Just so we're clear, we know that food is fuel. Every single person alive has between three and five emotional triggers. Sometimes we develop new ones when we experience anything that is traumatic. We're just affected, and until we master them,
we're still going to remain affected. And the second we're emotionally triggered, our mind kind of jumps out of our body and we go into this forward, anxious thinking, and until we can get our mind back in our body and the ability to scan it, we get into this idea that food is a great idea we must be needing it.
Today we have Kim Shapira on the show. Kim is a celebrity dietician, nutritional therapist, author, and creator of the Kim Shapira Method. Her method helps people take back their relationship with food and consists of six simple and very doable rules which anyone can follow. This episode, we discussed the rules, focusing specifically on the psychology behind them and what it takes to not just lose weight, but keep the weight off and be healthier and happier in the
long run. One of the main takeaways from this episode is that a craving is not a hunger once you really can wrap your head around this. I believe a lot can really change for you in your life. So without further ado, I'll bring you Kim Shapira, Kim Shapira, how are you.
I'm so happy to be here, Scott.
I'm so happy that you are here. Do you see what's in my right hand right now?
So proud of you. I'm so proud of you for so many reasons.
Thank you. So you know, so you know what this is immediately?
I mean, I'm hoping it's water.
No, but it's it's it keeps track.
Oh we know, I don't know. Tell me everything.
It's linked to my phone and its track of how much water I'm drinking every day.
I mean, look at all your growth potential. I'm so proud of you.
Thanks, Kim. I appreciate you have this amazing method which I've heard about from multiple people who have tried it and have succeeded. So I've been trying it, and I you know, I'm loving it and getting a little obsessive about making sure I get in all the numbers for all the dimensions. But we're going to go through all the dimensions. I don't want to give it away yet.
I like that you're all in. That that excites me. I'm very excited about that, and I just want to find a way to keep you all in always.
Yeah, for sure, for sure. So let's start with perhaps my favorite sentence in your entire book. Oh and the sentence is a craving is not a hunger. I feel like that was really profound, and everything revolves around that in a way. Oh say, more turned philosophical sets Now you say more, I'm interview What do you mean, I'm interviewing you?
What do you well? I mean you know that I'm obsessed, equally obsessed with the way that your mind works and wanting to know more about your mind. So to me, that seems very common sense, especially when we know our mind and we've been setting our mind. So what's really interesting is I know that food is fuel. I would say, like eighty percent of the population knows that food is fuel. And when we think food is fun, comfort, entertainment, joy, or the enemy, it means that it's an alarm going
off and we're rationalizing a bad idea. And I would think a craving would fall into the same understanding. But I think I think it's profound that that's a sentence you picked out, and especially you know the idea idea that we get so seduced by a craving that it's like we just visualize, internalize, feel all of the feels when we think about what it's going to be like in our mouth. Yeah, And the truth is all the reward that we get is actually in the anticipation.
Yes, And we know that you know from how the mechanisms of dopamine work. And you're really making this really clear to people who are trying to lose weight that you can feel. You know, eat when you're hungry is one of your roles, right, eat when you're hungry. So the interesting thing there is you can feel craving and then really get more mindful about huh is this a craving or is this a hunger?
Right?
And I think that just moment of reflection has changed my life.
I mean, I couldn't be more pleased to hear that. And I also just always wonder why people don't talk about hunger.
Yeah, yeah, because the hunger is not a bad thing, right, It's okay be hungry every now and then.
I mean there's like our emotional self and then there's our physical self, and we get signals all day long telling us what we need. Right, we're thirsty, we have to use the restroom, it's time to go to sleep. And for some reason, we have this natural fear that if we go hungry, we're going to starve to death. And the truth is nobody has starved to death. We
are not starving to death. And we will get so many signals to eat, our body will go into a full temper tantrum if we were strict, and all we will think about in such a narrow minded way is food, food food food. I mean, like if I said to you, okay, Scott, here's the thing. I'm going to let you pee one time today and I'm going to pick the time that you get to pee, your mind would go into overload and all you would think about would be having to
use the restaurant right now, think about restriction. And then the flip side is why aren't we talking about hunger as a signal that is great? And like our body is requiring fuel to focus, to do all the things right, regulate our body temperature, our hormones, so many things, and yet we can't really eat all our calories in one moment. Our body isn't capable of that, so we have to spread it out over time and only eat as much
as we need trusting, learning to trust. I'm actually going to eat again, you know, and we typically eat twenty one meals in a week.
It seems like I've been remiss not to bring up ozempic. It's like it's a craze right now. Now, what are your thoughts on using ozempic for losing weight? Do you think it's a nice supplement to your method. Maybe it's not necessary for everyone, Maybe some people can just apply your method, and yeah, will.
