190. Why Your Brain Is Wired to Crave (And How to Retrain It) with Dr. Glenn Livingston

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What if the voice telling you, "Just have one… you deserve it… start again tomorrow" isn't really you at all?

Clinical psychologist Dr. Glenn Livingston calls it the "Food Monster": a radically different way to understand cravings and that feeling of being hijacked by food. After nearly 20 years battling overeating himself, he realized that understanding why he ate wasn't the same as changing the behavior.

Instead of seeing cravings as proof you're weak or lack willpower, Glenn reframes them as a survival response. One that can be interrupted and retrained. Read on for the science behind why cravings hit so hard, the surprisingly simple tool Glenn uses to interrupt them, and why understanding this changes more than just what you eat.

A 20-Year Battle With Food

Before he was helping thousands of people manage binge eating, Glenn was almost 300 pounds himself. He came from a family of therapists, tried every kind of talk therapy, went to Overeaters Anonymous, and even had a spiritual awakening. But none of it stopped the behavior.

Along the way, he spent years consulting for major food and pharmaceutical companies, helping them understand exactly how to make hyper-palatable food more appealing. Eventually he realized he was "on the wrong side of the war", and turned his expertise toward helping people fight back instead.

Your Cravings Aren't a Character Flaw

As Glenn puts it, cravings are "a healthy mind perverted by a sick society." 

His point is that the craving itself isn’t proof that something is wrong with you. Your brain is using an old survival system that was built for a world where food was scarce and getting enough calories really mattered. Strong cravings helped people survive.

The problem is that we now live in a completely different food environment. Highly palatable food is everywhere, all the time, and that same survival wiring gets pushed much harder than it was ever meant to.

That reframe matters. Instead of making every craving mean, “I have no willpower,” you can start seeing it as a brain response, which you can understand, interrupt, and gradually retrain.

Enter the "Food Monster"

Rather than trying to love, integrate, or therapize the part of you that wants to eat the whole bag of chips, Glenn suggests something simpler: name it, and separate it from yourself.

He calls it the food monster: the impulsive voice that shows up in moments of stress, boredom, or temptation and tries to talk you into breaking your own rules. It sounds like: 

• "One bite won't hurt."
• "You'll start again tomorrow."
• "Your parents struggled with weight too, so you're doomed."

Once you can recognize that voice as separate from your actual values and goals, you gain a few precious seconds to make a different choice.

How to Actually Create That Pause

Knowing you should pause is one thing. Actually doing it in the moment is another. Glenn's practical tools include:

• Pick one clear, simple rule. Instead of vague goals like "eat less sugar," define something specific enough that ten different people watching you could all agree whether you followed it or not.
• Use the 7-11 breath. Breathe in for a count of seven, out for a count of eleven. Breathing out longer than you breathe in shifts your body out of "emergency" mode and into a state where you can actually think.
• Watch for the excuses. When the food monster argues for breaking a rule, write down what it's saying, and why it's wrong. Excuses tend to lose their power once they're out on paper.
• Check your foundation. Cravings often aren't really about the food in front of you. They're a sign that something upstream is off: not enough sleep, skipped meals, dehydration, or isolation.

Why Cravings Fade (If You Let Them)

A lot of people don’t realize that cravings follow a predictable pattern. When you stop responding to a craving the way you used to, it often gets worse before it gets better, something Glenn calls an "extinction burst." 

Push through that rough patch (usually just a handful of exposures), and the craving genuinely starts to fade.

This is also why cravings can seemingly return out of nowhere. If you've extinguished a craving tied to your afternoon donut run but then face a completely different situation, like a box of your favorite treat at a family gathering, your brain treats it as a brand-new cue that needs its own extinction process.

The Real Predictor of Success

After decades of working with clients, Glenn says the biggest difference between people who succeed and people who stay stuck isn't willpower, discipline, or even how "bad" their struggle is. It's whether they keep showing up after a setback.

Everyone slips. What matters is whether you interpret that slip as proof you're broken, or as one moment you can learn from and move past.

Ready to understand your cravings in a whole new way? Listen to the full episode now.

And if this conversation resonates, Glenn offers a free book, coaching session recordings, and food plan starter templates at defeatyourcravings.com. It's a diet-agnostic approach, meaning it works alongside whatever eating plan already feels right for you.

TRANSCRIPT:

Disclaimer: The transcript below is provided for your convenience and may contain typos, errors, or grammatical inconsistencies, as it has not been professionally edited or proofread. Please enjoy it as-is and read at your own discretion.

Please note: The content shared in this podcast and blog post is for informational and educational purposes only and is not intended as medical advice. Always consult your healthcare provider for personalized medical guidance.    

