Transcription
I had that carrot cake yesterday, which no one knows about. I kept it to myself. But does that mean that I'm more likely with the understanding of dopamine to want carrot cake again tomorrow, the day after, because I've got into a bit of a carrot cake cycle?
Because I think everybody when they think about the relationship with sugar understands that if they just laid off sugar for like three or four weeks, the cravings seem to die down. Yeah, it's an interesting question. I don't think we have the exact answer. Some would argue that we should have more of a kind of balanced relationship with food whereby if we really crave something that we should allow ourselves it provided it's not some addictive substance or something you don't addicts relapsing. Um here we're talking about food. We're not talking about drugs of abuse etc. Um but is food not addictive in the same way? Well food can be very compulsive. I think some people are addicted to food. Um I you know I define addiction as a progressive narrowing of the things that bring you pleasure. We could probably attach to that you know the classic definition of addiction is where continued consumption or engagement in a given activity is actually maladaptive for your life. Right? I mean if you have four pieces of carrot cake this week I doubt given your the shape that you're in it's going to shorten your life. You might not feel great, but it's not going to shorten your life. You're certainly not going to like lose your income um like somebody who's a gambling addict would. Um this kind of thing. You're not going to throw your life away or go rob somebody in order to get that carrot cake.
Although, but is it doing that that and I'm pointing now at the dopamine wave thing? Am I having a dopamine crash? You are. And Anna LMKY describes this best. Um and you can do this experiment. It's kind of a fun experiment for you chocolate lovers. Abstain from chocolate for say a week and then pick your favorite chocolate and take a little piece of that chocolate and put it in your mouth and taste it. And of course it will taste delicious. It'll taste wonderful. But if you notice very quickly your brain shifts to a sense of wanting more. Not so much savoring the chocolate that you're eating, but wanting more. And you're thinking about, well, how much am I going to take? I'm going to take this square. Oh, that other square next to it broke off a little bit. Guess I got to eat that one, too. So, that's the dopamine system in action. And then what happens is you eat half the chocolate thing and you go, I don't feel that good about it, but I kind of want more anyway. Why? Well, you're in that dopamine trough. The same amount of something is giving you diminishing returns. What's the way to make that chocolate take taste absolutely fantastic again? Abstain.
Now there's also an interesting phenomenon and this is why I said I can't be exactly sure how to answer your question accurately that is I have several friends just by way of example who reached their 40s quite overweight 50s quite overweight 30 to 60 pounds overweight and they'd come to me and they'd say I want to lose weight every single one of them has been highly successful in rapidly losing that weight and keeping it off the following way and I'm not a nutritionist I say you can eat meat fish, eggs, chicken, fruit, and vegetables, and that's it. And drink water and caffeine, and don't consume calories and beverages. And every single one of them lost 30, 60 pounds and has kept it off. Now, Lane Norton and I, who are friends and colleagues in the health space, he'll say, "Well, they created a caloric deficit and so they lost weight." I'd say, "Absolutely." I would also say, and I think Lane would probably agree, although there's no randomized control trial to prove this, that in eating that way, mostly whole, unprocessed, or minimally processed foods, they did several things as well. One is you start to learn the relationship between how something tastes, its caloric value, its micronutrient, and macronutrient value. What do I mean? When you eat a steak, like let's say a 12 oz ribeye, if that's in your nutrition plan, meaning you allow yourself red meat. Let's say you eat that, you taste it. It's very savory. Hopefully, it tastes really good. If it's cooked properly, it's a great cut. And your brain learns the relationship between steak and calories and nutrients and amino acids. There's this whole amino acid foraging hypothesis of nutrition. Then you eat fruit, you taste the fruit, you actually taste it. Now, this is far and away different than if you're consuming hogi sandwiches and hamburgers and cheeseburgers. There's something about removing the bread. There's something about removing the pasta. There's something about removing those foods that I believe has nothing to do with those foods being bad. In fact, I love bread and pasta, high quality bread and pasta, and I do consume those, but I'm not trying to lose weight nor gain weight. When people eat in that way, meat, fish, eggs, chicken, fruits, and vegetables, and nothing else for a couple of months, what every single one of them says is, "Well, then we had this party and you know, the kids were having birthday cake, so I decided to allow myself a slice of cake." They ate it and it tasted disgusting to them or they in some cases threw up or they just felt like it was gross. Whatever positive association they had with it before no longer exists and then they get right back on their let's call it diet and they continue along their way and they're very relieved to learn that they actually enjoy healthy foods. I think that we can rewire in fact we know that you can rewire your association between nutrative value, taste of food, calories and micronutrients. And so when I hear about these highly restrictive elimination diets where people do only meat, which frankly does not seem healthy to me, I think some fiber from other sources is good. Although I'm sure Paul Saladino will come after me probably with a drumstick or something or Jordan, whatever Jordan's doing seems to be working for Jordan. So I'm not going to argue. People should do as they will, but you know, um I'm an omnivore and enjoy that. But I think when people do elimination type diets, the more important thing is that they're learning this association between taste and calories that seems to really work for them and the pleasure of eating certain foods and really dropping into the the quality and the taste of that food.
