 Are you an overeater? So sometimes you open up the bag of chips and you think you're only gonna have a handful and you end up Eating the entire packet. I know I do I go down to the shop to the Bristol farm store Sometimes on Sunset Boulevard and I get a bag of barbecue flavored pop chips and I say to myself I'm only gonna have a half an hour. I have the half in a couple days and Most of the time I've got the bag finished by the time I get home to my apartment I am an overeater A lot of the times I overeat on very healthy food Rarely do I overeat on bad food, but I am an overeater nonetheless and today we're gonna figure out How to stop that habit? How do you stop overeating and then when you do overeat? How do you recover from binges? Do you have an addiction to food and even if you don't do you sometimes know that you eat too much? Well, we're gonna figure out why how to stop it and how to recover from it With with that. It's a big welcome to a veteran psychologist who has Decades of research in why people binge and overeat from stress He's been on there featured in the LA and New York Times. He's been on TV shows across the country He's the author of never binge again His name is dr. Glenn Livingston and he joins us from Pembroke, New Hampshire. How are you dr. Livingston? I'm very good and I'm looking forward to talking to you. Thanks James Wonderful great to have you here. Um, I Today I had a huge lunch. I had albeit a very healthy lunch I had some arugula and some kale and I had a couple of potatoes and then I finished it and then I decided to go a second round and I went another round again and I felt pretty pretty good at the end But is that is that binge eating if does it count if you're eating super healthy foods that you know to be healthy? Well, one of the things that I've discovered is that it it's really critical For people to step back and define for themselves What's binge eating and what's not binge eating because there's so many variables and most people who what identify themselves as an overeater or a binge eater They've done a lot of studying about what's healthy and you could ask them Have you had better days than others there are some days where you felt like you ate just about perfectly and What happened in that day? Wait, you know, how? how How many portions did you have and how frequently did you eat and what specific specifically did you have and why did you feel Proud of that and how did your body feel? Right and there's so many different diets out there and there's so much different information about what constitutes healthy versus unhealthy food I don't really get into that. I have very different opinions about it I don't really get into that with people Because I find that most people know for themselves. What's healthy and what's not and I what I tell people is that it's extraordinarily helpful if you take these four categories of Behavior of eating behavior Things that you never do things that you do only under certain conditions Things that you always do and things that you can do in an unrestricted amount and to find your food plan. So Kind of going to what you were talking about I work with a woman who figured out that the best way to control volume for her was to say I Always take a 60 second pause before I go back for seconds and I get up from the table and take a deep breath And that's all she really needed to do to figure out What was she really hungry? Was this something that she mindfully wanted for herself or was it something that was a little more compulsive and mindless and You know that type of a rule and her always category really worked well for her There are other people who need to eliminate certain foods there there are certainly for me. I'll speak for myself It's kind of like I've got an inner chocolate monster, right? And that chocolate monster will tell me anything to get me to have chocolate it I remember there was a time when I would I was on a I was trying to follow a follow a diet that had an awful lot of vegetables in it and You know, I had the Monday morning. I'm a formerly obese guy by the way. I was about yeah We'll get into your story in just a second Yeah but I remember a time when I was going to I was going to Try to eat an awful lot of vegetables and I was gonna stop having chocolate and candy you know all that kind of stuff and and I was Walking up to the counter on Monday morning after making this resolution And I was waiting to pay for my Starbucks and there's this big hairy chocolate bar That's just staring at me and saying, you know, you really want me and all of a sudden I hear this little inner voice saying, you know Glenn Chocolate it comes from a cocoa bean and and cocoa beans they come from a plant and a plant is a vegetable So, you know chocolate's really a vegetable and of course, that's ridiculous But I I use it as an illustration because during the moment of impulse we don't typically have access to our Higher levels of cognitive reasoning and impulse control right when there's that temptation what happens is our survival drive has been hijacked and We think that we need that chocolate bar to live and because of that There are some foods that it's easier to say never to than sometimes Just because if you if you look at if we can say well, that's that's not really food to me That's a much easier decision than well G Did I do enough exercise to have a bar of chocolate and I might have to my chocolate quarter for the day And there there's just some foods that people can't But that some people need to say never to and there's some people who can make a conditional rule and say No, I can have chocolate on the weekend. So I can have chocolate at social events We're gonna have