 Welcome back to another episode of the podcast. Friends, I'm really excited today. We have Dr. Glenn Livingston, he is a clinical psychologist. He is great with helping with insights on binge eating disorder, and this is something that one out of every three patients that I see has this as a challenge. And even if it's not binge eating disorder, they have binging tendencies, and everyone has urges and cravings. Can we start out with you just introducing yourself and tell us how you help people? Because I know you have a really impressive, resume in how you help people. Well, well, thank you. I need to have you follow me around introducing me at parties and stuff. So what I really want people to know first and foremost is that I'm not just a doctor that wants to work with binge eaters. I had a really serious problem myself. I was almost 300 pounds and, I tried just about everything. I come from a family of psychologists, and there are literally 17 therapists in my family. And, something breaks in the house, we all rush over and ask it how it feels, and nobody can fix it. So funny. But it's pertinent because when what you have is a hammer, then everything looks like a nail. So I really thought the solution was going to be to fix the hole in my heart. If I could fix that metaphorical hole in my heart, then I'd stop trying to fill the hole in my stomach. And for about 20 years while I was struggling, I went to the best therapist, and I cried and I screamed, and I confess, confessed everything a good Jewish boy from Long Island should, should confess. And, um- You know, a- and I went to Overeaters Anonymous, and I had a spiritual awakening, and I talked to psychiatrists, but everything just made me a little thinner and a lot fatter, a little thinner and a lot fatter. Yeah. And it made me love myself more. Yeah. I, I, I lost the self-hatred along the way, which- Yeah ... was worth the price of admission. Like, all, all- Yeah. But it couldn't help me with the actual behavior. Mm-hmm. Um, along the way, I married a marketer, and she traveled for business. So I had a lot of time on my hands. Yeah. And she was consulting for, um, you know, big food and big pharma, and I had time because she was traveling. We didn't have kids. I didn't commute. So I started a second career, and I started consulting for big food and big pharma. I did the, um, I did the quantitative part of that more so than the, the focus groups. Yeah. But somewhere around the time I was 40, towards the end of my consulting career, I recognized that, there was something wrong with my approach to overeating because what was going on in these companies was they were spending tens if not hundreds of millions of dollars to engineer these hyper-palatable concentrations of starch and sugar and fat and oil and excitotoxins and salt. Mm-hmm. And it was aimed at the reptilian brain. Let's say this is the brainstem. The reptilian brain, which is the seat of feast and famine. It's the seat of fight, fright, f- fight, flight, freeze, fawn, survival drives. Survival drives. This thing doesn't really know love. It, it's the mammalian brain on top of that says, "Before you eat, mate, or kill that thing, what happens to the people that you love in the, your tribe and your family and everything?" And then it's the neocortex that says, "Before you act on those impulses, before you eat, mate, or kill that thing, what, what's gonna happen to your longer term goals?" Mm-hmm. Which include weight loss and your contributions to society and your work and your, And I said, "So all of this therapeutic work that I'm doing, it's really in the neocortex and maybe the mammalian brain. It's all about love. It's all about memories. It's all about, my relationships with people- Yeah ... and loving myself." But the problem is that the way our neurology is set up, and you know this better than I do 'cause you're a medical doctor. I'm a- I'm just a PhD. But we studied it and the way the brain works, when the reptilian brain perceives there to be an emergency, survival drives take precedence. Survival drives take priority. And so if you're too hungry or tired or too isolated from the tribe, or if you're making too many decisions, you're too stressed over the course of the day, this thing gets to push this thing out of the way. Yeah. Because 100,000 years ago, if there was a hungry tiger chasing us, we didn't have time to sit around and think about our relationships and our long-term goals and that diet book that we read yesterday. It was, "Get out of the way. Let's act right now." And it was the same thing with scarce food resources. We didn't evolve in a very abundant food environment. We evolved when there was some competition and scarcity, depending upon where and when and everything, but you certainly could not go to the convenience store down the street and get 100,000 calories for $100 and then do it across the street in two minutes, right? Right. It, it's, it's a much different environment. And so our brain would say, when it would see these scarce food resources, "Om nom, nom, nom, nom. Let's scarf it down. Let's get it right now." Yeah. And that's why you get these reactions which are like, "Oh, it doesn't matter what my best laid plans were. It doesn't matter about that diet book that I read and wrote down things about. It doesn't matter about all the food that I bought and the prep that I did. You know, just hand over the cheeseburger and nobody gets hurt." Right. But, but that's why you get that reaction, and that's why- Yeah ... people are so puzzled. So sometime around the time I was 40, which was around when I was at my worst in terms of my own eating. Mm-hmm. And I always tell my audience, "Look, anything that you've done with food, I've done with food also." Gone to seven different drive-throughs to be sure nobody knew how much I was eating, taken food out of the garbage, stolen my roommate's food, had to go to the supermarket to put it back for him, eaten it again, had to go back. Yeah. You know, a- any of that stuff, I've done that also, so there's nothing we can't talk about. There's nothing that you really have to be ashamed of. A- and I've come to, I've come to see- People with particularly strong cravings as better adapted for survival in the past, but, but more poorly adapted for survival in the present, right? Mm-hmm. So I don't think that overeating is necessarily a disease. I think it's the manifestation of particularly strong genes, 'cause it was the people who had the strongest cravings that were the most motivated to go find food. Your ancestors survived because they had cravings. And so I don't think of it as a disease, I think of it as a healthy mind perverted by a sick society. Mm-hmm. That, that, that's what I think is going on. And- Mm-hmm ... uh, Jiddu Krishnamurti, I think that's how you pronounce his name, he said, "It's no sign of health, it's no measure of health to be well-adjusted to a profoundly sick society." Right? Mm-hmm. Yeah. So I, I don't really buy into all of this talk about, I'm not normal, and I'm sick, and I'm diseased, and... I think it's just the opposite. I think that we have to know when we've dug those neurological grooves, when we have those ancestral genes that are too strong, we have to know and do something special about it. But I don't think it's helpful to call ourselves sick and diseased and unable to control ourselves. Anyway, so I figured that out somewhere around the time I was 40. I also did this very large study, 'cause I was getting paid to do a lot of big studies. So I did one for myself when the internet clicks were cheap, and