 In this episode of Mind Pump, the world's top fitness health and entertainment podcast, we talk about yo-yo dieting. This is when people lose weight and then gain it back because they go way off the diet. In fact, this is actually the rule, not the exception. Most Americans, almost most Americans, go on some kind of a crazy diet every single year and the success rate is almost zero percent. In fact, I would bet that most of you watching, probably 90% of you watching and listening right now, have gone through this yo-yo process yourself. So we're going to help solve that for you in this episode and talk about why it happens and how to stop it from happening. Now, before we get started with the episode, this episode is brought to you by one of our sponsors, Paleo Valley. Paleo Valley has some of the best products out there, including meat sticks made from grass-fed beef, great macro profile. They actually taste phenomenal. They also have a supplement that I love taking. They're organ complex. Now, this is a product that has dried liver and heart and kidney in it. You take this supplement, you get the benefits of organ meats without the bad taste. I notice increased strength and recovery from taking these. Those organs are high in things like CoQ10, B vitamins and iron. Back in the day, bodybuilders used to eat organ meats all the time because they noticed incredible gains from them, but of course, organ meats don't taste good. But you can take a supplement like organ complex, which is coming from grass-fed clean sources, grass-fed cows, so you get the good benefits without any of the potential negatives. Now, you can get a discount if you go visit Paleo Valley's website and use the mind pump code. Just go to paleovali.com. That's P-A-L-E-O-V-A-L-L-E-Y.com forward slash mind pump. There's a code mind pump, and then you get 15% off your first order. Again, this episode is about yo-yo dieting, how to stop the process. By the way, if you need more help, we have something called an intuitive nutrition guide, which really goes into detail with all the stuff that we talk about on this episode. And because this episode is about yo-yo dieting, and our intuitive guide is perfect for that, we are going to make our intuitive nutrition guide 50% off. This is a flash sale 24 hours only. The guide itself is inexpensive anyway, so you're going to get it for a very, very low price. Here's how you get the 50% off the intuitive nutrition guide to help you lose body fat, build muscle in a permanent way. Just go to mapsfitnessproducts.com and then use the following code ING50. So that's ING50, no space. That'll get 50% off. That is going to end Wednesday, August 5th, so act now. So I did my stories earlier this week where I do the Q&A and had a couple that I screenshot and sent over to you guys that I thought would make really good single topic episodes. And the one I wanted to do today, I don't think we've done this actually as a single topic. I know we've kind of mentioned it on questions before, but I thought, oh, this will be a really cool one to talk about. And the question that she had asked me was how to stop yo-yo dieting. And I think it's a really good conversation because, one, yo-yo dieting tends to lead to eating disorders and binge eating. And it's extremely common. Very common. I mean, I think most clients that came to me and hired me, I would say majority of them, 80 plus percent of them, have already gone through this or were going through this when they hired me. Most people tend to, before they decide to shell out, you know, thousands of dollars to hire somebody to do it, they've tried it on their own, you know, more than once and have failed or been unsuccessful, and then are now looking for professional help. And so I tended to get most of my clients in this situation. Were you guys similar? Yeah, so yo-yo dieting refers to the process of big weight gain and big weight loss, right? So you go on a diet, you follow some kind of new eating plan. You just recall it, crash dieting. Yeah, and you lose a bunch of weight. And then that typically is followed by a period of you going off the diet. And you'll typically hear someone say, I don't want to do this anymore. I just want to live my life. I just want to enjoy myself. That sucked. I don't want to do that anymore. Then they go and they eat like they did before or worse. And then they gain a bunch of weight. And then that weight gain and then again makes them feel terrible like they did before. Promise them to now go through that same process again because it does, in fact, help them lose weight initially, but it's just not sustainable. So they go right back to the old habits. It's not just that. It's people even like, I mean, Doug mentioned this, right? And this was really common where somebody, I remember, because this was the other type of client that I would get. I would get somebody who wanted to follow a diet so they could get to a goal because of something. So then they could then return to eating how they were before. Yeah. You know what? I used to actually get this from some old clients that would come in that we're trying to get their weight down for insurance reasons. And then you'd get some people, like you're mentioning for their wedding or very specific things, but they want to come back to eating it quote unquote normal. And that would be a big part of my first meeting with this person was to get them to understand that what we're about to do is going to be a lifestyle change. This is not a diet I'm going to put you on to get you to your goal. Because if I do that, I can do that, right? And you are paying customers so I can give you what you want. If that's all you care about is get me down 15 pounds for my wedding, however we do it. I don't give a shit. So after that, I'm going to go back to what I was doing before. I'm really setting you up for failure. And I think I had to explain this because people don't realize this is how this works. If you go on a diet and the greater the diet is, the more of the deficit or the faster you lose for whatever event, the harder you're going to rebound when you come back. And the reason for that is, is you restrict, you now your body will eventually as you're losing weight, so you're down the one pound, you're down three pounds, down five pounds, our goal say is 15 by your wedding, wedding day comes around and trainer Adam helped you out, you lost your 15 pounds. And of course, your wedding day, you're gonna have fun. And then that's the beginning of you going back to quote unquote normal. The problem is, you have a new normal now. Your new normal is what we've been eating to get you to that goal. So when you go back to what you think is your normal again, your body piles on not only all the body fat that you had before you hired me, but more than that, because that was your new caloric maintenance. Well, so it's interesting. This isn't a behavior that we see with a lot