Feed Yourself Like You'd Feed a Loved One

cleanses and cabbage soup. Our friends download calorie counting apps and pledge to cut out carbs and sugar. It's hard not to get swept up and all the fresh start diet culture frenzy, especially if you're not feeling all that positive about how you look after the holidays. I know all this very well because I too, have had my fair share of January diet overhauls. I have started many many a new year hating what I saw in the mirror and obsessing over my own eating habits and what

was the result of all district dieting. Weeks later, more often than not, I wound up beating myself up for not living up to that perfect picture of health i'd envisioned on New Year's Eve, a resolution I thought would make me happier ended up making me feel more disappointed and more depressed than ever. It's been hard for me to break this annual cycle. But last year, around this time,

Andrea Walkeder came to my rescue. Andrea is a psychotherapist who specializes in disordered eating and the problem of diet culture. She's been studying effective ways to eat for over thirty years. I decided to take her meditation course Getting Over Overeating on the Insight Time ra app and it was like a light bulb went off. Hello and welcome to lesson one. I'm so glad you decided to join me on this journey.

If you've been struggling with overeating or binge eating, the most important thing to know is that it's not your fault. Like all the other experts in this New Year mini season of the Happiness Lab, Andrea has discovered that a more self compassionate approach is the key to becoming happier

with our bodies and healthier in what we feed ourselves. So, if you are ready to learn more about how you can be healthier and kick that destructive diet habit through kindness, then join me doctor Laurie Santos for another special New Year mini season edition of The Happiness Lab. The topic of what I'm supposed to be eating has taken up way, way more of my thinking than I care to admit. I have spent an embarrassing chunk of my adult life

plotting and planning new diet regimes. I've spent hours fantasizing that this time I really will perfectly adhere to that unnecessarily uber strict new eating plan, and I inevitably become sad and disappointed when, surprise, I fail again to live up to the superhuman diet goals I've set for myself, and because I then feel like a loser, I wind up comforting myself with whatever off limits food I was trying to limit in the first place. And that's why

I was so taken by Andrea and her work. She knows exactly what all this feels like, because she went through these very same behaviors and worse for years. I think it's really important to be open about the troubling relationship that many of us have with food and eating. But knowing Andrea's personal history, I was a bit nervous about asking her to share all the details. What was once the biggest shameful secret of my life is now

my career, so there's kind of nothing. I don't talk about it anymore because there's no shame anymore, because I know it wasn't my fault and I know it was all passed down innocently, and having found a way to climb out, I'm happy to share what I've been through. So with that permission, I asked Andrew to explain her journey towards eating with greater self compassion, beginning with her very earliest memory of when body image and disordered eating

took over her life. Basically, I started dieting when I was about twelve years old, and it was the first time I remember having someone comment or say something shameful towards my body. Up until that point, I don't really remember thinking all that much about my body, even though my mom and still is a chronic diet or. But when I was about twelve, I got teased about the

size of my thighs. And I call it a dart in the heart moment where something happens and you feel terrible about it, usually terrible about yourself, usually make decisions as a result that are not generally healthy or helpful, and so I felt terrible about my body. Decided that I needed to lose weight, and I started my first diet. And like I said, my mom was already dieting at the time, my older sister was already dieting, and I just op on what I now called the diet riot

roller coaster. So talk about what it was like to be on that diet roller coaster inside. Well, once I started obsessing, it was this constant soundtrack and it colored my life. Now. Some people can diet, I call them lightweight dieters pun intended. Some people can diet and it doesn't take over their lives, and some people it's a real huge obsession and leads to problems. And then many people it leads to full blown eating disorders. And that's

what happened with me. I just became obsessed, which is the natural response to dieting. I started sneak eating all the food that I wasn't supposed to have on the diet and had huge weight fluctuations. I did have a life, like I went to school and I eventually went to college, and I had lots of friends and summer jobs but on the inside, no matter what I was doing, there was this constant soundtrack of what I was eating, what I wasn't eating, what someone else was eating, and not eating,

what my thighs looked like compared to this. I was constantly obsessed and that really colored my life. So this sounds like a horrible soundtrack to turn on in your own head. But here we are at the start of the new year, and so many people are willingly jumping on this diet roller coaster. Tell me kind of how that makes you feel, as somebody who's studied this for so long. Well, it's sad because it's kind of the