When we crave a food and it's kind of an indulgence food like chocolate or carrot cake or something, it's more along this dopamine uh transition from peak to trough. Now, when I I love steak. My dad's Argentine. I'm half Argentine, so I love a great beef chorizo or like a you know, like I love red meat, but I don't eat two ribe eyes. I eat one and I'm good. And so, I think that there's something very sad about high nutrative quality food that includes fruits and vegetables and the vegans have their choices and the vegetarians have their choices. And so so much of what we think about when we think about dopamine and food is yes, highly processed foods, candy, packaged goods, cookies, chips, they drive this craving for more, but people don't actually enjoy them that much. They just require them or at least they think they require them. So I encourage anyone who feels addicted to those foods to take a, you know, healthy approach. You know, consume enough calories. Don't go on a crash diet, but try eating really high quality, unprocessed or minimally processed foods for just a couple of weeks. At first, it's murder. They just can't do it. And then inevitably, they call me and they say, "I feel so much better and I don't even want that stuff anymore."
It's interesting how that then correlates with your own motivation. And I it's we fly out here to do this podcast and we come out sometimes for two weeks, three weeks, sometimes even four weeks, and we all eat the same thing pretty much throughout the day for those four weeks. So, it's almost a dietary intervention for me because when we finish recording, my food is going to be there and I know what it's going to be. It's going to be basically a salad with meat in it, certain vegetables, etc. And so, it becomes this like intervention. Going to LA is this dietary intervention. And what happens is when I come here and have that salad every day with various different meats and various different vegetables every day is my motivation to go to the gym for some reason improves. Mhm. My sleep ends up improving and it's like my that one sort of dietary intervention has this really downstream impact on everything else. I get in the I get in the best shape of my life. I'm motivated. I feel good. I drive along. It might also be the sunshine out here. But and I just I I think people don't realize that even as you say a week or two having that dietary intervention intervention, cutting out the crap can have such a big reframing on your perception of food, how you experience it. And now I'm excited about the bloody salad. Yeah, it's wild how healthy foods become more attractive to us the more we consume them and the more we avoid unhealthy foods. I think also a lot of people don't know how great you can feel getting some morning sunlight, great sleep, eating nutritious food, and once they do, once they experience that lift in energy and mood, it's kind of addictive in its own right.