of different things. We also see with exercise, right? How many times you guys get this question, which I always found interesting. What's gonna happen after I build all this muscle when I stop working out? Is it gonna stay on my body? Well, of course not. You're changed your behavior, so your body follows suit. Now Yo-Yo died. Here's what's interesting about this, by the way. Every single year, this is an interesting statistic I looked up, about half of Americans during the calendar year will be trying to lose weight. Every single year at any given moment, about 45 million Americans right now are on a diet. People go on diets and go off diets all the time. The average person has probably been on several diets to try to go through. So Yo-Yo dieting is not the exception. It's actually the rule. Now the term Yo-Yo dieting got coined, sometime in the 80s, there was a doctor. I can't remember his name, Brownell. I think his last name was or Brownell. In the 80s, this became a term. I remember Yo-Yo dieting becoming a marketing term. I don't know if you guys remember this, but sometime in the late 80s, early 90s, infomercials would try to sell products and would try to sell you the solution to Yo-Yo dieting. This is the diet that will solve Yo-Yo dieting. It actually became a marketing term that people would use. Like anything does. We get some good research or science that proves how bad something like this could be. Yo-Yo dieting, how detrimental it can be to your health, and how much body fat you put on. So we scare the society first. We scare them with the new research, and then we give them the solution for an easy payment of $9.99. I think it's important. Yes, Adam talked earlier about clients experiences. Every client I ever trained had gone through somewhat of this process. Again, this is the rule, not the exception. I think the more important thing that we need to talk about with it really is the psychology of what's going on with this process of Yo-Yo dieting. It's important to talk about that, because although the diet itself leads to the rebound that comes afterwards, ultimately what caused the whole thing was the psychology leading into it. So if you're listening to this episode right now, and you are like most people have gone through this process of up and down with your weight, and like Adam explained earlier, over time it actually causes things to get much worse. I want you to for a second pause and examine the mental process, how you feel both going into your diet while you're on the diet, and then the mental process and feelings and thoughts that lead to you going off of it, and then how you feel when you're totally off of it. Let's examine that for a second, right? Going into your diet, you typically are in the state of mind of, I really need to change something. I don't like the way I look. This sucks. I'm gross, whatever. Typically something triggers this. Yeah, I'm fat. Something, right? Something typically triggers it. It's either a picture you saw, or a comment somebody made, or an event that suddenly is making you hyper-aware of the fact that you're- Right, or nervous even. I'm going to have that we have a beach party thing that we're going to. I'm going to be in a bikini or a bathing suit, and now people are going to see me with my shirt off and are scared and nervous. Exactly. And so then what you automatically do is you say, okay, all these things that I'm doing now need to be different. And so I'm going to change all of them right for a second. All at once. And the way I'm going to keep myself or make myself do this. Well, first off, almost nobody considers what they do to get where they want to go is what they have to do to stay there. Almost nobody thinks of that. Everybody thinks very short-term with this. I just want to get the weight off, and I'll worry about keeping it off later. This is the mental state. Yeah, typically, it's a thought of, I'm going to get there. I'm going to get to some place. And so I'm going to do by any means necessary, I'm going to do outside of my norm to get there. So I'm going to really challenge myself. I'm going to press as hard as I can to get there in as short amount of time as possible because I hate dieting. I hate this process, but you know what? I know it's important that I do this to lose the weight. And at the end of that, I'm going to look great and fabulous, but it's just they don't realize that the sustainability factor to it all is just the more you stack on top of that and the shorter the time frame, it just becomes more and more unreasonable. Yes. I remember having this conversation with clients and I would frustrate them sometimes, right? They would ask me questions, especially when they first hire me, which diet is the most effective? Like, what's the most effective strategy? And I'd say, okay, what looks like what you're doing right? I'd say, what do you mean? What do you mean by effective? It depends. What do you mean by effective? Oh, I just want to lose this body fat. Yeah, yeah. But do you want to lose it? Like, what do you mean by effective? Lose it the fastest or keep it off permanently? And they'd look at me puzzled. And then they'd say, well, I want to keep it off permanently. But what I was, what I was asking about, what's the fastest? So most people pick a diet based off of the one they think is going to work the fastest, not by the one that's going to keep the weight off forever. They're almost always never both the same diet, by the way. Usually the one that gets things to happen the fastest is the one that is the worst at keeping things off. This is why it's so important to dive into and this would be the first step I would look into for stopping this process. Work on the why first, or at least focus on that a little bit more, or at least as much as the how. Everybody looks at the how. I want to get this weight off. How do I do it? Don't eat carbs. Perfect. Eat low fat. Perfect. Only eat cabbage or whatever, you know, weird diet is coming out next. That's perfect. Nobody really focuses on the why. Why am I here now? Why am I, what are my motivations now? Why, how, how, how have I got to this place where I'm at this point where I'm so desperate now, I'm willing to do whatever it takes just to, just to get the weight off. That's the most important thing. If you can fix the why, the how usually takes care of itself. How weird is that, right? If you focus on the how, the why almost never takes care of itself. So there's a few places you could start when you're looking at the why, right? First off, what are the things that motivate you to eat in ways that probably aren't the best for you? What are some ways that, you know, for example, what are you guys running into with your clients? What are the number one ways that, or motivations for clients eating that usually led to eating that wasn't so. Probably stress is probably number one. Yeah. I would say that. Boredom was a big