chocolate once a month on the weekends and it really works fine for them So what I like to do is take people through an evaluation of the different trouble foods and behaviors that they have and also of the different constructive Foods and behaviors they want to implement like drinking more water or having more vegetables or going for a run every day or something like that Yeah, I'll give I'll just give you a rundown of when I get tempted and when I Overreach and then I'd love to ask you a little bit about your story and why this is such a fascinating topic for you as I understand that you Were an obese child or maybe you you were obesity at some point in your life And now you're reformed and found the way so looking forward to exploring that but for me personally, I'll tell you I I've always eaten a huge amount of food and I'll tell you where I think it stems from I remember back in the early 80s and About 1984 1985 and I remember sitting at the family kitchen family table dining room table and my mother serving us our dinner with me and my two younger brothers Edward and Tristan and my father Ron and If I didn't eat all of my plate of food And if I left had leftovers for example, my mother would say James Finish your meal think about all of the starving children in Ethiopia Because at the time it was this huge big thing like all the children in Ethiopia was starving of hunger and you might remember like We are the world and we are the children and Michael Jackson and all those famous 80s rockers came together for the live aid concert and to Make that very famous song and so for a couple years there It was just huge about the famine that was going on and in Africa in Ethiopia And so from that moment on whenever there was a meal even if I was full I would always finish My meal because think about the starving children in Ethiopia who would love to have just a little bit of that So I always just from that moment on ate everything that was put in front of me and more Like even when I was finished if I saw food around I would just keep reaching for it So I have always had a huge Appetite compared to what I what society might deem it as as normal Now I'm quite fit and quite healthy like I consider myself to be a fit and healthy 40 year old. I'm quite lean I've never I mean There was a time where I quit playing rugby when I first came when a couple years after moving to America And I stopped exercising for a year or two I started drinking a little bit more and I started eating poorly and I blew out to about 218 pounds. I'm now 185 But that was really the only time That stretch when I put on a lot of weight And it was I think it was because I didn't do the exercise because now I can't I don't think I've eaten I'm eating any less right now I think maybe what's happened is I'm now choosing better foods and I'm exercising considerably more So anyway, that's just to give you an overview Dr. Livingston of my eating habits and why I think It stemmed from that. Is that a logical summary? Do you think or or theory as to why maybe I've I've always over eaten? It's it's a logical theory as to how you got trained to overeat, right? And by the way, some of the things that I say are really not in concert with my profession's view of the psychology of eating So I I actually operate in this venue more as a coach and an educator than a psychologist. I have a psychological degree, but I when I work with people or work with them as a coach so that I'm freer to say things that my profession might disagree with but what What I want to tell you about that James is that the fact that you were trained like that It doesn't require you to overeat it. It creates a certain discomfort if you don't it It creates a certain psychological experience that makes it More natural for you to overeat than not over eat it, but it doesn't really require you to overeat and What I tell people is that you you can draw these lines for yourself and When you draw these lines and you adjust your behavior to match these lines Then the psychologist look it becomes something very interesting and soulful to look into, you know my My mom was married to an army captain and she was very worried He was going to go to Vietnam and get killed and she was overwhelmed because her father was missing when I was first born and so she rather than putting an awful lot of time into, you know feeding into 1964 so They didn't know as much about child wearing back then as they do now But she she would keep a big bottle of Bosco in the refrigerator and a very low level it's Bosco is this chocolate sauce and All she would say if I would cry where I was hungry. She'd say well the Bosco is right there and so I that's psychologically where my addiction to chocolate probably came from but What while I could use that as a jumping off point to talk for a few hours soulfully about My upbringing and what it means for the rest of my life It doesn't have that much to do with whether I stopped eating or or not What I what I tell people to do is to draw this line in the sand For example, since I I will never have chocolate again. Suppose I say that and then any Thought whatsoever that suggests that you have to have chocolate or that you have to overeat because of the starving children in Ethiopia you consider that to be coming from your Destructive self or your inner fat thinker or in a shorthand I call my inner fat thinker my pig Some people get upset with that they like to call it their inner slacker or they have all kinds of names for it But but it's this entity that I want to separate from and so what I say is that well It doesn't matter why I crave the chocolate to me Chocolate is not food chocolate is something the pig wants chocolate