Episode 22: Avoiding Self Coercion Through Intuitive Eating

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Unofficial, reviewed transcript. It may still contain mistakes; check the podcast when wording matters.

Speakers are labeled by first name where identified. Unidentified-speaker labels may refer to different people. Bracketed question marks indicate uncertain wording.

Transcript

[00:00:11]  Bruce: All right, welcome to The Theory of Anything podcast. I'm Bruce Nielson. Cameo, how are you doing?

[00:00:17]  Cameo: I'm doing great, Bruce. I'm Cameo Duran.

[00:00:20]  Bruce: And we have with us today Julene Nielson, who's my wife.

[00:00:24]  Unidentified speaker(s): Hello. Hello, welcome.

[00:00:27]  Julene: Thank you.

[00:00:29]  Bruce: So it's interesting how we came up with the subject for this episode. As people who listen to the podcast know, I'm into Karl Popper and also David Deutsch. I particularly love David Deutsch's four strands, which are what he says the four main theories of science are: many-worlds quantum physics, Karl Popper's theory of knowledge, computational theory, and biological evolutionary theory. He has this thing that he talks about sometimes called the fun criteria. I never really understood what it was, and I wasn't very interested in it. I'm not going to try to explain it in depth because, honestly, I'm still not sure I understand it. But it's this idea that there's explicit and inexplicit ideas in your mind, and that when you're having fun, that's a sign that the different ideas are not in conflict, because good ideas shouldn't be in conflict with other good ideas. Therefore, fun is an epistemological criterion in David Deutsch's mind. I've struggled with that for a number of reasons, to make sense of it. But my wife happened to be looking at a program totally unrelated to any of this. It was called intuitive eating, and there was a book that she was reading on it.

[00:01:58]  Julene: The book is called Intuitive Eating: A Revolutionary Approach That Works, by Evelyn Tribole and Elyse Resch.

[00:02:06]  Bruce: She started to describe it to me, and I suddenly realized, wow, this is exactly what David Deutsch was talking about with the fun criteria. This is a very strong example that really helped me understand: okay, now I think I get what he was talking about. So I wanted to invite my wife on the show to talk about this, because I just thought it was really interesting. So intuitive eating is a program, something that has to do with eating. My first impression is, oh, it's some sort of diet. But how is it similar to or different from a diet?

[00:02:42]  Julene: They don't have the same goal. In dieting, the goal is to lose a certain amount of weight in a certain amount of time. But with intuitive eating, they're trying to solve your food issues once and for all, so you eat less naturally, and thus you don't gain as much weight. It probably means that you'll lose weight if you start doing this, but you might not. If you are currently at your body's natural healthy weight, then you probably won't lose weight. But if you usually eat more than your body needs, you probably will lose weight.

[00:03:17]  Bruce: Interesting. Okay, what's the main difference, then, between dieting and intuitive eating?

[00:03:23]  Julene: Dieting is about force, and intuitive eating isn't. It's more about intuition.

[00:03:28]  Cameo: Instantly it's more appealing, because it's less forceful.

[00:03:35]  Bruce: So you've done both: you've done dieting and you've done intuitive eating. Do you have a preference between the two?

[00:03:42]  Julene: There are good things and bad things about both. With dieting, you can see immediate progress, and you can reach your goal fairly quickly if you're consistent. But the more times you do it, the less effective it is, as your body starts to resist. It's harder because of all the restrictions.

[00:04:01]  Cameo: Yeah, it's just not very much fun to go on a diet, right? You want to eat the things you want to eat, and so you constantly feel like you're punishing yourself for some goal that you've set for yourself. It has a very punishy feel about it.

[00:04:17]  Julene: Definitely. Definitely.

[00:04:20]  Cameo: So then, if intuitive eating isn't a diet, what is it?

[00:04:26]  Julene: Let me just say, to go more with what we were talking about a second ago: intuitive eating is less stressful because it's less extreme. But it's also a slower process. It's a lifestyle change; it's not a quick fix. So it's a little bit frustrating when you first start doing it, because you're used to the quick fix of dieting. You do A, you get B. But it's also a long-term solution. You don't have that stop-and-go of losing weight, gaining weight, getting frustrated, starting again, things like that. It's gone with intuitive eating.

[00:05:02]  Bruce: So you're not going to want to use intuitive eating to lose enough weight to get into that dress for your high school reunion or something.

[00:05:10]  Julene: No.

[00:05:11]  Cameo: So if it isn't a diet, then what is it?

[00:05:15]  Julene: It's a lifestyle change. Instead of working against your natural tendencies, like you were talking about a minute ago—you sort of naturally fight against that resistance of dieting—it teaches you how to work with them. You learn how to start listening to your body's natural hunger and fullness cues, so you don't need an outside source telling you what to do. If you generally eat more than your body needs, this will teach you how to change that. If you've been using food to cope, it draws attention to that to help you solve problems instead of coping with them with food. It encourages you to think of exercise and nutrition as ways to help yourself feel good, so you'll actually want to do them. If you've noticed, as soon as someone tries to force you to do something, you instantly resist and you're less willing to do it.