one, believe it or not. It's funny. I found this even for myself. I had nothing to do. Let's see what there is to eat. Yeah. Like that's something to do, right? And then people just happy celebrating or that love food. They love the, the, how good food tastes. That's a, that was always a hard hurdle for me was, you know, when you're trying to get somebody to make a lifestyle change that just wants to see the quick results and then also has this love and appreciation for the enjoyment of food is really, and this is why I like you transition into the psychology part because obviously the mechanism, the mechanistic part of this is important and understanding what you're doing to your metabolism. But the psychology is a psychology part is even more important and understanding what, what is the motivator or what drives them and knowing that what we're about to embark in is really going to be a lifestyle change for you versus something that we're just going to try and get them. Otherwise, I used to give this analogy of like your goal is like a shelter that we're trying to build. You know, the storm is coming. It's a, the wedding is in three months. You're like, Oh shit, we've got to build this shelter as fast as we possibly can. And what you're asking me to do is like, just throw up something as quick as we possibly can, board up some things, no blueprints, no plan, no idea of how this is going to last winter after winter. It's just like, Oh shit, it's coming. We got to get coverage and do whatever we can to get there as fast as we possibly can. We could just, I mean, I'm not a contractor. I don't know how to do any of that shit. But if you just still bunch of boards up in front of me and nails, like we could figure something out that we could survive the first night. But the reality of that is like, that's not going to last forever. And eventually you're going to be outside cold in the weather and that in a shittier situation than we were when we started. And so laying out the blueprints and then also laying out to them what that's going to look like for the rest of their life, because we don't want to just build this temporary. I want to build this body for you for the rest of your life. Yeah, it very much seems reactionary. When you get certain clients coming in that have, I mean, it's something that's been kind of prodding their thoughts a lot about, you know, I need to lose this. And so there becomes the point where they decide that it's urgent. And so like nothing else matters at that point to them other than losing the weight. So, you know, the, you know, they come in with that type of energy, it's, they don't want to hear about, you know, like how we can tweak and modify certain things that you can carry on with you from here on out. So this is the starting point to then living a completely different way. No, they want to hear that this is this is the point now where I get to, you know, do stuff outside of what I'm going to do, but I'm going to come back to where I'm comfortable. Well, this was, Sal brought this up on a recent episode, like this is the that first major hurdle is like getting people to accept that you're going to change their life. And food is a very big part of all of our life. And I don't mean, we don't mean change your life like, oh, you lost weight, your life has changed. No, no, no, you are going to change then your life changes. That's what we mean around you is going to look different. Yes. Like your food and how we eat is a big part of who we are. It really, really is it's, you know, we celebrate with food and we there's there's context that surrounds food and we use food as a drug oftentimes and ways to celebrate and connect food is much more at least we value food much more for what it does for us and how it makes us feel than just the proteins, fats, carbs and calories. We've known about proteins, fats, carbs and calories forever by those. This is not new information. It's not new information to cut your calories and you lose weight. We all know that most people do, but that's the thing that we value the least. This is just the reality. We got to be honest with ourselves. That is what people value the least about food. What they value more about food is the other stuff. And oftentimes it's around, how does it make me feel? Does it make me feel happy? Does it help me escape all the associations? That's right. Now here's a problem. When people enter into a diet, they think to themselves, either consciously or subconsciously, I can will myself to do this for 60 days. I can do, I can will myself to do this for 60 days. Now, if we change the context to forever, whoa, that breaks everything down. Yeah. Can you, oh, you're going to follow this Atkins diet? That's cool. You're going to do forever. Yeah. Ask clients this. This is what you're going to do forever? Oh, no, no, no. That's right. I'm going to transition after. This is the problem that I have with, you know, vegan, keto, all these extreme type of diets where you eliminate a food group and it's like, okay, you, you read all this information, you have a friend that told you this worked really well for them. So now you want to try it. And, and I'm not, there's lots and I can get behind some of the benefits that you're, you're explaining to me that someone explained to you. But the real question is, okay, your keto, are you never going to have potato chips ever again? Like, is that just something you're okay with? Or fruit? Yeah. You don't want that ever again, or that's not something you don't see being introduced into your life. And if so, then why are you doing it right now for this temporary period? Because it's only going to set you up for being in a worse situation when you decide to go back to having potato chips or fruit. Right. So here's what ends up happening. There's a, there's a term in psychology called the symptom eruption. And this usually happens when you restrict yourself from having a symptom. And then over time, you can't handle it anymore. And then you do more of the thing that you were trying to control before. So when you are willing yourself to be super strict for a short period of time on a diet, what you're literally doing is you are literally, you know, oppressing or tyrannizing yourself, you, you're separating yourself. And how do you know this? Well, it's your language. Hey, you want some pizza? I can't have pizza right now. You want a cookie? I can't have, of course you can't. I wish I could. I can't. Yeah, I can't do it right now, right? You are literally oppressing, tyrannizing yourself and willing yourself to do the short term process. Now over time, this becomes harder and harder to do because nobody likes to be oppressed for very long. Nobody likes to be tyrannized for very long. Nobody likes to be held back from something they want so too long. So then the opposite end of that looks like rebellion. This is why when people go off a diet, they don't just go