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Henry: Hello, I'm Henry Emmons and welcome to Joy Lab.
Aimee: And I am Aimee Prasek. So here at Joy Lab, we infuse science with soul to help you build your resilience and uncover your joy. We are talking about what I think is a very timely topic: food. Specifically, eating in such a way that nourishes your body and your mind, your soul. So some of us might be coming off of maybe a not so successful swing at a diet, um, resolution.
Perhaps. This is February. We're just coming off of January resolutions maybe. And as we learned in that episode, where we discussed resolutions, I'll link to it in the show notes, that's just one temporal milestone that we might use to sort of launch a new change or a goal. There's many others.
And diet usually comes in on those, who hasn't set out to stick to a new diet on a Monday or a first of the month? Most diets are focused on restriction. Don't eat this. Don't eat that food group. Don't eat this ingredient. They can be really hard to stick to. So we wanna talk about an approach that might be better for many of us. So Henry, this is something that you've really been working on for decades with folks, and that's the strategy again, of instead of focusing on what not to eat, focusing on foods to add to our diet, to support our mental health and really our overall wellbeing.
So do you wanna kind of explain more about that approach that you've worked with with your clients and patients?
Henry: Sure. So, might be helpful to say a little bit about how I kind of developed my thinking. What sort of foundations I have used to help think through nutrition.
I, read a lot about different nutritional science and the biochemistry of it. But also I have really explored a lot of diets, personally. I've tried a lot of 'em. Many what we might think of as fad diets.
But really the foundations, I think for me, a lot of my thinking was really influenced by my study of Ayurveda, which is, probably something a lot of folks aren't that familiar with. But what I really like about Ayurvedic philosophy and approaches to health is that it recognizes that we are not all built the same. And so, it doesn't make sense really to say that one diet is right for everybody.
We just have such different dietary needs depending on how we're wired, you know, kind of how our brains work, maybe where we're living and so forth. The other thing that I'm always informed by thinking about history and evolution and just how we have evolved and what our ancestors did differently than us that, you know, what worked, what didn't work. And so one of the things I really believe in is that even though we seem to have so much food available to us today, relative to centuries ago, we actually eat relatively few kinds of foods. We have a limited repertoire that we choose from. And, you know, most of us, myself included, I fall into this too. We eat the same no matter what time of year it is. And again, that's not really how we evolved. Our ancestors didn't have the same fresh foods available all the time.
Now, I am not suggesting, believe me, that we go back to having to get through the winter with just just whatever you pickled and stored in your basement. But I am saying that I, I think it's, it really makes sense for us to think about getting our nutritional needs met from a wider variety of foods. And then doing what our bodies evolved to do, which is not to overdo any one food category, you know, but to, to really spread it out. So I think a really good example of that is the, so many people now probably are gluten sensitive or wheat sensitive. It's not the same thing as having celiac disease, by the way, but, you know, just eating something that your body does seem to react poorly to.
And I think it has a lot to do with just the fact that most of us, for much of our lives have eaten, bread or bread type products every day, probably multiple times a day for most of our lives. And it may be that we're not meant to do that, that you know, we're meant to take breaks from things or at least not eat them in such high quantities.
Aimee: Yeah, I think what we're talking about too is this shift of approaching food with an invitation of what to eat cause if you're finding things that don't work well for you and you're not also encouraging foods to explore and to add more of, you're kind of left with not a whole lot. Um, the other thing to think about is I think it's such a mirage, back to what you were saying, Henry of it almost feels like we have so many different types of food, but it's like all the 45 variations of Oreo or Cheetos flavors are like the same ingredients. There's nothing different in the nutritional profile.
So we have just all these different corn and soy-based and wheat-based foods with different artificial flavors. It's kind of tricks us. I wanna introduce a classic study that I think can highlight what we're talking about here.
And this is coming from. Dr. Peter Herman and Dr. Janet Polivy. And they introduced a lot of work on something called restraint eating. So really just restricting foods, dieting, traditional diet culture, and how it can really backfire. So there's this classic study, or it was a series of studies, they did with folks. And they repeatedly found that people on diets respond to foods differently compared to those who are not on a diet.
