Dr. John Berardi Transcript

Transcription

1 Dr. John Berardi Transcript Ann Wixon: Hello, and thank you for joining us. I'm Ann Wixon, your host for The Future of Health Now. The purpose of our series is to give you privileged access to useful and helpful conversations with many of the world s most respected doctors, scientists, and entrepreneurs, helping you to achieve the best health possible. In this special bonus interview, we'll be speaking with Dr. John Berardi. As a nutrition coach and exercise physiologist, Dr. Berardi has coached hundreds of elite athletes, among them, professionals and Olympic gold medalists, as well as thousands of everyday folks. Dr. Berardi received his Ph.D. in Exercise Physiology and Nutrient Biochemistry at the University of Western Ontario, and is currently a faculty member at Eastern Michigan University and the University of Texas. Over the last three years, through his company, Precision Nutrition, Dr. Berardi has been quietly conducting the world s largest body transformation project. He and his team have coached over 7,000 men and women, and these clients have lost nearly 120,000 pounds. of body fat. Along the way, he's learned some very valuable and surprising lessons on what it takes to really change your body. We are speaking with Dr. Berardi today to learn about his future based solutions that have cracked the body transformation code and made his lean eating coaching program so successful. Welcome, Dr. Berardi. Dr. John Berardi: Thanks very much. I appreciate having the conversation today and being able to share some of this really exciting information. Ann Wixon: Well, it is exciting, and the first thing I noticed in the introduction and in all the materials I read, I didn t see the word diet anywhere, which is kind of exciting. Why is that? Dr. John Berardi: The word has taken on a pretty pejorative status. It's kind of a negative thing to most people, and for good reason. Historically, when we ve looked at the success rate of what people conventionally call a diet plan or something like that, it's pretty abysmal. Most people assume, right out of the gate, that diets are going to fail. And I don t know if it's necessarily an accurate assumption. I guess it depends on how you define failing. Most diets do work for a while, even if you do something ridiculous and silly. I mean, if you do a fad Hollywood diet or you follow a reasonable diet book. I mean, heck you can even go on Survivor and lose a bunch of weight and you can consider that a diet. So, most diets actually do work at helping you lose weight and that word will come into some importance in a little bit. In the short term, the problem is most of them don t help you keep that weight off in the long term. We've all heard of the statistics, up to 95% of people who lose weight through dieting gain that weight back. That s kind of sad statistic, and we know, probably, some of us have personally experienced the yo-yo of dieting, and other people have seen it happen in others. The truth of the matter is, through our coaching program, we work with thousands and thousands of people annually. Most of the people that I get to meet and I get the pleasure of working with have a long history of diet failure. In fact, if they came to us, in the first place, it was because they ve never succeeded long term on a diet and we're trying to change that. The big question really becomes, Why? Why did this happen? Why do diets kind of fail people, and why are they unable to maintain their weight loss in the long run? It can be kind of complicated, but through our experience, we found, basically, two major psychological reasons and two major physiological The Future of Health Now

2 reasons. On the psychology side, usually, what we see when people try to undertake a weight loss or a body change project, they make it this humongous, unsustainable mission. A lot of people who actually have the confidence that they can undertake such a project in the first place, like changing their body, because some people don t even bother trying because they don t have any confidence in their ability to change anything about their lives. So the people who actually get to the point where they're ready to try a change, are usually people with a decent amount or even a high amount of self-efficacy, so they come in to it with all this confidence, and they want to absolutely crush this project. They want to read everything, do everything possible, make it humongous, make it awesome, make it fast, and that confidence can hurt them, because they make it too big. And when you make it big, you don t have an appreciation for how it fits into the big picture of your life. You don t have an appreciation for how it will affect your relationships at home, your relationships at work, your relationships with the places you go and the people you spend time with. You're just looking at the weight loss project independent, and it's not. It has to plug in to an actual human life. So, we make it too big and make it this unsustainable mission and it just doesn t fit and things start to compete for attention. So that s the first thing, we make it too big. The second thing is we rely on willpower to take us through the process. So we pick a host of joyless exercise activities and horrible nutritional restrictions. We say, You know what? I'm confident and I'm tough. And they willpower through it. But neuroscience and brain imaging researches showing that willpower is actually a finite resource. It's like a bank account that can get depleted and often does on a daily basis. So, if we rely on willpower alone, a joyless sort of plodding through the process, it doesn t work. We eventually run out of willpower resources, and we have this big moment where we say, Just forget this, I'm just going to do what I want. Ann Wixon: Yes, I've had many of those. I must admit. Dr. John Berardi: I think we all have, you know. The interesting part is that willpower is like a bank account. So, not only are you making withdrawals on a daily basis, you could be making deposits, and we find that by adding sort of joy or adding deposits of things that bring you enjoyment and satisfaction, even in the weight loss and exercise realm, you can sort of replenish that willpower resource on a daily basis, which is actually a cool thing because we do need willpower. We just need to appreciate how it works. Ann Wixon: From replenishing