[00:06:09]  Cameo: Yeah, I think anyone who's ever gone on a diet—you somehow almost instantly are in front of the cupboard with a bag of potato chips, [unclear] shoving them into your face. But I think that's this very common diet-y feeling. It pushes you almost into this fight-or-flight kind of, 'Oh my gosh, now I'm…' And it's so funny because it's all self-imposed. So then, how does intuitive eating work?

[00:06:42]  Julene: We all start out as intuitive eaters. Every toddler naturally eats intuitively. They eat as much or as little as they need, and then they stop. So often that concerns the parents when they're watching: 'Oh no, my child just ate a little bit this meal. They're not going to grow properly,' or, 'Oh dear, they're eating too much. We better restrict their eating.' Not all parents do that, but over time, often we learn how to ignore our body signals, and then it creates problems.

[00:07:14]  Bruce: So how does it actually work? What is the program for intuitive eating? What are the steps that you would have to take to implement it in your life?

[00:07:24]  Julene: Okay, so the core principles. The first one is they want you to reject the diet mentality. They say dieting leads to deprivation, deprivation leads to craving, and craving leads to bingeing. Once again, we're talking about extremes. You're depriving yourself, but you still have these cravings. You still resist, and then eventually you break down. So they want you to just get rid of that thinking altogether. The second one is to honor your hunger pains. Don't ignore them. When your body signals it's hungry, you show respect for it by eating. If you allow yourself to become ravenous, then all intentions to eat moderately and consciously are out the window. So they just want you to pay attention to what your body is already doing. The third one is to eat what you really want. This is a big part of intuitive eating: satisfaction. If you eat what you really want, you're more likely to get satisfied, and you can more easily stop when you're full. Say you really want potato chips, but you feel too guilty to eat them. So instead you eat a plain baked potato, but that's not going to fulfill your craving. So you go eat another healthy food, but you still want the chips. Eventually you give in, you go and eat the chips, and you eat way more than you originally would have because….

[00:08:56]  Bruce: So in other words, you end up eating several healthy foods—quote, 'healthy foods.'.

[00:09:01]  Julene: Yes.

[00:09:01]  Bruce: Then you end up eating the potato chips anyhow, because you never actually fulfilled the craving that you had for the potato chips.

[00:09:08]  Julene: Right. You weren't craving celery; you were craving the potato chips. So they're just saying you can avoid that altogether by eating the potato chips and being done with it.

[00:09:18]  Bruce: Do you know what? This is just a humorous aside, but there was a study where they went and asked people, 'In terms of losing weight, which is healthier for you: eating a hamburger or eating a hamburger with carrot sticks?' Lots and lots of people picked hamburger and carrot sticks. So of course the media is making fun of these people: 'Well, obviously there's more calories in a hamburger plus carrot sticks than there is in just a hamburger. So if you want to lose weight, you should really just eat the hamburger, if that's your only two options.' It is funny because it does demonstrate that we think of food as healthy or not healthy. We have this concept, so somehow the healthy food cancels the unhealthy. The hamburger is the unhealthy food; the carrots are the healthy food. So that cancels, and that's a neutral meal, whereas a hamburger is a bad meal. Okay, now…. Here's the thing, though. For all of them making fun of people like this, there's a little bit of truth to this. If you were to eat a hamburger plus carrots, first you would fulfill the craving for the hamburger. You need to take care of that craving, get it out of the way. Secondly, you've got a bunch of your calories now through carrots, so you don't end up with a hamburger sometime later. You've fulfilled the craving. So the thinking isn't great, but it's not as bad as the media was making it out to be either.

[00:10:54]  Cameo: Well, if you ate the carrots first, you might get a little more full and not eat the whole hamburger.

[00:11:02]  Bruce: Exactly, exactly. There's kind of a psychological game there to some degree, right? And that's why nutritionists talk about healthy calories versus unhealthy calories. It's not a very meaningful concept on its own. It's supposed to be about trying to get enough calories that are healthy that, when you do allow yourself to fulfill your cravings for the quote 'unhealthy calories,' you just don't eat as much of it.

[00:11:29]  Julene: This goes right into what we were just talking about. The next point is: don't moralize food and eating. So you don't think of chocolate cake as bad and celery as good, and you don't think of yourself as bad or good for the things that you eat. As soon as you stop making eating a moral choice, you remove the guilt and you're allowed to eat whatever you want. And when you're allowed, you suddenly no longer want it so desperately. The next one is: feel your fullness. You stop halfway through your meal and note your fullness level. Are you still hungry? Are you starting to get full? Do you want to keep eating? If you do, go for it. Another very important part of intuitive eating is to never let yourself feel deprived. You want to be conscious of what you're eating and how you're eating, so that you can feel the true need. Once your need is fulfilled, you no longer want to eat. You're satisfied and you're content. Then at the end of the meal, as you're starting to feel full, you remind yourself, 'I can always eat more later if I want.' This is really important. You want to reassure yourself that your needs will always be met, that you can trust yourself to do that. And that will make it easier for you to quit when you're full.