So, for example, in one of their studies, participants were given a cup of pudding before they were asked to taste and rate some sandwiches. So in one round, the participants were told that they were eating an indulgent pudding and it had 600 calories in it. Or they were given a diet pudding that had 300 calories in it.
Okay. And then in the next round, the researchers switched the participant bowls of pudding, but they lied about calorie counts. So this is a sneaky little way to help determine if those calories or the nutrients were influencing sort of these later eating patterns. Okay. Now let's guess, so based on our own past experiences, I'm sure here, how do you think the dieters behaved after eating the diet pudding?
Or the falsely labeled diet pudding. Right? Did they eat less of the sandwich or more of the sandwich compared to people who were not on a diet? What do you think? Henry?
Henry: I'm gonna guess they ate more.
Aimee: They ate less!
Henry: What?!
I would've thought that if it were me, I'd think, oh, okay. I can indulge a little more in the sandwich. 'cause I had a diet pudding.
Aimee: Ah, okay. Now, if those dieters ate the if indulgent pudding, so a dieter gets the indulgent pudding, or they were told it was the indulgent pudding, the sign said it was, but they were being lied to. Now, did they eat more or less of the sandwich compared to the non dieters?
Henry: Well. They ate, they ate more.
no. no. The the, the dieters ate less compared to the non dieters.
Aimee: No.
Henry: Gimme clue. It's one or the other.
Aimee: Yeah, it's a 50 50. You got 'em both wrong Henry. know. This is so interesting. Okay, let's explain this. So, those who are on the diet, when they received the diet pudding, they ate less of the sandwich. When those on the diet received the indulgent pudding, they ate more of the sandwich. So Herman and Polivy identified this as what's called counter regulatory behavior and some other academicy jargon around dietary restraint theories and stuff.
But they used a much better phrase in some of their writing that describes this effect, and they called it the "what the hell" effect.
So the idea is it's like this cycle of indulgence followed by regret or shame, frustration, and then it's sort of, well, what the hell? So then you indulge more. And then it's regret and shame, and you can see the cycle. So, I think that's a big reason why this approach can be so helpful for those of us who maybe fall into that, what the hell effect, right? It's not for everyone. Some folks like a little bit more sort of parameters, but there are a lot of us, that can fall into this effect. And it's actually what fuels a lot of diet culture.
So instead, by focusing on what to eat, you can kind of avoid those, what the hell effects? It would be more of what you described Henry. Oh, well, you know, this pudding was kind of lighter or what have you. And, uh, you know, I've got some space. It's, it's more flexible. It's more inclusive.
Henry: Well, I wonder if you thought you were eating something indulgent, would you actually feel full faster? Even if it's not true that you ate all those calories, but you think it's true, if you really were just listening to your body and saying, I'm just gonna stop eating when I feel like I've had enough, would you think that you had enough, sooner just because of what you thought about it? In other words, how much does our just our thinking influence something like satiety and you know, having the sense that, okay, I've had enough, I'm ready to stop now.
Aimee: Yeah, there's a, actually a great study, another classic study, um, from Dr. Alia Crum. Where really that's what the question was, sort of this mind over milkshake where folks were told they were either having an indulgent shake or a sensible shake.
And it certainly was mind over milkshake.
The nutrient profiles were not impacting later eating behaviors as much as what the milkshake was marketed as. So they did the same thing. They gave people indulgent milkshakes, like a really rich, high milkshake, and they called it a sensible shake. And when people drank that sensible shake, they ate more after.
So, you know, it's, it's really interesting to see how what we're marketed, what we're told is something, how that can overshadow what might be an inner awareness of satiety.
Henry: Well, I think that, because in my work I have not worked with people for the purpose of losing weight. You know, I'm not a, a weight loss specialist or anything. I haven't tried to target that with talking with people about food. What I am more interested in, in my work with patients is how do we get their brain working better?
You know, how can we get them feeling better, their mood, their memory, reducing anxiety helping to limit the effects of the stress reaction. And what are the things that have a positive impact on that. So we don't just get caught up in restricting or avoiding or dieting or what have you.
