Episode 223: Get Healthy by Eating ANYTHING YOU WANT

If you want to get healthy, one of the best things you can do is pretty much eat whatever you want. Oh yeah, that's what I said. You heard me right. I'm going to tell you more about that on today's episode of the movement movement, the podcast for people who want to know the truth about what it takes to have a happy, healthy, strong body usually starting feet first, but now we're going to go gut first on this one.

You see, they are your foundation. If you want to walk or run or play or hike or do cross figure yoga, whatever it is, we're going to tell you about the propaganda, the mythology. Sometimes the outright lies you've heard about what it takes to do that. I'm Stephen Sashan, CEO of zero shoes.com, your host of the movement movement podcast.

We call it that because we are creating a movement that involves you. I'll tell you how you do that in a second. It's about natural movement. We're helping people rediscover that natural movement, doing what your body is built to do is the better, obvious and healthy choice.

Pretty much the same way we think about natural food and the movement part that involves you. That's just sharing information you get here or if you grab a pair of your shoes and experience what it's like to have natural movement, not rocket science, doesn't cost you anything. It's easy all you have to do again. Spread the word.

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Pam, it's a pleasure to have you here. Why don't you tell people who the hell you are and what you're doing here? Yes, absolutely. First of all, thank you for having me, Steven.

It's so much fun to be here. Let's see. I am an occupational therapist, turned freelance writer. I do health and fitness writing for many outlets, including The Washington Post, Runners World, Outside Time, The Guardian, Self, Women's Running, and Pudsey.

I'm also an endurance athlete. I'm a six-time marathoner, two-time Iron Man finisher, certified personal trainer, and what else I have two children. I've been here, I live in Boulder, and been teaching and recycling for a very long time. I don't necessarily want to say how long.

I'm a weight neutral health coach. And I have my company. A weight neutral health coach. Let's pause there.

Yeah. So I can guess what that may mean, but I want to hear you explain it because I love the idea. I just like the phrase. Sure.

I'm here to help people develop more healthy habits and be happier in where their movement routine looks like without a goal of weight loss. Should that happen because you changed your habits and you're happy with that? That's great. But that would not be the luck.

You came to me and you said, I'm here to lose 20 pounds before my wedding. I would say, I don't think I'm necessarily the right trainer for you. Or I might say, hey, can we dig into that? What's that really about?

Because we can talk all about how I got to that because I wouldn't have said that years ago. Yeah. And I also have my own podcast. It's called the RealFit Podcast and it features real conversations with women athletes about body image, confidence and more.

And overall, I mean, I wear a lot of hats, but my overall mission is to help people have more fun with movement and to tell women in particular that you are already enough. Doesn't matter how much you weigh. Doesn't matter how fast you are, how strong you are, like what you are is enough. Period now.

I love it. I'm very curious to hear more about weight neutral health coaching, especially given the setup that I said, which came from you, which is if you want to be healthy, eat whatever you want. And I have to preface this by letting you know, I was hanging out with a bunch of healers at different times at some event one day and they're all talking about the different diets they're on. And finally, I think there's a little pause in the conversation.

I said, yeah, I'm on the, I don't know when I'm going to get hit by a bus diet. And there's another long pause. I went, oh, that sounds good. Yeah, it's just way better than anything else I could think of.

Now, I mean, that said, I'm not prone to doing something like sitting down with a pint of Ben and Jerry's and eating the whole thing. In fact, I think I have a pint of Ben and Jerry's that I took two spoonfuls out of and it's been sitting in my freezer for five years because just having to have the courage for the flavor. And that's like perfectly, by the way, I want to make a caveat. If you have diabetes, if you have like a seizure disorder that you're treating with like a ketogenic, you know, there are medical conditions where, no, like I'm not a doctor.

Don't take my advice. I'm not, I'm not a dietitian. But I think one of the reasons why you don't feel compelled to eat the whole pint where most people, like I can't make or many people, I should say wouldn't even say I can't even have that in the house. I eat the whole thing.

We are inclined to eat the whole thing because we have rules in our head. It's like you tell a child, don't push that button. Um, what do they want to do? They only want to push the button.

We're not that far off from those little child brains that want what we know isn't good for us. The truth is, you know, I'm telling you, I mean, I'm pretty much eat what I want. That doesn't mean that I eat, you know, 12 donuts a day, a macaroni and cheese every night. I have got to at least where I trust my body to know what's going to nourish it.

And I do eat my vegetables and I don't, I'm not rigid anymore about what's good and what's bad and I don't, and I don't binge anymore. You remind me of a story and I'm very curious to hear your take on it. I'm taking a walk with a friend of mine. Actually, I got to make a note about something that you mentioned.

I got to bring up. Hold on. Go ahead. Go ahead.

The beauty of editing. So if I sound dumb, you're just not leaving it. Absolutely, because I trust that it's not going to happen. And if I sound dumb, I have no problem with that.

It happens sometimes. My fantasy actually is to do a podcast where the only thing that people respond with is by telling me I had completely my butt. I think that'll be really entertaining. It hasn't happened yet, unfortunately.

So, and now people might just do it for the hell of it. But anyway, here's the story. I want to hear your comment. Some take a walk around, wondering a lake and boulder with a female friend of mine who says, I'm just trying to listen to my body so I know what to eat.

And I literally fell to the ground laughing. And she says, what? I said, well, I know what your body wants to eat. French rise donuts and ice cream.

It wants calories that are going to sustain you. It wants fat sugar. That's what we're wired to respond to. But what you're actually saying is you're saying that you have this idea you can do a thing called listening to your body, which means you're going to tell you that you want some particular food, that if you eat it is going to change your body in some way so that when it changes, you'll eventually be happy.

And I used to think like that, but I can't find that thought anymore. And especially that last part, like once you get to whatever that body shape or size or style or color or whatever you're thinking is going to change, then you'll be happy. That's the part that's the real problem in my brain. But the first part is, again, I know what I want to eat.

It's mostly chocolate cake. In fact, I said to my wife, if I'm ever diagnosed with a terminal disease, I want you to know I'm going to go on the all chocolate cake and tie her diet. She says, I don't want you going to Thailand and coming back with some disease. I said, I'm not going to come back.

I'm just going over there. I said, I'm doing it for you because you'll be too distraught to take care of my sexual needs if I have a terminal disease. So you are a gem. You are like a real fine.

I say these things mostly in just, but the chocolate cake part, absolutely true. The tie-hugger part, probably not true. Anyway, so I'm so curious to hear what your response is to the listening to my body, to know what to eat, to change my body into something that will eventually make me happy. Well, yeah, there's a lot to unpack there for one thing.

Yeah, so what I'm talking about is something called Intuitive Eating, which is based on research. There's a book called Intuitive Eating, and it's by Evelyn Triboli and Elisa Rush. I believe there are two dietitians who wrote it in the 90s. It was groundbreaking at the time.

I'm kind of sad that I think it is still groundbreaking. One of them is you have to let go of the interest or the motivation to do this. It's not a diet. It's not a diet.

It's not even let's eat moderately. It is literally going back to getting in touch with the signals that we all had when we were children. We found everybody thought that our chubby thighs and our pot bellies were super cute and we weren't aware. You are aware, even the age of four, they say you're aware that dinner is considered more beautiful in our culture.

But we have these innate drives to know what we want. If you've ever seen a baby or a toddler eat, they'll eat some of one thing. They'll eat some of the other thing. Throw something on the floor.

They stop when they're done and they will not eat more when they're done. You can't make them. Right. Whereas, when I was younger, but I wasn't that much younger, even five years ago, I would eat past the point of being full because I felt like, well, I was good all week.