I mean, the truth is, my method's been my method for over twenty five years, and so if we think about what is ozempk actually doing, I think we have to slow down and like, this is the connection I feel you and I have. Okay, everything starts with our mind, and if we don't know where our mind is, we can't make rational choices. So let's use the example, and I'm going to come back to the ozempic in a minute.
Let's use the example. There's an alarm going off right now in your house and we're in the middle of shooting this podcast. You would probably say, hold tight, Kim, I got to go figure out what that is. You would go to the alarm box, you would turn it off. Then you would scan your environment and make sure you were safe. Then you would come back and we could
carry on. So if you start believing and start knowing that every single time you have a thought I have to pee, or every single time you have a thought, food is a good idea. All it is is an alarm coming from your environment. And then if you go to your mind, you quiet it, you turn it off, You scan your body, and you recognize why the alarm
even was triggered. You might recognize my chest is tight, I'm having a hard time breathing, I'm really really bored, my stomach is hungry, and then you can actually appropriately deal with why the alarm was triggered. Right, So, just so we're clear, we know that food is fuel. Every single person alive has between three and five emotional triggers. Sometimes we develop new ones when we experience anything that is traumatic, Like every one of us is still traumatized
by COVID. Some of us never wanted to leave the house. Some of us couldn't wait to leave the house. We're just affected, and until we master them, we're still going to remain affected. And the second we're emotionally triggered, our mind kind of jumps out of our body and we go into this, you know, forward anxious thinking, and until we can get our mind back in our body and the ability to scan it, we get into this idea
that food is a great idea. We must be needing it. Now, what happens when we feel stressed or when we're emotionally triggered. In less than ten seconds, we have fourteen hundred sensations that occur simultaneously. They trigger the hippocampus. The hippocampus is our memory center. And if at one point in your life you ate because you had discomfort in your body, your mind is like, hey, I'm here to help you survive, and I remember the last time you felt this way,
we ate and we felt better. Let's do that again, right and then right? And so if you think about ozempic and everybody who you know can't really differentiate between their emotional self and their physical self, ozembic is quieting that hippocampus. That's amazing. People are like quieting food noise for the first time in their entire life, and now they're actually be able they're actually able to deal with
their emotions responsively. How cool is that? How cool is that? Right? Yeah? Yeah, So like I've been teaching that all this time, but now there's a medication that does it. So I think like you either can use the medication or you can use my rules and all of my tricks to help you get that. But the second part of what ozembic or a GLP one is doing is it's working on the hormone Latin. So when you think about your stomach,
it's got two hormones that kind of regulate hungerful. And if you think about your stomach is like a bowl, the lining of your stomach when it gets when it detects that it doesn't have enough food, it signals grilling. That signals your brain is time to eat when you've
eaten something. And here's the fun part. And studies prove that if you're starving and you eat a piece of bread in a restaurant and you wait ten minutes for your food to show up, you're no longer hungry, right because leptin has now detected there's food in your stomach
and you're safe. So the gop ones are working on the food noise and the leptin, which you have the ability to do that too if you follow my rules, which rule number one, eat when you're hungry, take your normal portion, cut it in half, and wait fifteen minutes to see if you need more food. That rule is essentially a GLP one.
Yeah, I mean so you can. You can psychological You called it a trick. You're funny because it's a psychological trick that does the same thing than what the medicine you're popping in your popping you're injecting. So let me read a quote to a quote from you. The way to break those habits and start to eat when you're hungry is to be aware of what you're actually feeling
when you think you want to eat. The next time you find yourself searching through the cabinets for a snack or sitting down for a meal, pause and ask why. You list four reasons why we eat. We seafood, we are not seafood, We see food, we are emotional, we have a craving, and we feel actual physical hunger. Do you think so? You think there's a great benefit in being more mindful reflecting on the reasons why you're going to that food cabinet.
One hundred percent. I think you need to know where your mind is at all times. And like you know, the definition a mindful is knowing where your mind is without judgment. And so we really need to put space between the thought to eat and the action to eat, if that makes sense, because we all eat quickly and mindlessly.
We do. That's not the only thing we do quickly and mindlessly.
No, it's not.
Welcome to America.
Yes, it's true.
We do everything that way. Let's let's before we move on to rule number two. I wanted to talk about how to tackle hunger for sweets. So what you know, you say, feel it, acknowledge it, laugh at it, and leave it alone.
Yeah.
Have you found that that does that work for you?
Yeah? It does. Have you tried it?
I've tried it with candy corn, and the candy corn is good, too good. I don't get past the laugh at part.
