifestyle tips that will help us through our journey as we take our health back Aloha I'm Lillian Cumick host of Lillian's Vegan World the show where we talk about veganism and the plant-based diet located in Honolulu Hawaii I'm a vegan chef and cooking instructor and I have lots of information to share with you about how awesome this plant-based diet is so do tune in every second Thursday from 1 p.m. Aloha Aloha Hawaii and welcome back to Think Tech Hawaii with Timory Hagenberger the nutrition professor so she's here just sharing a little bit of tips and tidbits from her experiences as she coaches and trains and works with the students at her college there so she is actually a working professor a working mother with a lot of great knowledge that she wants to share to just help direct our thinking so we can make better and healthier choices so before we want to break we talked a little bit about making the commitment and how important it is to making the commitment and then not only just making the commitment but sticking to the commitment so Timory maybe you can refresh our minds and take us back to that commitment and then the why yes so the idea was once you made a commitment then you found peace and freedom because you could just take a deep breath and move forward and this idea that once you tell your brain I am all in then you start to see answers coming to you you start to see creative ideas coming to you because you have that space that it's not just cluttered with indecision but we also left talking about the why so the why cannot be something like weight loss the why has to be more important the why has to be something that basically brings you to tears I mean in order to change your lifestyle it needs to be something really big and even though this may sound silly I have 17 year old students and males at this who will say when I ask why is it important for you to be healthy and they say because I want to meet my great grandkids and that just blows me away I mean to be that young and to have that you know foresight but there are many people who they can't live the life that they are meant to because their body is holding them back right and I never want that I want people to be able to do whatever that they would like based on you know choices they've made but not because well I couldn't you know let me give you a quick example I was at a conference on the coast of California and we one of the activities we were supposed to go out to the beach and walk and talk with one of the other people like partner up and walk and talk and there was a woman there that had a boot on her foot because she had an injury related and it was getting worse it was related to diabetes and not taking care of herself and so she had to she paid the same amount that we all did to be there but she had to sit inside and couldn't get sand in her boot and couldn't get out there and experience that not because she didn't want to but because of the choices that she had made was hold we're holding her back so that's a big why it's a big why yes and and what it was as well was for the rest of you to see the quality of life you know right there and for you to solidify your commitment and your why you know we have a lot of that here in Hawaii where we can we see that daily you know here in Hawaii we have over 600,000 diabetics here in Hawaii so we are faced with that issue daily and so i'm sure a lot of the keiki and the great grandchildren they see that and so that's why maybe the statement comes from a young teen that i want to be around to see my great grandchildren and that's powerful and know that everybody here wishes that they could be there everybody is like why is a place that people save up for years and years and years to be able to come and vacation and to be there and to be not able to enjoy the paradise that Hawaii is is just sad that would be a great why so that we we should maintain and you know look after our body so we can enjoy all the beauty inside and outside especially and then the beautiful water and just to feel the water therapy yes so you know moving on let's yes the next one the power of choice architecture yes now you may think what in the world is that that is all about making the easiest options also the best so if you were locked up in an ice cream shop it doesn't matter how good your willpower was at some point you mean that ice cream not because your body needed it not because you had some kind of deficiency but because it was in your face right so you know sometimes i'll talk to my students and they'll say oh i went to a party and it was so hard because there weren't any options and i just felt so out of you know out of place and i felt depressed because there weren't foods that i could eat and but that's not because their body was craving the junk it was because the junk was just everywhere they could just as easily been at my house doing a foodie bar and all the options were on the table and all of them were fantastic so sometimes i hear people saying oh it's just so hard and i just can't stop the cravings but if we have it in our face right then of course it's going to be very difficult and you know when i saw that slide when i was reviewing this and i saw the slide and it said exactly that put the bad food away because it's if it's in your face you're going to eat it so i looked around my desk and i have a bag of macadamia nuts and that's my naughty my naughty healthy snack i say i know it's it's not the best but it is a natural snack it's a it was raw and it were their bits so instead of putting the whole nuts in my mouth i take the bits and i snack on that and it fills me up and it satisfies the need for something to be munching on as i'm working and working and working so is that what you meant absolutely we have research that shows depending on how far away a candy bowl is if you're at work you know they'll