is pig slap And I don't eat pig slap and I don't let farming animals. Tell me what to do and It's not a lot more complicated than that to just keep separating from those thoughts and Allocating them to your inner pig or your inner fat thinker and then if you want to it can be helpful to come up with a Rational answer to what your pig is saying. So for example When your inner pig says or your inner fat thinker says, you know You've got to finish everything in your plate because of the starving children in Ethiopia if you ever you could say Well, no, I have to take care of myself in the best way possible So that I have as much energy and enthusiasm and passion to help the children in Ethiopia and do a good things for the world I can't be lethargic and you know Unhealthy and dying early death because they're going to be more starving kids if that's my mission in life, right now You don't have to have that answer. It's enough to know that that the Suggestion and desire to overeat is coming from the pig or your inner soccer or whatever it is But it can be helpful to come up with a cognitive reason to overcome that so that you More thoroughly put the pig in its cage around those those ideas So it makes sense. Yeah, absolutely. Okay. So what so let's talk about some well first of all Just to give us a little overview about what your story was. You said that you were you Had obesity or binge eating as when you were younger. So what's your story? Mm-hmm. Um, I was born in a family of Psychologists there's 17 of us all together now I have my mom and my dad and my sister and my cousins and my uncles and my grandparents and you you don't want to come To my family reunions. There was an awful lot of talk about psychology in my in my family And I sometimes joke that I can't do anything around the house except for ask the broken stuff I would feel but I Was what you would call an exercise bulimic I discovered probably around the sixth grade that if I Exercise the lot and I love to work out that I could eat whatever I wanted to and not gain weight So it's actually a relatively thin Child and teenager What happened was that as I was kind of nearing the end of graduate school and taking in responsibilities seeing Seeing patients having a wife having a house so all of the responsibilities of adulthood I couldn't find two or three hours a day to exercise as much as I wanted to and Still be an adult But I found it very difficult to stop eating all the things that I was eating I was the kind of guy that could dislodge my jaw go to the delicatessen and tell them to empty it into me And I just really really enjoyed that and I found it extraordinarily difficult to stop to stop And I just kept gaining weight and like there's some stressful times and then I gained more weight and my triglycerides I think the highest they were were about 1,100 Ridiculously high number where the doctors would yell at me and say you're gonna be dead by the time You're 30 if you keep this up and But I I literally felt like I couldn't stop I You know, I went to support groups. I went to psychologist I I naturally gravitated towards all of these psychological elements because of my background and I even set up a Very large online study. We had over 40,000 people participate to look at the relationship between Personality in particular food addictions and I learned some interesting things I learned that people that really crave chocolate are feeling lonely or unloved in some way and people that crave Carbohydrates are usually feeling very stressed and people that crave Salty chips and things are feeling some type of work anxiety. So I want to go I want to go over that. That's interesting So people who crave chocolate are feeling unloved. Is that right? People who crave carbohydrates are feeling what? People who crave chocolate are generally feeling unloved or lonely Okay, who feel who are craving carbohydrates are feeling stressed and People who are craving chips tend to be feeling Anxious Anxious so every time I go for a bag of pop chips. I'm feeling anxious. All right. I'll have to make sure Check my mood next time They weren't perfect correlations Here's the thing James The thing was That I thought that knowing that I could then go to someone who said that they were Craving chips and I could help them work with their anxiety and I could come up with an alternative coping mechanisms and Helped them, you know, figure out how to get through the day feeling less anxious Mm-hmm, and I thought that they were gonna stop having chips then what happened was they learned some of these anxiety coping sessions They said, you know what until I really figure out these coping mechanisms I'm just gonna keep having as many chips as I want to see there was that inner voice that was always rationalizing why it was okay to have the industrial hyper-political food that they were addicted to and and eventually when I came across a there's a body of literature by a Man named Jack Trimpey and rational recovery and a couple of associated people and they talk more about this voice inside of you That you need to deal with They they also deal more with the black and white addiction like you know, you can stop doing drugs you can stop having alcohol entirely and It's perfectly fine for you physically. You can't stop eating entirely So there were a lot of differences in terms of applying something like this to a complex behavioral system but at bottom The the key insight for me was that there's this crazy Voice inside of me that inside of people that says we can't survive without this Addictive food we can't survive without the chocolate we can't survive without the second or third portion of x y or z and That's what I had