Okay, So let's let's load the whole thing down so you kind of understand what I'm talking about. Okay. So you know, our mind produces like over sixty thousand thoughts in response to what we see, smell, feel, here in touch. You are not taking credit for your heart beating your lungs to breathe, your stomach to digest, and you really can't be taking credit for the way that your mind
is helping you survive every single moment. Right So, when you can actually see that your mind is thinking about candy corn, that's your opportunity to recognize the alarm has been triggered. To take a deep breath, come back into your body. And one trick that I always use is to ask yourself, where is my body? And then to repeat it's just right here, and then to say where
is my mind? And really we can go find our mind and we'll recognize it's on the pantry candy corn in the you know, with the candy corn, or it's on the meeting I'm having next week, or it's on a conversation I had yesterday that I didn't like the way it went right. And if your mind is not in the same exact time zone as your body, you have some work to do. And so I would repeat the entire thing again, okay, until you know where your
mind is. But what happens when we have candy corn is if you actually slow down time and really take your time to eat the candy corn, you'll actually recognize that it's offensive to your brain. It's so sweet that it's offensive. But we're applying pleasure in the exact same moment, and it's getting stored in our addictive center of our brain.
And so what happens when we have the thought to have more candy corn, it's actually a physical withdrawal, and the hunger is coming from the discomfort you're having, and it's like a pulling, like you'd almost look under a rock for candy corn, right, And that is absolutely not hunger, because hunger is in your stomach. It's isolated to your stomach.
It's not painful, it's not scary, and it should happen often, right, And so what happens when we have candy corn is we stay in the cycle and we think that that's what we love, and we think that's what we're hungry for. And if we actually took the time to recognize, wait, I'm thinking about candy corn in the middle of the morning while I just you know, have to do this homework assignment or whatever it is, you'll recognize it's only because you had candy corn yesterday or earlier in that day.
And that's what I mean by last you want to break up your thought pattern.
Well, I mean that that part really is great. It works for everything else, but candy corn.
You how to really stop the candy corn is you actually have to stop eating candy corn for like four days so the sugar can leave your system, Okay, and then you'll no longer crave it.
I think there's a lot of sugar and candy corn. I think they've really manufactured something that is really good, not for you, but good tasting. Okay. Anything else I want to cover within the eat when you're a hungry part sodium, Maybe we talk about salt cravings because you say salt cravings are a different story.
Yeah. I would actually reach out to a doctor if you're having real salt cravings because it may be that you're not able to kind of keep your water balance maintained and could actually be a real, real serious issue.
So eat when you're hungry. And then you talk about the looking glass.
Oh, I love that you've picked up on that.
Yeah, tell us a little about how the looking glass is relevant here, you know.
Okay, And by the way, if you're also craving ice, you should call the doctor because that's that's an iron deficiency. Yeah, Okay, so it's one of my favorite quotes from Alice in Wonderland looking Glass and the White Queen says to Alice, the problem with people is they forget their future memories. And Alice says to the White Queen, what do you mean you know the future memories? And the Queen says, we know exactly how this goes if we don't change. I could predict how my clients are going to do
based on this. People can even know exactly how they go how it's going to go if they don't actually work on the change. And one thing you and I are very aligned with, and something I've been saying for I think my whole life is people will come to me and they say I need to lose weight for a wedding or a party or a graduation, and I always say to them, what's going to happen the day after?
And I really try and change people's minds from their goal to lose weight to make it their goal to learn how to change and make sustainable results for weight maintenance. That's the real goal.
I see that. And a big part of that is identifying your quote triggers right triggers.
And you know this is where I think the understanding that think about the superiority complex, which is I already know what I have to do, but also I neglect what I have to do. How do we change in that mindset.
I think most people know at some level when they're doing something that's not moving them in the direction of positive growth. I think they know that, you know, but that knowing it is one thing.
Right, that's not that's I mean, people know kale is full of vitamins. But you know, really early on in my career, I failed at putting people on diets, and it was a really good lesson for me. Actually I don't know if well it was in my book, but I don't know if you know this part. What you don't know about me is that I was a sick kid.