show you if it's covered or if it's glass if it's on your desk or your neighbor's desk all of that impacts how much snack can you do so it's not that your body needs it it's in your face but what i want to focus on too is to really value like what you were just explaining value the wisdom that we have from our experience so you know where you get into trouble on your desk right so you can take that knowledge and turn it into wisdom so we know a lot of things but wisdom means being able to put it into practice so one of the suggestions that i have is to use a very powerful technique called if then or implementation intentions so you create situations that you've experienced in the past that's the if so if i um bring let's see let's see if i have to miss lunch then i will have some hummus and carrots in the refrigerator to snack on you are just extremely specific about the scenario and then you have the then which will let you know ahead of time what your course of action is going to be so it takes away that commitment that um in decision again so i have students who um they will they say well every time i go out i end up spending money on fast food so there if then is if i'm leaving and i'm worried about spending money i leave my atm card at home so those types of implementation intentions can increase success so much if you have family members or parties that you're going to you know it's going to happen and so if i go to a party then i will bring you know cowboy salad from my book or something along those lines that way you've already thought about the situation wow that's powerful and you know the more we listen to this and we can reprogram our brains it'll help us a lot so one of the first steps i did about 10 years ago as i started the health journey i made a commitment not to buy livestock so i don't buy any i have not bought in 10 years pork beef or chicken okay so i've made that first commitment to not so while i'm at home i've never cooked it in the last 10 years and so that allows a lot of the temptation right at my fingertips and i knew that was the direction i wanted to go um the other part of the weakness for me would be the sugars yeah we're pretty much um a lot of us are addicted to the sugars and um so that's why i i try to i do peanut butters i do nuts and i i do a lot of hummus i used to make hummus by the gallons and i give out as gifts when people come to my home i pass them a container of hummus so that they can have that luxury of that product in their home in their ice box taking away a dip or something of that value and replacing it with a bean dip no that's excellent and whole nuts and are a much better choice even than the nut butters because our we don't we're not able to chew the nuts tiny enough and so some of that fat actually just goes right through us so but there's a lot i can go on and on about the science but we don't want to get caught up in that right now i want to make sure we get to our last um power and i don't know how much time we'll have but let's try to go to our last time well the connection we want to talk about yeah why is connection so important so we are designed as social creatures right and it's so important that we work together because while people may not think that their choices individually will make a difference they do and our collective power can create a new normal we can have access to items that at the grocery store we do now that we didn't have 10 years ago that are very very accessible because we have a demand for it and there's a whole variety for example of the the non-dairy milks that were never even available and now they're all over so we can really create a new normal and that's what i would love to see but this connection is critical for long-term sustainability and it may not be your same group that you have connected with in the past some people will be interested in making these changes but there's also lots of other people that are excited to make these changes that you may not be connected with yet and that's the most exciting part about this is yet because they're out there and a lot of the response that i hear is you know they've just got diagnosed with an ailment and they want to make the right choice they start but there's no one there to hold them accountable and i think that's very important to have your circle around you that will help you through this journey and that's why using you on our show today will help us to broaden the scope of reaching people definitely definitely i want to yeah go ahead so i want to ask you can we have it all yes we can have it all we can enjoy every single bite and take back our health so i wanted to mention to you so my cookbook the foodie bar way one of the main pieces in it is the fact that we can set up foodie bars that are for like potluck style and so this brings the community so that connection idea so it's the foodie bar way is like something where it says if chipotle met forks over knives with a sprinkle of the flavor bible so think about all different options that you'd set up for some kind of a taco bar and that way everybody gets to make their exact perfect plate but they can experiment with all types of the ingredients and another piece of the book is that it encourages people to do what i call our cook togethers so instead of going out they stay in and make let's say you were mentioning hummus do a hummus showdown right so amazing you know i mean timory we could just keep talking to you again and again and i will have you back on because you have so many brilliant ideas that people can listen to and and actually put into action but unfortunately our time has run out and so i have to wrap it up and i'm going to say will you come back and join us for more time yes yes absolutely and i say mahalo to you and mahalo for sharing your heart with all of us here in think decade so for now aloha aloha everyone