people. That's what I had to teach people and teach myself to to deal with okay So let's come up with some practical ways here on how we can avoid or We can prevent that. So can we have a few examples? Let's just put it into Context here someone who's listening knows that at a certain time of the day They want a Kit Kat or a bag of Skittles from the machine or They know at the end of the day they want at the end of their meal. They go. Oh, I really want some Ben and Jerry's ice cream Even though they're full well, I Could do this one of two ways I could speculate on that hypothetical person or if you want to I could coach you through a specific Example, which would you prefer? Let's go through the example. Okay. I'm just gonna get a pen and paper so I can take a couple and notice what we talk Do you mind? Just go for it. Okay? so What I ask people to do is to think of one specific problem one specific eating problem that they'd like to conquer because it's easier to learn this technique when you're Working on one problem than if you're trying to get it your whole diet or to control it all at once Okay, so is there one thing that you really wish you could Do better with your with eating or eating behavior With me. Um, okay, it would be Eating the Large quantity of ice cream after a meal that I tend to eat on weekends So on a Friday night or a Friday night or a Saturday night. I Will have a big meal And then I think oh it's Friday or Saturday. I'm gonna have Half a tub which might turn into three quarters of a tub of sugary ice cream Sounds good Um, bloody delicious. I gotta tell you But what's your favorite flavor? I'm a caramel kind of guy. So I love caramel. There's a there's I think it's been in jerry's is like a caramel cone So it's got little bits of chunky caramel plus some waffle waffle cone in there I think it's been in jerry's bloody hell. That's that's amazing. I mean that is sensational I I challenge anyone not to be like once you open that lid not not to want to finish the whole damn tub But there are billions of dollars of research spent on making those things Oh, yeah, there's a there's a famous book called salt sugar fat when and it goes into like they're all they have these laboratories of the big Food makers food manufacturers who hired the world's top scientists to find what they call the sweet spot So it's like that texture and the just amount of a level of sugar and sweetness to make you want it to just keep keep eating it Cool. Okay. So when what's the impact of having three quarters of a tub of ice cream on your head? How does that affect your life? Well in the mo in that moment? It's wonderful. It's like pure pleasure. I love it I love every bite Are 30 minutes afterwards it's kind of like regret that I ate so much of it It's not regret that I had some of it But it's regret that I had a lot of it and then when I wake up in the morning the next day I absolutely will go and exercise because I had the the Ice cream before which is a good thing because it makes me go and exercise But I'm also very conscious so the next morning where I go. Oh, I had that ice cream last night I best go and burn it off on an empty stomach What what would you consider to be a healthier relationship with the with the ice cream? How would you if you could wave a wand and have perfect control? What would you like to do? Uh, I'd like to enjoy having the ice cream on occasion a couple nights per week and just be be satisfied with a considerably smaller quantity The issue is is that I never seem to be satisfied with the small quantity What what um What type of a quantity would you like to be satisfied with? Oh, I think I think a couple of scoops. I think I think two scoops would be nice Is that enough? No, I want it all dr. Livingstead of course is not enough But I want it to be enough. I want to feel like it's enough, but no I want the whole damn tub Well, so they're it's almost like there's two of you inside right there. There's the part of you that has um Goals and aspirations and would like to see yourself behavior in a particular way and then there's This inner pig that wants the whole damn tub. Yeah, and I'm just I'm spending a little extra time in here I'm really defining what the difference is Because it's it's clear that this is not something you want to give up entirely you you want to have ice cream in your life um And you want to have enough to feel satisfied but but by the same token you want to draw a line that protects your goals and aspirations and You know higher level thinking so Just asking you to double check is is that is two scopes two scoops. That's where that line would be I mean if I could find it if I could find a way to be absolutely satisfied Then yeah, two scoops would be would be would be sufficient How could you do that? How could you feel absolutely satisfied with two scoops? Only make two scoops available available to me like if it wasn't if it didn't come in a bigger tub It was just a two scoop container then I would create the visual of that's enough. That's what a container is So that's what I'm going to eat. That's what I'm going to eat So if you put two scoops in your bowl and you maybe enjoyed it a little more slowly or a little more mindfully Um, and you knew that that was all you had then you wouldn't be thinking about that third scoop. No It's okay. I wouldn't be yeah If I knew that was all there was then then I would certainly enjoy and savor what I had Considerably more the moment that I put two scoops in and then put the rest of it in the freezer and say, uh You know, that's all I'm going to have is the moment that the soon as the two scoops are over I go back to the freezer and have the rest How frequently would you like