I looked at the relationship between what people craved and could stop eating when they felt stressed- Mm-hmm and what they were stressed about. And I found some interesting things like, I had a chocolate problem. My binges always started with chocolate and ended with pizza and more chocolate and more pizza. We tended to be a little broken-hearted and lonely and depressed. Mm. People who struggled with, chewy, starchy things like pizza or bagels, they tended to be more, stressed at home. Mm. And people who struggled with pretzels and chips and crunchy, salty things tended to be, stressed at work. And this was the last of my psychological efforts to try to figure out what was wrong. So I'm just gonna tell the story that kinda brings it all to a head. Yeah. And then I'll tell you what I do now, 'cause your question was, what do I do now? I see this thing about chocolate, and I say, "Okay, eureka, this is me. Now I've got it. And before I go out and talk about this thing, I'm just gonna really heal myself. Let me call my mom," 'cause my mom's also a therapist and she's also a chocoholic. I'm talking to my mom about that study. And I said, "What is it about chocolate that I go to when I feel unhappy or lonely or, depressed?" And I was in a bad marriage, and my mom knew I was unhappy. And she said, "Oh, honey, I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry." She gets this really look of shame on her face. And I said, "Mom, you know, it's okay. I love you. I forgive you. This was 40 years ago." This was 20 years ago we were having the conversation, but 40 years before that was when I was an infant. And she said, "Honey, when you were about one year old in 1965, your dad was a captain in the Army, and they were talking about sending him to Vietnam, and I was trying to get pregnant with your sister, and I was terrified that I was gonna be an Army widow. At the same time, my, my father, your grandfather, had disappeared for two years. It turned out that he was in jail, and I was horribly depressed about that. So when you would come to me for love or to play or for some healthy food, I just did not have the wherewithal to take care of you all the time. So I put a big bottle of chocolate Bosco syrup in a refrigerator on the floor. And I'd say, 'Honey, go to the chocolate. Go get your chocolate.' And I would run over to the chocolate, suck on the bottle, and go into a chocolate sugar coma." Hmm. And, um, D- Dr. M, you, you would think that at that point, if this were a movie, that we'd have our movie moment and I would never eat chocolate again, right? No. We'd have a big, a big... I know that it's not gonna work out that way. It didn't work out like that. Oh, yeah. It didn't work out like that. It was a good moment. Yeah. I learned more about my mom from that time. It opened up conversations. It dissolved the last bits of self-hatred that I was carrying. Hmm. But you know that I started binging on chocolate more after that. Yeah. Here's why I realized there was this kind of crazy voice in my head. I'm not schizophrenic, but I just mean there was this, this voice of justification in my head, and it went something like this: "You know what, Glenn? You're right. Our mama didn't love us enough, and she left a great big chocolate-sized hole in your heart. So until you can get out of the marriage or fix it or find the love of your life, you're gonna have to just keep on filling it with chocolate. Yippee, let's go get more right now." Mm-hmm. It's like it, it took this emotional trauma, and it made it into a justification- Mm ... for, just hand over the cheesecake and nobody gets hard- hurt, or start your silly diet again tomorrow or your parents were obese, you gotta be obese also. Mm. You're doomed. All of these justifications. Okay. So the way that I got better was I decided that voice could be disempowered. I was gonna have to catch it doing what it wants you to do and disempower it. For example, it's not just this easy to start your silly diet again tomorrow because the way that the brain works, if you have a craving for chocolate today and you say, "Just start tomorrow," and then you eat the chocolate, you're gonna reinforce both that thought and the craving. You're gonna have a deeper craving for chocolate tomorrow. You're gonna be more likely to say, "Start tomorrow," tomorrow. You're gonna snowball down- downhill. You can only ever use the present moment to be healthy, and if you're in a hole, you better stop digging. Mm. I call that a rational refutation, and I got better privately by keeping a journal. Now I did something I wish I didn't, I wish I didn't call it this, but at the time, I decided that I needed to think of this thing in my brain not so much as a part of myself that I was trying to nurture and love, but as a part I was take- trying to take control over. Mm. I'm very much in favor of being compassionate towards yourself, but I decided this was like a, an inner pig. I should have called it a food monster. I should have called it something different, but I, I called it my inner pig, and I would make lines in the sand that were very clear. Like I will never have chocolate on a weekday and no more than two ounces on the weekend after a good workout. Mm-hmm. And that way, if I hurt... I'm, I'll call it a food monster for the rest of this, this, this video, because I prefer that people call it that these days, but you'll see it in the literature, because I have two million readers and a lot's been written about me. So I said I will never have chocolate again on a weekday. Mm-hmm. That way if I'm in a Starbucks and there's a chocolate bar at the counter and I'm about to check out and I hear that little voice that says, "Oh, Glenn, you've worked out hard enough, a little bit won't hurt," I can say, "Wait a minute, that's not me. That's my inner food monster. It's moaning for monster mush." Mm-hmm. I don't eat monster mush. I don't let monsters, food monsters tell me what to do. Yeah. And it's very primitive, it's very... It's a, in a way, childish thing for a sophisticated psychologist like me to do. Mm. But I think I needed that- Yeah ... because it would wake me up at the moment of impulse and give me those extra microseconds to, to make a different choice. So that's how I got better. I'd make those extra microseconds, and then I would figure out what was wrong with what it was saying. So it says, "One bite won't hurt." And I would say, "Well, one bite is the difference between who's in charge, you versus I. The difference between living , a planned and disciplined life with food versus living a whimsical, emotional, a, impulsive life with food." Mm. And I much prefer around, only around my difficult food decisions to be in charge with my intellect rather than my impulses. Mm. Or it would say, you know, "Glenn, your parents were heavy, so you're doomed." But if you look at the research, it's somewhere around half the variance that's responsible by genetics. The rest is diet and lifestyle. Mm. And even if I have a harder mountain to climb, does that mean I should just lay down and roll down the mountain or do I just, get to walking up it and do the best that I can? So for about eight years, I, kept the journal and I got better. I got better through that process, 'cause all my excuses disappeared. Mm. I'll pause there, and I can tell you the rest of the story where... about how it evolved professionally. Okay, so many questions. First of all, thank you for sharing your story because I really find, people that I bring into my world in any capacity, whether it's the podcast or programs of mine, things like that it's so different when someone's had a lived experience versus just intellectualizing it all, so thank you for sharing that. One question I have for you is, in the beginning when you started, doing this journaling and you were doing this work, when you were then in the moment, like in the store and you wanted to buy the chocolate and it was a weekday and you wouldn't allow yourself, w- how did you create the pause to even be able to access that part of the reasoning, right? 