I ate salads all week. Now, I'm presented with dessert at a nice restaurant. I really like this dessert. I'm eating it.

I'm on vacation mode, man. Who cares if I'm so uncomfortable? Or Thanksgiving? It's like, oh my God, today's the day.

I'm going to gorge today and tomorrow I'll be good. It's like, I can tell you honestly, since I've adopted intuitive eating. Once in a while, I overeat. It's not the way I used to, like, so uncomfortably full.

I don't beat myself up about it. I'm just like, I ate a little too much. Okay, moving on. I'm not nearly as inclined to feel like I have to have dessert just because it's in front of me or just because my family might go out to ice cream.

Once in a while, I might say, you know, I'm not going to move. I'm not going to have it. I never used to do that. It's so interesting.

What you're describing in a way is getting over, I'm going to call it the derivative thought. The derivative thought is, hey, I'm going to eat a whole bunch. That's the first thought. The derivative thought is now all the thinking about how bad I feel because I did the thing.

It's sort of like, this is going to be a weird analogy. It's kind of like when we're procrastinating. The thing that's more stressful is the complaining in our mind about procrastinating more than the actual procrastinating. Or if we're not balancing our checkbook, it's more stressful to think about how we haven't balanced the checkbook and to find out the reality of what happens when we balance the checkbook.

So there's a derivative thought in what you're describing that you just don't have of the kind of, oh, that was good. Oh, that was bad. Oh, I shouldn't. Oh, I shouldn't.

Food is not good or bad. Food is not a moral thing. It's not a moral obligation to be quote unquote healthy. And I would argue, I want to actually challenge it.

You said the first thought, what did you say the first thought was a? I don't remember. Something about the food. This is a good food or this is a bad food.

So much is a good food. Like what I just ate is good or bad. That's right. No, I'm not going to bad food, but like too much or you know, because I have a similar thing where every now and then I go, I know I'm definitely going to gorge myself today.

And I love that. I mean, it's just like I'm very aware that I'm going to do it because this food that I adore, like we used to go to this one, Chinese buffet down in Broomfield that had like six things that were so good and so ridiculously hyperchloric. But it's like, we're going to go do that. It's going to be a blast.

Well, and that's okay. It's lovely. It's time to be social. It's there's so much cultural stuff around food and we shouldn't.

It's just so sad to me that we can ruin. I've ruined so many day nights and birthday parties and things just dressing about food, but I'm going to go back to that first thought because I think the first thought isn't about food. The first thought is actually thinner is a better, be more lovable, see more healthy. We have all these misconceptions about what it means to be thin in our culture.

And the truth is the real truth is I'm just reading this research that they say about 70% of what you way is genetically determined. It's almost as dependent on your genetics as height is. And you don't see people walking up. You might see the odd person.

He's like, oh, I gained a quarter of an inch from doing Pilates, right? But that's not typical. You don't see people sitting around like, oh my God, I'm so bad. I'm five feet tall.

And I'm five feet tall. I'm just like, yeah, five feet tall is what it is. But we are so conditioned to think and I would even say the first thought isn't necessarily thin is better. But even before that, it's I'm not enough.

And so I would say not as much enough as not right. Like the way I am now, there's something wrong with the way I am now. And by the way, I got to tell you on the right thing. So I do have variation on that because I used to be five six, but my I've broken spine.

I've lost a disc. So now I'm going to like five, four and change. And I tell you the thing that's so funny about height is if you read any article about human beings, if somebody's short, they always mention that they're short and they mentioned it like it's the reason that they're behaving in certain ways. If somebody's tall, doesn't get mentioned at all.

So there's this very entertaining thing about height that happens as well. I'm typically oblivious to it. Last night though, I was hanging out with a whole bunch of people who were all like six, five. And all I could think is if the world exploded right now and they only found our skeletons, they would assume these were two totally different species.

I mean, weird. It's not in the same universe. It was totally hysterical. But yeah, that not the not right thing.

And it's back to your point about how we're even at the age of four. This is definitely not for this. Maybe when I was eight or nine, I have a vivid memory of walking down the hallway in elementary school and like pretending that I had muscles to flex. So it's the only for guys.

It's like, yeah, bigger in some way. And I remember even at the time kind of thinking, this is a little weird, but I'm still I'm going to kind of try and see if I can do it. But here's the question that I wrote down a note to given everything that's bad. I mean, Boulder is a place that is hyper, hyper something when it comes to bodies supposed to look a certain way and bodies that look unusual, unusually fit compared to the rest of the planet.

So what's it like having this perspective living in this crazy ass town? It's freeing. I will say that it's really freeing. I'm so much happy.

Like I'd be happier in any city, but yeah, I'm a lot happier because I think I felt prey to look at the comparison track, you look at all the other moms and all the other women, you know, whether at the gym or at the school pick up and you're like, damn, like, I'm going to look like that. Like, now I'm just like, fuck it. I look how I look. They look how they look.

I don't know what they they whatever they want, whatever it's their life. And I will also say it can be isolating because I don't participate in those conversations. When my friends start talking about like this right after I sort of adopted my new mindset, I was really feeling like this is good for me. I remember going out to dinner with a couple friends and they were talking about intermittent fasting and I was, you know, I'm not here to evangelize the way I do things.

If someone like you're asking about it and I'm telling you what I'm not going to, if someone doesn't want to hear it or is ready to hear it or is not interested, it's not useful. So anyways, I just got up and went, I was like, you know what, I had to pee this whole time and this is the part of the conversation that I am not going to be missing. So I was just like, I'm going to go to the ladies room and I would, I got back sure enough they were talking about intermittent fasting. So I try, I don't, I try really hard not to try to impose my way of thinking out of other people, but it can be hard.

And I also, sometimes I'll be honest, sometimes I'm a little smug. I laugh at in my mind, I laugh at certain people I know, for example, who they'll be doing like a cleanse. Like what I think of as a very restrictive cleanse, they claim it's for health. I think it's for weight loss.

And then we're sitting around and we're, they're like drinking so many margaritas. And I'm like, do you know that alcohol is a neuro toxin? What the hell kind of cleanses this? Like, I love that.

I mean, my favorite thing about everyone's diet, especially if they are trying to die for weight loss ago, this is really simple. The research is very clear. It's been unequivocal for well over 50 years. Calories in calories out.

It's all about what you can, what works for you to handle calories in calories out. If you're trying to lose weight, everything else is. Yes and no. Yes and no.

There's also hormones in play. There's hormones or stress. There's a lot of things in play. Plus there's genetics.

Yeah. Even with all of that, I mean, I'm not saying that you can become any shape that you want, but in terms of energy balance, energy balance, I mean, it's thermodynamics. You really can't violate the laws of physics as much as we think we can. There are things that affect that, but you can't violate the fundamental laws of physics.

But again, if you're chronically hungry, if you're chronically hungry, it's not sustainable. It's not going to work. If you're not meant to be 20 pounds lighter, you're just not going to be out. As you were saying, like, we know, number one, we know that 98% of people who go on diets do not maintain the weight loss.

Right. And then, you know, there's this multi-billion dollar industry telling us it's not the diet that failed. You failed. You weren't disciplined enough.

Number one. And number two, we know science has shown that weight cycling as in losing a significant amount of weight and then gaining it back. That's bad for your long-term health. That's bad for your metabolism.

That contributes to diabetes. That contributes to cardiovascular disease. Like, that's not good. And, and weight stigma going to the doctor and being told you need to lose weight.

That's a direct correlation between people who feel shamed by their doctor and people who then don't actually want to see their doctor when they really need to for health reasons. That's interesting. It reminds me I have genetically high cholesterol. And so at one point I went to my doctor and they said, you should stop eating meat.