to have those two scoops? At least uh weekly weekly would be would be sufficient one night a week would be great Yeah, and Forgive me for being relentless about the definition. I want to set it up so that your your pig can't fool you Um, when you say one night a week, is that like a calendar week from sunday to saturday? Is it only on the weekends? Yeah, it's usually on a friday night or or a sat saturday night Okay one night per weekend Yeah on friday or saturday Okay, and so Uh, this is a I'm just templating this for your audience so they know how to do it themselves We're eliminating any ambiguity because the pig loves ambiguity at the moment of impulse It looks for little holes in the fabric of your plan and it just rips right through it So we're we're really eliminating any ambiguity And then we're going to make some very declarative bold statements and this this is the part that's controversial because if you talk to most people about anything addictive, they'll say You know, you really can't you really can't do these things forever. You can just you can make a guideline more than a rule um But I I think that when people are sitting out to accomplish something important like Climb out a mountain or ride ride a bike all the way to the top of the hill if you're a little kid I think that they need a way to purge all the doubt and insecurity from their mind I think they need to be able to visualize the top of the mountain and see themselves finishing it I think they need to know they're going to pump their legs all the way up the hill Now if they happen not to make it that's another story then they should be kind to themselves And we're not going to beat ourselves up and we're just going to get back up and do it again But it's it's kind of like when you get married You don't say you know, I'm 80 sure that I can not sleep with anyone else But there sure are a lot of attractive people out there. So I'll just make that a guideline not a rule um And so I asked people if they would be willing to consider Making a very definitive rule for themselves like I will never have more than one and two scoops of ice cream per week per calendar week and I will only ever have ice cream On one weekend night again So that would be the most I'm just writing these stands we can come back for that would be the most definitive and declarative statement I could come up with to encapsulate the rule that you want to follow Okay, um, I'm covering a lot of ground here because I know we have a short amount of time. I would normally do this in a Longer example and I can point people some examples on my side if they want to to listen to that later um Just before we go on we're talking to dr. Glenn Livingston who is a trained psychologist And has helped thousands of clients over the years Where can our listener find more about you as we continue here dr. Livingston? Well, my book is available for free if you go over to never binge again dot com Never binge again dot com. So there you go never binge again dot com if you are a binge eater You want to reign in how much you eat check out never binge again dot com. All right continue And I should say that's the the electronic versions of the book are available for free the paperback and the audio version Have a small charge associated with them okay, so We've got two rules to encapsulate the behavior you want I will never have more than two quite two scoops of ice cream For a calendar week again, and I will only ever have ice cream on one night on one weekend night again And I would normally add between now and the day that I die Why would I do that? I know I know that this is going to engender all sorts of feelings inside of you And you probably hear your pig screaming right now saying between now and the day that I die. Whoa Whoa, dr. Glenn. I don't know if I really want to do that Um, but that's on purpose. I'm really we're really trying to force the pig to the surface I just want you to ignore it for the moment And what I want to ask you is If you never had more than two scoops of ice cream on one weekend night again between now and the day that you died And you did this perfectly for the next year What what would be different in your life? How would your Life have changed a year from now if you were able to do this 100 percent Regardless of whether your pig says you can or you count How would my life change if I only have two scoops of ice cream per week for the next year? Yeah, you suddenly have this magical ability to do that Uh, I'd probably feel um, I would feel more Self control which would give me a feeling of satisfaction. I feel like I would probably be a slightly leaner physically which would make me which would create more energy which would make me happier And I would probably savor the ice cream You know, I would appreciate the ice cream more when I actually had when I actually had it Knowing that it was only once per week Okay um What would be the impact of having more energy and being happier? How would that play out in your life? Uh having more energy would make me Give me greater clarity And having greater clarity would give me more direction having more direction would make me happier and being happier would probably make me Wealthier and making me wealthier would probably give me a greater level of satisfaction and Yeah, it would have spin off or spin off effect Can I pressure them just be a little more specific about that so um, what would you do with all the clarity and energy and Happiness that would create wealth and much more wealth you think you would have because of this Well, it would enable me to focus more on my business and to be more focused in the moment and the more focused I have The more knowledge