What to do when you have no motivation

Transcript

Chef AJ:
And what Susanna says, I've had good success with AJ's program and I'm down 30 pounds with 30 to go. Unfortunately, I’m completely off the rails at the moment and I'm having a hard time finding the motivation to eat right and take care of my health. Why do I just not care sometimes? How can I get myself out of the pleasure trap and rekindle this flame?

And I think, I think anybody that has ever struggled in any way with either food addiction or weight or both can relate to this question, at least at some point in their life. So you certainly don't have to feel alone in that. And I’m gonna weigh in with my 2 cents and this might not pertain to you. But one of the things I think happens is, excuse my language, you get a case of the fuck-its and I think that the pleasure trap in some people messes with your brain so much that — I think the pleasure trap can cause us to lose all motivation.

I really do because part of it is those chemicals that we get when we get into these pleasure trappy foods, the fat, the sugar and the salt, they do affect our brain chemistry. And the reason I say that is because I'm right off the heels of a 90-minute interview I did with a lady that some people consider the world's leading expert in food addiction, Joan Ifland. And basically that's what her whole talk was about is how these foods affect the brain. So I think that for some people, the food can be doing that to you.

You guys, hopefully by now, are at least somewhat familiar with the concept of the ego trap. If not, I think it's really important. And even if you are familiar, I would even suggest you re-listen to episode 161 of Beat Your Genes podcast and anybody in the chat that can maybe could post that because this dance that people do with the ego trap and the pleasure trap is difficult because the diet that will get you out of the pleasure trap can put some people in the ego trap and that's the thing.

And so in other words, what's the answer? You gotta eat clean enough and that's gonna be different from different people. And this is why I think it's so difficult because like when people go to a weighing and measuring program, which I get, I always see them at some point, like at some point the weighing and measuring program, it stops working, because of course it's gonna stop working cuz you can't live on that little food.

You know, if you think about all the weighing and measuring programs out there, at least almost all of them, they give the same amount of food to everybody. Whether you're, you know, a four — I remember gotten two clients on the same day from the exact same weighing and measuring program. One was a girl who was 4’11” and one was a volleyball player. She was 6’4”. They were given the exact same food plan. Now irrespective of weight, how can that be possible? That two people that are a foot and a half difference in height be given the exact same amount of food.

But anyway, what was my point? I was trying to make the… those programs ultimately will fail for most people because you can't do it consistently. But what we're learning now is that restricting food causes you to seek more food. It makes sense from an evolutionary perspective. And that's why, you know, people gorged and feasted, but what they were feasting on when they feasted was whole natural food, which is a lot different than the pleasure trap food that people are getting to today.

But what Dr Ifland was saying yesterday is that restriction wakes up that food-seeking part of the brain. And that's why… has anybody ever met anybody that struggled with bulimia or binge eating that had never, ever dieted a day in their life? No. And I know that from Dr. Sean Geisinger, who I interviewed today, the anorexia expert, binging is the treatment of anorexia. When you think about it, you're starving. And so while people are gonna be different, people are gonna vary in the response to how susceptible they are to these pleasure trap foods.

And one of the things I really am excited about with, at this summit that I hope you guys will learn. And, and we can ask Dr Lisle to address that as well, is that — have you ever heard him or Justina Froese who's been on our program twice, talk about how 80% of weight is heritable. 80% of weight is heritable. So that means 80%, whatever you weigh right now, 80% of it's not your fault. You're gonna weigh that no matter what. And if we took every single person on this broadcast and locked us all up in a suite at True North and fed us the exact same food for 60, 90 days, even a year, guess what? Some people are gonna be thinner and some people are gonna be heavier. That's called genetics. And if you are heavier than you want to be, you're probably not gonna be a size zero.

And one of the things Dr Geisinger talked about is that only 5% of the population is truly model thin without doing anything about it. So in other words, we have these unrealistic expectations of body types, and that's why you have to understand… and I've said this before, and maybe you haven't heard me say it, but I've always talked about your lowest attainable weight versus your lowest sustainable weight. And I think what happens is maybe it's not so much for men, but women have a tendency to wanna be thinner than what their biology would allow. Justina Froese is very good at explaining this concept.

And so one of the things I suggest to people like Susanna right now that are kind of stuck in the pleasure trap, and I've always said this to people, you wanna eat clean enough that your arteries are clean and then your weight is another matter. But see, I look at it now more from a health standpoint than a weight standpoint. And I do believe that when people eat the foods that get them healthy, their weight is not as much of an issue.