[00:12:47]  Cameo: Interesting. That almost implies that part of our eating, the way that we respond to food, has a little bit of evolutionary panic about where the next meal is going to come from.

[00:13:00]  Julene: Yeah.

[00:13:00]  Cameo: Yeah.

[00:13:01]  Julene: Exactly. So then the last one is: have as much of your favorite foods on hand as you'll want, so that you won't feel deprived. You're really trying to fight against that feeling of deprivation that makes you feel so desperate. It makes you think, like you were saying about evolution, 'Maybe I won't ever be able to eat again,' or in this case, 'I won't be able to eat this again. I better get it while I can.' So we're just trying to get rid of that feeling.

[00:13:31]  Bruce: It's interesting here, though, that I've sometimes had the opposite experience. If I'm the one who does the grocery shopping for myself, if I buy Twinkies and potato chips, which look really good in the store, and come home, then I'll end up eating those a lot. Whereas I know if I can just get out of the store and not buy those, I'll never really even think about them, or at least not very much. So I end up just not eating those. This idea that you go ahead and have it on hand if it's a favorite food—it's interesting. I feel like I've done the opposite of that in some cases. I feel like in some cases it's worked.

[00:14:13]  Julene: Each time you think of one of those foods that you really love, you feel a little bit deprived. So even though that is true, even though it's not around, you wish that you had it and you feel guilty about having it. You feel like you're being deprived of it. Then when you finally get access to it, you lunge for it. Giving yourself permission decreases your cravings naturally.

[00:14:37]  Bruce: It's interesting that you say that because I guess I have seen that. I'll never buy potato chips so that I don't end up eating potato chips. But then I'll be at an office party and they have potato chips….

[00:14:52]  Julene: You can't stop eating.

[00:14:53]  Bruce: And I can't stop eating the potato chips because they're now in front of me.

[00:14:56]  Julene: That's a good point.

[00:14:57]  Bruce: And that happens all the time. Luckily, you're not in that many circumstances where… The place I work right now, back before the pandemic, it seemed like people came around with goodies, sharing goodies with each other a lot. That actually started to become a problem, because I've never dieted before. I've always been able to stay thin without too much effort. There is some effort, and as I get older there's more effort going into that, but my strategy isn't intuitive eating. It's, 'I'm not going to buy the things that I'm going to accidentally gorge myself on,' and it's worked well enough. I guess I should probably mention that. But then you're at the office and people come around, and they're trying to offer cookies. I do find that I literally just can't stop myself, right? You mean to: 'Well, I'll just have one.' But because I've been forcing myself to not eat cookies or chips or whatever for months, maybe, because I just don't buy them in the first place… I don't realize I'm saving up, but in fact I end up gorging myself on those things. It's never really a huge problem as long as you only are in that environment once in a while. But I started to notice that at work they were doing it too often, and I started to have some weight gain from that. I was like, 'I don't get weight gain,' but here I was getting it because I was unable to control myself. And again, I'm forcing myself.

[00:16:32]  Julene: Yes, right.

[00:16:33]  Bruce: And it's still very undesirable, just like Cameo was saying. So I guess I can see what you're saying. Even though that hasn't been my strategy, and my strategy has, quote, 'worked,' at least for many years, I do see your point: because I am depriving myself, even if I mostly never realize I'm doing so, circumstances come up where then I lose control because I was depriving myself for too long from something I enjoy eating.

[00:17:05]  Julene: Okay, and then the last point is: if you notice yourself eating when you're not hungry, stop and ask yourself, 'Oh, I'm not hungry. If I don't need food, what do I need to solve this hunger that I'm feeling?' They're trying to get you to be aware of what need you actually have there. This is actually pointing to a need that you do have. It's not hunger; it's not food. What is it?

[00:17:31]  Bruce: It's interesting that you say that. I can't remember what the source on this is, but just recently I was listening to podcasts. One of the podcasts mentioned this idea that we have this homeostasis, or whatever it's called, where if we're not having a need fulfilled—like we feel bad for some reason, you got chewed out at work or something like that—you'll literally try to compensate by creating positive feelings through some other means, such as going home and eating a tub of ice cream. I never really thought about that before. Because you had talked with me about intuitive eating, it jumped to mind when they mentioned that. It hadn't really occurred to me that there are many other reasons people do eat.

[00:18:28]  Julene: Yeah.

[00:18:28]  Bruce: Besides just eating or whatever.