I will be able to gain and the more knowledge I'll be able to gain the more I'll be able to implement new strategies into my business and create new products and So for is there a particular project that you feel you'd be able to move forward better? Uh, yeah, I'd be able to move my 30 day no alcohol challenge forward more In fact, what I would learn from abstaining I guess for the other six days of the week from ice cream I'd be able to teach to the existing customers and new customers of the 30 day No alcohol challenge as it relates to alcohol and as it relates to other areas of their life More I'm able more I'm able to serve them The more they're going to want to work with me and that would equate to more members or longer staying members Which would mean more dollars in the pocket and greater levels of satisfaction from being able to help more people And james would this impact any of your personal relationships? Well, if I was if I guess if I was happier Then sure I would be I would attract even happier people into my life Okay, I would spend a lot more time on this if we were doing a full session What I what I'm really doing is trying to ground you in your higher aspirations and goals Associated with the desired behavior change. That's what I'm trying to do there And now what I want to do is give your pig a chance I want to give your pig a chance to tell you why you can't do this why you shouldn't do this why you won't be able to do this And as your pig is starting to come out. I want you to know james. I I like you very much, but I don't like your pig So um, please don't take anything that I say to your pig personally. Okay, okay So what what does your pig have to say here? Why can't you do this? Why shouldn't you do this? Why won't you do this? I just like that damn ice cream too much and sometimes I just The heart wants what the heart wants and the heart might really want the ice cream on a Tuesday afternoon When I'm pissed off or frustrated at something to do with work I might just want to go and smash a cornetto ice cream from the chevron gas station down the road You know exactly where Um, the heart ones with the heart ones. Okay, two first thing I'm gonna work What else why can't you do it? Why won't you do it? Why shouldn't you do it? Um Because life is too short and if I want that damn ice cream I'm gonna eat the bloody ice cream because I might get hit by a bus tomorrow and And I'll be pissed off that I didn't eat more ice cream because it gave me it gave me What else Because I've uh because I can convince myself that I've seen studies that say that Anything that gives you short-term pleasure is good for long-term pleasure So I can convince myself that having the ice cream gives me an immediate boost of uh of happiness which would uh Yeah, I can always find a way to to justify why it's it's okay for me to have that I'd also want to eat it. I guess when I was uh Uh It was someone else like someone that I loved or someone that I was close to and I would feel like I could have it to bond over Maybe I was having a nice romantic meal and at the end of the meal I wanted to continue the romance and have like a little sort of naughty delicious delight at the end just to Just to round off the evening so I could justify that like in order to create greater connection Indulging in something that is a little naughty and you know that it's bad for you Creates intimacy or romance and so I could justify it that way What else? Um, what's the question again? Well, what why else does your pig say that you can't do this shouldn't do this won't do this won't be able to do it Oh, yeah, um Because I can do whatever I want whenever I want I've got freedom I'm just gonna do whatever the hell I want. I'm I create my own world. No one's gonna tell me what I can't do I'm just gonna do it Okay, and again if we had a full session I would keep going to get every last possible You call these pigs wheels? every last possible reason that your pig says you won't be able to do this but What I'd like to do with you now is have you jump back into your higher self um the james that wants the energy and happiness and additional wealth and sense of mastery and control And let's just go through the squeals that your pig for added us and see if you can come up with a A counter reason a reason to to stay on it. So It's too good and the heart wants with the heart wants What what would you say to that? Um, so now I'm coming at the count. I'm countering the argument. Is that right dr? Yeah, now you're now you're telling yourself. Why are you gonna keep to this rule regardless? You're right the heart does want what the heart wants and what I want more than the temporary pleasure of the ice cream is uh long-term health and happiness and so that I overrides my Illusionary temporary feeling of pleasure from eating the ice cream right What if you're too frustrated at work? You just want to pound one down from the gas station down the road We'll just get up and breathe in for a minute. Do some heavy breathing jump up and down Do some push-ups do some burpees go for a walk around the block drink a nice tall glass of ice cold water There's 101 Thousand different things that you can do other than walking down to the chevron and buying a king cone ice cream Yep, there you go Life is way too short. What if you get hit by a bus tomorrow? Are you going to be pissed off that you didn't have the ice cream? Yeah life is way too short That's why I enjoy life now by being healthy and energetic and fit and making good dietary choices because I enjoy eating healthy and feeling amazing and Enjoying my life life is short. So I'm going to make sure that I do it the proper way and that's being super healthy