that willpower, does that help me elsewhere, too? I mean, it's not just willpower that I tap into for trying to lose weight or is there a bigger benefit here? Dr. John Berardi: No, absolutely. Yes, there is a huge benefit here, and it spirals into every aspect of our lives. When we are relying on willpower as traditionally defined, things like getting up to your alarm, that s an active willpower versus hitting snooze for the fifth time. You know, things like decisions at work. There might be some colleague of yours who s done something to get under your skin, and it takes a lot of willpower not to just sort of put a fork in their eye. So, every day, we go through even small withdrawals from the willpower bank. So when it comes time to make a big willpower decision like not eating something that makes you feel good at the end of the day, then that s too huge of a withdrawal. So, by depositing regularly into our willpower bank account, it helps in every aspect. It helps with every decision, it helps with every sort of application of willpower, and it's a conscious effort. It actually takes an effort to think about the things that do bring you meaning and joy, and sort of deposit those things on a daily basis, even if it's just a few moments, but it's important. When it comes beyond the psychological factors, there's two physiological reasons we see that diets tend not to work in the long run. The first is that they set up, for a lot of people, what's very well known in my field called the binge and restrict cycle. So, what ends up happening is, and this isn't a psychological phenomenon, it's actually physiological. Ann Wixon: By physiological, you mean, it's something that s affecting my body, not necessarily my Dr. John Berardi: Absolutely. Yes. We know now, based on the latest science, that the brain and the body are not separate. They work together and signals from the body, travel up to the brain, and they tell us The Future of Health Now

3 things and the signals from the brain travel down to the body. So, when we talk about things like the restrict and binge cycle, we often think it's kind of a psychological issue. Like if you were strong enough and had enough willpower, you wouldn t binge. But the truth is, the signals get so strong when we restrict. When we restrict calories, when we restrict carbohydrates, when we restrict any food that should be eaten reasonably on a daily basis. The signals get so powerfully strong because we're sort of these end products of millions of years of evolution. Historically, when we weren t getting enough food, the signals to go out and eat were really strong. In fact, if we go to the lab, there are actually these interesting rodent studies. So, in many laboratories, they ll have a running wheel for rats in their cages. What will happen is, if you restrict their calories, they engage in something called food seeking behavior. So they will run on their wheel all night, and it's fascinating the first time it was observed. Scientists were wondering what the heck was going on, because if you figure they're eating too little, then they should be just lying around and trying to conserve their energy. Ann Wixon: Be napping, yes. True. Dr. John Berardi: But instead they're running on the wheel because they can't get out of the cage. But, fundamentally, their bodies pick up a process to go look for food, so they're trying to look for food. So, these signals are so strong and powerful, and eventually, if we restrict for too long, we end up binging and we end up overeating and we end up putting all that weight back. It's not your fault. It's just the product of evolution. So that s the first physiological or body-oriented reason. The second is a loss of lean muscle or lean mass. We all have a tremendous amount of lean mass, some more than others, and when we diet in ineffective ways, we end up losing that lean mass. That lean mass is a signal for strength, it's a signal for functional independence, it's a signal for keeping the metabolism high. So when we drop some of that lean functional, independent, strong tissue, then bad things happen. We end up with a lower metabolism, with a lower capacity to do things, we end up sitting on the couch more. Even as we're losing weight, we're doing less stuff, we're unable to do stuff - fun, functional, active stuff - and then we end up gaining the weight back. So those are the main reasons that diets don t work. You ve got the psychological pieces, we just make it too big and we rely on willpower way too much; and the physiological, we signal a forthcoming binge and we also lose a lot of lean tissue. Ann Wixon: Just listening to you, I'm hearing mention about how the brain is functioning, and I'm hearing some information that I've never heard before in terms of weight loss. So I have a feeling you're going to bust a bunch of myths for us here, which is very exciting. But before you do, it sounds like you ve kind of cracked the code on diet, only you call it body transformation. What is the body transformation code? Dr. John Berardi: For the last five years, I've been in charge of what's been called the world s largest body transformation project. So we've worked with thousands of people, hundreds of thousands of pounds lost and thousands of lives changed along the way, which is something I'm very, very proud of. Ann Wixon: It's terrific, yes. Dr. John Berardi: Because I come from a research background, there's sort of another piece of this project, which is a research piece. So there's this tremendous coaching piece, so people come to us and we teach them how to make some of the changes they want to make in their lives. But there's this research piece where we've been trying to uncover key factors involved in body transformation. I call it body transformation because the idea of weight loss is just incomplete. With the everyday, we work with men and women who lose no weight, but they might lose as much as 20% body fat, which is tremendous. So these people are losing fat, which isn't only a vanity project. I mean, as fat accumulates, your cholesterol goes up, you're risk for diabetes and heart disease and metabolic syndrome, they all go up, all those risks. So when we're talking about losing fat, sure, it helps you look better and fit into the swimsuit, but it also helps with a host of health factors. But we don t just want to lose fat, we want to actually increase our The Future of Health Now