off a diet. They go in the opposite direction. People who are doing keto just to lose weight, for example, right? They will themselves to do keto. Do you know what they do when they go off keto? They don't have a little bit of carbs. They have more carbs than they did before. Do you think, do you think this happens because this is something that is like built in all of us like naturally? It's like, we're talking about food right now, we've brought this up before about the young generation that's coming up, no matter what they rebel with what the majority is like. Is it just in our nature to be rebellious like that? And so when you put yourself in these extreme situations, you're obviously testing that to its fullest because if you're going to be so strict or so extreme one direction, it's naturally in your body. You want to rebel whatever that is. Put it this way. Let's say you have a kid and you raise them authoritative, very like not loving, cold authoritative. You are punished if you watch any TV at all, any electronics at all. So while they're under your roof, they are afraid because you are constantly going to punish them and you're watching over them. This kid, the likelihood that they're going to, when they move out, watch a shit ton of TV is very high. Which is a great analogy because this is what people are subconsciously doing to themselves when they do this. Absolutely. I can't have this cookie. I can't do this. Yes, you can. You're a fucking adult. That's right. You absolutely can have it. You choose not to because you know it's not serving your body. So it starts with that mindset when you do things. It does. Now, again, if that kid chose to not watch TV, would they move out and then go in the opposite direction? Mindset. They have chosen themselves. They have chosen this decision themselves. I remember when I would get clients who, you know, whenever a client would hire me, I would ask them what their goals were and we would dig deeper and deeper. And I would always ask, why? Well, why do you want to lose weight? Why do you want whatever? And oftentimes they'd say, well, it'll make me happy. And then I would always tell them, look, in my experience, you get happy first, then the weight comes off. This is very true. If you are treating yourself well, the side effect is to lose weight and eat in a particular way. It's not to diet. The other way around almost always never works. In fact, the success rate with diets is so bad that there's a whole category of nutrition and fitness experts, quote unquote, who are anti-diet. That's how bad their success rate is that they say, never diet, don't ever change your food. They go too far in the opposite direction, I think. How many times have you seen a client where they'll bring up an old picture and, you know, I want to get back to this specific body that I used to have at this point in time, like, okay, and they're all about trying to get happy again. And like, how happy were you then? They're like, oh yeah, I hated my body. I hated myself. And it's just, it's such a mindset that you have to acquire before going into the journey for sure. So the first thing I would say, you know, okay, so you're going to focus on the why, right? Start to think about this with yourself. Start to reframe yourself. Am I avoiding this food because I can't eat it? Or is it because I choose not to eat it and practice this? This actually makes a big difference when somebody asks or offers you to eat something that you know is not serving you. Don't say I can't. Literally just say, no, I don't want it. By the way, this is not, you're not not admitting or acknowledging that you'd enjoy the flavor of it, just like a, you know, a husband wouldn't admit that the hot stripper over there wouldn't be hot to hook up with, but he's not going to do it because he really doesn't want to, right? You can look at the food and admit that it's going to taste good. Oh yeah, I'm going to enjoy, I would enjoy the flavor of that, but I really don't want it. It doesn't serve me. This makes all the difference. All the time, this is a, I mean, last night, Katrina was like, Katrina was craving a burger and she's like, I want a burger right now. And I said, oh my god, a burger sounds so good, but I don't want it. I don't want it right now. I didn't get my training session in today. I didn't do this. I didn't move very much. So I don't want it today. Like, so you just got, and honestly, just practicing, reframing that conversation makes a world of a difference. Totally in your language. Totally. Because then there may be moments when you do want it. Well, you know, I've been eating pretty good and it's my kid's birthday and I promised we'd make cookies together. And so I know it's not serving me physically, but it's worth it. And I want those cookies right now. So I think I will have some. So you avoid those major swings when you change your Y, which I think is the most important. But here's the next part. Don't go to such massive extremes. The bigger and more extreme the change, the bigger the potential reversal when things flip out in the opposite direction. So I'll give you an example. You're averaging 2,500 or 3,000 calories a day. And you're like, that's it. I want to go on a diet. I'm going to go to 1,500 calories. I'm going to cut it in half. Or I never eat vegetables. I eat processed food all day long. I'm going to go vegan and only eat whole natural vegetable-based foods or whatever. That's a very big extreme. And remember, you eat every single day, several times a day. You celebrate with food. You eat for lots of different reasons. You're going to radically change how you eat that extreme. That is a very difficult thing to stick to. It's a shock. It's almost impossible. Instead, I would say, make a small change. In my experience, the people who made the extreme changes, I can't remember a single time a client was long-term successful when they made the whole like, give me a meal plan and they threw everything out. Like 10 years later, yeah, look and see where they're at. Like, it's never really been something that I've seen stick for that long amount of time. It's always been the ones that have built upon one small thing. Then they added to, then they kind of started to introduce more factors that they could handle at the time. And then they started to get excited about it because they started to crave like, how good their body felt and started to make a couple more changes. And it's just like the snowball effect. Yeah. So the first changes you should make should not be very extreme. And the ones that follow shouldn't be extreme as well. This, by the way, develops the skill of discipline. This is how discipline is developed. You take a step that is challenging, has to be challenging. That way it's meaningful. If you take a step that's not challenging, it won't mean anything to you. But it also must be realistic in a long-term sense. And by the way, when