'Cause that's what I see with people, is that we can know all of this, right? Like, we can make lists. Okay, this, this is what I'm telling myself, and on the other side, but this is also what's true, what you're talking about, like the figuring out the other side. But then in the moment, people really struggle. What are some, tools that you use for that? Yeah i'll tell you what I used back then, and then I'll explain what we learned after working with thousands of clients later on. 'Cause the way that I got better and the way that I eventually learned how to take care of people is a little bit different. Okay. So the first thing is that you have to be aware- That a pause is even required. Yeah. Because what I like to tell p- people is I think our brains are set up to automate food acquisition. Mm. You know? Because food was scarce, we had to just scarf it down or grab it when it was available before a competitor got us. So our brains don't really want us thinking. They wanna take us out of that stimulus response loop. So you have to recognize that it's not natural. It's healthy, but it's not natural. We have to do something unnatural in order to create that pause. The first thing was to make sure that the rules that I set up were really crystal clear, and that I was reading them out loud every day so I had a high valence. Notice that I didn't say, "I'm just gonna have chocolate about 10% of the time." Yeah. "90% of the time I'm not gonna have it." Yeah. Why, why not? Well, because that doesn't give me any guidance for when to have it and when not to. I don't know which is the 10% of the time and which is the 90% of the time, which leaves me constantly making food decisions. Maybe it's a good idea now, maybe this is the 10% of the time, I don't know. And decisions wear down your willpower. There's a bunch of research on that. It's not 100% conclusive, but it's pretty strong. And So I would use what we call an operational definition when I would create a rule. I would say, "I wanna define my rule. I wanna define the healthy behavior," which in this case would be avoiding chocolate during the week. I wanna define that in such a way that if 10 people followed me around all month, they could, agree on exactly how well I did. They'd know whether I followed my rule or not. Mm-hmm. Um, that's called an operational definition in the research literature, and it's, it makes it so we're actually measuring something. And I, I think of that like a tripwire alarm, which wakes me up where I wasn't awake before. You can't pause if you don't know that you need to pause. Now, right? Yeah. So- Yeah ... now, the first experience you're gonna have when you do that, and I ask people to start with one simple rule. Don't set the bar too high. Let's just learn how to play the game first. Like- Yeah ... i'll always put my fork down between bites or I don't go back for seconds or- Right, right ... something relatively easy. As opposed to, I'm gonna follow this diet 100% and I'm never gonna have sugar. Some people really can't have sugar, but- Yeah ... but it's sometimes a hard first rule to follow. And then you make sure the tripwire is on so that you know when your inner food monster is waking up. And you can start to say, "Wait a minute. That's not me. That's... Or that's at least not the part of me that I want to be in control. That's my food monster. It wants things that are not necessarily so good for me." Mm. "It thinks there's an emergency." Okay. The next thing you need to do is to disempower the emergency response system, right? You can breathe in for a count of seven and breathe out for a count of 11. I got this from Lori Hammond. Mm-hmm. Called the 7-11 breath. And what happens when you breathe out for longer than you breathe in is you move from your sympathetic nervous system, the emergency response system, to your parasympathetic system, which is the part of your brain that says it's okay to rest and digest and strategize and think. So the sympathetic system says, "There's a hungry tiger chase- chasing us. This is an emergency. We have to act now." The parasympathetic system says, "Chill. It's okay." So you gotta learn to take that breath. Sometimes- Sometimes people can't even do that to start with. Sometimes they just feel like the locomotive is so automatic. When that's the case, I tell people, "Before you eat anything, at every meal, I just want you to take a breath and go one, two, three." You just need to build up that pause muscle so you actually have that space. Now, some people will come back and say, "Okay, Doc, I have that space. Feels good. I still went ahead and had the chocolate bar." A- and I'll say, "Why?" And sometimes they'll say, "I just really, really wanted it, so scr- I, I didn't have any excuses. Just screw it, just do it." Other times they'll have a very specific excuse. They'll say, "Well, I was at dinner and they were serving chocolate cake, and I didn't wanna make people uncomfortable." And I'll say, "Okay, so your food monster said that you can't make people uncomfortable, so you have to break your rule and harm your body in order to make everybody else comfortable." Mm-hmm. And then we can work with that. Then we can say, "Well, you know, do you love these people? Do you care about these people? If you care about these people, do you wanna show them that's, it's possible for someone to opt out and go first?" Mm-hmm. "It's actually possible for someone to hold their own boundaries and kindly and lovingly, you know, eat healthy when everybody else is eating badly." And that's kind of... That works for some people. For other people, it's, um, "Are you okay with harming yourself in order to make other people comfortable? Is that okay?" Mm-hmm. Sometimes a better solution is, well, let's change the rule and make it conditional. Let's say that I don't eat chocolate except in a restaurant when I'm socializing, but no more than, twice a month or something like that, and no more than one serving. Let's put a very specific boundary about it so that you don't have to make decisions at the moment of impulse- Yeah ... so that it's kinda like putting your food monster on a leash as opposed to letting it out of the cage. Mm-hmm. And then you c- you could walk it around the block while it's on a leash. So you can do that. Once you have... Oh, there's one more thing. The other thing that makes it very difficult to pause and generate that awareness between stimulus and response is self-care and self-regulation. Mm-hmm. The more the animal inside of you, we all, we all live astride of this animal body, and the more that animal is nourished and cared for, um, you know, the more that you're eating regular healthy meals, whatever that means to you. But it's the more that you're doing that, the better that you're sleeping, the more water that you're drinking, the more you're having a little bit of contact with your tribe and getting a little bit of sunlight and getting enough sleep and, all the things that are traditionally thought of as self-care and self-regulation become the brain- Mm become the brain. And when you miss out on that, then what you