Transcription
Hey, this is Dr. Laura Conver, and today I'm going to make a video on the Neuroscience of weight. So the reason I even thought to do this video is I'm going through menopause, and I'm definitely gaining a little bit of weight. And I realized that I was shaming myself, just a script in the back of my mind like, "Oh, you shouldn't eat that," or and if I stepped on a scale and noticed a change in weight, I caught myself having a visceral, very strong internal visceral reaction to that that was very negative and led to a feeling of shame. And I know there is a major medical study back in 2017 that showed that fat shaming and internalizing that and shaming yourself is worse than the weight itself, as far as having health outcomes. They followed overweight people who internalized the stigma and the shame of being overweight, and when it was internalized, they had a 40% higher rate of having metabolic syndrome and other um health issues because of weight—40% higher independent of weight. So even if they were just a little bit overweight or mild obesity, but they internalized it and took that stigma on and created shame in their body, they had a much higher chance of having metabolic syndrome than even the person in the highest weight category if they didn't internalize it and they didn't take that stigma on. If you internalized and shamed yourself for weight, even if you were not in the higher weight categories, you had a much higher uh chance of having really poor health outcomes than someone who doesn't internalize that stigma, even if they weigh twice as much as you. It's how you self-talk.
And the reason I want to make this video is I just attended a medical conference where we talked about the Neuroscience of weight and why our brains are hardwired to make us eat. And there's nothing wrong with that, but when we then shame ourselves for it, you can't shame yourself for something that's literally an evolutionary trait that is hardwired into our brain stem. It is wired so that we overeat so that during times of abundance we get as many calories into our system as possible because there was also always times of lack. There were times of famine; there were times of starvation; there were times of drought; there were times where you had to go without. And so when you could eat something, even if it wasn't something particularly appealing, the brain stem drive is, "Eat it, and then eat more, and then eat more," because now is the time of abundance, and you need this food. Well, now the time of abundance is constant, and not only is it just abundant that we can acquire food, but it's super easy—easy. It's literally all food sales are created around trying to make it more appealing than just standard food is, and it's really just to get your money. Food is crafted around what will sell and not what's healthy for you. So the smell of food, the artificial colors they put in food, just the packaging of food, the colors they choose and the way they package it and how easy it is to open and how convenient and quick it's going to be to consume, um, the taste, artificial flavorings and preservatives that are in there, just literally not for your health and in fact disadv—you know, a disadvantage to your health, but to make you want to consume it. On top of that, there's now chemicals that are put in the food that numb your brain. So, for example, high-fructose corn syrup numbs your brain, so you can't even tell that you're satiated. So it numbs the part of your brain—um, has even less blood flow to the part of your brain that would tell you you're getting full. So you're consuming chemicals that won't even give you any kind of biofeedback that you're getting full. On top of it, your brain stem is telling you, even if you're full, keep eating more; if there's food available, you need to eat it; you need to eat it. And that's you—you can't unwire your brain for that, and so therefore you can't shame yourself for that.
There are so many other additional stressors facing us, like, for example, insomnia is a public health crisis. Most people are not sleeping well, and it's almost impossible to have portion control, diet control, and lose weight if you're not sleeping well. In fact, studies show that you gain weight nine times faster—not just that you can't lose weight, but that you gain weight nine times faster when you have poor sleep night after night after night. So if you're sleeping 5 hours or less—is the parameter they used in this study—you are nine times more likely to make poor food choices, poor calorie choices, and to gain weight nine times more quickly. And again, you can't shame yourself for that because if you're not sleeping well and so you don't have natural energy, of course your brain, the neurochemistry of your brain, is hardwired to say, "You didn't sleep well; your energy is low; so you need to consume some calories to get you through." It's literally a survival advantage. If you are going on no sleep, then you need that extra nutrition to power your day. But unfortunately, what most of the options we have are not actually nutritious, so we're left with empty calories and feeling more depleted, and then that evolutionary—the brain chemistry saying, "Well, then eat more; then you don't feel good; eat more; you need to eat more," and if it's available, you need to eat it; you literally need to eat it. And if you don't eat it, you feel like you're like harming yourself. That's the feeling your brain gives you is, "If I don't consume this, I'm going to die." And that is an evolutionary advantage back when there were times of abundance and times of famine and times of feasting and times of fasting, but we don't have that anymore, and all the companies out there are just trying to trick you to take your money and not make sure that you're healthy.
Let me end this video though by giving you a bunch of tips on, since we know that's how the brain's going to work and that's healthy and normal and we're not going to be able to change that brain pattern, here is a way to set up the external environment so that um I can work with the way our brain chemistry is set up and make it a little bit easier for myself not to continuously overconsume, even though I know that's what my brain is going to tell me to do, and there's nothing wrong with me because of that. So the first tip is pretty obvious: If do not bring it into your home. Because if you have it in your home, you're going to eat it; you're going to at least want to eat it; your brain is going to at least be constantly telling you to eat it. So the food in your home should reflect food that you are comfortable eating and that you feel is healthy and nutritious for you to eat because you just assume that everything you bring into your house you will eat, because why would you set yourself up for bringing things into the house as like a treat or once in a while or portion control? I'm going to have a a handful of chips—just assume you're going to eat all of it. That is what your brain is hardwired to tell you to do. So you're not doing something wrong because you eat that whole bag of chips; you're not—you're not doing something wrong, but maybe you can only bring a whole bag of chips in once a month so that it is a treat. But it's so much better to bring in food that you don't have to worry about portion control than to expect yourself to override your evolutionarily wired brain to give you artificial portion control. We are not wired for portion control. So only bring food into your home that you're okay if you eat every single thing that you bring in. If you're going to shame yourself for it, don't bring it in your house.