I said, I haven't eaten any red meat or any other than some fish since 1980. Because I don't like it. I have a genetic thing where I don't taste savory flavors. So I don't eat meat because it just tastes like metallic mush to me.

So I said, yeah, I know. So I said, so I don't do that. I said, well, you know, you should maybe a little more exercise. I said, I'm a nationally ranked sprinter.

And they're like, oh, then. That was all that bad. And that was all bad. Yeah, they don't get to know you.

They don't understand you. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I'm really curious about a lot of things.

One is, first of all, what's so interesting about what you're talking about with intuitive eating is that it violates the number one thing that people use to sell diet books and that people believe more often than not, which is there's a diet that works for everybody. There's a way of eating that works for everybody. And that blows me away. I said to a bunch of paleo guys at the first paleo conference.

I said, you guys have this idea that this is the way everyone should eat and it's very high and meat, which I don't eat. But besides, I mean, it sounds silly that everyone should have the same thing. Why would I, as a master's all American sprinter, eat the same thing as some Kenyan distance runner? I said, look, I'm a genetic freak.

I said, what do you mean? I said, oh, for men over at that time, that's 46. For men over 45, I'm one of the fastest Jews in the world. And he's like, huh?

Amazing. Yeah. And I said, I don't know one sprinter who isn't on a high carb diet. I've never met a sprinter who's paleo or keto or any of those things.

Sprinters tend to be on high carb diets. That's the way we tend to be wired. So that one diet fits all things a problem. But anyway, that's just my little tirade.

I really want to hear about, A, your transition and what it was like making this move into intuitive eating, both practically and just psychologically. And as you work with people, what you see with them, because I know anyone listening, some people are going to be thinking, yeah, that's not going to work for me. I try that and I gain 500 pounds or whatever thoughts they have. So let's kind of break that down frame by frame so people can process might be like, yeah, but really quick, I really appreciate what you said about how there's no one size fits all diet for everybody.

And I think it's not just diets. And I'm sure you know this as an entrepreneur, there's always going to be somebody out there selling you something like a five step magical it going to make more money, get more clients, some more stuff, lose more weight. You want to hear my fantasy? I see that someday Lane and I make enough money from zero shoes that I can walk into a bookstore and buy every book that's one of those quick fixes for whatever, and then I buy every one of them and I take them out into the parking lot and burn them.

I love it. I'm so sick of this like praying on these vulnerabilities not just in their appearance. They always, if anybody is listening and they only have like 10 seconds to listen, anybody is listening thing. So, but one of the things it really is just preying on a fundamental human psychological thing.

We evolved to do this. Imagine the thing that we need to be happy in the future and then try to look for some retroactive path to getting there. The problem is we're really bad at it and it doesn't work, but our brains are wired to continue to do this because in simpler times, you could reliably do that. You could figure how the rain affected the growth of something and how that led to, I mean, there was cause and effect.

It was much much simpler. Now we're talking about things for which there is no simple cause and effect. There is no, there is no, you have to find your own way. And actually that's a great segue into your actual question, which was how did I find this?

Because for me, a lot of it was not just what do I want to eat. It was also, wait a minute, who even am I and what do I want all around, not just, but yeah, I'm talking up. I don't really remember a time when I didn't think that it would be nice to be a little bit thinner and never struggle with my weight. I'm not, you know, quote unquote, like you're using the word overweight because I'm fine that there's like a right way to be.

But for lack of a better word, never been really overweight. I had a phase in college where there was like a lot of years, like late night pizza, but overall I've been, you know, never had a doctor saying you should lose weight or anything like that, but always just feeling like, ooh, what if I could just take off like five pounds, you know, and always kind of like managing my food. Like I just when I was training for my first marathon when I was like 21, I distinctly remember, you know, the internet wasn't what it was. I wasn't really like, I don't know, I wasn't googling like, what should you eat after a long run?

I remember limiting the amount of like even Gary that I would drink during an 18 mile run and then waiting as long as I possibly could until I was like starving to have my bagel, which I allowed myself a bagel once a week as a huge treat, but only after a long run. And then I wondered why I was sore for three days and couldn't do a run again until like Wednesday, I'd be like on the elliptical Monday and Tuesday and Wednesday, I'd be like, I guess I had no idea. I just didn't know. So that I really remember like just obsessing about how I remember like getting way too drunk when I was in my twenties because I thought alcohol has so many calories.

So I'm going to make up for it by not eating a big dinner, which is just terrible, terrible thing to do. Okay. So fast forward and I tried all these different diets, but didn't admit to myself that they were in fact diets in my mind. I tricked myself into thinking these are for health.

Like for example, the zone diet is pretty restrictive. I will say the zone diet gave me an understanding of how protein can make you feel full for longer as a great way to just make your meals go farther. I did learn that, but it made me crazy. So I was kind of on and off the zone for a while, then I'd be like making these random rules like, Oh, for example, if I knew I was having pizza for dinner, like, no way, I would be having a slice of bread with my soup at lunch, you know, too many carbs.

You know, even in the whole banana, they tell you bananas have so many carbs. I was like scared to eat an entire banana. And by the way, soup is just pizza deconstructed. I like that.

I like that. I think fundamentally, almost everything is pizza, some kind of bread, some kind of something is saucy, something, something cheesy or something topping. Like a burrito is pizza rolled up French to no grilled cheeses, you know, pizza, depending on how you do it. Maybe without the sauce.

I mean, like almost everything is pizza. If you really boil it. Everything is pizza. You can do a whole podcast.

I want to do that as a book. Everything is pizza and just, you know, all of it variations of pizza. I love it. Okay.

I do love pizza. That was like a, you know, scary food or whatever. And then let's say I got into it. So I like a background as like, you know, an endurance athlete, but then I got into CrossFit.

And I think CrossFit is great. I'm not like, anti-crossfit really. But just as a byproduct of getting into that culture, I started following CrossFit accounts on some media and a lot of people who do CrossFit also count macros. And they also, these people that want to sell you these macro counting programs, they're posting a lot of like before and after photos on Instagram.

And that was very enticing to me. I was like, you know what? I had this warped idea from partly living in Boulder, partly being on Instagram, partly like, you know, surrounding myself with these very fit people going. But fitness has to look a certain way.

It has to be ripped abs, sculpted arms. I'm very fit. Why don't I look like that? Like, I thought I should look like that.

That's the way to look. How do I get that look? Okay. I count macros.

So I was using this macro counting app. And for the first like eight weeks, it was like, heavenly, I was like, wow, I'm eating all this food and I'm like getting so much more lean. This feels amazing. But it was like a prison because counting macros is a Tetris game.

Like at the end of the day, I'd be like, oh, I'm just going to eat like a Beebell cheese and a spoonful of mayonnaise. It's like eating like the weirdest things to get in there. By the way, the phrase, the concept eating a spoonful of mayonnaise to me is like saying poke your eyes out with knitting needles. There's no food I like less in the world than mayonnaise other than egg yolks, which is, you know, like hate egg yolks.

Well, I like them cooked. I don't like them hard boiled. Yeah. Scrambled eggs is okay.

Any other form of egg yolk. Again, egg yolks and then mayonnaise. My wife apparently makes great deviled eggs whenever she has to make them. I leave the house.

Oh, wow, you hate them. Okay. So yeah, so I'm like doing this macro counting thing. I'm making myself crazy.

I'm measuring my food. I'm weighing my food. I'm like, oh, Dairy Queen is good, because all the nutrition stats are online and I can like modify my dinner to make sure that I don't overdo my carbs and my fat and go down to Dairy Queen at the family, it will be so carefree and that's absolutely not care for some in this mental prison. And this started I was like 38, 39 and it was right before, I'm now for context.