perceive as an impossibility at the moment of impulse is actually a problem that started way before that. Publius Syrus is a Roman slave and philosopher who said that it's easier to cross rivers upstream. A river is easier to cross upstream when it's just a trickle. By the time it's a roaring river, it's really hard to cross. So more often than not, when people have that screw it, just do it experience- Mm ... it's because something upstream has gone wrong. It's not really what's happening in the moment. Mm. So you wanna look at your systems. Am I doing enough food prep? Am I getting enough sleep? Am I getting enough water? Makes a really big difference. It also helps to have rehearsed some Alternative sources of dopamine. Just some al- alternative things that give you pleasure. I like to look at my old hiking pictures. I look at pictures of when my sister's kids were little. I have about 42,537,000 pictures of my dog. And I like to look at those pictures. He's not with us anymore. But they make me happy, and, if I'm feeling overwhelmed by life and the solution seems to be a chocolate bar, then I'd rather look at Zachary or the kids and- Yeah ... or remember, have some of my hiking things. Okay. So it's gonna be easier to find that pause. Once you've found that pause, that moment of pause, sometimes the pause is enough. Sometimes that just kills the urge, but sometimes it doesn't. Then what you wanna do is say, "Okay, why specifically does my food monster want me to break the rules?" 'Cause it's arguing for you to break the rules. And, maybe it's going to say, you start again tomorrow or any of the things that we talked about. And then you take another breath and ask yourself, "What's wrong with what my food monster is saying? How is it lying to me?" And usually if you do that, especially if you do it in writing, the excuse will disappear. Yep. Usually the excuse will disappear, and we can do an example if you want to later. Sure. And then what you want to do is say, "Well, how would staying on my plan and not indulging my food monster's ideas right now, how would that make me feel like a happier or better person?" Mm-hmm. You know, for me, it's that I can be a relatively thin, tall leader in the world. I can be free of cardiovascular worries. I can, you know, have the energy to write my books and do my yoga and, you know, walk on the beach and do all the things that I do. Um, and then you ask yourself, "Do I have any authentic needs that are going unmet? Did I skip a meal? Did I, do I really need to take a break and contact someone? Do I just need a break?" Like I, I remember this doctor who was in the process of trying to sell her business, and she was working 20 hours a day, and she came to me because every day she was running off to, you know, the candy store to... She'd take an hour break, and she'd buy a candy bar, and she would have the candy bar there and then come back. And I said to her, "Well, why can't you just take an hour break? Why do you have to get a candy bar?" And it hadn't occurred to her. Like, her- Right. Like, not allowed unless it's a ca- unless you're going to do that, right? Right. Exactly, yeah. Right. Her food mo- monster had her convinced that the only break was possible was a candy bar. Mm-hmm. So, you know, you can't, um- You, you gotta pay the piper one place or another. Our, our, our bodies need care, our souls need care. And if you're having these repeated moments, um, you know, like conscious, conscious indulgences, uh, where you feel like you're not eating, it's perfect- there's nothing you can't eat. Like, I'm not gonna stop people from eating potato chips or ice cream or anything. But if you're doing it beyond your own best judgment and you're feeling bad about it, and you'd like to get more control, that's what these techniques are for. Yeah. And so, so if you're doing that, there's likely some element of self-care that is missing, and you need to take a breath and back up and look for that, so. Yeah. Yeah. I know one thing that always pops up for people is they feel like, things can be restrictive, "oh, my gosh, I have these rules that I have to live by," right? And I think you've already very nicely made a case for but you're actually thinking through, what would my best loving self do? And, you're saying the other side of it. When you're speaking, it sort of sounds like you're talking about internal family systems, where you have these different parts of yourself, but you're just talking about the food monster. Do those... Does that fit at all with IFS the way, or no? Um- What, what would the difference be? In internal family systems or Gestalt therapy, you're really trying to integrate all the, and love all of those parts of yourself. Right? Yep. This is more like a thing. It's like a physiological organ in your body, and the way it's defined, a monstrum is any thought, feeling, impulse, or image that suggests that you're going to break your most constructive rules, right? Mm-hmm. So it only wants bad things. This doesn't, this is not like your dad who abused you because he wasn't loved and you need to get through to him and, love him back into the circle. This is not like your inner wounded child. As a matter of fact, when people insist on that, the system doesn't work for them. You need this to be something where you're, you have a gut reaction that says, "Oh my God, I don't want this thing in charge." It's like a wild boar that you're letting out of the cage, and it doesn't wanna go back in the cage when you let it out of the cage, and it does all sorts of damage, and it doesn't care about you, and it doesn't care about the people that you love. It wants the cheesecake at all costs. That, that's... It's a game, but that's how you define it. Okay, so I hear what you're saying, but how do we rectify, I'm just trying to, I'm trying to, uh, I'm, um... It's helpful for me to hear all of this. How do we... I mean, I guess there's a part of me that believes that some of this is self-preserving, right? Like, let's say that physician, right? I have several, I have physician patients, and they keep doing the same things that hurt themselves, but in a way they don't know how to stop overworking. They, so they don't have tools for a lot of these things sometimes, and so the food is, a way that they're helping themselves to cope and to soothe, right? So I feel like that part then is helping in a way. So can you just explain how that's not the case? Well, well- Yeah ... yeah. So the chocolate Bosco helped me when I was an infant. Yeah. Right? It did damage also, but it gave me something to do when my mother wasn't available and I would've been too distressed and I would be screaming myself to sleep, right? Mm. I have the utmost compassion for that infant, for infant Glen who went through that. I don't think it's a good idea to continue to repeat the behavior. So- Mm-hmm ... s- here, here's what I, here's the unusual way that I see emotional eating. I'm still a psychologist and I still do traditional therapy, and I have the utmost compassion for people and what they went through. But if you're coming to me for, and I offer my- Training, education, and coaching as that rather than treatment for eating because, specifically because of this reason. Because I think that the beha- behavior has to come first. I think that you should be in therapy working on that alongside of, of changing the behavior. But if the emotions were a fire, this work is the fireplace. Mm. This work isn't the fireman putting out the fire or peering deep into the fire to figure out. This is the fireplace. This is