solution that people are given. And even though the diet industry is hugely successful and multibillion dollar industry that continues to grow, it's got pretty much a ninety five percent failure rate. People think that they themselves are failing, that they're just failing the diets. But really the solution that we're given to body image issues and to binging or overeating is to diet, And the solution that we're given

the diet is part of the problem. So I feel sad about it, and I know what it's like to spend your life upset on food and going to parties and not being able to eat what others are eating or what you really want, or eating out of control once you quote slip or break or go off the diet. So I know that only too well. And I also know what the effects of dieting are. And there's it is a roller coaster. So what were some of the

negative behaviors you noticed in yourself? You talked about your obsessive thinking, but did you also have behaviors that made you worry that something wasn't right, that you were on this kind of a strange roller coaster. Oh? Absolutely, I snuck ate constantly. I tried to eat what I had deemed good foods in front of people, and then naturally ate what I deemed bad foods or what I was taught were bad foods. I would throw food away in an attempt to get rid of it, and then get

it out of the garbage and eat it again. I mean just They call it in Alcoholics Anonymous, in the twelfth Step arena, they call it incomprehensible demoralization that I never dreamed I would do. There were even times I would steal people's food when I was out of control with food. What's amazing about your story is that you really realized the bad part of this diet riot roller

coaster firsthand. Right, Yes, But after decades of dieting and rioting and severe eating disorder and going on one diet after the next and yo yo weight fluctuations, and then I finally found help that actually helped, and I started working on the deeper issues. And so how were you able to get off this diet riot roller coaster? Well, I began getting sufficient support that took me deeper than just my body size. Support that helped me learn what I was eating over not just what I was eating.

Support that helped me stop restricting and start having a new relationship with food and learning how to approach food according to how it would make me feel rather than how it would make me look. And one of my biggest doovers was deciding that I was going to let go of my obsession to change my body and instead learn how to treat my body respectfully and then make peace with whatever that body was going to be as

a result. And so, in some ways, ironically, it was this attempt to get over this diet mentality that allowed you to kind of come to terms and love your body, which is what people who are starting out on diets want in some sense in the first place. Exactly. People think that if they change their body, then they love their body. But the way they love your body is to love your body like you cut out the middle guy and you work on that, and it's work on

it's roll up your sleeves, work on it. Because of the culture we live in, talk a little bit about what happens and what the diet mentality does to our brains in our minds. Oh, let me count the ways what it does to our brains in our minds well mentally. First of all, when we deprive ourselves, we become obsessed. If someone is cold and they don't put on a sweater, they're going to be thinking about how cold they are, and when they put on that sweater, they probably don't

continue thinking they're cold. Or if someone's tired and they continually deprive themselves of sleep, they can't stop thinking about how tired they are and feeling tired. But as soon as we sleep and get rest, we're not likely to obsess on being tired the next day because that need was met. So when we diet and chronically restrict ourselves of delicious food and enough food. Then our minds obsess on food because they're not getting what they're needing, so

it's a natural response. So that's the first huge effect of diets. Secondly, there are hormonal changes that happen in our body as a result of dieting and attempting to

lose weight. Unnaturally, have hormones that are responsible for hunger and fullness, and when we die it and we lose weight unnaturally, our hormones will adjust to try to get us back to natural So our hunger hormone will increase because it wants us to eat more, and our satiety hormone will decrease because it wants us to get more

food to get more calories because we need it. So hormonally, our bodies are very unhappy when we die it, and when we are eating in a loving, respectful way, which means we don't starve and we don't stuff ourselves, then our hormones regulate, and similarly, metabolically, that's a third area that changes and that gets affected by diets. Our metabolism will adjust if we deprive ourselves and if we try

to go lower than our natural weight range. We all have a natural weight range, just like we have a natural foot size and a natural height. Our natural weight range isn't one number, opposed to what we're taught people try to get to be one number. Our natural range is a range. It fluctuates, and when we diet, our range tends to fluctuate enormously and unnaturally, and our metabolism will try to adjust to try to get us back to our natural range because it's natural. So that's another

effect to be metabolically happy. We want to stop stuffing and starving ourselves. And when we stop starving ourselves, we stop stuffing ourselves. And you use this wonderful metaphor of all these changes is this kind of diet roller coaster. So talk to me about what you mean about this roller coaster. Yeah, I call it the diet riot roller coaster. So there are certainly many people that just riot. They just binge and painfully overeat and they don't die it.