4 lean, because as we get older, there's a huge health component to this. Functional independence, with age, comes from having enough lean mass. In fact, it comes from having a lean reserve when we're younger, because we're all probably lose a little bit of our lean mass as we get older with each passing decade. But if we have a good amount to start with in our 30 s or 40 s, then as we get older, it's like sort of a functional reserve. Where when we lose a little, by the end, we'll still have plenty to keep us functional, so we won't fall down and break our hips, so we won't have to use assisted devices to get around. So that sort of what we're looking at when we talk about body transformation. It s about lean functional gain, in conjunction with fat loss. That s really, really important, and a lot of people totally miss out on the idea there. But, our whole project sort of serves that purpose, but it serves a bigger purpose, which is doing this within the context of a normal life, and that is just so important to me. We could do a Biggest Loser type scenario, where we take people and we exercise them for hours every single day. We remove them from their normal life, from food temptation, from the context of relationships which impact how we eat, and just take them on an island and have them do nothing but fitness. That works, I mean, I'm sure you've seen the show and other similar boot camp-type programs. But, not everyone has the opportunity to go live on the island. Ann Wixon: That s right. And then what do you do when you get home? Dr. John Berardi: That s right. So, we strive for finding efficiencies, so that someone can fit exercise and nutrition into a full, rich, and in many cases, complicated life. How can you, with a family and work obligations and other commitments in your life, get fit? In some cases, our clients are losing pounds. How can they do that without going to boot camp? That s what we're looking for. For us, it means finding the minimum amount of exercise that s required to get the result that you're after. I've long thought that the exercise and fitness community is largely driven by people, personal trainers and individuals, who love to exercise in the first place. It's been a really hard time for those types of individuals to look for the minimum amount of exercise that gets results. They want to do more personally, so they think everyone else should want to do more, too. Ann Wixon: It's almost a sin if you don t. That s right. Dr. John Berardi: It's the no pain, no gain coach and whistle kind of approach. For us, it's the opposite. What's the minimum amount someone needs to do? In some cases, we found it might be 30 minutes per week to produce a pretty Ann Wixon: A week? That s pretty surprising, yes. Dr. John Berardi: So, I mean, that s the first thing. The second thing is, what's the minimum amount of nutritional change required? If you go pick up a popular diet book, and the advice might be great, but by the time you ve read that thing, and if you ve actually listed the small habits that you have to change on a daily basis, there might be 100 or 200 that they're asking you to change. Ann Wixon: Yes. It's always overwhelming. Yes. Dr. John Berardi: So, what's the minimum amount, and what's the progression? When you start grade school, you were not taught complex mathematics. You're not taught complicated equations. You're just taught with the basic numbers. Eventually, you progress from one year to the next, at whatever developmental pace is happening, to in some cases, people do really complicated math, and the same thing with reading and every other subject. Why don t we do that in fitness? Why aren t we figuring out the first essential nutrition habit that needs to be adopted or practice? Then add another one later, and then another one later, with a real, true learning and progressive model. That s what we're trying to do by cracking this body transformation code, and I believe we have. Another thing is, for some people, it takes some environmental changes. We sometimes think fitness is about exercise and nutrition only, but how you eat is often more important than what you eat. We can talk about that a little bit later. Then the last thing is sort of like a mental re-orientation with the world. Because The Future of Health Now

5 fitness has to plug in to the rest of your life, how do you re-orient? So for us, this sort of this quest for the last five years and it's on-going, has been how do we answer these questions: What's the minimum amount of exercise? What's the minimum amount of nutritional change? What should the order be? How do we go through a mental re-orientation with the world? How do we change the environment, in subtle ways, without making people feel like today, they're person A, and tomorrow, they need to be person B to make this successful. I want them to still be person A, but I want them to slowly be able to accrue these skills. So that s the body transformation code that we're working on and cracking, and that we've done a pretty good job at so far. Ann Wixon: It sounds like. Also, what I'm picking up is that what you are developing is a personalized body transformation solution for people as opposed to, you know, Let's just throw everybody into the swimming pool and either you're going to make it or you're not. You're saying, No, no. Just like learning how to swim, there's a process that you go through and I have to instruct you according to what's best for the way your brain works and your body works, and I'm not going to let you drown. Dr. John Berardi: Yes, that s exactly right. The most interesting part, and this is something one of the Ph.D.s on our team, who is part of our curriculum development team, has a background in psychology. One thing we pull from counseling psychology, in particular in change psychology, is the fact that most people already know what their next strategy should be. They already know and they have all the resources and the reasons within them to change. It's just a matter of helping call those forth. So rather than this being a strict expert model when you come to us and we say, Okay, here s the first five things you need to do, go do it, we allow each person who comes through our coaching program to collaborate with us on that process. It makes it an individualized process, but not an expert-driven process, it's a selfdriven process. That, in