Now, I also think it's important to not be too restrictive, right? You know, around the holidays or something. I I mean, I love a great slice of pie. Like, I do these things. I think if one gets enough movement then you're fine. Um you know if nothing else this whole um kind of trend toward the use of these GLP-1 glucagon like peptide agonist like ompic and mangjaro if it's taught us anything it's that people are obese because they consume too many calories. They just ingest too much relative to their activity levels. And here in particular in the United States people are walking and moving far less. Most people get no regular exercise and they consume about 3,500 calories per day on average. So they're just on a steady weight increase for most of their life. More activity, less food intake is fairly easy to accomplish if you do just a few subtle things. So there are these levers, these major levers like eating better, as you said, meat and salads. I mean, it's one of the most satiating meals you can have. I also find that if I consume fewer carbohydrates during the day, this is just me. It runs countercurrent to most everything you'll read out there. But I like to fast essentially until about 11:00 or noon just cuz I'm not hungry. I like to exercise in the morning. But then I'll have a lunch that is some meat, some salad, maybe some starch, like a bowl of oatmeal or rice, but not a whole lot. And then toward evening, my final meal, you know, dinner, which is around 7 or 8:00 p.m. generally includes a few more starches and a little less protein, and I sleep best that way. Some people, it's the opposite. They like a big bowl of oatmeal and just a couple of eggs in the morning. and you know and some nuts in the afternoon and then they like a big steak for dinner. You know, I think everybody's slightly different.
Some people are just naturally have more energy. I think about Jaco Willink. I mean, the guy has so much energy. And I think it's not a coincidence that he works out at 4:30 in the morning. I think that if you work out early in the day, you often have more energy throughout the day. I find if I get my workout done before 9:00 a.m., I have more energy all day long. However, if I work out midm morning, late morning, pretty sleepy in the afternoon. Everybody's different. Is there like a physiological rationale for that? There probably is. You know, as our body temperature rises in the morning, we are waking up. So, when we exercise, we accelerate that transition toward being more alert. Now, in the afternoon when our body temperature typically peaks after that is usually when we get a bit sleepy. Typically, after lunch, people get sleepy. Sometimes because of the volume of food they they've eaten. Most often it's because they've hit that temperature peak in the early afternoon. And we know that as body temperature drops 1 to 3° in the evening and nighttime, that's when we fall asleep. In fact, in order to fall asleep, your body temperature actually has to drop by about 1 to 3°. This is why, you know, sticking a foot out of the, you know, the comforter or if you have a cooling mattress, which some people require because they run hot, or keeping the room cool, facilitates falling asleep, although it's not completely the case. So I should mention the best scenario would be cool room with warm blankets to fall asleep and then toward morning sort of a warmer environment. We actually get a little bit more rapid eye movement sleep, dream sleep, elaborate dream sleep toward morning. So you can get really nuanced in this stuff. All the biohackers know this, but you know, basically if you work out early in the day, you know, before 8 or 9:00 a.m., it's going to accelerate that increase in body temperature and you'll feel more alert.
There's also this beautiful phenomenon in circadian biology called entrainment whereby let's say you're not a morning person. You hate mornings. If you force yourself to get up and exercise at say 6:00 a.m. for three days in a row, by the fourth day you'll naturally start waking up around that time because the circadian clock of the brain we call the super kaismatic nucleus. The main inputs that drive when you're alert and when you want to be asleep are sunlight, exposure to the eyes. This is the whole basis for that morning sunlight exposure, physical activity, when you eat, and social engagement. And there could be a whole discussion about this, but suffice to say that if you start getting some morning light, some exercise, maybe even before the sun comes out, some caffeine, hydration, and then a meal in the early part of the day, your body will start to anticipate all of those activities. And even if you're a so-called night owl, you'll start to shift your clock toward being a early riser. And lo and behold, around 10 or 11:00 p.m., you'll start to notice you're getting sleepy. Then you just have to have the discipline to turn off the phone, put it in the other room, and go to sleep.
I I wonder that. I do wonder if I'm a night out because of bad habits or because of some kind of biology. Typically, people fall into one of three categories, and it is genetically determined of you can be a morning person. A more typical would be somebody who goes to sleep somewhere between 10:30 and midnight, wakes up between 6:00 and 8:00 a.m. And then the night owls who like to stay up till 1 or two in the morning, wake up around, you know, 10 or 11:00 a.m. It changes with age. I'm a bit of a weirdo in the sense that I like to do most of my mental and physical work between 6:00 a.m. and noon. Then I'm not super effective in the afternoon. My brain doesn't work so well. I can take care of some little things unless I offset that. And then between 6:00 p p.m. and midnight, I'm alert again. I don't know, maybe it's my Argentine roots. Who knows? So, given it's the afternoon now and I knew that we were going to be podcasting, what I did is I did indeed get up at 6:45 a.m. I did a bunch of work this morning for the podcast, some other things. And then on the way here, I did a non-sleep deep rest. I listened to that for about 10 minutes. I kind of sensed I was somewhere in sleep. I don't quite recall. And then when we arrived, I'm a little bit groggy, a little bit of hydration, a little bit of caffeine, and I feel completely alert. So, you can learn to offset these troughs in energy.