Maybe you do because you read my book. But I spent a good portion of my twelfth year in and out of the hospital, and then about four years after that visiting my specialists at UCLA, and you would have probably considered me a quiet, shy kid. And so just picture a twelve year old going to the doctor and being in a lot of pain. And I must have been crying one day on my way to UCLA, and my mom said to me, don't cry, will go shopping. And this really imprinted on me, and every emotion led
me to think shopping was a good idea. And somewhere in high school, I was talking to a doctor friend of mine. I was interning with him. He was a dietriss and he said to me, you know, food can make people sick or healthy. And that was one of those moments where I said, that's it for me. I want to be healthy, and I bet everybody else does, and I'm going to make a career in making people healthy. And I went to graduate school. I studied nutrition and
I wanted to know everything about food. And my very first client was a therapist. And I say that because I was twenty seven, she should have been smarter than me, right, because she knew more about her mind. And she I helped her lose thirty pounds by putting her on a diet, and then she said to me at the end, after I helped her, I'm going to gain the weight back. And this triggered me in a million different ways because I just helped her get healthy and now she wanted
to change it. And she said to me, my husband wants to be intimate with me all the time. And I was molested as a child, and I thought, oh my god, I don't know anything about people's relationship with food. It's not about kale, it's not about what they know to be healthy. And then I started recognizing the pattern that my clients are eating in the exact same way that I'm shopping. And if I can help myself, then I can really start having you know, helping them have
sustainable results. And so that's how this all came to be, where I started really changing the way that I that I worked really and so it's not that people don't know, it's that they don't they neglect to do it. And that's the piece that's fascinating to me.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. What what do you find is a big motivator for people? Why do most people decide to really commit and change isy aesthetics? What's it like the number like three top three reasons you've seen over and over again?
What I mean? I would think that it would be health, It would be definitely. I would say looks probably is number one more than health.
Yeah in Beverly Hills.
Could be yeah, so looks health. And then I would say a party or a TV show that they're about to film, and these would not be these would not be the answers that I would allow them to walk away with.
What is the best reason, too? Is wait? Health? Right?
It is health? I mean obviously I picked this career to be healthy and to help people get healthy. And what do we have if we don't have our health right? Like, that's got to be somebody's priority, and it's not necessarily always, and it's not enough when we have short term memories and there's candy corn.
Yeah no, absolutely, yeah, yeah.
But I think my clients who find me are the ones who are done dieting. They're the ones who are sick and they're and tired and they're looking for sustainable change.
What's the relationship between the gut and hunger?
Well, we talked about the hormone growlin sure did, And I mean, is there one without the other? Like you you know, hunger is in your gut and if and if it is in your energy and if you are like bottoming out and you're feeling like low blood pressure or low blood sugar, these are different things in hunger.
Let's let's double quick on the gut a little bit more because there's so much in the gut. What sort of pre biotics probiotics do you do you recommend? I I take like an all in one preeh post like it?
I like it?
I mean which one? Yeah? Go?
I mean now I'm like, can I nerd out and just like slow down on the whole gut thing? Because Okay, so when you're talking about like gut health, we really have to start understanding the whole digestive track. And that's from your mouth to your anus, and it's the width of a tennis court. And every single inch of this track has a job, every single inch of it. And food should travel down one millimeter an hour, hopefully giving
you a twenty four hour transit time. Now, what's really important is that we need to learn to stop and smell our food. I know this is like we don't talk about hunger. We also don't talk about chewing our food. First, we smell our food so we can get like a salivary amilies. Like what happens Scott when I say think about lemons, think about like a really good sour lemon in your mouth? What happens in your mouth?
I get more water watery in my mouth. My mouth is watering.
Okay, so that is salivary air.
The same happens when you say candy corn as well.
By the way, oh interesting, I love that. Okay, interesting and pickles, I'm sure. So your mind already told your digestive track get ready, we're going to be eating, and it produced salivary emilise. So just by thinking and smelling your food, you're actually starting to prep your body for digestion. It's very important to reduce gi distress. We need that saliva. And remember I told you that when you are emotionally triggered,
you have these fourteen hundred different sensations. It actually dries up your mouth and it actually makes it harder to eat. And so if you override that and you eat, you're going to end up with bloating, gas, diarrhea, constavation. But anyway, let's go back. You smell your food, then you actually need to chew your food. Now we take big bites. We want to slow that down, and why not because we think we love food. So let's actually be present
with the food. So you put the food in your mouth and you chew it longer than you think necessary, and you know what, that's really really boring, and our mind doesn't like boring moments, and so it's telling you to pick up your fork and eat faster, and we got to practice eating slower. By chewing your food and making it liquid, you're actually making it digestible and absorbable. So digestion starts with chewing, and it's our only mechanical
form of breaking down the food. If you eat quickly and you don't chew your food, well, you are like swallowing whole pieces of food that are unrecognizable and you actually can't get the nutrition from inside that food, and that creates an inflammatory response immediately. So now we're talking. Now the food has gone from your mouth in a liquid form, hopefully, and it's sitting in your stomach where it needs to be there for two to five hours so it can actually be properly broken down. And so
now let's just talk about this. Think about a paper towel holder, that cardboard ring. Okay, we're actually talking about the inside of that carboard ring right now, and that technically is the outside of your boy. Nothing has entered your bloodstream, and so we need everything to be staying in that hollow tube and that inside layer is called the mucosal layer. Connected to that are called tight junctions, and now the outside of the cardboard is called the
epithelial cardbet. Those three layers make up your digestive track. So technically, what is inside that hollow tube has not entered your bloodstream, It has not started folding into those paper towels. If it has, and if it does, this is the how we get an increase in mood disorders disease states because it's not supposed to. So our first layer of defense is that mucosal layer. Hopefully we're protecting it.