this particular field, is very novel. We think it's why our program works so much better because people have an investment in their next new habits and practices. They know there are things they have confidence they can do. Then when they actually go and implement them, it's part of who they are, it's part of what they're motivated by, it's part of their belief system. Ann Wixon: So you would be teaching me how to be the expert about me, as opposed to making me rely on someone else to cause transformation. Dr. John Berardi: That s right, and that s scary for some people at first, for some clients at first. Ann Wixon: Well, you know, it really is. Dr. John Berardi: Yes. If I can be the expert on me, why the heck aren t I right now? Ann Wixon: That s right. Also, I mean, what do I know? I don t have a degree on biochemistry. Does anybody really understand nutrition? I don t. Dr. John Berardi: That s right. Absolutely. That s the value of coaching. In this day and age, there's a great community online of people who are strong supporters of self-experimentation. I love the concept; however, for most people, I feel like it should have a slight twist. It should be sort of guided selfexperimentation. Ann Wixon: What do you mean by that? Dr. John Berardi: At least in the very beginning, someone should be kind of walking alongside as a guide, helping you choose which things to experiment with, you know what I mean? And that helping comes from a questioning. What is most meaningful to you? What is most important to you? Here s a couple of strategies for how to do this experimentation effectively so it doesn t take too long or you don t have any mistakes that could have been avoided. So it's a guided self-experimentation. It's where you actually have someone walking alongside of you, but not an expert standing in front of you telling you which way to go. Someone just collaborating through the process with you. The Future of Health Now

6 Ann Wixon: So, let's say I decided to work with you, what would be some of the first questions you would ask me? Dr. John Berardi: Some of the first questions would be, in some cases, we like to use the Toyota - the five whys thing. That s one great first exercise, which is, if you were to come to our body transformation program, why are you interested in losing fat or changing your body? So that maybe the initial question. Typically, people will just come out with a socially acceptable answer. It's not deep, it's not well thought through, and it's just what you think I want to hear. So you might say, Well, I feel like I'm overweight or My doctor said I should or whatever the case maybe. Then we just progress through a series of five why s. So, Okay, so your doctor said you should lose some weight, but why? Well, because my cholesterol is too high and I have a hard time getting up the stairs. Then we can go through this progression of questions, and ultimately, it gets down to a deeper and deeper understanding of why you re here. For some people, one of the first few answers is Because when I look in the mirror, I'm unhappy with how I look. As you dig deeper, you find that that means to them, that when other people look at them, they feel judged. And then that means that when they feel judged, they feel like other people don t love them. It gets down to something much, much deeper than weight loss, it gets down to feeling unloved. This gets very touchy feeling, all of a sudden, and I'm scientist, so it's always walking the balance between exploring someone s feelings and then using that as a meaningful approach to changing their physiology. That s what it comes back to. This isn't just talk therapy here. So it's about exploring someone s deeper motivations in a guided fashion. Ann Wixon: I must also say that it sounds like people very often will give what has become for them, a rote explanation. You almost wonder, well, that s because in their brain, the little synapses or whatever have created a path and they're always going to go to that rote explanation. They're kind of doomed. And so, I'm like, okay, there is a psychological aspect to what you're asking, but also, I would think, you're almost kind of changing the way their brain thinks about all of this to give them a better advantage. Dr. John Berardi: That's an excellent insight, and one of the schools of coaching that we are big proponents of is called motivational interviewing. In motivational interviewing, one of the main points is to help people elicit change talk, positive change talk. In most scenarios, if you were to come to me for advice, and I wasn t sort of trained in how to do this, and you say, John, I'm really having a struggle with a relationship. This person really treats me badly, etc. What should I do? The first thing that I'm inclined to do naturally is to tell you to get rid of that person, or whatever, to actually give you a piece of expert advice. Ann Wixon: Right. Take some action. Yes. Dr. John Berardi: In motivational interviewing, it's not about that at all, it's actually about eliciting change talk on your part. What ends up happening is, if I tell you what to do, nine times out of 10, you will argue the other side. I'll say, Oh, you have to dump that crappy boyfriend of yours. He treats you badly and sometimes he hits you. Your response, nine times out of 10, will be, But, when he's good to me, we have a great time, or But, I'm so invested in this, financially and personally. Now you're arguing against change, aren t you? You're arguing for the reasons why you can't leave. Motivational interviewing takes the opposite approach. Rather than telling you what to do, it helps elicit positive change talk from you. It helps you pull together the strength and the wonderful amount of resources that you already possess to make changes and have confidence in that change. Then use the word yourself. So rather than arguing against change, you argue for a change, and that does change the brain in powerful, powerful ways. It reorients the communication, the synapses, the firing of neurotransmitters, it all changes. But ultimately, what happens is that you start arguing in favor of change, a change that you want, and all of a sudden, things work much better. Ann Wixon: So it's a change that you want as opposed to a change you think you should be making. Dr. John Berardi: Absolutely. Yes. The Future of Health Now