I think that at every stage of life, meaning for every 5-year block of life, you can kind of predict what the best schedule for you would be. So, when you were a baby, you slept all the time. That's your best schedule. When you were an adolescent, it was different. I have a niece, she's 17, and I went and stayed with my sister recently, and it was unbelievable. She went to bed at 10:30 at night, probably fell asleep at midnight because she was on her iPad with her friends. She would wake up the next day at noon. It's summertime, get up, say hello, get a glass of water, go back to sleep, and sleep for another hour. And that's exactly what she should be doing. Why? Because she's growing, right? She's a she's youth in youth. In your 30s, it might be a different schedule. In your 40s, a different schedule. And then, of course, kids come along and they force the schedule. So, I would say whatever stage of life you're in, you probably know what the best schedule is for you and you just have to work with the realities of life. But if you can adhere to that, knowing, okay, you have a peak in energy and focus at this hour or a peak in energy and focus at that hour, by all means, do it.
I mean, Rick Rubin shared um when he came on my podcast that his best day is to transition slowly into the day. Take a walk outside in the sun in the morning slowly into the day and then he does his work really his main focused work in the afternoon and in the evening. Some people are more night shifted, some people are more morning shifted. I tend to get my best ideas I think right before I go to sleep which is annoying because there's this temptation to go to my laptop and begin writing and begin working. Do you write them down? Yes. Yeah, I write down little cues and then my team will know because it's useful when I'm on this frame because my team in the UK are getting my memos at 7 a.m. there, but they don't know that I'm it's like midnight or 1:00 a.m. here.
I'm so glad you mentioned this. I think for people who are interested in having a great life, a great career, it's very important to have a mode of capture. So, for me, um it's this notebook and it's not just blank pages in front of me. I promise these are just like little little things that come to mind. um it doesn't matter what's here. um and I place them into the notebook and then at the end of each week or so or if I'm on a plane, I'll start to look back and see, you know, what are the ideas that feel sticky like, oh, there's something there. There's like a concept there. I'm actually thinking about doing a a a drawing book to teach neuroscience at some point. I'm also very interested in animals. So I was listing out this is very um embarrassing but the different animals that I feel I embodied at different stages of my life and where I'm at now because of the different energies and this is very personal right like in the sense that it's not going to mean much in the kind of classic neuroscience sense but I think having a mode of capture for these thoughts that spontaneously arise out of our unconscious mind I mean that's what's happening when you're falling asleep your conscious mind which is involved in thinking and planning and organizing knowledge is starting to tire. Those prefrontal cortex circuits are starting to tire and your unconscious mind which is the main driver of all your ideas and so much of what you you are about as an individual are starting to geyser to the surface. This is why in dreams even though it occurs in symbols we are playing with different ideas and ordering of different ideas. This is not Freudian okay this is not just yungian psychology. We had an expert in this you know Dr. Paul Kiy did a mental health series on our podcast and he said, you know, the bulk of your brain activity besides the stuff that's just regulating breathing and heart rate and digestion, etc., is really devoted to this unconscious processing. It's taking events from your childhood, plans that you have that you don't even know yet, that aren't aware of yet, experiences that are happening today and and looking at those from different perspectives and offering those to you in in what? In dreams. What are dreams? in stories, in narratives that are really disrupted in space and time. A lot can happen in a short period of time, then you're in a different room. Dreams are very distorted in terms of their representation. But when you're falling asleep, you're in that pseudo awake state obviously where your thinking, planning, and action parts of your brain, your logical mind is turned off and these ideas are geysering to the surface.