I'm about to be 43. Right before my 40th birthday. It was like the week before I had been good about how many my macros. And then I'm like getting really hungry, really, really hungry because I had gone to like a new level of levels of a plan, and I'm on my computer with the Spill chatbot thing.

And I'm like, I'm really hungry. What should I do? responding and I'm like feeling crazy or in crazier and then it's like well are you eating a lot of fiber and I'm like fiber's all I fucking eat like because it's low calorie you know I'm eating cabbage I'm eating yeah and then I just had this like moment of clarity where I was like I'm about to turn 40 and I'm asking a chatbot that I don't even know is if it's a human I don't know what it is it might be like who knows what it is and I'm asking it what to eat this makes no sense so it started as like I was like fuck this for a week I'm not doing macros and I need a break and then it turned into like a lifetime because over that the next few days it was I just had this it was almost like a light switch it was like this thing I've been doing asking sources outside of myself what I should eat is sucking the life out of me it's getting me out of touch with what I know that I need because the things we do know what we need but we don't listen so I let that all go and I started reading like I read the intuitive eating book I read the bucket diet by Carolyn Dooner Caroline Dooner I think I got into I found this whole corner of the internet that's all like hashtag health that every size hashtag um ditch diet culture stuff like that um just started learning more about how insidious diet culture is and how we've all been brainwashed and um so the right before my birthday I had this sort of come to Jesus um which I'm also Jewish though I don't even know uh but come to Jesus then so is Jesus yeah that's right and I um because it was my birthday we had our kids day at their grandparents and my husband and I went to Austin for a long weekend just the two of us and it was like the best vacation of my life because it was the first time that instead of being this mental quote-unquote vacation mode I was just on vacation and I just sort of said to myself you know what you're gonna eat like instead of stressing like you always do on vacations you're gonna order what you want you're gonna eat what you want you're gonna stop eating when you feel full and then you can start eating again when you feel hungry and it's that simple and like I knew that everything kind of had changed for me because on the last day of the trip um watching we went for sushi one night um it's really nice like multi-course oh my god it was nice and after my husband was still hungry and he got like late night pizza and I normally would have per took but I was like I'm gonna buy you I'm not into that you eat that and then the next day right before we were leaving he was like I gotta try this ice cream place that everyone's saying is so good and I was like you know what I have it all the bite I don't want it and then in the airport there was this amazing looking cookie and I looked at it a few times but I but I said to myself and this is what I do when I get a little bit in a funk I say you have full permission to eat whatever you want like you want a hundred of those whatever is you could eat a hundred of those it would be okay when I imagine the full permission to eat like a hundred of whatever it is it helps me get in touch with like well okay do I really want one and I remember like not eating that cookie because I was like you know what it looks like a good cookie but when we get home if I need something I live in a foody town I can get another really good cookie it'll be fine you just made me think of something that I had never put together in my brain before and that is again I tended to do very much what you described but there's certain foods or certain times where with like a cookie this I'm still putting together my brain even as I say it it's hard for me to eat the amount of a cookie that I really want because I feel bad throwing away half of a cookie if I just paid two bucks for a cookie and it's not like I can't afford it but and I since I've literally never had this not before I mean it's been in the back of my brain but I've never articulated it in my own brain let alone to another human being I'm really gonna have to pay attention that when it's making me I'm getting a little literally I'm getting a little warm with this sort of realization that something this is a big thing for me I remember like I don't like eating this funny because the flip side of that is I don't like eating the last thing in a refrigerator if I know other people might want it so and that's like the opposite of throwing it away in some strange way but I'm gonna have to play with buying something where I know I only want half of it and throwing away the other half because I just bought it for half you know for twice the price I mean that reality is that two dollar cookie it's actually a two dollar half a cookie and if I'm okay with that then I'm gonna buy the two dollar half a cookie and I've never I've never really thought about it and I'm I wish I could explain how excited I am and this moment thinking about unwinding that because I just realized that's part of why I sometimes eat certain things more than I normally don't waste it I think that's really powerful I don't think you're alone I doubt it a non diet addition on Instagram Rachel Goodman I think her handle is like good nutrition or something and she had this great graphic of on one side she's like I can't remember her whole point was it's not wasting food if you throw away the extra chicken nugget your kid didn't want or throwing away the apple cookie that you just weren't hungry for she said it that's not any more wasting food than it is eating food that you actually don't want that's kind of a waste to you know in its own way so yeah she did so that's what this is all about I think you just kind of showed that a lot of this is about you said you unwound that thought it's about being conscious of the thoughts the drive our behavior and then going but is that thought serving me because for me all this time thought was I'm not good enough the way I am I'll be better if I'm dinner I'll be and I'll tell you what happened when I got dinner with a macro counting I was probably even more anxious about food than I had been before I was I felt good about my body but it wasn't worth it because I was more nervous about ruining everything if I were to like go to a birthday party or something I'm gonna loop back that back into the wasting money slash wasting food where people who become very wealthy often find that they're more stressed out because now they have to protect the wealth which they didn't have before it's a different kind this just goes back to we try to imagine what's going to make us happy in the future and we're almost never right and then the only thing that is dumber is that we forget that we're almost never right so so there's there's that same sort of element I mean it you're reminding me also like for me one of the thing I lost I think I lost about 15 pounds during covid because of one very interesting thing that I started doing which is cooking more and when I was more I would only make like one dish now I don't know the interesting thing is it's not like I wasn't making a lot of food because I would make enough food for me and for my wife Laina and for leftovers that I would leave for her for lunch the next day and so it was much food but for whatever reason I found myself just eating what I stopping when I was full versus if I went out to the Thai restaurant which I almost never do to now do now because I can cook as well as the Thai restaurant so I would go to I would get you know three things and would feel again obligated to finish mmm half of them or whatever Laina didn't finish I mean just it was so interesting so it was just really and I'm not a big fan of the phrase listen to my body because for me getting full is kind of funny I have to stand up to tell if I'm full I can't tell it was interesting well that's the I think that's great it's like that's what works for you like you said before not everything works for everybody well and if I'm the one cooking I'm usually having to stand up to go get another glass of water do something that I don't do if I'm at a restaurant and I don't even do if I'm bringing home food so much so it just I was getting some signals that were there all the time but I either didn't notice or overrode them or something and there's one other part you're gonna get a kick out of this the whole idea that you know you get thinner now it can make you more anxious I totally get that and one of the things that's funny for me is that every morning as I'm rolling out of bed every time I pinch around my waist to see if I somehow got magically thinner overnight and the thing is for me first of all there's definitely a sort of let's call it neurotic for lack of better term there's definitely a thing there about whatever my weight is and whether I've body fat that I would like and as a sprinter you know I can justify it by saying if I weighed five pounds less I have a better strength to weight ratio I'd be faster blah blah blah but the biggest thing backing up to what we talked about like first thought and derivative thoughts is it used to upset me that I had this seeming obsession with checking to see if my body fat was and now I just don't care it's just this goofy thing that I do and for no reason because it clearly isn't going to change from whenever I checked as I rolled into bed to whenever I got out of bed it's just this weird obsessive thing that I do the way other people do obsessive things about whatever obsessive thing they do and so now I just kind of find it entertaining and it doesn't really that's awesome you like reframed it and are you like it's not that weird because I've noticed it's funny that you say I have a bad habit I have it's really padding my stomach when I got out of bed kind of same reason and where I used to not like what I saw in the mirror or think that my pants were too tight where I used to be like okay that's it like I'm reeling things in I'm getting tough on myself I'm I'm salads all day you know now I'm like okay number one if the pants are too tight that just to me all that means is I'm going to select a different pair of pants if pants are chronically too