how you quickly build a fireplace around the fire so the ashes can't burn the house down. That's beautiful, what you just said there. So you believe that by us, putting these boundaries in place that you get hold of the behavior and then you're able to work on everything else. Is that right? Yeah. Yeah. I also think, I consistently have the experience that people tell me that once the behavior's in check, the emotions are not quite as frightening. Yeah. So there's research that says that people that are overeating sugar and flour are about 22% more likely to have depression and anxiety. Mm. Now, you could say, "Well, maybe the depression and the anxiety are causing them to overeat," but you could also say that the sugar and the flour- Yeah ... is physiologically disrupting their system and making it harder for their system to generate life energy and conduct the emotions and help them accomplish their goals. Take anxiety. A lot of people tell me they can't go to sleep without a big plate of carbs 'cause they feel anxious. Mm-hmm. Well, I know of some animal studies. I don't know of human studies. I know of animal studies where- the manifestations of anxiety, there are a lot of physical manifestations. Galvanic skin response, perspiration, respiration, a little bit of sweating, pupillary dilation, b- blood pressure. I know of some animal studies where they look for that, and then they give the animal a piece of sugar. This is done with orangutans, for example. And what they find is that all of those physiological responses, they go down for a minute when they have the sugar, but as a whole, they're higher than the control. So our experience is that the sugar quells the anxiety, but what if the sugar is reinforcing the anxiety? What if it's training your body to produce those symptoms that led to the acquisition of calories? It would make sense that our bodies would be finely attuned to acquiring calories from a scarce food environment. So I think that's part of it. So I think it's a two-way relationship. I don't think it's as simple as you're looking at. And I find that, this is the last piece of this, it can take five to 10 years of psychotherapy, with all due respect to all the newest therapies and tapping and everything like that. I think it can take five to 10 years of therapy with a good, solid therapist to really work through your depression, anxiety, and, rage and worse. Mm-hmm. And these on the other hand are very practical techniques that can have you eating better a month from now. Yeah. I'm not recommending... This is not invasive. There's no medication. There's no cutting. There's no surgery. There are no pills or potions or powders. I'm just recommending a different way of thinking and behaving, that can give you control. Why not do this alongside of your efforts in psychotherapy? Why not do this alongside the GLP-1s or the psychiatric medication or- Complet- completely. What's interesting is, and that's why I like that in the past you did OA and all these things, it's everybody's philosophy's a little different, and sometimes I find that, you've never heard this approach, but this approach would work for you. And it's... What I really like about here with us having this conversation is that this might really resonate with someone, right? And then they've got a chance at something that before maybe they kept failing, and they feel really bad about that. Have we gone through all of what your philosophy is, or is there, other things that we haven't touched on for kind of how you would approach, urges and cravings, binge eating disorder, things like that? So the other thing I like to educate people about, and then I know you wanted to ask a question or two about the corporate consulting. Yes. I'd like people to understand what a craving actually is and how it's extinguished, 'cause there's an awful lot of research on this, and people don't understand it. Cravings we've talked about are a sign of a healthy mind being, perverted in a sick society., If you think about a cave person, let's call him Thag, T-H-A-G, 'cause I like the name. Let's say that he comes across a monkey that leads him to a banana tree. Mm-hmm. I'm gonna call the monkey the food stimulus. You would call it a trigger. I don't like that word, 'cause it takes the person out of the, equation. I would call it a food stimulus, and the banana tree is the reward, or the bananas and the banana tree is reward. When Thag follows the monkey to the banana tree, Thag's brain learns something. It says, "Oh, monkeys make it easier to find food. You better follow the monkey." Thag's brain secretes a lot of dopamine the next time it sees a monkey, and if Thag doesn't follow that monkey, Thag's brain drops the dopamine below normal to make him miserable. Thag learns very quickly that he's gotta follow monkeys, and he gets really happy when he follows the monkey to the food. Mm-hmm. Now, let's say it's later in the season and Thag's been following monkeys and feeding his family and, Thag's a happy caveman. Mm-hmm. And later in the season, one day he follows a monkey to a banana tree and there are no bananas. The other monkeys got there first. Maybe they dried up Most people think at that point Thag's brain will start letting go of the craving, 'cause it's not efficient to keep wasting energy on something that is not producing a reward. Mm-hmm. However, it turns out that in a scarce food environment, it's more effective and efficient to have a monkey that leads to a banana tree 80% of the time or half the time or even 20% of the time, as opposed to the default, which might be 5% of the time. Mm-hmm. So what Thag's brain actually does when the monkey doesn't lead to the banana tree is there's a little bit of a, there's a little bit of a drop in the craving, but then it says, "Okay, we really gotta make sure that monkeys don't work anymore." So it generates a worse craving than he's ever had before. This ca- this is called an extinction burst. Mm-hmm. In the behavioral literature, you'll find it's somewhere between 4 to 10 exposures. 4 to 10 monkeys, 4 to 10 days if you're talking about a craving in the modern world. Mm-hmm. If Thag finds bananas, then the brain says, "Aha, I was right. Let's keep craving bananas when we see monkeys." However, if there are no bananas, Thag's brain begins to say, "Okay, this is a waste of energy, so now I'm gonna start to let go." You have to get th- through those couple of days of really bad cravings. Now I'm gonna start to let go. And then somewhere around the 21 to 30-day mark, there are a couple of little more bursts. They're nowhere near as bad as they were. And then the brain will label monkeys as a dormant cue. It will know what... That doesn't mean that the memory is erased, right? Yeah. It's labeled dormant so it doesn't bother you and you don't waste energy chasing monkeys. Let's bring this to the modern world and talk about how people get in trouble. Let's say I've got a donut problem, which I used to have, on the way home from work, and I stop in the store and I eat four donuts and I'm developing a little paunch and I wanna stop. So I make myself a rule that says I never eat donuts on the way home from work. First couple of days I'm okay, and then I pass a donuts store sign and it's like, "Oh my God, this is awful." Well, my food monster will jump on that and say, "This is too torturous. It's gonna be like this forever." The food monster wants you to believe that it is gonna be like this forever, when in fact, it's gonna be just for a couple of days, and then you're gonna start losing the desire for it. If I listen to