[00:18:31]  Cameo: Yes. I think those are the same things that also push people into addiction. When people are eating for comfort or to fill that need, that's the same exact way people use drugs and alcohol: for comfort, or to fill a hole within their emotional state at that point in time. Food does have a very similar physical reaction. You can feel your endorphins be released when you're feeling really nice and full and you're eating your very favorite thing that makes you feel comforted and warm.

[00:19:10]  Bruce: Okay, so we talked about other reasons why people eat besides just the need to actually get nutrition into their body. What are reasons that people eat that have nothing to do with getting nutrition into their body?

[00:19:25]  Julene: They eat when they're stressed or when they're feeling bad. They eat because they see something they like and it's there. They eat because they're bored. They eat to reward themselves because they deserve it.

[00:19:40]  Bruce: I have to admit, I feel like I eat because I'm bored, especially during the pandemic. I find myself going to the refrigerator just to take a break from having to concentrate on work. Luckily, the refrigerator is full of some fairly low-calorie foods, little yogurts or something like that. So I think that's why that hasn't translated into weight gain for me. But it seems like I do that all the time. I'm just bored with my job for the moment. I just went through a long meeting; I can't stand it anymore.

[00:20:15]  Julene: You're rewarding yourself because you deserve it.

[00:20:19]  Bruce: So I get up and go to the refrigerator and open it up. There's these yogurts, and I think, 'Oh, I'll have a…' Or string cheese, something that's really quick and easy: 'Oh, I'm going to have that.' And then I end up grazing all day long, just eating a little bit here and there.

[00:20:37]  Cameo: Should you not ever eat to reward yourself?

[00:20:41]  Julene: Of course you can eat for other reasons than hunger. This program is all about reasonableness, but it's also about consciousness and deliberateness. Their motto is: 'If you don't love it, don't eat it. If you do love it, savor it.' So if you're eating something for fun, enjoy every minute of it. Even if you're eating what you really love, if you're in a hurry or you're not paying attention, then you're not getting the full enjoyment out of eating it, and that's why you're eating it in the first place. So stop what you're doing, sit down, close your eyes and revel in it.

[00:21:20]  Cameo: That's interesting. So Jimmy John's, before the pandemic when I worked in the office, was something we ordered regularly. I actually really enjoy their sandwiches. I've figured out the way to make them that I really enjoy the flavor. But I don't think their cookies are very good. The cookies would always come, and I'd always say, 'No, I don't want a cookie.' I think the perception was I was on a diet and I wasn't eating the cookie. But I eat cookies all the time. I'm not going to spend my caloric options on a cookie that doesn't make me really happy. Just save it for later, when I can have a cookie that actually makes me really, really happy.

[00:22:03]  Julene: That's perfect. You're an intuitive eater right there.

[00:22:06]  Cameo: I'm an intuitive eater.

[00:22:08]  Bruce: Do you know, that's actually why I never order a soft drink, or rarely. Sometimes I have an actual craving for a soft drink and I'll order 7UP or something like that. But I feel like it's a really high-sugary food that I don't get a ton of enjoyment out of.

[00:22:25]  Cameo: Right, low value.

[00:22:27]  Bruce: Yeah. If I'm going to use my sugar budget—that's probably the wrong term for intuitive eating—but if I'm going to use my sugar budget, it's going to be on a chocolate-dipped cookie or cake or ice cream.

[00:22:42]  Cameo: Yeah, something that just really makes you happy, right? So can you tell us about your actual experience with the program? First, how long have you been doing this?

[00:22:52]  Julene: I listened to the book, actually, not really read it. But once I listened to it, I discovered I have a lot of intuitive eating practices already built in. Like we were talking about, I don't order soda when we go out to eat, or I think about, 'Do I really want that cookie, or would I rather have just the sandwich?' I did that already. I've had some of the same experience as Bruce, that it's been fairly easy to keep my weight off because I did things like that. But I didn't do it as much as I could. Maybe in the last year I've been paying more attention to what I'm doing when an eating option comes up. I really have liked it. It's very freeing. Compared to dieting, it feels so good to just eat whatever you want: 'Oh, I really want that. Oh, I can have it. Okay.' Then I know that I can stop because I tried it. I ate till I didn't want it anymore, and then I quit, and I was completely satisfied. I'm not faking it. I really was satisfied and I really didn't want it. So it's wonderful, actually.

[00:24:11]  Bruce: I've always wondered about this because there are certain foods that, if they're in front of me, I will gorge myself, which is why I try not to have them around. Let me use the potato chip example. If I start to eat potato chips, it's hard to stop. You finally have to seal the bag or something like that, so you've got incentive to stop. How does intuitive eating deal with that? It's got to be a fairly normal experience for most people.