But I've never met anyone that doesn't diet in mentality. So I like to say, whether you're dieting in reality or mentality, it's still going to have that rebound effect of rebellion. So if somebody deprives themselves of food on a diet, whether it's official diet in a book or a doctor, or it's your own deprivation and rules of food groups and foods that you're just not allowed to

have because they're bad or they're fattening or whatever. So when someone does that, it sets up this natural response to just want to eat everything the diet mentality tells us not to eat. And again there's people that just binge and overeat and they say they don't diet. But I've never met someone who didn't have diet mentality thinking that they should be dieting, And that still sets us up. And so you know, I grew up in diet culture obviously. I mean I took your course on Insight Timer, which

I adored. Everyone who's listening to this should take her course. If you're struggling with this stuff, thank you. But even though I know this stuff, it's sometimes hard for me to believe that it's possible to kind of take care of your body and lovingly feed it in a way that doesn't feel so obsessed. But you've argued that we can all do this if we kind of listen to that voice deep down inside of us if we put some work in to kind of listen to it. We

do have this voice, but it's a deep voice. It's kind of in our hearts. It's a natural knowing of how to treat your body, just like you know, if you're cold, you grab a blanket. You know, if you're tired, hopefully, if you're caring for your body, you go to sleep or rest. And we've been so robbed of this innate knowledge of how to feed our bodies because of the diet industry. So this process is about getting it back.

So I think people at the start of the new year really want to do something positive for themselves, right like they want to in some sense be healthier or be fitter, but they unwittingly end up jumping on this diet riot roller coaster that leaves them in some ways, like mentally and maybe even physically, worse off than before. Absolutely, And it's like looking at one piece of a puzzle

and missing that there are so many components. I like to talk about a four legged table, and that in order to be healthy and in order to heal from if somebody doesn't feel comfortable in their body or their treatment of their body in order to feel more healthy and more balanced. We have to deal with all four legs of this table in order for the table to be stable. I love a good rhyme. So the four legs or areas to work on if someone wants to

start the new year and work on being healthier. The four areas are physical, which is letting go of that extreme diet riot and learning how to feed yourself lovingly and respectfully. And then it's emotional, which is learning how to cope with and tend to your emotions rather than think certain ones are good and certain ones are bad. And then there's mental, which is looking at your thinking.

And I think disordered eating is really disordered thinking, so looking at the quality of your thoughts, how you're speaking to yourself all day long. And then the fourth is spiritual and how you're feeding yourself spiritually, how you're connecting with yourself or deeper areas of life. And so when we deal with all four of those areas physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual, not dealing with them perfectly or overnight, but we really work on all those parts of ourselves and

our lives. That's how we get healthier in the new year or any time of the year. We're going to take a short break now, but when we return, I'll have Andrea explain exactly how we can make sure all four legs of that table are sturdy, and how kindness and self compassion, yet again are key. The Happiness Lab will be right back. Psychotherapist Andrea Walter describes her experience of disordered eating as like being on a diet riot

roller coaster. It's an analogy I can relate to because it's not just that the ups and downs of strict denial and drastic over indulgence are like a fairground ride. There's also a disorienting and deafening inner monologue that comes with this mental ride. It can even sound like a creaky old roller coaster. When you're dieting and rioting, you often can't hear that quiet, kind, calming voice inside you, the one that knows what a body really needs to

feel healthy and happy. After years of riding the roller coaster, Andrea had to make a special effort to hear her own calm, inner voice over all that diet noise. I would ask myself over and over if I was feeding someone else who I love, how would I feed them right now? And I always had to add the someone who doesn't diet or riot part. If I'm feeding someone else I love who doesn't diet or riot, how would

I feed them? Because if you love someone, some people put loved ones on diets, and some people stuff their loved ones and say here, take more. I love you so much, eat more. So if you're feeding someone who doesn't diet or riot and you love them, how would you feed them? Because I didn't have that intuition for a long time, that intuitive eating in the early years didn't work for me. I was like, I don't know how to eat intuitively. I know how to restrict, and