the food monster and I stop at the donut store, I have reinforced the food monster at random. It's called variable ratio reinforcement. It's the most powerful reinforcement schedule in the literature. And I taught my brain that it was right to generate those cravings. My cravings are gonna get worse. And you snowball because you've taught the brain to generate cravings. If I say, "I don't have to do anything. Maybe I need to get a little more sleep or a little more water, or look at pictures of my dog, or go hug my kids, or go to a stand-up comedy show or something," that's one of my tricks. I like, I like going to see... Uh, a- and if I do that and I get through that, then I start to lose my cravings for donuts, maybe a couple little cravings. A month later, I can't even really remember what it was like to feel so tortured by cravings. Yeah. The other place people make a mistake is that towards the end when the craving's being labeled as dormant, they think, "I got this. This was never really a problem." That's what I was gonna ask about, because I do see people get control, and then they're like, "How did this just suddenly explode again?" Yep. So yeah, t- tell, tell us the dormant getting reactivated phase. Well, that's what happens. Y- because your brain thinks that the donuts are keeping you alive. The brain thinks that binge eating is keeping you alive. It's a survival response. And so it's... y- you really have to methodically teach it that's not the case. Mm-hmm. That's why you also want to switch to healthier fantasies. Like, when you're passing the donut store, I should be thinking about stopping to get some herbal tea or maybe some vegetable juice or something that really nourishes my body. 'Cause it won't feel right. Every bone in my body will be screaming for the donut, but the moment I have that green juice, I'm gonna feel like, oh, okay. It kinda scratches the itch. It doesn't get you high the way the donut does, but it kinda scratches the itch. So you don't wanna get cocky at the end. You don't wanna get overly intimidated at the beginning. There's one other place that people really trip up. Cravings come in stimulus response pairs. So the donut store is a very specific cue. Passing the big sign on the way home from work, that, that's a very specific food cue. And I used to, pull in and go to the back of the parking lot and, get my donut. And before I know it, there were crumbs rolling down my face, and I said, "How did I do this to myself?" Mm-hmm. So it might be that after a month or two that I feel no cravings for donuts whatsoever because I haven't encountered any other food stimuli. But then my dad invites him over, me over for poker, and there's a big box of donuts, and he got my favorite type, and I have a worse craving than I've had for the longest time. Did I fail to extinguish donuts? No, you can't extinguish donuts by themselves. You can only extinguish the cue. So I successfully extinguished the donut store. I did not extinguish my dad's place. Mm-hmm. And so you'd have to go through an extinction curve for your dad's place as well. Yeah. So as a practical matter, when you want to extinguish a difficult food craving, you make a list of all the different stimuli and what you're going to do when you get there. Because it would take a good, 21 to 30 exposures to my dad's place for poker to really extinguish that, I can expect to have the craving when I go there. So I know that I'm gonna need more support for a while 'cause it's an infrequent stimulus. So it's not 21 to 30 days, it's 21 to 30 exposures. I was just gonna ask you about that because I know in the past I've heard some people say 20 times, and that's what I see once people can get past that. That's a really hard amount if it's not a daily thing that's occurring. Yeah, yeah. I think this is helpful for people to hear because I, again, we're all so hard on ourselves and it's like, but if you're put into that scenario only twice a year, it might be years, until you're feeling differently with that. So you wanna recognize it as a vulnerability, and it's very solvable. You recognize it, it's a vu- Let's say I always screw up at Thanksgiving, which I used to do. My, my sister would make these delicious apple pies, and I could eat like six of them and "Thank you very much. What are the rest of you gonna have?" What I can do is I can think about the kind of support I need. So let's say for the three days before Thanksgiving, I schedule an email for myself to arrive, and I say, "Okay, Glenn, you're gonna need to make your own dessert and take it to Thanksgiving. You know? It's okay, you could have some apples, maybe even some dried apples and, some, special kind of tofu." And there, there are things that are not quite as delicious as apple pies, but at least you can have something and it's okay. And here are the refutations. Here are all the reasons. Here's why your food master's gonna say that it's okay to do it. Here's why your food master is wrong. I want you to read this over every day before you go there. Here are the friends that you wanna call. You've called them ahead and told them you might wanna talk to them beforehand. Here is the special yoga class you can go to on Thanksgiving morning. Here is the food that you're going to leave set up for yourself when you get home in Tupperware so that even when you do survive it, you don't, blow up at the end of the day, which is a really common thing. Yeah. So you recognize it as a clear vulnerability, you baby yourself about it, you set up a lot of support, and you get through it. Yeah. And then eventually you get through those 20 exposures, but it takes a while. Yeah. It sounds so intensive what you're saying, right? I recommend all the same thing to my people and it's like, "Oh, my gosh, I need to think through this and that." It's like, yeah, but we want a different response, right? So we have to change things. W- What characteristic do you see in people where they are the most successful? Like, they can start this, they can tackle it, it doesn't matter how significant it was coming into you. Is there something where you're like, oh, always when they do this or that, or a certain personality thing where you see that they're more successful? It's the people who don't hide. The people. I can deal with any mistake, I can deal with any level of shame or discomfort, but when the people hide and they disappear for two months, it's... I'm like, "Uh-oh." And it doesn't help for me to call them. I have to wait until they get to me. I love that you bring this up. I call it going dark, right? So it's like- Yeah ... you just drop off the earth, and it's like that's when you needed the help the most. But like you said, shame or whatever's going on. And I see the same thing. If people are just willing to keep showing up, we'll always figure it out, 'cause there's always a reason why things are happening. What do you see be the most common, environmental or family, or what things are going on when people... Let's say they got control of things, but then it again, gets out of control. Are there certain things you're like, "I really see a lot of this always be the problem"? Yeah. Vacations, family events, spontaneous work meetings. And it's not so much what happens there in and of itself, although that is a problem. It's not having a plan for it, and it's, feeling embarrassed about what happened and letting your food monster tell you that this means that it's impossible, right? Mm-hmm. After people make a mistake, and everybody makes a mistake at some point, including me. I've never been perfect. I, I, I