7 Ann Wixon: Yes. This is so fascinating, thank you. So what have you discovered about weight loss that will work for everyone? There's an awful lot about weight loss that doesn t work for anyone. Dr. John Berardi: Yes, yes, that s true. There's a number of things, actually, that will work for everyone, for sure. The first is that, I mean, obviously, there's the eating habits part, like eating more protein and vegetables while reducing processed food and sugar, that works for everyone. If they do it, and the doingit part is the hit-or-miss part. That s why the most important thing we've discovered is something else entirely. It's this: it's eating with awareness and present-mindedness versus mindlessly rushing through meals. That trumps everything else. Ann Wixon: Okay. You ve got to help us understand how to do that, because I don t think people know how to do that. I certainly don t, particularly. Dr. John Berardi: Let's start with another concept, which is something I said earlier. How you eat is more important than what you eat. Ann Wixon: Yes, thank you for coming back to that, yes. Dr. John Berardi: So let's just begin with some simple questions. Where do you eat? In your car, in restaurants, sitting down, standing up, in front of the TV? These are all how-you-eat styles, and some are much better than others. With whom do you eat? Alone, with other people, with other people who encourage good habits, or other people who encourage bad habits? Do you think these things would impact your nutritional choices? Absolutely. How fast do you eat? Do you quick or are you in a hurry or do you eat slowly? Do you pay attention to the food, how it tastes? Do you pay attention to how your body feels when you eat it? What do you notice when you eat? Do you notice the taste and smell? How full you are? Or are you distracted by television or the newspaper or something else? Why do you eat? Because you're physically hungry or because you're sad, you're angry, you're bored, you're anxious? You see how all of those stuff can have a powerful impact on your food choices, but have nothing to do with protein or carbs, it has to do with how you eat. So what we teach clients, we teach them is that the following things make the biggest difference. You choose your food thoughtfully, focusing on the quality of that food. It takes time, it takes awareness. Then you eat sitting down, relaxed, without distractions. Do you actually carve aside a little niche for yourself to eat without distraction? In the beginning, it has to be very purposeful, and eventually, you just sort of get into the habit of doing it. Eat with others as often as possible, sharing a meaningful connection with them, and avoiding sort of enabling behaviors, or like, We sneak to the buffet or We go and get donuts on Tuesdays. We eat with others and share a meaningful connection, but again, starting with the beginning, choosing food thoughtfully. Pay attention to your food, treat it with care and respect, while paying attention to your body, especially how your stomach feels and how the rest of your body is doing while you're eating. Simple questions, like after your meal, like, How do I feel right now after I ate that? Do I feel stuffy? Do I feel congested? Do I feel nervous? Do I feel jittery? Do I feel alert? Do I feel sluggish? I know a lot of people don t ask themselves these questions, and it leads to a lot of problems. So this is mindful eating, this is present-mindedness, it's paying attention, and that s really what we like to say. Some of these other stuff seems very sort of new agey, but really, what we're saying is, when you eat, pay attention. Instead of distracting yourself or mindlessly rushing through, slow down, think about how you're feeling, think about what's happening. In our coaching program, this is where we build from, this is the very first habit. Our very first habit that we introduce is eat slowly. We teach people what that means over a series of lessons and how long a meal should take. We say it should take about minutes in the beginning. We even have a little lesson where we give people 10 raisins and we ask them to eat them over the course of 10 minutes. Ann Wixon: That would be difficult. The Future of Health Now

8 Dr. John Berardi: It is. But people have all kinds of flashes of insights, because previously, 10 raisins made up about a third of a handful they jam into their mouth. What does one raisin tastes like, especially if you chew it completely? It tastes completely different. The thing is, junk food, whatever you want to define that as, tastes awful when you eat it slowly and with awareness. Ann Wixon: I agree. It does. Dr. John Berardi: But it tastes pretty good when you jam it down quickly and you just get the sugar hit and then it's gone. Ann Wixon: Right. There's nothing like, you know, Doritos. Dr. John Berardi: There you go. So, that s what will work for everyone. When it's time to eat, whatever it is you're having for now, you don t even have to make a change to your food yet. Sit down, relax. Ask yourself even before you start, How do I feel? Ask yourself, Why am I eating this? Am I really hungry or am I feeling something else? Ann Wixon: Now, is it going to take a little time for this awareness to kick in, because I think a lot of the reasons that diets don t work is we think that they should happen really fast. So, listening to you, I'm thinking, would I start recognizing things quickly or really do I have to say to myself, Ann, you're going to do this for like a week, and then you'll have to be more aware. Dr. John Berardi: What's going to happen at first is you're going to be saying, This is freaking stupid. Ann Wixon: Yes! I probably would. Dr. John Berardi: This Berardi guy doesn t know what the heck he's talking about. This maybe for this new agey, touchy, feely people, but I'm a real person, I live in the real world of concrete reality, and thinking about my feelings is B.S. It's exactly what you'll feel. But, all you have to do is pop by our website and look at the 10,000 people who've lost a couple hundred thousand pounds starting here, and appreciate the fact that we will get to your concrete reality soon. Because, here s the thing, I'm not trying to make you an emotional person by doing this. But here s the trick, if you slow down your eating and you start paying attention, what ends up happening, every time, is that you eat fewer calories. So now we have the physiological benefit of