I know how to binge. But when I started asking myself that question and asking what feels loving, what feels respectful, then I would get little inklings until it became the new normal. And so I mean, I've tried to be on this path myself of sort of hearing that inner voice, and it's hard, in part because of all these kind of cultural norms, but it's also hard because I think if you have it listened to the voice, in a while,

it becomes hard to genuinely hear it. You know, Sometimes when I hear you know, how would you feed yourself lovingly. I think it's got to be the healthy stuff, you know, avoid the cookies, Right, Like that kind of idea of good and bad sort of gets in there. And so in your course you talk about three things to pay attention to when you're picking food that should feel loving, nutritious, delicious, and moderate. So talk about why that's kind of a good cue for those of us in the baby steps

towards mindful eating. Yeah, I use nutritious, delicious, and moderate as a little checklist because we need to nourish our bodies. And a lot of times when people say I'm not dieting anymore, no more diets for me, than they're perhaps not getting enough nourishing foods. So we do need to nourish our bodies. Whatever that looks like or feels like for anybody is it might be different, right, but there are food groups and there is a way to nourish

our bodies. And again we begin to tune into that inner knowing or ask ourselves how we feed someone we love who doesn't diet or riot we can get a sense, so how do you nourish someone? You're not likely to give a child a banana for breakfast and send them off to school for the day. When we think of how would you feed your child, you're more likely to give them a nourishing meal, so nutritious delicious when we die it, we often eat kind of tasteless food, and

so we need to make sure that it's delicious food. Now, if I'm just focusing on the deliciousness, then we might not be getting nutritious. So when I first started trying this all on many many years ago, and I was, Okay, I'm not dieting anymore. I'm just going to eat what's delicious. Well, it's not loving to just eat cookies, and it's not loving to just eat donuts, and it's not loving to just eat salad. So we've got some nutritious and some delicious,

and they can over lap. Too. Many nutritious foods are delicious to us, and hopefully we do just eat what we like and love and then moderate is what's a loving amount, a respectful amount for your body. Our bodies know when they're satisfied, so it's learning how to listen to that. And this is all easier said than done, especially if we haven't worked on the other legs. So I can't stress that enough. This is a four pronged process here, and so let's talk about one of the

other legs. I think kind of the mental part, right, you know, so talk about how you would sort of work on that leg of the table as you put it. Well, we need to look at what's the nature of our thoughts. I talk about three different mind moods. We have an unkind mind, a kind mind, and a quiet mind. And oftentimes when someone is living on the diet Riot roller coaster, they're really hanging out on the unkind mind channel. So we need to have an upgrade in our thinking the

quality of our thoughts. And again, just like how would you feed someone you love, how would you speak to someone you love? And looking at the way we're speaking to ourselves and we need to be speaking to ourselves kindly. And then there's also which internal voice are you listening to? Are you listening to the dieter voice that's telling you that's bad, you shouldn't eat, that, you shouldn't look like that. Are we listening to the rioter voice that says, give

me everything that I never am allowed to have? Or are we tuning into love? What is respectful, loving, compassionate, treatment and self talk. I think the unkind mind is so important to talk about right now at the New Year, because I think so many of us, in an attempt to better ourselves on January one, end up talking to ourselves in a really unkind way. Yes, So it's bringing

consciousness to the way we're talking to ourselves. So often we just have this monologue going and we don't even stop to question it because it just feels so real, sounds so real. But that's often where safe support can come in, getting help from someone who can say, wait a minute, that's really not a kind way to speak to yourself, or would you ever speak to someone else like that? And really beginning to take a look at how am I speaking to myself? And would I speak

to someone else who I love in this manner? And so another part of the table is to really pay attention to the physical cues that we have around eating and kind of what's causing us to eat. You know, we often assume we just eat because we're hungry, But then when we really pay attention to what's causing us to pick up that sandwich or that cookie, sometimes it's

not hunger at all. Right, Yes, and if you've got a history of dieting and rioting, you're likely to be pretty cut off from your natural hunger and fullness signals. When I first started that piece of the process, I couldn't really distinguish so much between was that a feeling? Was that a hunger? Paying was that anxiety? Was At first, I don't know what's going on in there, because so much happens in our guts. So for me in the beginning, I just kept going with what feels the most loving?

How would I feed someone I love who doesn't diet or riet? Well, I probably would give them some food upon awakening within a reasonable time an hour or half an hour or something. And it probably it wouldn't be a box of donuts, and it wouldn't be a yogurt. It would be what's a loving meal? And I just kept asking myself that it was. I call it the biggest doover of my life when I decided, as I approach the kitchen or open a menu, I am going to ask myself what feels loving, what feels respectful to

this body? And I'm going to move aside, step aside that voice that thinks I need to change my body in order to be lovable and acceptable, and I just kept doing that over and over, and it was hard at first, because just like meeting someone new, you don't know them. It takes time. It takes time to get to know that voice inside of us. You know. One of the things I observed when I to do this is that when I was craving food in the beginning of this journey, oftentimes it had nothing to do with