tight they go to good will the end and I'm sorry and I'm working on training myself and I'm getting better all the time instead of going down that negative thoughts by all of I'm too big and this is what means I'm lazy I'm disciplined I'm blah blah blah blah I just like oh I maybe I'm bigger I'm bigger the end yeah who cares it doesn't say anything about who I am well the part that you said that I adore is the what does it mean because if because if we ask that question the you know I don't like the way I look I don't like what but the question is what does that mean does it mean someone's not going to like me I won't be able to do something if we look at the what does it mean and then investigate that and check you know wait is that actually true this imagined thing that I have and if we really look at the meaning part that's where the whole thing can fall apart because that was the same thing that happened for me with that you know pinching to see it's like what does this mean and now it just doesn't have a meaning and so I love that you highlighted that and in a similar vein though on a back to something you said the it's not about the food it's about the thinking you reminded me I talked to I was hanging out with a friend who talked about how he was having problems drinking I said well let me ask you a question what are you thinking right before you go for that drink and he says I'm thinking I can't handle it I said what just happened that made you think that he's all I had this argument with my wife and it's like I can't stand this anymore I can't handle it I said well I got to ask you this I can't handle it thought is that true that you can't handle it and he said no of course I can I mean I've been handling it for 20 years with this person I said oh so when you're not aware that that thought is just completely not true then the obvious next step is to get a drink to kind of quench that thought and that was the last time he drank because the next thought I can't handle it can he called me he said you know I just have this argument with my wife it's not I can't handle it came up and I started laughing of course I can and then I didn't have a drink to make it go away and I never thought about that with food so much because we don't think of food is having that same effect as you know alcohol or drugs or whatever else we do I think to some extent well I mean I haven't seen a million articles there like how to stop your emotional eating as if emotional eating is the worst sin you know it makes my argument I would say emotional eating makes total sense it's a logical conclusion if you believe the thought that leaves do that thing yeah if you believe I can't handle this I'm so stressed out I deserve a cookie here's the other thing I want to say too and the book intuitive even gets into this emotional eating isn't the worst thing in the world like how can how can you go from being a baby that either got comfort from being held like two things right being held we're having a bottle or a breast right but like that nourishment that you get is a baby that comforts you like that comes out through your whole life now where you get into trouble I think if eating the foods that make you feel good are the only way that you can cope that's obviously we need we need to have our deep breaths we need to have maybe movement we there's a million ways to cope that aren't food but if once in a while you turn to food like we've demonized food as comfort food and that's like not the worst thing if you have other coping tools and you just are consciously making a decision that you want the macaroni and cheese or whatever it is well so essentially you say that it's something I've been thinking about doing a little podcast rant about is that because I've been on a bunch of podcast lately where people entrepreneurial things where people ask me what I do to de-stress and I said I don't they said what I mean so well you're the idea of you know doing something to de-stress is like doing something to beat up the feeling that I might be having and I don't do that like if I'm exhausted from a long difficult day I'm just exhausted from a long difficult day I don't feel the urge to beat up that feeling it'll pass I'll go to sleep at night and I'll wake up the next morning it'll be gone it's like I got some sleep or I'll you know watch TV with Elena and you know we enjoy ourselves and it goes away I'm not watching TV to make it go away it's just it's just an emotional state it'll pass and it'll back up to what you keep referring to babies you watch babies they have emotional thing and then it changes yeah yeah well they let themselves feel it babies aren't like oh my god I should be crying I need to be on the fuck up you know they're like they're like you say you feel it and it passes and that you just said in like five sentences what's taking me like thousands of dollars in therapy to figure out is that like when you push against your feelings and you try to deal with them like you should deal with them you pushing them away only gives them more power you got like you said let yourself feel the feeling well and again the thing that you said about finding the meaning is really valid the other version of that that I've been playing with the thing about the whole de-stressing thing is um it has to go oh is realizing that the thing that caused my stress isn't the thing it isn't the person who just quit or the container that stuck off the port of Long Beach it's realizing that those things it's the meaning it's the expectation that I had perhaps not even knowingly that was just the rug just got pulled out from underneath me because of this event that occurred so it's the expectation that is that the dashed expectation the changed expectation the unplanned changed expectation that's the upsetting part the fantasy of the future is the upsetting part and once I realized that it's not like I distressed goes away or the thought about how I wish that expectation was not being changed goes away it's just that it diminishes so much that I move on more quickly to what do I need to do next and as it comes back up it's just diminished because I recognize the fallacy the ephemeralness of that expectation or the desire for that expectation still and there's that same thing that I'm feeling around because I like conversation about food it's just the more thing he thinks yeah yeah yeah no I think I think oh and I do want to go back to one thing you said you said we think we know what's gonna make us happy but most of the time we're wrong right I do think that like most people like on their deathbeds they won't say like I wish I'd been thinner they'll say I wish I spent more time with my family you know that's like a comment I think we do know that feeling connected definitely makes us feel better would you agree with that absolutely but we rarely find ourselves having the urge to feel connected we find ourselves having the urge to whatever it is make more money get a different job find a different partner you know doing something I don't know speak for yourself that's my husband I'm always trying to connect with him he's always like I need a little space but actually the connecting thing is I think that's a more immediate thing I don't think we're projecting very you know super far actually take it back I'm going to qualify this dramatically because I realized when I was about 39 how long have I been with my 20 years so yeah so when I was about 39 I realized that for most of my certainly adult life and probably much of my teenage years I had the idea that I'd be happy if I was with the right person and I had the right partner and for some reason when I was about 39 that thought came up and I couldn't by myself believing it I couldn't make myself imagine that while I'm in this happening while I'm spending time with Laina who was at that time a friend of mine who for four years prior to I've been trying to convince her that we should be a couple and she had no interest in that at all and so and it just hit me it's like I have this idea that I'll be happy when I'm in this imagined future with the right person and in specific with Laina if you know we'd be a good couple which was kind of a funny thing to think I realized because if you ask my exes I don't do couple very well according to them and and so I had no evidence that Laina would be a good couple and I had no evidence for I'd be happy in this imagined future and then I just couldn't make myself believe that anymore and then there's gonna be like the food then the craving stopped I just found myself not craving this thing and looking for it and checking to see if I was getting it and ironically and in that moment I then said her when I was believing this idea that we'd be a good couple and I'd be happy in the imagined future if we were a couple here's the obnoxious things that I've been doing in the last four years to try to convince you I was right and I just gave her a list of the humiliating ways that I was not very subtly but thinking I was being subtle the way I behaved to try to get her on board of this project and if you ask her that was a big chunk of what gave her the space to then see if she actually wanted to be with me or the way she said it is I spent that weekend looking for all the reasons they're looking at all the reasons why I didn't think we should be together and then I ran out of reasons and I realized that everything I wanted a relationship I could have with you and so but I think that I might getting out of the way not deliberately just because I could no longer believe the thing that was energetically things shifted you weren't so said yeah and she felt it like that's like a scary thing to feel I would think if if I felt like my husband thought he couldn't be happy without me that's a lot of freaking pressure and I think the reason I met him when I did to your point is that I was extremely happy in my own life when I met him and up to that point and it wasn't like I didn't want to meet somebody I definitely did I was definitely thinking like time sticking like I gotta do this I mean I was 29 when I met him but all my friends were like coupled up and having babies by then pretty much but I was like but I was also like at this place in my life where I was like doing my thing and living my life and you know get out of my way here I come was kind of my vibe and like I think that I think that's why it happened when it happened and I have zero