[00:24:43]  Julene: You don't have to worry about portion size. You don't have to worry about calorie count because you automatically regulate your eating without effort. I really like that about this program. In order to get to that point, though, you need to heal your food cravings. You need to get rid of this intense yearning that you have for some foods, like you were saying with your potato chips. They recommend that you make a list of your favorite foods, and then you focus on one at a time to heal your craving for that food.

[00:25:14]  Bruce: Focus on one at a time, meaning you intentionally eat the supposedly bad food that you enjoy?

[00:25:22]  Julene: Yes.

[00:25:23]  Bruce: To reduce craving for it.

[00:25:24]  Julene: Yes. So my number one favorite food was chocolate-covered almonds. I went and bought a huge jar of them.

[00:25:35]  Bruce: I can testify that's her number one favorite food.

[00:25:37]  Julene: I love chocolate, period, but I love chocolate almonds even more. So I went and bought this huge jar. Every time I was physically hungry, I would go and get my chocolate almonds. I'm following intuitive eating like I'm supposed to: I waited till I was hungry to do it, but I would eat them first. As soon as it was lunchtime or something, I would eat them first, and I would eat as fast as I could. I barely even tasted them, and all I could think about was how much I wanted them. But slowly, over time, my cravings started to calm. I wasn't as rushed, and I didn't feel quite so anxious about eating them. I started to pay more attention to the taste. I'd eat for a minute, and then I'd check in with myself and ask, 'Do I want to keep eating these, or am I done for now?' At first, the answer was always, 'I want to keep eating these.' Even when I started to want them less, I still kept eating because I'd felt deprived for so long.

[00:26:40]  Julene: I just wanted to be able to do what I hadn't been able to do. But eventually things got less intense. When I'd check in with myself, I'd notice they weren't quite as appealing, and I'd be able to put them away once I'd had enough for that meal. Each time this happened, I felt a little less deprived and I ate a little less. Then I started noticing I'd rather have real food at the beginning of the meal, and then have the chocolate almonds at the end. One day I picked up the jar, looked at the chocolate almonds and thought, 'Oh, never mind. These don't appeal to me today.' And that's the last time I ever ate a chocolate almond. To this day, I still can't walk by them at the store without thinking, 'Oh, no thanks.' I think I went a little too far with that food. The other foods I've healed cravings for are still appealing to me. I still like them and I still eat them. I just don't have intense cravings for them anymore. I think the chocolate almonds were the big breakthrough for me. They were the first thing I used to heal my relationship with food. I think I'll always feel differently about them, that sort of strong aversion to them. But every other food I worked on doesn't have that aversion now. I just eat food and enjoy it without that intense overreaction I used to have.

[00:28:01]  Bruce: I can tell you that she has complained to me a number of times: 'Oh, I hate the fact that I don't like chocolate almonds anymore. I used to love them so much.' It's worked too well.

[00:28:15]  Cameo: Not even variations, like white chocolate almonds? Or what about those sea-salt chocolate almonds from Trader Joe's? Have you had those? Those are really good.

[00:28:25]  Julene: I haven't. I still love chocolate and I still eat it, and I still love chocolate with almonds in it, like Hershey's Kisses with almonds or something. So I don't have an aversion to either thing. But I just ate them and ate them and ate them, and I loved them, and it was so great. And I don't love them anymore.

[00:28:52]  Cameo: It's so fascinating to me. I don't know that I have any food cravings as strong as what you're describing. Maybe because I've never really restricted myself from foods as a rule—it's never been an approach that I've taken towards food—I've never built up that level of craving. But I am really interested to try this. There are a couple of things that I'm tempted to overeat, like Muenster cheese. I just love Muenster cheese. It's one of those things that I sometimes feel like I eat more than I should. So now I'm pretty interested to try this, with caution, obviously.

[00:29:36]  Bruce: Yeah, don't overdo it. So I should mention that Julene has done dieting in the past. She was actually quite successful at it. I was surprised that she would have a goal weight and reach it really fast. She's been very successful with diets in the past. So what do you think of dieting now that you've experienced both? Did it change the way you think of dieting? Do you see dieting as a negative now, or is it right for certain circumstances?

[00:30:14]  Julene: I have had good experiences with dieting in the past. About 12 years ago, I had a severe clinical depression. After medication and about a year and a half of counseling, I was in a really good place. I had gained a lot of weight during that depression, coping with it with food. After I went on the medication and went through the counseling, I felt really good. So I joined Jenny Craig, and I lost 42 pounds in a few months, and I've kept most of it off. That was the first time I had ever been on a real diet, and I was really motivated. They cut you down to so few calories that it's very easy to lose. It was fast. I was really motivated because I saw progress so fast. So I kept going, and it was really fun. It was actually a fun thing.

[00:31:12]  Bruce: It actually did come across like it was fun.

[00:31:14]  Julene: Yeah, and then you just see yourself shrinking. Anyway, it feels really good.