my hunger cues whatsoever. The food was trying to fill something else. And this gets to I think your spiritual leg of the table. We need to kind of figure out what else is missing, because it seems like sometimes we kind of go to food when there's some other thing we're looking for. Absolutely, we were somebody I read once that binging or dieting our attempts to find spirituality

but going to the wrong address. You know, it's like a good valid try to get filled up, or to get some more sweetness in your life, or to get some comfort. I say, good try. We're just doing the best we can, trying to fill ourselves up. But when we really fill our spirits, we feel better afterwards. We feel fulfilled, afterwards, we don't feel regretful or stuffed. Or

like we hurt ourselves or deprived ourselves. I always encourage people to make a spirit filler list and to gather ideas as you go and to find ways to fill your spirit in a way that you feel better afterwards. And so, what are some examples on your spirit filler list, because I think this will be really important for our listeners to hear some of good examples. Oh, my spirit filler list, rest and getting in nature and yoga and taking a bath and meditating and connecting with loved ones,

watching a comedy or reading. I paint rocks. I decided a few years ago I needed something off the screens, so I started just doodling and painting on rocks. So there's lots of ways that people fill their spirits, mostly to me, going into nature, going to the beach or the woods or swimming, and everybody has to find what fills them and ways that even if it's just resting in a way that's guilt free and you're filling back up,

that's what we're looking for getting comfort. I'm glad you mentioned the resting thing because one of the early experiences I had after taking your course on insight Timer when I was trying to pay attention to why I was eating things. Was you know, I was actually working on podcast episodes in fact, and started writing, writing, writing, and I had this craving to like head downstairs and get like a cookie or get some chips or eat something.

But I knew I wasn't really hungry, And as I was kind of walking down, I realized, actually what I really needed was just to like stand up, right. I was sitting in that chair writing for hours, and I think my body just wanted to like get up, move around, get a change of scenery. But the only thing that I would allow myself to do if I was like taking a break, was to go eat something. And that was a really important moment because it made me realize, like, oh,

my body doesn't want food right now. It just wants a break. And sometimes the only way you think you can give yourself a break is with like eating something exactly, especially if that's a habit. It's kind of like if the baby starts crying, you want to rule out all the reasons, right, So maybe it's hungry, maybe it's tired, maybe it needs a diaper change, maybe it's something's poking it. We have to rule things out. So if we want food, we have to rule out am I hungry or unsatisfied

from my last eating experience? And if you've eaten and then it was a delicious, nutritious, yummy meal or smack, okay, I'm probably not hungry. So now am I having feelings? Do I need to tend to some emotions that I'm having? Or what am I thinking? Are my thoughts kind of sending myself in an unkind direction an unhelpful direction, or am I needing something? Or is there a deeper need here and needing something more spiritual or to connect with or even just to rest or to stand up or

sit down or whatever. And all of the strategies you're giving us fits with something we talk a lot about on the Happiness Lab, which is the simple act of mindfully paying attention right. You know, for me to notice what was going on with my craving, I had to kind of be there and pay attention right to my emotions. But I think also to notice that you're eating nutritious, delicious stuff, you also have to be there when you eat.

And this is something I struggle with, is like simply being present and not checking my email or ignoring it during the simple act of eating. So talked a little bit about some strategies people can use if they want to kind of pay more attention during eating and be more mindful. Well, I think this process is about paying more attention in general. Right, It's really about waking up and being more conscious. And that's the only way that I have found to make sustained change is to be

more aware and kind of parent ourselves. And loving parent doesn't just send a kid off and just let them roam the house all day without care. And so it's really caring for our body, caring for our mind, caring for our needs, and tending to ourselves and being awake at the wheel, so to speak. So being awake and aware when you're eating, being more awake and aware when

you're not eating, what you're needing, what you're feeling. And so often people with whether it's a full blown eating disorder like I had, or just disordered eating, people have had kind of a hypnotic spell cast upon us, and it leads us to be pretty checked out. With these screens is constant scream use, and with just obligations and now all the anxiety in the world, it can leave us pretty numb. So what's being asked here is a lot, but you get a lot as a result, you get

a lot back. So it's a worthy cause. But it is about being more aware of how you're treating yourself and how you're speaking to yourself. So as we put all these legs of the table back, I think a final thing we need to pay attention to is kind of trying to avoid these cultural forces that led us onto this diet riot roller coaster in the first place.