regrets and I will also say even though I do think he's the perfect partner for me I can't say I'm always happy but it's not because of him it's because that's life well and you just said people have asked Elena and I why we think we have a great relationship and I say it's because we're very clear that when we're upset quote at the other person it's not because of the other person and we don't we kind of well we're usually pretty good at only coming back together when that's very clear or when we're both very clear that we don't know what the solution for getting out of whatever mental state we're in is and one of us is willing to walk up and go yeah I'm stuck and I wish I weren't I don't know what to do next and but we're but we yeah we don't pretend that the other person is the one who made us something upset yeah that's very self-aware have you guys read the Untetter and sold by Michael Singer no I have no idea what that is you sound like you don't even need to read it but it's really good it's really good for doesn't really about relationships but it definitely pertains to it's about what is it even about it's good spiritual let's just say that it's good all right make a note to self when I'm reading again when I have time to read again we have a second magazine since two hikes sitting on our kitchen table because we don't have time for that lately so back to food so we got pretty far along the in your story of the transition into kind of getting this and anything else you want to add to that before I ask you to jump back to you know from the people that you've worked with and for anyone who's listening you know what might they need to consider or realize they might experience if they're going to start experimenting with this I mean really like changing way of behaving that's a great question I would say first off really really divorce yourself from the idea that like this could sneakily help you lose weight you can't it will not work or it won't work for you it just it won't do what it needs to do if you don't how can you do that I mean it's again this is sort of like you don't tell a kid not to do something how can you make yourself not do the thing that your brain is doing and when you say not do the thing do you mean don't think the thought of I want to lose weight or don't eat the food of the food thing oh don't think the thought oh it depends on the person there's gonna be there like we were talking about four there's no one size one size that's all approach but like I would start with like if you're on social media start following accounts that are you know body neutral help that every size look for the hashtag like intuitive you'll find all these influencers that have these great ideas and like just surrounding yourself with that and unfollowing anything that is like a boring after picture that's helpful to get you in the mind frame if I don't have to keep in this way I rec if you were a reader I'm a big reader I recommend reading the intuitive book I recommend the bucket diet there's a whole bunch out there the body is not an apology as a good one and there's so many podcasts about there exploring the stuff like um food psych with Kristi Harrison is a really great her book anti-diet if you're a sciency person like it's all about debunking all the quote unquote science that supposedly shows that eating certain diets is good for you or that you even can really lose weight and sustainable way if you're an average person anti-diet if you're a book how else I think you have to maybe working with a therapist undo some of the shit you've probably been told by society about your parents like some people have really complicated relationships with their parents and around them you know they're just so it just depends on the person but however you get there you need to be ready to go I love myself as I am even if I gain weight I can still love myself I think that's probably step one but I also think sometimes I'm gonna pause on that one because look I'm not like you know an overweight guy I would like to again be a little leaner for various reasons and I've never been like significantly overweight and just saying that the I'm willing to love myself even if I gain weight I got a hot flash from that it's like a terrifying thought and I don't know why it's not something that I actually am literally worried about and yet just tossing that idea into my brain made me rapidly anxious which I find fascinating yeah well we live in a really fat fobic culture and I pointed out to my kids all the time like I'm big on the media literacy so like when we read Harry Potter and you know I don't know if you read it and you notice the dursleys they're never just described as like larger or they're always like the bad evil overweight like gluttons and I point out to them and I'm like no I mean J. Cry Rowling she's not my ever person but she's as an artist I respect her and I'm like but I tell my kids I'm like what do you see here with these the only fat people in the book also happen to be like the villains let's look at that you know I notice I point out to them you always always see the fat friend as like the sidekick in a movie we don't get to see a lot of fat heroes in movies you know so just noticing how much as a culture and I want to also say a caveat I am speaking largely for myself like as somebody who has nobody's ever like giving me side eye because I got the plane next to them because I was too big you know I never worried will I not get this job because I you know that is a different thing and I think I just have so much compassion for people who live in bodies that are scrutinized that's and I think it's shitty but I think we all need to be aware of this because we are fat folk whether we need to be or not we live in this society that has told us that that means all these things let me give you the follow up for anyone you may have noticed that I'm kind of wiggling in my chair which is the thing that I tend to do when I noticed that I have some thought that I wasn't aware of that feels kind of sticky and so now the whole idea of I'm willing to I'm willing to I'm willing to like the phrase love myself I'm willing to be okay I'm willing not even care if I am willing for it not even to be a thought if I eat and gain weight it's now starting to feel really excited it's like I've gone from holding my breath the kind of breathing and feeling warm in the back of my neck like this is really interesting because the thought that goes with it is not that I'm going to eat a whole ton and get fat it's like quite paradoxically I feel this sort of sense of freedom like I have permission whatever that means to do something that I thought was taboo that I didn't even know was taboo and it doesn't make me feel like I need to do it it just makes me feel like I don't need to be afraid of it that's fucking amazing that's so cool that is so cool that is one of the things that I did early in my like intuitive eating journey was and as the book tells you to do this is like experiment with eating the foods that you find scary and don't worry if you do eat like a lot of them because if you have been restricting for a long time that's totally natural and you might quote unquote overdo it on the things that you could be a surprise yourself of but if you do you do eventually because you can't undo what you've done for years and like a day or week or a month for different people will take a different amount of time but yeah anyways yeah so I don't even remember the question but yeah that's the cool thing for mission well yeah the question was you know for people who might who experiment with this and what your experience has been working with people what might be through and by the way I can't even tell you why I can't even say that I'm feeling the next phase of what I'm going through is sad per se it's more there's like a kind of bittersweet melancholy something it's a weird feeling either like I've given up something familiar or that I'm realizing how much stress I've been putting myself under for no reason and so that's sort of you know that's a little sad making if you will as if I could have done it different so it's the way it is but this is I mean this is really I'm having a really good time watching this thing online cool I think people can expect to feel a little bit of drift when you spend your whole life going I should eat this or I should eat that it can feel really unmoreing I guess it's the word to go oh my god anything I want like I don't even know what I want I really don't know I'm so not used to asking myself the question what would taste good right now um so I think being patient with yourself would be I would advise that but be prepared that it might feel really freaking weird it might feel really like who even am I if I eat a meal with that wondering how many calories it has or how much you know it's not gonna be a straight line yeah I think you should accept I mean I've been doing this for a few years and so I have to sort of like give myself a pep talk before I do things that used to be that used to often be situations where I would ignore my hunger queues and eat too much like for example camping trips camping trips always kind of felt like a free for all because food would just be out on the picnic table or be eating s'mores after dinner even if you were full of just like your friends full of the s'mores stuff like that or things like I mean I used to restrict to some extent all week and then have a couple drinks on a Friday night feel tip see and just go in the pantry and just eat whatever and my husband would like in the kind of most gentle way possible be like how do you think you might feel about the system in the morning and I'd be like I feel fucking great get out of my way but then inevitably I did not feel fucking great like I would do that anymore so I think you can also prepare for like having more fun with food like prepare for the joy of like going to a restaurant and going you can order whatever the hell I want and it will be okay that's amazing and you have the opportunity to just get excited about every social event that's gonna have food which is every social event um without the cloud of the stress and again like I sometimes do stress it's not like it was like snap your fingers everything's great but I have ways of coping with that now I'm able to slow down and do the thing you describe and do the thing where I have the like stressful thought and then I