this weird, psychological practice. You end up eating fewer calories without having to count calories, which is just horrible, having to do nutritional mathematics for the rest of your life to be in shape. Ann Wixon: What a drag. Dr. John Berardi: It's awful. There's absolutely no reason to do it. The only reason people do it is because they don t pay attention to the sensors that they already have in their body. Our body is full of sensors, it's the most sensory-rich organism. So, by not paying attention to them, we have to actually go do math to figure out how much to eat. Instead of doing math, we need to just slow down, because you can't hear the sensors over the TV. Your body signals are more of a whisper than a scream. It starts screaming once disease kicks in really heavy. But, early on, it's just a little whisper. So if you take the time, you go slow, you take your minutes to complete a meal. You ask yourself how your stomach feels, how your head, how other parts of your body, your nose, your sinuses, and then just listen. Just be relaxed and listen, and it will tell you what you should eat more of, what you should eat less of, what you should eat more often, what you should eat less often. There's certain foods that people have intolerances to that immediately after eating, they ll get jittery and nervous or stuffy and congested. Those are foods you should eat less of. It will tell you what you should eat more food or less food, and that s when we get to the second habit, which is stopping eating at about 80% full. That is a really powerful one, because it teaches us something that, in North America in particular, we struggle with, which is, how to eat a meal but not be jammed full. We sort of invented this concept of not walking away until you have to unbutton your pants. The Future of Health Now

9 Ann Wixon: Yes. That s right. Dr. John Berardi: In the rest of the world, it's not like that. Unfortunately, it's becoming a little bit more that way, but the idea that food should take us to about 80% full. Now, a lot of people struggle with this concept, because if you rush through your meal, it's impossible to feel how full you are. It takes about minutes for our brains to sense what s happened digestively and give us satiety signals or fullness signals. So, if you go too fast and you don t pay attention, there's no way you'll be able to stop at 80%. So, it's this progression we're talking about, and again, this is what works for everyone. The secret is paying attention. Again, as touchy and feely as it sounds, we've used this with tens of thousands of clients now, and it's amazing what happens when you just say, You know what? I'm going to take a time out here, and I'm just going to pay attention to this one thing in my life that I've not paid attention to before - my process of eating, how I eat. Like I said, more protein and veggies, less processed food and sugar, that s where you ll eventually want to go with this. But, you're going to have a heck of a time sticking to that if you don t pay attention to how you eat. Ann Wixon: I have to share something, you know, my listeners are very used to the show, you know, Here s the Ann share. Here s her stuff. So, this week, one of the meals I had was pasta with meat sauce. It was getting colder and it was kind of rainy and this, that, and the other, and I thought, All right, well, that is the perfect meal for a day like this, set up number one. So, then, I prepared it and it smelled okay, which kind of surprised me because I was expecting it to smell fantastic. I got to put it on the plate, and my reaction was, Hmm, but I ate it all, because like, it's the perfect comfort food, right? I'm supposed to feel comforted as a result of this, but I didn t. And I was like, that s kind of interesting. I've been by myself all week, so I didn t have anybody to communicate this to, which is probably just as well. How do you communicate stuff like that? But then, two days later, I had some chicken kebab and a little bit of rice and some vegetables. I put it down on the dining room table and I looked at it, and I was like, you know, I feel happy getting ready to eat this. I was like, Wow! That s so interesting to me. This is just, I guess, me kind of paying attention a little more. That s so interesting. But that s not the sort of thing I think I would share with anybody, because they d probably tease me. Dr. John Berardi: Right. Exactly. Ann Wixon: This is my personal secret about maybe making some major changes. It's not like I'm likely to give up pastas, but maybe like half of what I had and I need a salad to go with it or something, because I'm like, Oh, I kind of want to trigger that happy reaction. Dr. John Berardi: Yes. Absolutely. Ann Wixon: It was odd! Dr. John Berardi: This is the thing, you know. We don t place value judgments on food, like pasta and meat sauce or, heck, let's say it's a fast food burger and that s a comfort food for you, because there were special cases when you were a kid that your family took you to a fast food restaurant for that. I don t place any value judgment on that at all. You notice, though, you have your own motivation and feelings around those particular foods. Someone else might have felt very happy by eating some pasta and meat sauce, then we can explore that. So, it's your own motivation, it's your own reason for changing. You felt like this food should do something for you instead of just sustenance, you wanted it to make you feel a certain way and it didn t, and you pay attention, which is awesome, and you said, Wait a second. I assumed that it would make me feel a certain way, it didn t. Maybe I don t have to rely on that as my comfort food anymore. Here s another thing. You said you wanted to feel sort of comfort and happiness sort of out of that experience. We ask our clients to ask themselves, What's another way you could have sought happiness in that moment, instead of food? Would it have been some physical activity? Would it have been reading a book? Would it have been calling a friend? I don t know what that would be for you, and if you were a client, we would explore that a little bit. But that s why paying attention to your feelings when you sit down The Future of Health Now