But we are really thinking about what can be added here that might really help this person to feel better for one reason or another. Along those lines, I'm very tuned into what is happening with brain chemistry? With, neurotransmitter levels? And what kind of nutrients are going to have the most positive impact on that? And for that, I am more interested in what to add rather than what to take away. And so one of the things I'm just keenly aware of is that unless we're really intentional about it, many of us are not getting all the nutrients, the micronutrients that we need through our diets. Not through the standard American diet. It's so easy to get depleted of one thing or another, either because of how the food has grown or because we are limiting ourselves to just a few different food choices, or we're not getting things fresh enough, or they weren't raised in a nutrient rich environment. You know, there's lots of things that can and do go wrong with our food system.
So what do we, what can we do to really ensure that we're getting the things our brain needs to be able to make the right mix of, of neurotransmitters to help this person feel better.
Aimee: Well, I think what you're proposing too, what we're talking about here, of, of adding more so supporting brain chemistry and having a more empowered approach to eating- what can I add to promote my wellbeing? That approach that supports mental health, it just can't help but support total wellbeing.
So if weight loss is a goal for folks, that is a really great route to focus more primarily on, this more empowering, you're standing in your power. I'm going to choose foods that nourish me. And that is that great spark to create an upward spiral like we talk about here.
It's also in something called self-determination theory. So this idea that you continue to fuel your agency, your confidence, um, your belief that your actions are gonna be supporting your outcomes. So, I think this is a really effective way to eat, um, no matter what your goals are.
And we have some great food lists as part of our resilience type mini courses, uh, totally free. So you can take the quiz at NaturalMentalHealth.com. You can sign up for the free course, and then you'll find some food lists of what to add. And we also have our resilient diet at Natural Mental Health that focuses on foods to include and some that you might also wanna steer away from, like we were talking about initially.
You know, our food scape is kind of, um, there's some things that maybe don't belong in the category of food. That have found their way in. And maybe those are things that are not helpful. Um, and avoiding that can seem contradictory I know as we're talking about what to add. But I think that's also the beauty of this more flexible approach, right?
We can put up some parameters, some guideposts, and that can be helpful. It can be more helpful for some of us. But, or and the focus can be more so on what to eat, so that that becomes the metric of success, um, rather I didn't eat. So your metric of successes is eating more foods that fuel you.
Henry, is there anything else you wanna share?
Henry: You know, I, I think it might be helpful to just kinda list the things that are related to diet that I think really have a direct bearing on mood and anxiety. And there's, there's just a handful of them. They're really big topics that we're gonna have to dive into in future episodes, but they're really important.
One of 'em is what we have tried to at least touch upon today and that is the mix of micronutrients that your brain needs to be able to do its job and produce the right balance of brain chemicals. And so the micronutrients are all those good B vitamins and minerals and the amino acids that get turned into the right chemical through all these great complex and beautiful processes.
So one is micronutrient. The second thing is eating in a way that minimizes inflammation. So inflammation affects the brain directly and there are ways we can choose to eat, food groups we can add, and others we can minimize that really have a direct bearing on inflammation. Third thing is eating in such a way that you stabilize your blood sugar. That you're really, um, keeping blood sugar as steady and even as possible. And again, there's foods you can choose that are positive for that. Things that have fiber, things that, have more protein in them that help to stabilize that whole process of how we deal, how our bodies deal with sugar. And then, I think that a fourth category, which is, uh, maybe not as quite as obvious, but it's, it's eating in a way that helps to minimize the damage that the stress hormones and the stress response is doing to our body. Kind of protective foods. And I think maybe we could dive into each of those in a deeper way in future episodes.
But it's a, it's a way that I think through, um, diet when I'm meeting with somebody and it, it helps me to understand where's the money in this particular situation? Where are we most likely to get benefit by focusing on this or that kind of food.
Aimee: Yeah, we covered a few of these in the podcourse series. So, I will link to the nutrition lessons that can be helpful there. So, and then, yeah, we'll get into more of these episodes. Uh, so to close our time today, I just have some very simple wisdom from journalist, author, Michael Pol lan I love this practical approach. Here it is, "Eat food, not too much, mostly plants."
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