go wait a minute where's the thought coming from does this make sense is this serving me let's pick a new thought and then it helps me I love it I'm still you know reeling from this has been really super fun um you know one thing is that I do and I'm partly rethinking it and I'm partly saying it's totally fine as it is that if I am planning on if I know I'm gonna go into an event where I'm gonna eat an entire chocolate cake which again I don't actually do that but I mean like if I'm going to a hot luck with friends where I know there's gonna be a lot of things to eat and I'm gonna want to eat a lot of them I will not infrequently think okay during the day I'm gonna get a little higher protein a little lower cow just so that I can and I don't feel like I'm being restricted when I do that I feel like I'm it's almost like preparing for a race it's like I'm just doing the thing that you know because I know that I've got this thing coming up so I'm gonna do this thing to prep for it and I found a way of doing that where I don't feel deprived I'm just it really does feel I mean I actually kind of get excited like I'm just gonna have nothing but meals with protein and very little else for breakfast and lunch because I'm gonna eat an entire 16 inch pizza for dinner and I'm gonna love every bite of that and I think like the energy that you're describing the way I see you showing up like over the zoom and like the way you're describing it to me that sounds like the energy behind your decision is sort of based on actually listening to your body in a different way it's not motivated by will I um gain or lose weight from these decisions it's motivated by I really want to enjoy the potluck to the fullest extent possible and to me that's like joy driven rather than fear driven and that's how I've been like trying to reframe my we didn't get to my relationship with exercise but in a nutshell some of my endurance stuff was always about oh my god I'll have a license to eat wherever I want and now that things aren't looking back up when I'm thinking about events I'm like oh I don't want to like pick a race to train for because I'm secretly hoping I'll lose weight and I'm like but you know what there's a million reasons to do a race besides losing weight where is the drive coming from is it fear that if I don't do an event I'll gain weight be lazy be on discipline lose all my fitness is it fear or is it joy is that like I want to experience the camaraderie I want to train I want to say what there's no I would bet that it's not you know that that scale is not 100% one direction or another that even if you find that there's that it's motivated by something let's call it joy that there's still that you know by the way I mean maybe I'll lose maybe a little weight which it's not as big of a deal it's like that's not the driver but it's not like you're making that thought disappear it's like yeah okay whatever maybe that I have an if it doesn't no big deal that's my hunch yes I think that makes sense yeah because I think pretending a thought didn't happen it's kind of like pretending a feeling isn't there you know it's what yeah I had the thought fine and if it is you know if it doesn't doesn't it's really funny if you want to see a bunch of people who are probably 10 to 20 pounds overweight go to a master's track race and find the sprinters the guys like me for whatever reason way back when I knew someone who was part of the early genetic research on decoding human genome and it turns out that the genes that code for fast twitch muscle fibers and for sprinting also code for gaining abdominal fat so so yeah it's and again it's such a genetic thing that sprinters genetically tend to put on abdominal fat and so you see these guys there's probably guys who are the fastest guys in the world who got these potbellies and they show up at race and you're like what the hell's he doing here or she happens for women too and then they crush everybody else like what and so there's this misunderstanding about how bodies yes fitness is not a specific look it's just I just had somebody on my podcast who she's in alert body she's a badass this woman has swam across and blocked nests she has swam around the island and he's a fan from standing out of the night there is no swim she hasn't done she's a beast and I think if you start on the street you might say she doesn't look fit well what do you know you know nobody knows it's not a look I have a friend who had done multiple multiple triathlons and was basically shaped like a beach ball and you would never in a million years guess that that's what this person could do and that's that means like crank them out yeah and that's because we're that moment actually went to a strogan stride which is a bullet for people listening to that bullet is like a swim run casual thing I went with a friend this was like pre-covid and my friend was blatantly like look at all these fat people each how she made a comment that was really rude like it was sort of like they can do this and I was like would you stop I were good enough friends that I was kind of like that's not cool like what you're saying is blatantly fat phobic and they you have no idea looking at anybody here how fit they are so just stop and she stopped for the fun of it though I do want to put a bit of a pin in something which is it's one thing about being about fat phobic or criticizing someone else or even criticizing yourself but there are some people who use those ideas as an excuse to do things that are really unhealthy for them to I mean to be eating 10,000 calories a day or whatever it is I mean to do something where it's an excuse not to look at what's going on not suggesting that it's even going to change anything but there are I mean I'm just having memories of watching this is going to sound like a weird one I'm talking with a guy that I knew about drinking alcohol and I just read a statistic that 80% of the alcohol is consumed by 20% of the people and he said and he said yeah like me I said what he goes how did you notice this is when I was doing comedy for living he said I'll have three years before I get on stage I'll have three beers while I'm on stage I'll have three beers when I get off stage I just had nine beers in an evening oh yeah I'll probably have one or two with lunch and it was undeniably hurting his health and he was using he was using the statistic to not have to inquire about why he was drinking 10 to 12 beers a day and what it was doing to him and later he eventually did and realized yeah there was a lot of stuff I didn't want to deal with so I just ate drunk all the time oh yeah that's a drinking problem that's a disease I mean I would say for somebody like that whether it's food or booze or whatever it is it's not the statistics fault right that's like an anti-covert like you know it's like yeah if you're doing things in an unhealthy way whatever they are you need to look into it I guess I'm saying you know when you're ready yeah I'm not landing on this but I want to I want to I want to kind of it's something I'm really just kind of thinking about curious about is the gap between becoming self-accepting versus trying to use the idea of self-acceptance to not look at what's actually leading to certain behavior you're saying I don't think it's I think if you have an addiction yeah you're you're probably not fully accepting some part of yourself I don't think that addiction and self-acceptance go together really go together I feel like addiction is a way of not accepting what's happening like not feeling the feelings or not experiencing it's really present yeah if we go back to what we said before it's sort of like you could have the thought of oh I can't handle this and I'm gonna have some food that I'm gonna like that's gonna quash that thought and then after that complaining that someone is complaining to you about being overweight it's like well no you sort of missed a step it's sort of like this can sound really weird I'm impossible to insult and the reason I'm impossible to insult is you could say something seemingly negative about me and either it's factually inaccurate and so it has nowhere to land or it'll be something where you know someone could say oh you know you're arrogant and I'm gonna say oh boy you don't even know the half of it you should hear the stuff that goes through my hand and I don't say and sometimes things come out of my mouth that sound like they have an arrogant tone but that's not what I'm actually thinking they're feeling and I don't know why it comes out with that tone and I wish that it didn't and if you have any suggestions I'm totally open so any the worst thing anyone's ever been able to say to me I usually agree with them and usually it's worse in my own mind in the way they're perceiving it and the only thing that I'd be upset about is that I don't like it and I was hoping nobody would notice and so and then that's an opportunity for self-awareness correct and so there's a similar thing where if someone makes a comment about your weight your size and there's this overt reaction it's possibly like the overt reaction I used to have 20 plus years ago if somebody would say you're arrogant or say some some insulting seemingly insulting thing if I would get defensive about it then there's definitely a there there there's definitely something that I've got to take a gander at and if I can just meet it with the truth then not a big deal so that's what I'm talking about is the difference is hearing it and meeting it with the truth versus hearing it and being defensive so that one doesn't have to look at whatever truth that you know it might be what it's funny that you bring this up I feel like the universe sent me this shitty situation to see how I would react for many years of my life people would be like are you pregnant when I wasn't and it would rip me apart like I just happened to surf out in my stomach it just is a fact it's been how I've been how I'm going to I would go home from work and cry I mean they would say the meanest things when I would be like no they would get really embarrassed and not come to the conversation I'd be like the least you could say is sorry but and there's no real way to do yourself out of that one when you ask the women if she's okay I had a friend who started me conversations 20 years ago four pregnant women and he would walk up to women and say hey I've got a website you might be interested in and they go I'm not pregnant