most of the time What about the fact that you've seen studies that suggest short-term pleasure increases long-term pleasure? Yeah, well, there's always a study for and every other study isn't there So so I'll just choose which study serves me better in the long term Which is the study that sugar is not good for you and even a little bit over a long time can make you put on weight um Give you acne slow you down make you eat Make you crave sugar even more sugary foods disrupt your sleep patterns so I'll just go with the studies that show that You know having a little bit of ice cream is okay having anything in moderation is fine But anything consistently or overindulging in something is ultimately going to be bad for you What about the fact that you Want to have some type of social enjoyment if you're having a romantic meal with someone to Have that indulgence as a way to increase the intimacy I mean you can do you can do it another way you can first of all you can have healthy ice cream coconut coconut Based ice cream you can have Some fruit a little bit of fruit You can do anything else So you don't even you don't have to have the ice cream You can just say something nice or go for a walk around the block or instead of having the ice cream say let's go for a romantic walk instead or There's 101,000 different things that you can do to create intimacy or connection other than eating a sugary treat Yeah, here you go What about them I I have the freedom to do whatever the hell I damn want I know I do All right, so I have the freedom to choose what to put into my Mouth and what I don't so I choose long-term health and satisfaction over short-term satisfaction with feeling of resentment or disappointment afterwards So James, how confident are you at this point that you're never going to have more than Two scoops of ice cream per calendar week and you're never going to have a more than one weekend night per week Well, the fact that I'm saying this in a public setting like this is that I'm pretty Pretty confident. Let's let's say this. I'm more confident than what I was and when we started doing this So I have I understand the process of reframing my mind I'm not going to say something that I'll regret later and promise it And then someone takes a video of me smashing a full cup of ice And post it on twitter or facebook and says you see you were full of shit James But I this this is a really really important point This is how what I'm suggesting is different than the way most people go about this see In this point what we want to do is separate how confident you feel From what your pig thinks right, okay and we It's it's almost arbitrary, but we draw a line and we say We're a hundred percent confident that we're going to do this, but our pig has other ideas right and you don't It's it's different when you do it publicly it's different do it publicly because then you've got other people's opinions to contend with And I don't normally recommend that people go about that because I think that Nobody can really follow you around all day long and watch what you put in your mouth. So I think that Eating is a very private matter and you have to make the decisions yourself But what I would ask most people at this point was whether they'd be willing to say That they're a hundred percent confident in their pig has other ideas Because that sets up the framework For hearing all the pigs other ideas See if if if you're not willing to say you've got that one hundred percent confidence then The pig can sneak ideas past you you can think that it's your idea um And it's it's a very personal choice and you don't you don't have to do that. The best we can do is give you a real a real jolt of clarity and determination um But if you really want to take this to the nth degree then you say i'm i'm a hundred percent confident my pig has other ideas and All those other ideas are pig squeal. I'm going to listen really carefully for the pig squeal and i'm never going to do it again Is the is the way only way to become a hundred percent confident that you're not going to do it again To associate so much pain around what it is that you're trying to stop because I I I can I can Probably admit that I don't have that much pain Around the fact that I eat too much ice cream on a friday or saturday night like it's not a I'm not with my head in my hands on a saturday morning going. Oh james. You're such a fuck up like you're a disgrace Ah, god, i'm not filled with self-loathing because I have the top of ice cream It's like a guilty pleasure, which I kind of like giggled a little bit about even though i'm like, oh, jeez I had that I had that ice cream last night This might not be something you want to commit to then It's it's um, it's not the only way if you really wanted to make the commitment you could But i'm certainly not going to tell you that you have to do that and I don't want to take that guilty pleasure away from you I I think it's kind of like um, if you were a city planner You don't want to put more stop signs or stop lights in the city than you need to because it's just going to slow down traffic so so with someone, uh See see I So really from for someone like me who doesn't Have feel a lot of pain over binge eating For me my desire to to change or my likelihood of changing is not is never going to be as great As someone who puts a lot of pain a lot of suffering about the fact because there might be someone listening right now Who's who knows they're overweight and knows they eat too much and feels a lot of pain and hurt around that And they're more likely to say I 100 percent commit to this Because the pain is just so so great. Yeah yeah That that's that that's absolutely true and