And so we're going to talk about those prebiotics and private and probiotics, right, So do you have any questions about that so far?
Yeah? So I have Celiac disease, okay, and I one of the biggest use in the beginning when I've first diagnosed was that that it affected that that layer that you're talking about. So obviously my selfish question is what are some sort of what are some of the best probiotics or probiotics or things at regimens I could do to kind of rebuild it for people who may have had it for various reasons. There are other reasons too, other than celiac, why someone might have had some and
I have been able to rebuild it. By the way, I'm like, I'm back, baby, but.
You know I love that.
Actually, yeah, yeah, I'm I'm back. But that was I was diagnosed later in life with celiac, so it really I went a whole lifetime of damage to it. But I'm good now. Yeah. But but yeah, but can you please give some advice there?
Yeah, So prebiotics. So think about it this way. When we're born, we're born with our microbiome system, and this is going to be very influential in our mood, our health, the way that we break down food. And we can have up to ten pounds of microbiome in our entire body, and we have them in our mouth, our stomach, our vagina, and our anus. And when we take an antibiotic, we actually kill off colonies in any of these areas that
we're never actually going to replace. And when we take a probiotic, those are kind of like little tourists that are visiting and they're leaving messages, but they don't stick around. So in order to repopulate and read ferment, let's say that mucosal lining, we need to be consistent in the way that we're eating and adding things to our diet. Prebiotics are things that feed the probiotics and they're very
important for this repopulation. So some things I would say, there's about five things that I would say you want to include in your diet every single day, and that would be fiber between twenty five for a woman, twenty five grounds for a woman, and about thirty to thirty five grounds for a man. Is really really important as food for those probiotics, and they also pull out cholesterol
and toxic estrogens, very very good for immune health. You want to make sure you're including fermented foods, which could be something like sour kraut or kimchi or yogurt. These things have natural probiotics that kind of like send messages all over the place to boost our immune system and our gut health. You want to diversify or in other words, have a diverse amount of fruits and vegetables every single day, and the recommendations are literally between four and seven servings.
It could be four and seven vegetables or four and seven fruits, or a combination of the two. I'm not a huge fruit fan. I love vegetables they've got the same nutrients, so it doesn't matter which one you pick. And then you also want to make sure you're including whole grains. So the whole grains is tricky if you have celiac or other GI problems, but they're not so tricky if you don't have those problems, so I wouldn't be so afraid of them. And one whole grain that
I would recommend would be something like sourdough. Sourdough, it's sour and it's a fermented bread, so it already has the probiotic in it. The last thing I would recommend would be flax seed, geas seed, or hempseed every single day. And I've spoken to many like GI doctors and I always ask them like, what's the one thing you recommend for colon health? And without a doubt, they say flax seed, chia seed, and hempseed because it's high in fiber and
because it's got omega threes. So now we're talking brain health, gut health, and heart health.
Our mutual friend Lisa, who I hung out with yesterday, was like, I need to get my flax seed in today. Kim told me that I need more flax seed.
So every day always say literally.
Yes, yes, so cal on, I think that's enough information to wet the app to what the salvatory glands about the gut. But it's really that is really valuable information. I want to move on to another psychological aspect of eating, because this is the Psychology Podcast, and I love that
your work is so psychological. It's psychologically changing the relationship you have with food and with hunger, with your hunger more specifically, so eating when you're hungry is one, but another one is loving what you eat, like keep loving what you eat. And I think a lot of that's a big misconception. A lot of people think that, you know, like if I'm going to diet or if I way, I'm going to eat broccoli all day. Now, I know you love you love broccoli. I know, I know, but
not everyone does. Kim tell us a little bit about how you can lose weight and still eat what you love.