you ask yourself this question, make sure you're asking the version of you that's not super motivated. Here's one of the other problems. When you're in that mindset of, that's it. I want to lose the weight. That mindset is not your permanent mindset or the one that you're usually in. That's in the hyper motivated mindset. And you ask anybody who's very motivated, hey, what are your goals? How much do you think you could do? It's always way more. It's all distorted. Yeah. I'm hyper motivated to, you know, get in shape and, you know, I'll go five days a week now. Well, how many days a week were you going before? Zero. Okay. That's a little too extreme. So you start with that small step. Once that becomes second nature, then you add to it. This is what I mean by not going extreme. Same thing with calorie cutting. You want to drop your calories. How about you drop a couple hundred rather than a thousand calories right out the gates? Makes things a lot easier. Well, referencing mindset, you know, one of the ways that I help a client change this mindset. And we've mentioned this on the show many times, but this is so important for the conversation around yo-yo dieting. And that is changing your mindset around like what you tend to look for and focus on. So, you know, in my early years as a trainer, the conversation was always around muscle and fat and, you know, maybe building performance. And we didn't really talk about the things like hair and sleep and mood and, you know, energy level, like all those things weren't, those were like a secondary focus. It's like, I'm here because I want to lose 30 pounds. That's all I care about. And when you focus just on that, you get married to the scale and it's really easy for that to change your mindset all the time. So, learning to shift the focus on other aspects that eating this way or exercising this way is benefiting your life makes it a lot easier to stay focused and stick to it and make decisions like, I don't want to eat that. And the reason why that is is because you start to make connections with your stool, with your hair, with your skin, with your energy. Hey, when I eat according to this plan that I've set or my trainer has set for me eating this way and I make good food choices for two, three days in a row, wow, I really noticed that my stool is better. I really noticed that my mood is better. I noticed that my energy is consistent through the day. I noticed that I go to, I sleep even better. And you start noticing that maybe the scale hasn't even changed. Doesn't matter. It gives a shit. We're not going to pay attention to that thing right now. We're going to pay attention to all these other aspects of your life that are being enhanced by making these good choices that you choose to do, not that you're being forced to do, that you want to do because it's serving your body. And look, your body's repaying you by seeing the increase in all these other aspects. Learning to switch that mindset is tremendous when you talk about getting somebody out of this yo-yo diet cycle who's always on or off the wagon. Absolutely. Another part of mindset, you know, this is an interesting one. There was a study a long time ago that showed the, how consistently people took their medications that were recommended to them by their doctors versus how consistently they gave their pets medication that the veterinarians recommended that they give to their pets. Now take out the fact that we're talking about medication. I'm not saying you need to take medicines or drugs or whatever. That's not the point of this. The point is the study found that people were far more consistent and diligent about giving their dogs and cats their medicines than they were to themselves. Now what does that tell you? That tells you that we tend to not take care of ourselves nearly as well as we take care of our pets. I'm sure you see that same, you use that study, but I guarantee there's one to match that for your children. Oh, even better, right? Even more. Right. If your kids are, if your kids are, you know, you have a like a one-year-old like I do and doctor tells Katrina he gets, you know, one milliliter of this at this time. I mean, it's like we don't miss anything. You're on, it's your child, right? Absolutely. And so what, so again, what is this telling us? It tells us that we take care of other people far better than themselves. Now what's the ultimate, let's get pure here, right? What's the ultimate goal of changing your diet and changing your activity and in improving your health? What's the ultimate goal of that? It's to take care of yourself, make yourself healthier. Now is that really what you're doing right now? And I don't mean on accident. I mean, is that really what's motivating you right now? Are you thinking to yourself, I'm doing this because I got to take care of me. I got to, I deserve to be taken care of just like my child deserves to be taken care of. I love me in the truest sense, not love yourself like that, like a narcissist or I'm so cool or whatever, or like the opposite end of the spectrum, the bot, you know, the love yourself at any size movement, which sometimes can turn into a, you know, ignoring the fact that you're not actually not taking care of, I mean, in the true sense, like you would your child. Are you really doing this because you care about yourself or are you doing this because you hate yourself? Okay. Am I on this diet because I'm disgusted with the way I look. I'm really angry with myself. I don't like that I've let myself go this far. I'm pissed off. Think about that for a second. Which one is a long-term strategy? Or do you want to live in a body that hates itself all the time? Of course not. At some point, again, you're going to rebel. This is where the yo-yo comes up. At some point, you're going to stop and you're going to say the following words. I just want to enjoy life. Now think about that. How many times have you as a listener said that to yourself when you've gone off a diet? I don't, you know, this diet, I just want to enjoy my life right now. I just want to go out with my friends, enjoy life, not worry about things, not be stressed out. I want to have a lot of fun. I want to enjoy food. That's what life is all about. Yeah, life is about enjoying things and you would enjoy life if you took care of yourself or at least if that was the mindset. Why does that make such a big difference? Well, when I'm eating healthy food and I'm doing it because I'm taking care of myself, that's a very different feeling. It actually feels kind of good. I enjoy doing that. I definitely don't enjoy eating because I hate myself. I don't care what the food is. If I'm eating this like, oh, disgusting fat. Yeah, with disdain, just, yeah, you're not going to be able to keep that up for very long. No, I got to lose this weight. Oh, gosh, oh, I'm looking in the mirror. Oh, it's way on the scale. Oh, I don't like this. Of course, you're