[00:31:19]  Bruce: Jenny Craig coaches you. They're like cheerleaders. They get so excited for every improvement.

[00:31:26]  Julene: They make you feel so good. You want to spend all your time with them because they make you feel so good.

[00:31:29]  Bruce: And so it wasn't just that she lost weight and that was positive. It was a motivating, feel-good experience, from what I could see.

[00:31:42]  Julene: Right, which kept me going on it so that I succeeded at it. But I think the reason I've kept the weight off all of that time is, first of all, I'm not coping with those intense, painful feelings anymore with food. Second of all, I do have a lot of natural intuitive eating tendencies anyway. A lot of times, according to a lot of research that you read, dieters just gain the weight back, because it's so extreme that you just react to it and stop as soon as you can. You just react and go back.

[00:32:21]  Bruce: You reached your goal weight. You can get in that dress for the high school reunion. Now I get to reward myself that I was successful. I was so good.

[00:32:29]  Julene: I deserve it. Yeah.

[00:32:30]  Bruce: Then you gain it all back.

[00:32:31]  Julene: Right.

[00:32:33]  Bruce: You got it for what? Two months of torturing yourself for one good night, and then….

[00:32:38]  Julene: Right.

[00:32:39]  Bruce: You're right back to the way you were.

[00:32:41]  Julene: Right, so dieting is not a good solution. It's a temporary thing. I feel like if I hadn't had those natural tendencies, and also if I hadn't gotten rid of the real issue, I probably would have gained the weight back. Over the years I've had a few times where I did a little mini-diet to lose five pounds or something. But the more times you diet, the harder it is to lose the weight. Your body is resisting and it doesn't want to let go, and it's hard. Finally you get to the point where you just think, 'I'm never going to go on another diet. I just can't get myself to do that.' Once you hit that point, it's the ideal place to decide to become an intuitive eater, because you're willing to get rid of the diet mentality, and you are eager to do something to maintain a good weight for the rest of your life that's easier, more comfortable, and works.

[00:33:38]  Bruce: So I mentioned I've never really been on a diet. I'm the wrong one to talk about this. My experience with dieting was actually watching my wife, and it came across to me as a fairly positive experience. That was why I asked this question, because I wasn't sure that your message is that dieting is wrong or bad or something like that.

[00:34:02]  Unidentified speaker: Maybe repetitive dieting is bad.

[00:34:05]  Bruce: Okay. All right. I'm just trying to get a nuanced view here. I know that there are people who would probably disagree with that. I think there are people who would say dieting is bad. It didn't seem like it was a super-negative experience when I watched you do it. It seemed like it was a fairly positive experience. I'm just trying to figure out where dieting fits into the big scheme of things, really.

[00:34:31]  Julene: You know, I should probably bring up that after I finished and hit my goal weight, I quit going there every week and using their food. But once in a while I would want to buy some of their food because it's really good. So I would stop in and buy some food, and it wasn't as fun. The people that used to work there weren't there anymore. Everybody was still really nice and welcoming, but I didn't feel like they were my best friend and they would do anything for me, and I was so wonderful. I didn't feel that support anymore. So I think a lot of it had to do with who I was working with, unfortunately.

[00:35:10]  Bruce: Oh, interesting. I see what you're saying. You got something out of the diet, but it may not have been specifically the diet. It may have been the support and the….

[00:35:23]  Julene: It was probably everything together. I think it was everything.

[00:35:26]  Bruce: Cameo, you got any thoughts on this part?

[00:35:29]  Cameo: I do, because I'm definitely an anti-diet person. It's interesting, their focus on being able to eat whatever you want, because I don't think of what I eat as dieting. But I definitely target what I would consider healthier foods, and I try to figure out combinations of healthier food that are very, very delicious. I feel like our modern relationship with sugar is not natural to humans. We've never really been presented with it before, so it's an unusual thing that we maybe need to teach ourselves to deal with. Easily accessible sugar is not something that humans have ever really had to deal with or adapt to before.

[00:36:30]  Bruce: Right.

[00:36:31]  Cameo: It's not a natural state for people, because nature doesn't make sugar plentifully without our ability to create artificial sugar, essentially. Because of some random societal things that happened, the rise of the sugar beet is a political thing that ended up resulting in sugar flooding American nutrition. It's this really interesting societal thing that's changed people's relationships with food. So my approach to the way I eat is to try to learn to have a relationship with food that's not dependent on some of these artificially created things. Because you ate something three or four or ten times… I just think people have been taught a little bit by themselves to believe that they care about food that they wouldn't necessarily, except in the way that society has just flooded sugar onto… American food is really based on sugar. Humans are actually made to crave sugar, but it's really rarely occurring at the level we have it at. It just doesn't happen. So I've taught myself to find a lot of enjoyment in things that would be considered healthier, so that I try to eat a lot more of those as a matter of course. I don't think of it as dieting. I just think of it as enjoying things that my body is more naturally adapted to process.