10 to eat is so important, because it short circuits overeating. You might say, You know what? I'm not eating because I'm hungry right now, I'm eating because I'm angry about something that happened today. Ann Wixon: Right. Or I'm bored. Dr. John Berardi: How can I get rid of those feelings in a way that isn't going to make me over fat and die younger than I have to? Because that s what's at stake here. We often wrap up this body transformation thing in more of a vanity project, but what's really is at stake is your health, your ability of function in the world as your body was meant to function, to stave off disease, to be resilient. Man, it sucks, if you sit down and you eat because you're bored, and that kills your human resiliency. That s awful. Ann Wixon: That is awful, but I don t think many people even consider that. Dr. John Berardi: I'm glad you did, and I'm glad you're sort of thinking about these things. Ann Wixon: Honestly, it was a surprise to me, I just kind of like, Wow! What a weird kind of thought, and I'm a little happy that I'm by myself. Dr. John Berardi: You kinda let it go. You kind of let it float out there, and then today you had a trigger to remember it, which is cool. Ann Wixon: That s right. I was like, Oh, this is like and, but I want the foods that do make me happy, so let me just pay attention to what that might be. Dr. John Berardi: That s right. So it's just, you know, like I say, slow down, think about why you're eating. You take a good minutes to eat, afterwards you just think about how you felt, what happened in your body rather than in your head. You start counting calories, it becomes a left brain exercise. Ann Wixon: I can't count calories, that s too much of an effort. Dr. John Berardi: Yes. It divorces you from an understanding of your physical sensory system, the way your body feels at any moment in time. It becomes left brain instead of a deeper sort of communication. Again, I'm a scientist, so saying some of these things that come out of my mouth, they hurt me a little bit, but at the same time, it's true. Maybe we just don t have the scientific language for understanding it completely yet, but nevertheless, this stuff works - slowing down, paying attention. Ann Wixon: Yes. Like body brain stuff than just you need muscles stuff. So, I know that over all the years that you ve been working so successfully with thousands of men and women, you ve got some really valuable, and what I would consider counter-intuitive lessons, on what it takes to really change your body. I guess, permanently, I mean, not just for the big like New Year s Eve party or anything. Can you share some of those with us, because I have a feeling they're going to be surprising. Dr. John Berardi: I think in terms of like really kind of concrete lessons that people can walk away from this conversation with, the first one is the one we've just talked about - simply, at least for the next little while, slow down and pay attention. When it's time to eat, eliminate distractions, and this is going to be hardest one, just turn off the TV. Even if you just promise that you're going to do it for one meal. Turn off the TV, get rid of the distractions, take 15 minutes to complete your meal, and ask yourself some important questions. Why am I eating this? How am I feeling leading up to the meal? How do I feel during? Am I stopping before I'm stuffed or am I stuffing myself because that makes me feel happier? And then how do I feel after? Did that food make me feel calm, confident, and energetic? Did they make me feel bad and nervous and, you know, those types of things. So that s the first one - eat slowly, pay attention, ask some questions of yourself. Next, is boost healthy food instead of taking away unhealthy ones. This is a concept of addition rather than subtraction. A lot of people try and decide when they're going to get in shape, to take away unhealthy foods. I'm going to stop eating X, Y, and Z. The Future of Health Now

11 Ann Wixon: Right. Dr. John Berardi: It doesn t work. What does work is increasing the healthier foods. When, let's say, you do reach for the unhealthy food, you're already a little bit full, so you might eat a little bit less of that really calorie-dense or sugary food. So, that would include more lean protein, more vegetables, those are two good steps in the right direction. If you just, each time you sat down to eat breakfast, lunch, dinner, whatever, if you eat snacks in between you just eat more lean protein and more vegetables. The caveat there is that some people don t like vegetables, or so they say, they just haven t discovered the right way to prepare them. If you're listening in and you think that s you, then there are some tremendous cookbooks just for preparing vegetables. So, explore how to make that work. Ask yourself, instead of This is impossible, I can't eat vegetables. Ask yourself, If it were possible, what would I try? So, boost lean protein and veggies. And then the last one is making new projects, any new project, but specifically, fitness projects, smaller than you think you can handle. The right feeling about a new fitness project should be, Oh, God, of course I can do that. Ann Wixon: Okay. Anyone can do that. Dr. John Berardi: I'm not sure. Like this is going to be a big deal. If I were to ask you, how does what you're about to embark on, on a scale of zero to 10, how confident do you feel that you can do that? You should say nine or 10 out of 10. If you say anything lower, the project is too big. The idea here is that you can do it in conjunction with all of your other responsibilities, all the other X factors that crop up in your life. You hear it all the time, Oh, this week was crazy. My son got sick and we had to rush him to the ER and he had an ear infection, and then I had a deadline at work and I couldn t get to the gym, and of course, I couldn t get any healthy food. You hear that over repeated weeks. It's always something else. So people start thinking that their week was odd, that this particular week was different from the rest, because of these unexpected things. The fact is every week is like that. When you build a new habit into your life, assume that every week is going to be like that because it is. I remember talking with a very well known coach who is one of our clients, and he travels all over the world, he gives lectures and talks and that sort of a thing. He, for six weeks in a row, said, Yes, I struggled with my program a little bit this week, but this week isn't typical. I was on a plane here. And I said, Well, we're almost two months gone