not going to stick to it. So that mindset of going in, of caring for yourself, boy, does that make all the difference in the world? Now, I know that's a little challenging because people say, well, how can I, I really don't like myself right now. This is why you got to separate your body image from your self image. This is a very powerful thing. Well, and also you kind of brought that up like the whole association thing with food. Like, you know, for me, like I, I couldn't stand certain vegetables forever growing up because it was presented to me like, this is you have to eat this because, you know, if you don't eat this, you're not going to be healthy. And so it was just this almost hammering an assault of vegetables that I had to cram in there just because I had to, you know, and there was no other information about it than how it was going to benefit my body and why I was going to feel so much better and all. And that, and that was something I had to really work on personally to then, you know, reframe that for myself. Like I started to start pursuing those vegetables because of the way it made me feel and then I actually started to like them as a result of that. Totally. You know, along the lines of mine said that's I think an important conversation around this and what I found really common with clients. Like, so I think most clients are smart and aware of what would be considered a good food for their body and a not so good food for the body. But there's something that I found really common with most of these people is that we tend to intentionally distract ourselves, even if it's subconsciously. And so I like to dive into that. And I can always tell like when I'd ask clients like, oh, when you eat this food or that like pizza, or you have a, how do you feel afterwards? Oh, I feel fine. I feel fine. I feel fine. Everything's fine, fine, fine, fine. Doesn't matter if I eat a bowl of vegetables or I eat this. I feel fine. I feel the same. I feel the same. And then you start digging a little bit deeper and you start to see some of the behaviors and the patterns they do. And like a common one that a lot of us do, especially today, is that you eat and you're on your phone at the same time or you're eating in front of the driving. Yeah. And the television or you're just, you're totally distracted from what's going on and you're not present in the moment. And when I would get those people to start and I would like a lot of times not tell them to change eating, I'd say, listen, I just, when you eat, I need you to stop watching Netflix for me, like eat your meal. And then I just want you to report to me like what you notice afterwards, how you feel and I want to, these are the things I'm looking for. What's your energy level feel like? What's your, you know, digestion feel like? What's your stool feel like? Do you notice any swelling or bloat or anything like that? And so I'd ask them all these questions to start paying attention. And lo and behold, as they become more aware and they start paying it, they start to notice like, Oh, wow, I guess when I do eat that pizza, I do get like this total bloat filling. I do notice my energy crash. I didn't realize that. And then the same is true on the other end of the spectrum. You know, you just, Oh, I'm told to eat my vegetables. So I just eat my vegetables. No one ever really pays attention to like, Hey, after you have that bowl of broccoli or that, what a bowl of greens, like think about like 30 minutes later, analyze the exact same things. How does your energy level feel? How does your mood feel? How does your, do you have bloat right now? How's your digestion feel? And when you start connecting those dots and becoming more aware and less distracted, it becomes easier to say no to those things. Just like I told Katrina 100% a cheeseburger sounded good, but I already did not feel like I was running on an empty tank. I still had food left in my front, my system from earlier in the day because I didn't exercise and train. And so then overstuffing myself with a burger and fries, which I knew would do that. I already know what my belly would feel like afterwards and what my energy levels would be and what sleep would be. So it's very easy for me to go as much as that sounds tempting and sounds really good. Cause it would taste amazing going down. I also can, I'm very aware of all the other things that follow that and that doesn't sound good. And that's, that's realizing the, the total and real value of food, all of it. Now here's the problem. The problem is all of us, most of us really only understand and value one aspect of food, which is how good it tastes, how enjoyable and pleasurable is it to eat this food. In fact, all the top selling foods are typically the ones that are the most palatable. This is what makes them a top, even in the health food section, by the way, you go through the health food section and you look at the, the, the top, you know, health bars and shakes and whatever, they're probably not that top because of the healthiest. They're probably the top because they taste the best in that category. So what's happened is we only value the palatability of food and that's a problem because if you only value that, that's all you'll ever search for when you eat and that's not going to serve you well. Now, if you do what Adam's talking about, what you really understand and start to become aware of all the effects that food has on you, here's the side effect of that. You start to learn to value lots of those other things. You have to become aware of them first, but when you do, you start to value those. And then here's the side effect of that. And this is the weird part. I used to love it when clients would get to this point. They started to enjoy eating foods that they didn't think they would ever enjoy before. You know, I remember years ago I had a client who ate no vegetables and little by little through this process of awareness, she started to realize her digestion was better. She could sleep better when she would eat vegetables. And lo and behold, when she'd go on a business trip and come back, she would trip out because the thing she would crave was a bowl of vegetables because, oh, I didn't have any when I was on my vacation. My digestion was off. That's what I want right now. Then this is what ends up happening. You start to think to yourself, you know, my energy's low. This is what I want to eat. You know, I'm feeling a little bit, I need more strength, my performance. This is what I want to eat. You know, my digestion is all this is what I eat. And then of course, you also every once in a while understand that I'd like to have a real pleasurable meal or I'm just all about the taste and the feeling of the food in which case, not a problem. In fact, this is how you maintain balance. See, balance is when you understand the full value of food and what it provides you so that this will probably what it