Yeah, so the whole rule is to eat what you love, Comma, but make sure the food loves you back. So you know, my degree is in human metabolism and clinical nutrition, so my goal is to help your body be well. That's the goal. Now, a lot of people have restricted only to find themselves binging. They also label food as good, bad, healthy, and unhealthy. They also know to eat kale, but are finding themselves having milkshakes and then filling a lot of
shame and persecution. So the reality is it doesn't necessarily matter what you're eating to lose weight. When you eat when you're hungry, and when you start with half right, that's the fail safe piece. It's important for somebody to start trusting that they could eat food that they never felt they could eat and not gain weight. That's a
really important piece to do this long term. Now, it's also quite interesting when somebody says I love bananas and then they're recognizing they're having diarrhea or heartburn, and it turns out that the banana in this scenario is the culprit. Right. It's shocking. Now, how often will you continue eating something
that makes you sick? This is the piece that's very interesting to me, because you wouldn't stay in a relationship or you actually would stay in a relationship where the person is abusive or toxic, And this is like the hero's journey. At some point you're going to have to recognize, wait, I'm the only one who can heal myself? And now I have to get curious, does the banana make me feel sick? And can I see how I feel if
I don't have the banana for a couple days. This is how we gain trust and how we can move forward in things. And then what ends up happening is people start recognizing I really don't feel great, and so they start changing naturally the foods that they're eating on their own, without restriction. That's how we grow.
But you do say there are some exceptions. You say, you know, eat what you love unless you get sick from eating. Yeah, and that mays common sense. But but but there are some safeguards there, right, Like, what do.
You mean safeguards? I mean, I think if I think, if you nails, I mean, what nails are we talking about. I don't think that people. I don't know that people are eating nails or people eating nails.
No, I don't think that's the thing. I don't think that's the thing.
But I don't know there could be. I mean, people are eating dirt, but that's you know that they need iron if they're eating dirt or craving dirt.
But I mean, like, let's say someone like once needs to lower cholesterol, and they love eating food that is really high in the bad kind of fat. You know, yeah, you know you don't. You don't recommend eating that all.
Day, right, Yeah, So when you're talking about that, you're talking about saturated fat, you know, fats that come from an animal. And it's the thing is, and this is the most amazing thing that I've ever discovered, is that most people who have high cholesterol, it's a weight related disease. You know, it's based on metabolic syndrome syndrome X. And so actually, when you lose weight, and when you lose the right type of weight, specifically body fat, your cholesterol
goes down. And when you start losing weight and feeling better, you start making changes that are way more positive for you because you have less inflammation and actually your motivation becomes higher. Now, in some ways, people have what's called familial cholesterol, which is type two, and they've lost weight and their body fat is good and their muscle mass
is good, but their cholesterol is still high. So then we have to look at their hormone health, and we also have to look at the type of foods they're choosing. So this is what you're getting at here, and I think the fail safe and starting with half and figuring out your hunger is so protective, believe it or not, in lowering cholesterol, blood pressure, and blood sugar. Unfortunately, familial to cholesterol, the one that you can't really fix with
diet does require medications. I think that people have different levels of inflammation. Maybe they've taken antibiotics, and so I think there's all different varieties of intolerances and those are all reversible.
Rule three is eat without distractions. You say food is boring? What do you mean by that?
Okay, so a lot of people call themselves foodies right now, I mean that's just yeah. And then ideally I would like you to be alone with your food, right I would like you to actually challenge yourself to sit down with your meal and have no distractions. Take away your book, your computer, your television show, the friends, the family at the table. Well, oh tell me, is food fun?
No boring? Boring? It's boring if I'm not doing something else at the same time.
And that right there is the game changer. So you should love what you're eating. I would never want you to put something in your body that you do not love. And that does not love you back. But you should not be eating it because it's fun, because it's actually not. And remember, we're always anticipating the next bite. We are literally in love with our food. We can't wait for our meal. We put the food on the fork, it's in our mouth and we don't even put our fork
down for the next bite. We don't even bother spending time chewing it. Food is boring, unfortunately.
Yeah, good point, good point. Oh well, most of us enjoy the anticipation more than we actually do the actual food. Yeah.
I would tell you to enjoy the food. Why are you eating it?
So you say, stop and smell the pasta?
I do? I mean, how long does it even take to eat the pasta? You know, like a few minutes?
Okay, good, Well that's another psychological trick. Mindful eating is a whole thing in the meditation literature, you know, to the retreats. When you go to retreats, they make you eat a raisin and and be mind They force you to be mindful about it.
Yeah, and have you done that?
I have, I've done it with my students.
How long does it take to eat the raisin mindfully?
A couple of minutes.