[00:38:25]  Bruce: Interesting. I should also mention, I said I have never dieted—that is not true, now I think about it. I've never dieted for weight loss, but I have had numerous times I've gone on special diets for health-related reasons. In fact, you may remember the one where I used to do a salad for lunch with chicken on the top or something like that. I had a certain diet I was trying to follow in hopes that it would help a certain health situation.

[00:38:56]  Cameo: I actually do remember that because you complained a lot about it.

[00:39:02]  Bruce: Yes. And that's what I was going to say: I can't remember any of the times that I've dieted, even though it was not for weight-loss reasons, that I enjoyed it. It was something I wanted to get over as quickly as I could. The terrifying thing was, 'Oh wow, what if this really works, and then I have to follow this diet forever?' It wasn't really a sustainable circumstance. I tried a gluten-free diet once. That was just awful. I think what I found from the gluten-free diet was that there is absolutely nothing in the universe that is similar to wheat.

[00:39:44]  Cameo: Well, when you just described this salad with chicken on it for lunch, I had this yummy reaction in my mouth. One of my really favorite things is this particular salad that I've made for myself that has this great combination of flavors that I just really delight in. I definitely had a yummy reaction. My mouth was watering thinking about having a salad with chicken.

[00:40:10]  Bruce: You know, it was actually really good the first time, and maybe even the second time.

[00:40:16]  Cameo: Well, that's actually an interesting point, because there's a part of eating that's crucial to enjoyment for a lot of people. We have a tendency to have things that we really like. But if you feed somebody the same thing—and this is you with your chocolate-covered almonds—if you only get the one thing all the time, you will ultimately just be so tired of having it.

[00:40:43]  Bruce: Right.

[00:40:44]  Cameo: Right, which is an interesting dynamic for us, because we do have a tendency to both want things to be comfortable, but also almost want infinite variety at the same time.

[00:40:55]  Bruce: Yes. That's something that Julene and I always laugh about: we always end up going to the same restaurants and ordering the same food. Now, we do have variety. We've got several restaurants, and each restaurant has a certain favorite dish, right? So we don't go to the same restaurant every single time. We're getting variety that way. But there's always this, 'Maybe I'm going to try something different at this particular restaurant, not the one food that really attracted me here in the first place.' And I'm disappointed like 90 percent of the time when I do it. So it's really hard. We just went to this restaurant, and I know the reason why I wanted to go here was because I particularly like the pulled pork here, or something along those lines. It's almost hard to go against that. And yet you're right: if you went and did that every single time, you'd get sick of it. If you had to do it too much, you would lose interest in that food altogether, which is apparently what intuitive eating uses to overcome food cravings. You give it to yourself enough that you lose interest in craving it anymore.

[00:42:07]  Julene: And if you do it while you're distracted, it takes longer to get tired of it.

[00:42:12]  Cameo: That kind of bored, habitual eating where you're eating responsively rather than focusing on what you're eating and thinking about it. So if you're using it both as your crutch, but then being distracted about the way you're using it….

[00:42:28]  Bruce: There is something disappointing about eating a food you really like, but you're in a hurry or you're doing it for a bad reason. I really love milkshakes. You can either stop and savor the milkshake, and then you really enjoy it, or you might finish it because you were on the phone, and you're like, 'Wait, I…'.

[00:42:51]  Unidentified speaker: I missed it. I actually missed it.

[00:42:55]  Bruce: Right. There's something to that, this idea of savoring. In fact, Julene and I do something we call a Walmart date. We'll walk down to Walmart, because we're fairly close, and we'll buy a wrap or something there, and then we'll eat it on the way back. If you were to eat the whole wrap, it would probably be quite a few calories, but we're splitting it between ourselves, so it's not too bad. I'll eat it slowly on the way home. We're walking home, and I'm just trying to enjoy it as we go. That actually seems to work, because usually I don't have any hunger cravings by the time I'm done, where I might if I'm just paying attention to something else.

[00:43:40]  Cameo: Right.

[00:43:41]  Bruce: So it is interesting. There seems to be a huge psychological element to all this.

[00:43:46]  Cameo: There really is. I don't know if you guys are familiar with the slow food movement.

[00:43:53]  Bruce: No, no, I think I've heard the term, but I don't really know what it is.

[00:43:57]  Cameo: It's more of a dining experience, but it's patterned off both French and Italians really dragging out mealtimes. So you go and have essentially this two-hour meal, but you're not eating a whole ton of food. You're really savoring the entire meal experience. These small, almost tapas, small-plate types of… but really stretched out over this long experience, so that you're eating very slowly.

[00:44:33]  Bruce: Mm-hmm. Is that related to why they think French people don't have an obesity problem to the degree that Americans do? I guess I've heard that somewhere: here they eat these fattening foods, foods that we would consider, quote, 'bad for you,' and yet they don't really have the same level of problem that we do.