looks like for most people when you have balance. Most of the time you're eating foods that serve you physiologically. Most of the time they serve you that they're good for your digestion. They're good for your health and your skin. Every once in a while, you'll have those foods that you enjoy just for the pleasure of eating them. Now, when you don't do it this way and you do the whole restrict thing and you cut those foods out, well now every time you eat, you're getting, you are perceiving zero value. I'm not getting any value from this food, aside from the scale going down a little bit. Boy, this is a nightmare all day long while I'm eating this food that I really hate because it's not pleasure. Of course, a bowl of broccoli and chicken breast is not going to be as pleasurable to eat as pizza, but does that mean it's less valuable? And I don't mean just like, yeah, of course it's got value. No, really, do you really understand the true value? And when you do, it makes it a lot easier. Now, one thing you can do about this, just an easy step, is to avoid foods that are engineered to hammer on that one hyper palatable pleasurable value to eliminate those foods just for a little while. Just cut them out for a second just to get yourself acclimated. These are the heavily processed foods. You know, it's funny, we've been told that it was fat intake that's causing the obesity epidemic, then it was carbohydrate intake that was causing the obesity epidemic or sugar that was causing the obesity epidemic. You want to know what the truth is, what's caused the obesity epidemic? It was the introduction and then the fact that these foods then permeated and became a majority of our lifestyle. I'm talking about heavily processed foods. When you look at the introduction of heavily processed foods into the market, and then how much of our diet that they made up, it matches perfectly with the obesity epidemic. In fact, studies now show that this is the single most effective strategy you can take to reducing your overall caloric intake. They've done some pretty brilliant studies. We'll take two groups of people in a lab so they control everything and they give both of them unlimited access to food. One group, whole, natural, unprocessed food. The other group, heavily hyper, hyperpalatable, heavily processed foods. Macronutrient profiles very similar, no joke. And then they say, okay, eat as much as you want. And of course the scientists are tracking their calories and everything. And then here's the best part. Then they switch the groups just in case they switch them over. Here's what they find. On average, people who are eating lots of heavily processed food eat about 500 more calories every single day. Now, I'm going to simplify something that's a bit complex. So it's not quite the simple, but it kind of is a little bit. That's 500 calories extra a day is about a pound of body fat a week. That's a big deal. 500 calories is a big, big deal. Cutting that is usually where you start with your diet. No joke. So heavily processed foods get rid of those because they hammer on the pleasurable factor and you just eat more of them. And because they're so pleasurable, it's easier to ignore all the other values of your food. Start there, I would say. Well, and that study is done in a very controlled setting too. What we're talking about today is yo-yo dieting. And so this is even more important when you're talking about somebody who is living in a calorically calorie deficit for a period of time, because then then those hyper-palatable foods become even more desirable because you've been in a low calorie. So you got to keep that in consideration too. You're given in a study where there's probably control people, they're all eating an average diet, and then they get to do either all processed foods or whole foods and then they find that out. Well, I bet you if you took another group and you said restrict them for two weeks of low calorie and exercise and then get put them in that situation, what do you think would happen? Oh, it'd be like a thousand extra calories. The whole natural food group would probably eat another two or three intercalories. The other group would probably eat another thousand. 100%. Yeah. So I would avoid these heavily processed foods not because they're the devil, although most of them are unhealthy, but rather because you want to go through a process of starting to really understand the total value of food and understand your body's signals. Those foods, a lot of money, most of the money that goes into developing those foods goes into just designing them to really mess with your signals of satiety, with how you're perceiving the pleasure of that food. I'll give you a great example. I think there's four or five potatoes in a bag of Lay's potato chips. I think about five. Five potatoes in a bag of potato chips. Most people could not sit down and eat five plain baked potatoes with no salt, no butter, just plain. Just try eating two. Yeah. Just try eating two in a row. Probably couldn't do it. Most people could crush a bag of potato chips. No problem. Same amount of food. Actually, here's the crazy part. The potato chip bags have more calories even, and yet you'd be able to eat that easily. So that's what these foods tend to do to you. And it's really hard to go through this process that we're talking about. When you're feeding yourself these, these foods that hack your system, if you will. This is even more important too for somebody who will tell me as a client that, I don't really like vegetables, or I don't really care for fruit, or you think that whole foods are bland to you. Because you eat so much processed foods, or it's such a big portion of the percentage of your diet, even if you're, and this includes, by the way, healthy processed foods, your quest bars that everybody loves, or these these drinks that are artificially flavored. Like when you do that, it changes your palate, and you get used to these super palatable foods. And then I go ask you to have a bowl of broccoli. Yeah, no shit. It tastes bland. But I tell you what, when you go from somebody who eats a lot of processed foods to eliminating all of that, going all whole foods before you know it, and for me, and for clients that I've trained, it typically takes about a month. It takes about 30 days of consistency and some are less, but around 30 days of doing this. And then all of a sudden, you get this response from them like, oh my God, like an apple is so amazing. And oh man, the vegetables taste so good. And they think it's something to do with the season, or they just got a great buy at the grocery store that weekend. It's not that at all. It's that they've completely changed their palate. You can't, and a lot goes into changing your palate. It's not just the actual perceptions from the brain. It's also, again, going back to understanding the total value food. And by the way, if you're listening right