and he basically learned that until if you don't see the baby's crowning you don't ask it for women to spray it's probably a good rule yeah and not to mention you don't know what she just had a miscarriage or a million thing you know but for me it would definitely hit the nerve of I look fat right and I remember calling my mom in my 20s and I'd be like so me at work I was you know what I was doing she goes you already told me this story and I'd be like no it happened again it's just happening and then I was out of potluck this was pre-covid and somebody asked me and this is since I discovered intuitive eating and decided that I'm just gonna be okay with whatever my body was like so this woman says to me um are you are you expecting and I just said no and that was sort of it I did walk away because I felt like up to that point she had been a little bit socially awkward and at that point I was just sort of like that was rude but they didn't cry about it I wasn't upset about it I was just like you made a stupid comment I don't want to hang out with you but I wasn't willing to be like this says anything about me and yeah maybe I do maybe I do look right now who fucking cares like the thing that would have been so funny is I think you missed a great opportunity to tell the whole truth so here I'll be you in that case I asked me if I'm expecting Stephen congratulations are you expecting oh I'm not and I bet you feel really embarrassed right now this person actually I don't know if she had the emotional intelligence to feel embarrassed but I just was like you know what I'm kind of glad that this showed me how much I can be neutral about somebody essentially telling well it is that the way no it's actually even easier someone just asked you a yes or no question that's it yeah again you could have had a lot of fun with it you could have said no I think about right now so I'm all right well that's next level that oh my god my you do stop working I know I that's next next but like you didn't see me on that show I didn't know I was pregnant then I wonder how to baby I mean there's so much it's like it is next level but I think once you get Pat once you get to the you know it's just somebody asking a question and it doesn't have the meaning oh my god you could have so much fun with that I can't even imagine totally totally yeah so so we've gone like over our time I have a little time is like but I'm having fun with you this is great now we're having a conversation the conversation is take the time to take but no we I think we can sort of kind of bring this in for a landing is there anything else that you want to let people know who want to explore this about again the path or the the something is anything that we left out about what this might be like yeah I would say I would say stay curious stay curious and this wouldn't necessarily always be an easy path but if you can change your thinking and you can change your behavior a whole world of joy will open up to you food can be so much more fun parties you can like be present in your mind and your body without you preoccupied by food and I will say that my whole life changed after like my whole career opened up I'm making so much more money I'm getting clients I want I got the bylines I want I'm like I really love my work in a different way than I did before I'm just it's so much easier for me to make decisions about what I want because I'm sort of grounded in my body in a different way I think your body has a lot of answers for all kinds of questions not just food well and I'm gonna sort maybe even hyper simplify this it seems like what you're describing is as you started I don't want to try this as you started oh man it was in my head and then it fell right out I'll get a whirl awkwardly as you started making decisions about your eating from a different perspective it seemed to allow you to do that same kind of thing in other domains of your life other areas of your life yeah 100% that's super cool I love it this has been such a treat well you remember me though can we talk about how you don't remember me yes so I want to go before we close out so I I'll start with the random email I got an email that was meant for a different Pam more that said will you come on our marketing podcast and I'm like I don't know shit about marketing and I'm like I know they mean this other Pam more so I said hey look I think you got confused with other Pam more but if you want to talk about you know body I'm in endurance sports mid-life career changes all stuff like these are things I can talk about and they got back to me and said you know what not a fit for our podcast but we might know somebody can we share this I said go ahead like a few days later Stephen's podcast producer gets in touch with me and says hey we want the movement with Stephen's action but he's done it I'm like you don't tell me who he is I came to Stephen's kitchen in North Boulder right we're living in North Boulder around 2009 my husband was having this like chronic foot pain and I was like I know what you need honey you need barefoot shoes and I'm just the person to get you the barefoot shoe and I don't know how you might have done a talk at the Boulder Tri Club that might have been what it was I think yeah I I did I mean I did a lot of stuff but zero shoes was like a small option so Stephen was like come over I'll give you what you need and then I took on this make your own shoe kit that my husband like made his own customized shoe based anyways but yeah we hung out anyways I'm like oh my god I'm like reconnecting with Stephen Sashan through this like random email but he doesn't remember me so I'm hoping when we cross paths again you'll know who I am well I'll only recognize you if you have that background behind you so so yes in the same way that you can arguably now respond to someone who says are you pregnant with yes or no I can say yeah I have a horrible memory for faces and I wish I sometimes say to people actually I very deliberately try to not say to people that I don't remember meaning you or don't because it's just the way my brain works or in this case doesn't work and by saying embarrassed that's not accurate it's I have a horrible memory for faces and I wish I didn't and so no I don't but let's you know start now and so yes I hope and expect that I will and if not you can just say hey moron I will respond to that and I so look forward to it and yeah this has just been a blast and I'd say it'll be much harder for me to not remember us having this conversation but I had had a conversation with someone I think maybe two weeks ago on the podcast and then they reached out to me and I had to like rack my brain to remember who the hell they were it's I do think it's some wacky neurological something and again I wish I could say I'm embarrassed by it I just know that it's awkward and so I just acknowledge that and hope that people will forgive me I think that's a great way of approaching it it's like very conscious it's not like being colorblind it's like you know you can't get mad at something colorblind but we but it's a funny thing we actually think that our memories are good even though they're often way out of whack I mentioned you before we did this when I went to my 30th high school reunion there were so many people there who I had zero memory of who I know were like really good friends of mine 30 years earlier and they were just gone from my brain and some of it was actually some people weren't gone what I discovered at my 30th was that people thought I was crazy in high school which I didn't know I didn't know that I was or I didn't know that they thought that so I found that out when I just talked to them 30 years later and I said I thought them it's one woman I said um I haven't you know we knew each other but we weren't really friendly but if someone had asked me about you like up until this moment I would have described you as being five nine and you know I went on she goes uh I'm five feet tall I said I know it's not wild how memory is just like so malleable and out of whack and she looks at me like I'm insane she goes what and I went oh okay uh yeah she thought I was kind of crazy and there was there was you know one after another of those where I was just so fascinated by what brains do after 30 years and apparently that fascination was not shared by other people and in fact it was just confirming things they believed about me or still seem to think about me from 30 years ago that were completely different than what I imagined which I found just as fascinating so I love it I love it what are you gonna do what are you gonna do all right well Pam thank you thank you so much if people want to get in touch with you and find out more about everything we talked about or more about what you're doing how can they do that oh thank you for asking Steven you can go to pam-more that's m-o-o-r-e.com that's my website everything that you might want to know is that's why the easiest place to find it but if you're like on social media I'm at pam-more 303 on instagram on twitter I'm at pam-more-writer and you can search for you can find the real fit podcast right from my website where you can find it on apple or spotify or every listen the real fit podcast features like conversations with some really really cool women and once in a while I have a quick episode that's just me talking about something that's hopefully helpful thank you thank you um awesome well for everyone else thank you for joining us um I hope you had as much fun as I'm listening to have and more importantly go to join the movement movement.com to find previous episodes all the different ways you can interact with us again how you can share and spread the word about the movement movement helping people rediscover that natural movement is the obvious better healthy choice the way we think of natural food and now we're thinking food in a whole different way natural is just you know whatever you seem to think is right for you at that time and if you have any questions or comments or anyone you think should be on the show you want to pass that info on drop me an email send it to move at join the movement movement.com if you want to try the most comfortable lightest coolest shoes that let your feet do what's natural that's at zero shoes.com xeroshoes.com although if your computer makes you type in zerob guess what that would get to us too and most importantly go out have fun and live life feet first.