And I feel like there's nothing harder than to do that during the new year, where it feels like, you know, there are forces screaming get us to restrict our foods or to eat keto or eat healthy. You know, any hints for how to fight these forces, especially at this time of the year, Well, the first hint is you have to believe in what I'm saying here, what we're talking about. You have to buy in to the idea that the diet is not the solution to a body

image issue or feeling unhealthy in your body. The diet is part of the problem. So you'd have to believe that. And once you believe it, it's about really standing by that belief and acting according to that belief. And so once I believed that dieting is not of interest to me anymore and that it only sets up obsession and binging, then no matter what other people were doing, it didn't

matter it maybe it wasn't as enjoyable. I remember in the early years when I was first trying to make the shift, and I would go be with people that were still dieting, and I remember there would be times where let's say I was visiting family and we were going to go out to dinner, let's say, and it was lunch time, it was mid afternoon, and I'd say, oh, I'm gonna eat lunch, and they'd say, oh, we're going to have a big dinner, an early dinner. I'm going

to skip lunch. And I'd say, okay, well I'm going to go have a lunch. And I would just it took it was brave to go against the culture. Or I want to maybe dessert with my breakfast and nobody on they thought it was weird. Or I don't want dessert with my dinner because I'm full of sort of going against the cultural norms is brave. But once you know this is what I need to do to get my own relationship with my body back and to get off that diet riot roller coaster, and you're committed to it.

And once you know wholeheartedly that dieting is part of the problem, not the solution, then it's about being brave and taking a stand and doing it differently. Sometimes I'll say to my clients, if someone in your family has to go to the bathroom, do you think you should automatically go to You know, it's like we get to have different bodily needs and it's brave on this one.

And so how has this approach changed your life? I mean, you've talked about this being a moment that has changed everything, So talk about how it's changed your relationship with your body but also your happiness only completely, only every day. Just I used to be completely obsessed with food and my body, and I was either restricting and obsessing or overeating and binging and obsessing and white knuckling or out

of control. And again, you don't have to be as extreme as I was to still deserve and warrant help. And now I eat food when my body tells me it needs food, and I choose just exactly what I like and what I want and there's no longer. In the beginning, when I was learning this, there was a lot of inner committee dialogue of is that loving to have that? Is it restricting if I don't have that? As it felt like every meal was a big committee meeting. And now I just know exactly what I want and

I just go get it. Fortunately, I'm fortunate enough to be able to have resources and have what I want in my home. So now that frees me up. That frees me up so much time. I think about all the time I spent thinking about food and my body size and just missed out on life. And I don't think anybody gets to their deathbed and wishes they were

a different size. I've had so many clients in their eighties and late eighties who have said that they don't even have a memory of eating naturally and feeling comfortable and peaceful in their bodies. So so many people just lose years out of their lives thinking about food and body obsession. So for me, I've gotten that back. I have a lot more free time, and that frees me up, and I get to read if I want to read, and go walk in nature or sit down or do

a podcast with a lovely person. So it just frees me up to be able to see what else there is in life. It doesn't mean I'm happy all the time. That's not natural either. It just means that I'm not obsessed with food all the time or at all. Since learning of Andrew's work, I've tried really hard to reduce the amount of mental time and emotional energy I spend

thinking food and eating. I'm still more influenced than i'd like to be by all the cultural pressures to look a certain way or eat a particular thing, or to think of food as good or bad. But this year, I'm trying to find that kinder, more compassionate voice in my head, and so my eating resolution for twenty twenty one, unlike the diet riot urges of years past, is to ask myself the question Andrea suggested. If I was feeding someone else who I loved, how would I feed them?

Right now, it sounds like a tiny step, but for me, it's been a game changer. In our next and final episode of this New Year mini season, we'll tackle another super common resolution that also causes us to be unkind to ourselves and to our happiness. Exercise. So if you want to learn more about how you can engage with fitness more self compassionately. I hope you'll come back for the next episode of The Happiness Lab with me, Doctor Laurie Santos. That Penis Lab was co written and produced

by Ryan Dilley. The show was mixed and mastered by Evan Viola, and our original music was by Zachary Silver. Special thanks to the entire Pushkin team, including Mela Belle, Maggie Taylor, Carl mcgliori, Heather Fame, Sophie Crane, mckibbon, Eric Sandler, Jacob Weisberg, and my agent Ben Davis. That Penis Lab is brought to you by Pushkin Industries and by me, Doctor Laurie Santos,