now, you're like, oh, how do I change my palate? You've already probably gone through this, you know. Most kids hate the taste of black coffee. Then you get an adult and you start to enjoy it, probably because you associate it with waking up and, oh, it gives me the energy I need in the morning. And now I love that cup of coffee, or you hated one food. Then you're like, I remember as a kid, I hated the taste of spinach. It's bitter. It's not a food I liked eating. Then I watched the cartoon papa. I'm showing my age a little bit, but if you don't know what that cartoon is, it's this sailor that eats a can of spinach and his arms get buffed and then he's super strong and he beats up the bad guy. Well, I always wanted to be strong as a kid. Watch those cartoons. I'm like, it worked. Mom, make me spinach. I didn't like the taste of it when I first ate it, even though I was force feeding myself because I want to be buff like papa. You know what happened over time? I liked it. I started enjoying the taste of spinach because I connected it with getting stronger. That works for me too, and also those got milk commercials like about getting enough milk in you to feed your muscle. Super powerful, the marketing of it. You can use those same tactics on yourself for some of these foods that you know would help to benefit you. It's just all about reframing that and like presenting it. Dude, they did this one study where they served people chocolate ice cream. They had groups of people, chocolate ice cream in a bowl or chocolate ice cream in a brand new clean toilet. That's their joke. And they wanted to see if the people and they told people eat as much as you want, right? The people eating the chocolate ice cream out of a clean toilet ate far less chocolate ice cream. Now, obviously it's because they associate it with poop and the toilet and that stuff. But it just goes to show you that you can change your mindset around food. And these studies really illustrate that and kind of silly and fun ways. So you can do this with yourself and all of this is surrounds the why more than the how. Once you really address the why, the how starts to fall. Above all, I would say this, take it slow. One of the hallmarks of yo-yo dieting is the extreme nature of the diet itself. The fact that it's such a rapid, sharp shift in direction from where you normally are that it's almost impossible to maintain. So ultimately, I say to everybody I've ever worked with, let's take our time. And I know if you're listening right now, you're like, I don't look, I want to lose this 15 pounds, because I'm going to be going to a trip in Vegas or I'm going to go to a wedding or whatever. Okay, is that one event more important than forever? Which one do you value more? You want to be you want to be fit for that one event or be fit for all the other events that follow? You know, talking about take it slow, something that comes to mind. I had this conversation with my niece the other day. She told me that they're going vegan, right? And the irony of this is I know how much her family eats meat and she loves meat, right? And then she's going to go to this other extreme. And one of the things that I was, because they just got them watching Game Changers completely sold them on the idea that they need to go this way, oversold it obviously. And I said, you know, it's so funny. And I was explaining to her how easily we are all manipulated into these fake categories that are called diets. This is all a bunch of made up bullshit to market to all of us and sell. And then we use all this science to try and support it to close you even harder on it. It doesn't mean that you can't take some of the principles that support those studies and start to integrate that into your lifestyle. And so what I said to her said, why would you, somebody who you know you love meat, you eat tons of it, go from one extreme to the other. But you recognize that there's you and you just watched this movie and you heard all these studies and these benefits of you eating all more vegetables and whole foods and not eating so much red meat and how it could be bad for you. Okay, so why eliminate fish? Why get rid of turkey? Why get rid of chicken right now? Why don't you just kind of reduce some of your meat intake and then try and increase some of the vegetables and the same thing is true for the person who goes all into the ketogenic diet. You're eating all these carbohydrates before, both processed ones, whole food ones. And then now you're going to go all carnivore or all keto. It's like, why do that? Why don't you just take some of the principles that you recognize are probably not good for you in your diet right now, eliminate some of those. So take it slow like that also, like people get so easily manipulated into following a diet. And the reality of it is I've never met anybody who I think should be following, unless they are extreme, I shouldn't say anybody because there is that there has probably been the 1%, 1%ers I've trained that have some sort of a medical condition where it makes sense for them to be following a really strict diet. Everybody else should learn to take some of the principles and the concepts from it and learn to integrate it into your life and then see and pay attention to the benefits. And these people that are so divisive on these certain methods are trying to win your money. And that really is the bottom line with that. So again, I totally suggest that to take those principles, evaluate how you can integrate that into what you're already doing. So it's not a super drastic step. We've got to kind of really take our time, be slow about it and start to incorporate it so it makes sense long-term. Right. And ultimately, it's not going to be a problem to do long-term. If it's something that you truly enjoy doing and I don't mean enjoy and again, I don't mean necessarily just enjoying the taste and the pleasure of the food, but enjoying the process of taking care of yourself. Nobody doesn't like to take care of themselves. Everybody loves doing something for themselves because they're taking care of so reframe everything. Look at it from a different perspective. Go slow. Don't be extreme. And your odds of success long-term are far higher and the risk of yoyoing out of that process is far lower. Look, Mind Pump is recorded on video as well as audio. Come check us out on YouTube, Mind Pump podcast. You can also find all of us on Instagram. You can find Justin at Mind Pump. Justin, me at Mind Pump Sal and Adam at Mind Pump Adam. So somebody says the name Kodak. And right, so they say like, what do you think of Kodak? And that's because that's normally how they present it when it's a person, right? So I'm assuming they're talking about some Instagram person. And it does sound like some meathead on Instagram. Totally, right? So I just, I go, I mean, there's even a supplement line. My name is Kodak. Kodak is the name, by the way.