[00:44:53]  Cameo: I have heard that same thing, but I don't have any….

[00:44:57]  Bruce: No data.

[00:44:58]  Cameo: No data to back it. It may be a myth.

[00:45:00]  Bruce: It may be a myth.

[00:45:03]  Cameo: I will say that savoriness, or that food that makes you want to come back to it, that makes you want to go back to a restaurant… I used to work for a great restaurant owner. He said the key to a restaurant's success is having at least three things on a menu that have that response for people, that make them wake up and say, 'Do you know where I want to go to dinner? I want to go to that place and have that thing.' If you don't create that desire in somebody for your food, it's very difficult to ever have a successful restaurant, no matter what else you do.

[00:45:45]  Bruce: How do you actually create that desire? Is it just very good….

[00:45:49]  Cameo: Food?

[00:45:50]  Bruce: Yeah. There's actually an interesting point here. Taste, what we enjoy eating—recipes are hard to vary, right? Putting a little bit too much of one thing, or a little too little, ruins the experience. I was thinking about Waffle Love. Do you like Waffle Love? We love Waffle Love here.

[00:46:13]  Cameo: I don't go to it very often, but the times I've been, it's been delightful.

[00:46:18]  Bruce: Apparently, up on their wall they have this story of how Waffle Love came to be. It was some guy who I guess was local here, BYU or something. I can't remember what it was. He lost his job, and so he decided to see if he could make his interest in cooking pay off. He started to make waffles, and he apparently experimented for, I think, years on his family until he found a recipe for waffles that they kept starting to demand: 'Oh, I want that one. I want that recipe for waffles.' He says that it took him years to find the right combination. When his extended family members were starting to say, 'You've got to get this for me. You've got to do that for me again,' that was when he realized, 'Okay, I've got something here. I've found the secret recipe that is going to cause people to keep craving and coming back for this.' I've always thought that was very interesting. That's a concept from David Deutsch. Popper never called it 'hard to vary'; he called it 'improbable.' So it's hard to just find by chance. But this concept of hard-to-varyness applies to food and recipes, even though it's a purely parochial thing. There's no objectively better food, but there are foods that you actually do enjoy more—but only if you can mix it with variety.

[00:47:50]  Cameo: Oh yes, right. Is this for everyone? I'm going to try it, but is this something everyone should be using?

[00:47:58]  Julene: They do mention in the book that there are some cases where you shouldn't do it yet, so to speak, where you need to do some preliminary work first. One of those would be if you had an eating disorder, where you had a body-image issue and you can't see that your 90-pound body isn't healthy and isn't well. You wouldn't be able to rely on your natural instincts in that way, because….

[00:48:29]  Bruce: You've overridden them.

[00:48:30]  Julene: You've overridden them, yes. So you would need to work with a therapist or a nutritionist or something first to get that resolved, so that then you can start listening to your body again. Another case would be if you starve yourself enough, your body actually turns off its hunger pains. So you can't wait for them to tell you to go eat, because they turn off. You would need to, again, work with somebody until your body starts producing them again, and then you could do intuitive eating.

[00:48:59]  Bruce: Because intuitive eating relies on those signals in the body. It's basically built on the idea that the signals are generally correct, right? Maybe more so than if we're trying to intentionally coerce ourselves into some sort of specific diet.

[00:49:15]  Cameo: Right.

[00:49:16]  Bruce: What you're craving is actually… your body does a fairly good job of telling you what it is you should be eating. But if you've got some sort of psychological health issue, those signals are no longer reliable. They're now problematic.

[00:49:31]  Julene: So.

[00:49:32]  Bruce: Okay, that makes sense. All right, well, thank you for coming.

[00:49:37]  Julene: Sure. Thanks for having me.

[00:49:38]  Bruce: And thank you, Cameo, and we'll see you in two weeks. The Theory of Anything podcast could use your help. We have a small but loyal audience, and we'd like to get the word out about the podcast to others, so others can enjoy it as well. To the best of our knowledge, we're the only podcast that covers all four strands of David Deutsch's philosophy as well as other interesting subjects. If you're enjoying this podcast, please give us a five-star rating on Apple Podcasts. This can usually be done right inside your podcast player, or you can Google The Theory of Anything podcast Apple, or something like that. Some players have their own rating system, and giving us a five-star rating on any rating system would be helpful. If you enjoy a particular episode, please consider tweeting about us or linking to us on Facebook or other social media to help get the word out. If you are interested in financially supporting the podcast, we have two ways to do that. The first is via our podcast host site, Anchor. Just go to anchor.fm slash four dash strands, F-O-U-R dash S-T-R-A-N-D-S. There's a support button available that allows you to do reoccurring donations. If you want to make a one-time donation, go to our blog, which is four strands dot org. There is a donation button there that uses PayPal. Thank you.