Yeah, that's amazing. That's amazing. And right there, that's that fail safe where we slow down and we wait to see if we need more. And I had a client who in her advisory class in high school, every day, the teacher would bring donuts, little donut holes, and she was the kind of person who would pop a donut hole in her mouth. And I'm the kind of person who would take a couple bites of my donut hole,
and she would eat three donut holes to my one donut. Wow, like slowing down eating a raisin over a couple minutes. That to me, that's why, like, if you could do that, then why we wouldn't have a weight problem.
Yeah. Yeah, I mean, well, that's an interesting point you just made. There's genetics at play here, and then there's the things that we could do to change. Some people have a higher uphill battle due to their genetics.
Right, yes, kind of Yeah.
So what do you you know, how do you work with people who come in with all sorts of different genetic set points.
Yeah, I think if they can get connected to all six of my rules, then they're going to be on fire. And I think that I actually heard you speak on this a little bit when you can picture your future self, which the truth is like, there was a study done fleas. I'm sure you're aware of that where the scientists put the fleas in a study and the fleas jumped in and out of the jar. What did I just say? The fleas put the the scientists put the fleas in a jart Did I say that? And then they jumped
in and out. And then the scientists put a lid on the jar, and the fleas stopped trying to jump out. Then they took the lid off, they kept it off, and the fleas never tried to jump out. But here's the fascinating piece. The babies of the fleas they never tried jumping out. So when you talk about limitations, if you can't picture your future self, if you can't see
past the limitation. Right, there's a quote that I love that says, if this disordered eating, it actually says, if this illness right now feels like a cage, please try to hear me. The door is unlocked and you are free to go. And why people stay in the cage is comfort, And why people don't tiptoe out is because they haven't decorated what it looks like outside of the cage. They don't feel safe, they feel so they stay.
Stuck, worn't helplessness. Yeah. Rule four, take ten thousand steps every day. Okay, Now why that number? And does it have to be running? Can it be walking? Just any kind of movement? Is that helpful?
Such great good questions and points. So right now the average American walks about thirty five hundred steps and they're obese. Okay, So just we know that just by getting seven thousand steps, you're decreasing your risk of sudden death by fifty percent and decreasing your risk of almost every other disease, including Alzheimer's. So what I have found over my twenty five years is that in order to maintain your weight loss, it has to be ten thousand steps. You have to be
an active person. Now here's the thing. We can't always do it. It doesn't have to be perfect, but it has to be progressive. You have to be the kind of person who is active more times than you're inactive, and never following follow following less than seven thousand steps. So ten thousand steps helps your circadium rhythms with just your sleep and wake cycles. It helps your digestion, It helps your mood, and it helps you maintain your weight.
Okay, well those are good reasons, yeah, to talk to me about the different types of that pay.
Yeah. So if you're somebody who really is only averaging thirty five hundred, then your goal right now is just to get that number to seven thousand, right, And you can do it anyway that you want to do it. I don't care if you run up and down the stairs in your own home or in your office building. You could go to a bathroom on a different floor, taking the stairs, I don't care how you do it. Take less dishes out of the dishwasher. Those extra steps
make a difference. Right. But at some point, just like what you love, and you're going to have to kind of figure out what loves you back. You're going to have to start recognizing my body needs many things. Needs cardiovascular health, and needs strength training, and needs flexibility, It needs endurance. I literally just saw the greatest commercial I've ever seen, as an elderly man lifting weights and he was talking about not doing it, you know, because he
wanted to look great. And then later it shows him hugging his grandchildren and carrying groceries from the car, and like, this is it. We need our body to be well and remain well, and so it's got to be a variety of things to do to make that happen.
I love that I'm doing it to look good, though I'm not. I am. I tell everyone the truth about my motivation because my health metrics are great, even my current weight. So I can't just say, oh, I need to do it because of help. No, I want to look good. Yeah, so that can be an okay motivation? Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah.
I mean you have a plan, you know. I like it.
I have a plan. I have a plant. Well if I drink eight cups of water a day, yeah, okay, Well I am I according to this app I'm doing it's it coined to my body. So everything they're telling me do ten cups of water a day? Yeah, but at will we st date? Is that Iteeah?
So I would say it's minimum eight. And for every twenty pounds of person wants to lose, it's actually two additional cups of water. And if you drink a ton of caffeine, for every one cup of coffee, it's two additional cups of water. But the reality is people are either drinking way too much water or not enough water. And if you don't drink enough water, you're putting yourself
at risk for that metabolic syndrome. So water detoxin filters all the toxins in our body, and if you're not drinking enough water, your liver kind of kicks in and helps your kidneys because your kidneys can't function properly without the water. And the liver's job is actually to metabolize fat. So we're now talking in cholesterol, body fat, and triglycerides. So if you don't drink enough water, you're going to see an increase in all three of those fats. It's
a secret sauce to losing weight. Drink your water.