a lot of the people that my work appeals to Are people like me who've been through the experience of feeling a loss of control and Feeling like it interferes with everything else in your life. Yes overtakes your life. It takes three days to recover and What's the point? I really liked the the the process that you went through there doctor living center of Identifying like the the the positive things that would happen if you are able to control Whatever it is that you're trying to control But not just like oh, I'd feel better or I'd lose weight It's well, what are the benefits you get from losing weight because losing weight is just a feature, right? It's just something that would happen. But a benefit is You are happier which attracts happier people into your life Which makes you more energetic which makes you look better which makes you smile more and when you smile more Other people smile at you more which brings much more positive people into your life And much more positive people into your life will inspire you to quit that crappy job that you're in And finally achieve the dreams that you want to achieve Including traveling the world and building a business and finding your perfect partner and loving your children and having great relationships and Blah blah blah blah their benefits Yes, and when you really analyze it If you I think you know that I have a strong background in marketing also you go from the Go from the feature which is losing weight to a rational benefit, which is You know, well, I'll feel better about myself or I'll look better to to an emotional benefit Which is that I'll feel happier and attract more attract happier or better or more positive people And then it kind of develops a constellation of emotional benefits, which is a statement of character It's the kind of person that I'd like to see myself as And that's what i'm trying to get people to envision Is how that would be a different person? And what would that mean for every aspect of their life if they could be that person? yes and Obviously you're You know you've written books on this as it relates to food and it's never binge again dot com, but can we use this same structure? Can we use this same kind of like investigative? questioning Designed to extract certain answers for other things like giving up smoking giving up drinking giving up porn giving up a swearing swearing Preventing getting into fights being irritated like it doesn't work in all areas of life. Dr. Livingston. It does with a caveat There's a difference between the black and white addictions like drinking and alcohol where you can Give those things up entirely and the more complex behavioral economics like eating or swearing or where there are conditions and situations where There's like an infinite number of permutations you have to examine and I tell people My approach is more forgiving than something like rouse on a recovery or or the other types of cognitive approaches to to the black and white addictions and If you're struggling with alcohol or cigarettes, then I would encourage you not to use my approach for it to go back to the original work and Look at um, you know rational recovery, right? I don't know much about your approach in particular So I don't mean to steer people towards them. If this is something you would like to have a look at your third-day alcohol free challenge with But I what I don't want people to do is to apply never binge again to drugs and alcohol in particular because The mechanisms of forgiveness will Rune the work in drugs and alcohol whereas they help it in overeating and the consequences are really grave if you Rune the work in alcohol or drugs. I'm I'm very careful about that Well, dr glenn limington, thank you so much for your time and for your insight into that I really appreciate that remember to the listener and the viewer you can check out never binge again Dot com. Where can we find you on social media? Dr. Limington? If you go to never binge again dot com there are links to the twitter and facebook and We'll just twitter and facebook Yeah, that's what you know what your twitter twitter and facebook. It's never binge again. Yeah never binge again. Okay wonderful So yeah, if you want to uh, send him a tweet send dr. Limington a tweet at never binge again Or follow him on facebook at at never binge again. Please do so you send us a tweet right now Make sure you include at james swanick there um So let me live so let me know that you have listened to me and uh Yeah, tell us what you thought about uh Tell us what you thought about this uh this episode and how you are going to use what dr. Livingston Taught you in your own life. Are you going to now reduce the amount of ice cream that you eat like me? Are you going to stop eating bags of chips and couldn't have ice creams? Are you going to stop drinking so much coke or soda? Have you got the tools now to be able to do that following dr. Livingston's advice and if you'd like to Get more and follow dr. Livingston a little bit more closely make sure you check out never binge again Dot com dr. Livingston. Thank you so much for your time, sir. I appreciate it Sure. Oh, I I should say that when you go to never binge again dot com. There are a bunch of Free food plan starter templates. You can see examples of what worked for other people And there were a whole bunch of audio recordings of the Full sessions like I started to do with james here Oh, wonderful. Yes. So if you want to hear even more sessions of that check out never binge again Thank you dr. Livingston appreciate your time. Thank you james. Thanks for being a good guinea pig And to the listener and the viewer. Thank you very much and I'll catch you on the next one