n- they n- they never get carried away. I never... I don't hate myself anymore, I don't feel like I'm out of control or powerless, but I've made mistakes. When you do make a mistake, the food monster sees that as its opportunity, and it will try to attribute the mistake to something in your character. "See? You're broken. You don't have this. You can't do this. You always start a program, and then you fail, and you always start and you fail, and you couldn't, so you can't." As opposed to what human learning is really about, which is that you can't until you can, every success involves repeated failures with almost everything that's worthwhile. It's the interpretation of the mistake. Yeah. When you let your Food Monster interpret it as a permanent part of your character as opposed to a situational problem that can be solved for with your system. Mm-hmm. I like to use the analogy of hiring a personal trainer. Let's say you hire a personal trainer and you go to the gym, and they teach you how to do squats. And at first, you're just holding the bar. There's not really any weight on the bar, and then there's a little bit of weight on the bar. But you really focus on the form, and you're doing great, and you're feeling better, and the blood is moving, and you get a regular routine going. But then the personal trainer says, "Okay, I'm gonna load some weight on the bar," and they load a little too much on the bar, and you fail. You just can't do it, and maybe you hurt your back a little or something. Well, your Food Monster would say, "You can't do this. You should not be doing squats," as opposed to you saying, "No, I had the right form. I'd perfected it at a certain level, and the problem is that I jumped to too high a level too quickly. So I'm gonna go all the way back down to where I need to go to, and I'm gonna jump up a little bit more slowly and more gradually progress. And this was a temporary environmental situation, and I actually am encouraged that I got to figure out where the limit is, and now I know I can't do that again." Yeah. So that that's the biggest deal. It's how you interpret the mistake as internal or external. Yeah. It's a, it's like a very rational approach, but like you were saying, that I think that takes people a long time to be able to get there in many scenarios. Well, because there's a libidinal motivation. Bec- because, slop tastes good. Mm-hmm. Because there's a gratification involved. And if you believe that you're out of control and incapable of doing this, then you might as well just eat the chocolate and the, and the- Yeah ... and the cheesecake, right? Yeah, yeah. And chocolate and chase- cheesecake is yummy- Yeah so we're always fighting that. I... This a little bit off topic, but I just wanted to go there so I don't forget. I know you said it was a long time ago, but what does it look like when, a psychologist comes in and helps, big food? Like, what, what are they, trying to do when they're there? I was on the wrong side of the war. I really was. I was a hidden persuader. I specialized in doing observational studies that could statistically attribute psychological motivation to purchase. I could actually measure what the emotional appeal was of a particular spokesperson or brand message or advertisement. I could make sure it was consistent with where they identified the target, and I could tell them what targets were most likely to create purchase motivation. And you think that advertising doesn't affect you, but it affects you more when you think that 'cause your defenses are down. And we psychologists, we know what we're doing. I was on the wrong side of the war. I'm trying to make up for it now, but yeah. Anyone who doesn't think advertising affects them, I don't know those people. I think it's highly influential. Hearing you say that, gosh, it just really shows you how, yeah it's not on accident that you keep going back to the things yeah. And I do think it really... I always say it's like when you have these foods, it's like Fourth of July in the brain, we were never meant to take that on as a physiologic response. So it's almost unreasonable to think that when you have those foods and all that's going on with chemicals and everything in your body that you're like, "Yep, and then I stop." Well, yeah. And you're good. You know? Like, like, like the idea that you can mindfully eat a bag of potato chips, it never really made sense to me. I always say to people, there's no off switch with ultra-processed food. You might eat a cookie and decide, "Okay, that's the end." Like you're saying. You know, like, that's my line. That's my limit. Okay, we know we're gonna want more, and we don't do it. But yeah, it's really hard with these ultra-processed foods. If someone was listening, and, they've been having a hard time with all this, and they're listening to this episode, they're like, "Gosh, this sounds great. Okay, I'm gonna go do this," what would be, either a word of encouragement or the first starting place where it's like this is usually where you see someone start or what they do or the- Yeah ... mindset to be most successful or word of encouragement? Yeah. And I'll tell you also the book is free. I'll tell you where to get it at the end. Yeah. I tell people to start with one simple rule. Something that they could and would do which would make a difference and reassure you that you're on the right track, but it doesn't feel too onerous or difficult to do. Because you're excited about this now, you just listened to this interview, you know what's possible. But you're gonna wake up in a few days without your mojo and you're not gonna wanna do it. Find something you can do even when you don't have your mojo. I knew a trucker who said, "I'll tell you what, doc, I have to eat fast food three times a day, but I won't go back for seconds." Mm. And from there he started to say, "Wow, I'm really doing this. Maybe I'm someone who cares about myself. What else would someone who cares about themselves do?" Your identity function kicks in and you keep going. Mm-hmm. So one, one simple rule is the best place to start. And then watch for your inner food monster to tell you how it wants you to break it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, that's my best easy advice. Oh, beautiful. I could probably talk to you for hours and it's fascinating what you're saying and the approach that you take, and I know everyone listening will have learned so much. So can you tell us where can they find the book, where can they find you more? All at the same place. Defeatyourcravings.com. The good name. Defeatyourcravings.com. Thank you. C- click the big blue button, sign up for the reader bonus list. You'll get a free copy of the book in Kindle, Nook, or PDF format. You will get, a set of recorded coaching sessions so you can hear how this works in practice. This is all free. And I have food plan starter templates. This is a diet-agnostic program. You can do it on any reasonable, nutritious diet. You can't do it if you wanna eat marshmallows all day. I'm sorry. I can't help you if that's what you wanna do. But if you're willing to eat reasonably nutritiously, you don't have to give up anything, I'm not gonna tell you what to eat, then we have starter templates for you to see the kind of rules people are using successfully. It's all at defeatyourcravings.com.. Thank you so much for coming on today. Really giving people a lot to work with and probably hope, honestly. Thank you dearly for having me on, and I'm happy to come on anytime you want to talk about whatever you want to. So thank you so much.