So dehydration is how does dehydration affect losing weight?
So if you don't drink enough water, your liver kind of helps your body detox and it stops metabolizing its fat instead it stores it.
That's interesting because I feel like if I drink a lot of water, I feel fatter. Interesting, that's a thing called water weight, right.
That's interesting, and I would actually love to know more about what I mean. You feel fatter, you feel full.
I feel fuller. My stomach just my stomach protrudes further.
Yeah, So then I wonder how fast you're drinking water, and I would recommend you drinking it slower. So, you know, we have intracellular water and extracellular water, and we have like one hundred trillion cells and they're forty percent water. And when we eat a diet that is high in let's say carbohydrate, which we should all be eating a diet plentyful of carbohydrate, but people don't always hear the
word hydrate in the word carbohydrate. And those foods, which are milk, fruit, vegetables, and starches are full of water. So when we eat them, we're actually taking the water from inside the food and we're putting it into our intracellular cells. And it takes about three days for that to diffuse diffuse back to extracellular and so it could look like you're gaining weight, but all you did was really what you're saying, gain water weight, and it's not real.
But like, if you're drinking that bottle right there, let's say it's twenty four ounces, and you drink the whole thing, you're actually putting a pound and a half of water in.
Your system, right right, Yeah, that's right, but you.
Didn't really gain weight because really your only real weight is on a Thursday morning, first thing in the morning.
That's right. And you do say change a relationship to the scale, and you do recommend Thursdays. Why Thursdays to measure.
Our human body weighs more on Mondays. And it takes again three days to diffuse back to normal from all of maybe alcohol, salt or food that you ate that whatever is changing the composition. It takes three days. So our lowest way to the week is on a Thursday. Always so interesting, Yeah.
Well, I know I find this interesting. You say, quote dehydration can make you feel headache, constanpate, tired, and run down. It can lead to weight gain, and it's damaging to your organs. Make drinking water easy and make it a habit. You do not need to be perfect, and every day may be different. Just be patient and stick with it. It's been fun measuring how much water I'm drinking a day and obsessively drinking water. Can you drink too much water?
Drinking water flushes out all of our vitamins and minerals.
Oh is that a good or bad? Not good?
Not good? We want to not good.
Rule sticks get seven hours of sleep. I always hear everyone tell me get eight hours.
Yeah, it's really seven to nine. So it's it's a great number. But the truth is the average American is getting six and a half. They can't even get seven. And so again, I don't like to add pressure to people. I want them to just you know, get there. Yeah, So people have problems falling asleep, staying asleep, and waking up rested. And this is called your circadium rhythm, and it's really melotonin and cortisol. And so there's just so
many things that we could talk about here. But if you're having problems falling asleep, staying asleep, or waking up not rested, you definitely need to talk to your healthcare practitioner or work on your sleep hygiene.
Relating to sleep and just like, like, how many hours before you sleep should you finish eating? I'm trying to think, I'm trying to think of the best way to phrase that. Yeah, I think stop eating.
I think if you are somebody who has gird or heartburn, it has to be like four to six hours before you lay down. If you're somebody who doesn't have that, then it's at least three hours before you lay down. If you eat close to bedtime, you're actually telling your brain it's time to wake up, and your overriding sleep and you're going to have poor sleep.
So if you go to bed like ten thirty eight pm, you really should kind of be done eating by seven or so.
Yep, seven exactly right, exactly right. And I would say my math ability is our genius level. It sounds like you say, here are the facts. Nobody is always hungry after dinner. Instead, you were giving in to what you're feeling for your anxiety and titlement.
That's interesting. You sent titlement or a search for fun and a source of comfort, which is a bad habit that needs to be broken. And if you do experience physical hunger in the evening, it means you are not eating enough during the day, so you need to change how much you eat throughout the day. But the most part of thing here is you say you are in control. This seems to be a common theme of your book.
Mm hmm, yeah, how do you feel about that?
Well, it is very in line with my philosophy about overcoming a victim mentality in life. But not everyone's into that, you know, but really you can be in control.
Yeah, I believe you can be in control. And in fact, there's a paradox right people who are living this lifestyle they're having fun, and people who are not find it hard. But if they can actually just start just doing it a little bit more every day, what ends up happening is they start falling in love with it.
Let's end the whole episode on a single quote. If this illness feels right now like a cage, please try to hear me. It isn't locked. It has been open all along. You are free to go. Well said. Thank you Kim so much for inspiring so many people to be healthier, look better, naked, and feel better about themselves. You're doing great work in the world. Thank you so much for on my podcast.
Thank you for having me so fun.