here, and every week, you ve told me it's not typical. That sounds typical to me. So let's build your program in a way that it can be absorbed into that type of schedule. Because when you're sitting there planning it, you have a few free minutes, and the world doesn t feel chaotic and crazy. So you make these new projects, 10 out of 10 on the confidence, and so that you can do it in conjunction with any craziness that comes up. That might mean you commit only five minutes of exercise a day. It may mean you commit to having just one healthy meal - breakfast. Whatever that is, make it small enough that you feel like, Oh, God, anyone can do that. If that s the sentiment you have, it's worth starting. If it's big and it's making you really scared, it might be too big and you may be able to do it for a month while you're flexing those willpower muscles, but eventually they're going to get fatigued and then you're going to be back to square one. In fact, probably worse than square one, because now you have a failure under your belt and your confidence is lower next time you try. Ann Wixon: It sounds like you're actually busting some myths around weight loss, which is terrific. What are some fitness myths that you feel are just nonsense? What should we be doing instead? Dr. John Berardi: Where do we get started? I mean, we've probably busted a few, one is that fitness shouldt be this big overwhelming project. That you should like read a bunch of books and go to all the websites and cull together the perfect program, and then get started and exercise all your discipline and willpower to get it accomplished. That is a humongous myth, it just doesn t work. What you need to do is get started right now at this minute. You don t feel like you have enough information to get started? I guarantee you do. You know that you need to move a little more and eat a little bit less, so why don t we The Future of Health Now

12 just start there? Maybe start with the move part only. And while you're moving, you can start doing some other research or get some guided experimentation going on. That s the first one. There's some others. One that is very, very interesting and very pervasive around food, let's say. I mean, these myths don t necessarily bother me because I probably believed them at one point in my career as well, but the one has to do with breakfast. What do we hear about breakfast? Ann Wixon: Got to have breakfast. Got to have breakfast. Dr. John Berardi: The most important meal of the day, that s right. The fact of the matter is, all meals are negotiable and there's a lot of people, there's a whole community of people, who have great success skipping breakfast. Under one condition, that the rest of their meals throughout the rest of the day are properly planned. The reason why people say breakfast is the most important meal of the day is that, in some individuals, if you skip breakfast, you'll overeat later in the day because you're so hungry. However, what if you're not someone who overeats later in the day? And you do just dislike breakfast. You have to eat it to be healthy? Absolutely not. Absolutely not. Ann Wixon: Here s another example where you got to like not pay attention to the myth because it's not personalized to you. Dr. John Berardi: That s right. I mean, you ve met people. You ve met breakfast haters, people who just wake up and they're like, I feel nauseous, I cannot eat breakfast. You force me to eat breakfast and I hate you. Then other people who wake up and, God forbid, they have a conversation with another human before breakfast. You know what I mean? Like you need to eat something. Those are two different personality types, so why do we try to make them do the same thing? So that s one, breakfast being the most important meal of the day. If you're a non-breakfast eater, that s totally cool as long as you make sure to pay attention and plan for the rest of the day and you don t overeat. What's another one the low fat, low cholesterol diet being more heart healthy. There s a very common one. If you lower your fat, lower your cholesterol intake, then cardiovascular disease will be kept at bay. The fact of the matter is low fat and high carbohydrate diet often lead to excess body fat gain, and excess body fat is very strongly correlated with heart disease, diabetes, and high cholesterol. So, it's weird, because you're saying that by eating less cholesterol, it should lower your cholesterol, right? But it doesn t always do that; in fact, in many cases, the problem comes up because you eat lower fat, you eat lower cholesterol, and that makes you hungrier. You eat more carbohydrates, and you end up gaining body fat. In fact, the number one correlate with high cholesterol levels is body fat percentage. If you weigh too much and have too much body fat, that s when you're going to have a problem. So, that s another myth - low fat diet is the best for heart health and lowering cholesterol. Ann Wixon: But that s the diet that we've been told to be on. What do we do? Dr. John Berardi: Absolutely. Well, the nice part is that that shift is happening in the medical community. This is sort of my philosophy of science training coming to the front, but sometimes for a paradigm to change in the world, it doesn t get changed through data or information, it gets changed when the old guard retires or dies. So that s what's going to happen with this. The physicians who believed the old information and it's not that they were stupid or whatever, it was just the research hadn t been completed yet, and the theory was reasonable they're going to have to retire or die before the new understanding kicks in. So, it may not happen in one generation, but very very soon this sort of idea is going to be adopted. It's not saying that a high fat diet is the most healthful thing, it's just saying that the low fat, low cholesterol diet is not necessarily more heart healthy and that a more balanced diet with lower processed food is probably the best. Another myth, this one s pretty interesting. When it comes to the benefits of exercise, as recent as a decade ago, we thought exercise helped us get leaner and healthier by burning calories during our exercise session. You get on the treadmill and you watch that little counter go up to 200, 300 calories. There's my benefit. Recently, that s come into some serious question. In fact, what's come up is the idea The Future of Health Now