Mhm. And this is why sometimes people have their best ideas in the shower, while walking when they're not trying to have ideas. And you can seed this by writing down a few things before you go to sleep. You can think, you know, like wondering what to do next year. Don't know. Okay, maybe it's that vague. Does that mean you'll have a dream that solves it that night? Maybe. Probably not. But chances are if you pay attention to, you know, during the day you'll be walking along or for some reason this always happens to me when I'm um uh urinating. I don't know why. I don't know why. Like I go like I don't know, maybe it's because I'm relaxed. Like I go especially if I'm in nature and I'm hiking. I'll go like take a take a pee behind a tree and I like oh I have an idea. I don't know why that is. I think it's because I'm not thinking about doing anything except you know I'm taking a leak behind a tree. I guess this is very forthcoming for me to admit this. You know, some people stay in the shower, other people while they're running. One thing that I think is really useful for coming up with ideas, I seem to be mentioning Rick a lot today, but um one thing I observed when I spent time with Rick, is he has a kind of a practice, although he's never said this formally, where he'll be very still with his eyes closed. And I thought maybe he's meditating, maybe he's um sleeping. And it turns out he told me that his mind is very active in that time. Even though his body is very still. Now, that sparked something in me because I have a guest or had a guest on my podcast by the name of Carl Dyeroth. He's one of the luminaries in the field of neuroscience and one of the best bio-engineers in the world. He's also a psychiatrist, a brilliant guy. And when he came on my podcast, he said that he has a practice every night after he puts his five kids to sleep. He's one of these hyperproductive people where he sits down and he makes himself stay as completely still as possible. and forces himself to think in complete sentences. And I thought this is interesting because it was also reported or purported that Einstein would take walks and then occasionally just stop and let his mind continue in thinking while he stopped his body. And when you start looking back through history of science, history of music, etc., you'll find that there are these hyper creative, hyperproductive people that have a practice of making their body completely still and their mind very active. Not meditation where you're trying to just focus on your breathing, but they're actually actively thinking while keeping their body very still. Now, I find that fascinating. I also find it fascinating that some people, for instance, myself, if I take a long run, which I do every Sunday, I make it a point to run for 60 to 90 minutes every Sunday. Not fast, but I just go go go go go. Inevitably, during those runs, I come up with some of my best ideas. It's a it puts my brain into a state where I can things geyser up from my unconscious mind. And so that state of mind is one in which the body is very active and I'm not trying to think about anything. So you have these two inverse states. One is body still mind active. The other is body active, mind kind of free running, kind of just like spooling out. When I'm running, I'm not thinking about anything. And then ideas spring to the surface.
In the neuroscience of creativity, we know that there's a meditation practice that's been studied called open monitoring meditation. Most typical meditation is you sit or lie down, close your eyes, maybe lotus position, maybe not, and you concentrate on your breathing. You bring your attention constantly back to your third eye center. Work from Wendy Suzuki's laboratory at NYU has shown just 10 to 13 minutes of that practice every day can improve memory. In particular working memory which is your ability to keep thoughts online lower stress and other benefits. There's a different form of meditation which is open monitoring meditation where you sit or lie down, close your eyes and you actually are paying attention to everything around you. You focus your attention there in the room, there in the room, there in the room or you just let it all just kind of sift over you. You're not actually focusing on your breathing. And that practice of open monitoring meditation is associated with improved creative capacity. Now improved creative capacity in air quotes is something that's measured in a laboratory. So synthesis of new ideas, creative solutions to a puzzle, etc. We're not talking about writing great works of music. But in a laboratory, you only have so many things that you can sample or measure typically in undergraduate students. So, I I'm kind of just, you know, tossing all of this out there as a means for people who are interested in improving their creativity or exploring creativity to not just wait. Not just wait, have a mode of capture. Write things down or maybe jot them into your phone or voice memos. Maybe do open monitoring meditation. Maybe sit and force yourself to think in complete sentences with your body still. Maybe go for a long run or walk where you're bored. You're not listening to anything and see what comes up. I think everyone does this differently, but if you're able to access this state of mind, it can be immensely powerful because great ideas come to you.
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