The second tip kind of goes along with this; it's this is—it's so hard in our fast-paced society because we're go, go, go, go, go, but um if you can bring in food that requires some kind of preparation, it makes it harder to consume. That is another way of um putting a little bit of buffer between our hardwired brain, which is just eat whatever's in front of you, um, to and kind of reduce its availability. If food requires time to prepare, you will typically only eat when you are really, really hungry. Um, if food is instantly accessible—you open a package and there it is; you open a bag and there it is—then it's very easy to immediately consume because your brain is telling you, whether you're hungry or not, you should consume if it's in front of you. But if you have to prepare it so that it's not immediately in front of you, it takes effort, then you're typically only going to be motivated to follow through on that effort when you're truly hungry. And so that is a way to kind of dampen down that brain stem impulse to eat just what—eat what's in front of you and eat all of it and then eat some more. Another way to do this so that it becomes automated is to do intermittent fasting, so that you do—you don't have shame, and you allow yourself to eat whatever your brain tells you you want when you want it, as much as you want, but you're limiting the window in which you're allowing yourself to do it, so that when it's off, it's just off; you're not entertaining your brain; you're not even allowed to eat; it's just, "I'm in a fasting state; I'm done." If you can get—if that works for you, that is a really phenomenal—that is so good; it boosts your metabolism; it is really, really healthy, and it mimics that evolutionary times of abundance and times of famine. So if you can shorten the window and say, "I'm going to fast for 16 hours a day in a 24-hour period, and I'm only going to eat for 8 hours," then that is a phenomenal way to mimic that evolutionary drive that our brain has. And then for those 8 hours, you can pretty much stop monitoring yourself and stop shaming yourself.
Another thing you can do, if fasting doesn't appeal to you, is just don't drink any of your calories, if that's possible. That is another really great compromise. That way you're not monitoring your brain; you're allowing yourself to eat; you're not going to shame yourself, but you're also not going to add any calories through what you drink, because that is a major—and diet sodas are no—diet sodas have those chemicals that numb your brain that tell you you're not even—even full when you're full. So we don't—no diet sodas; that's not what I'm talking about when I say zero calories. I'm saying you stick with water, unsweetened tea, and black coffee, and um that way you are free to consume eating as all the calories you want because you're not adding any other calories based off of just a beverage you're drink—you're sticking with water. And if you can do that—sorry about the shift of the sun—if you can do that, then that's a phenomenal um way to work with your brain and not do the shame but also still not overconsume as much as—as if you were drinking calories on top of eating calories. We touched on this at the beginning—beginning of the video—but another thing you can do is fix your sleep. Because if you fix your sleep, you are much less likely to reach for food to give you energy. But since I've slept well and I feel restored from sleep, um, I don't even—that's not even interrupting my day as much; I can focus on my work instead of constantly thinking, "Gosh, I'm hungry; God, I need some food; God, I'm so tired; I really need to eat; I just need a snack; I need that—that'll help; I need another Frappuccino." You know, those thoughts interrupt your day less, so it's a way to just restrict the amount of time you spend in grazing mode, in eating mode. So fix your sleep; it helps also boost your metabolism and helps your whole body, all the organ systems in your body function better.
Another thing you can do um is reduce background noise, because just like shame and that—that—that um chronic stress of body shaming in and of itself independently causes poor health outcomes and disease, so does background noise. I have another whole blog where I talk about the stress of background noise. So if you work in an office and you're constantly hearing background noise, you sleep with the music on, you constantly have a TV running, you live by a busy street—th—that might not be stressors that you can modify, but those are causing constant chronic uh stress on your body, which has been shown to increase weight, increase your chance of metabolic syndrome, and decrease your metabolism. Another great one that has been shown to boost your metabolism and help you process food uh better and is really healing for your body is temperature differences; so going from heat to cold and cold to heat; so using sauna, ice baths, that kind of thing. That's something I cannot do—will not do—but if you want to do a Polar Plunge or routine use of a sauna um so that you get that heat and that cold and that temperature change, that is really, really good for your body. That is similar to going through times of fasting and then times of abundance, so doing intermittent fasting. So if intermittent fasting is not your thing, maybe dramatic temperature changes is a different way to shock your body and get it into a higher metabolic state. There's also some key supplements you can take so that you're working with your neurochemistry instead of fighting and shaming yourself because of it. So one of the things you can take is taurine, and the other thing is 5-HTP. Both of those things help moderate the neurosignaling in your brain, and so do they—do help you feel more satiated; they do give you the feedback that I might not need to overeat as much because I feel happy; I feel satiated; I feel full.
Another way, too, instead of shaming yourself, you're just working with the fact that you know your brain—it's going to want you to eat and then eat again and then eat more. So I'm going to pre-eat with something that's super nutritious—this uh metabolic biome fuel is made from organic fruits and vegetables and then either collagen or pea protein, depending on if which one you want to pick—um, and it's just filled with really healthy proteins, organic fruits and vegetables, like organic broccoli sprouts, organic kale sprouts, um apple juice, beet fiber, all of these wonderful nutrients, um, and it just—if you can drink a little shake that you make of that beforehand, it will definitely take away your body's just physical capacity to overeat. And so that is just an easy way of, again, not shaming yourself, not trying to rewire your brain because I don't think that's really possible um in one lifespan; um, it would have to be an evolutionary thing that happens over generations and generations and generations. Now that we're dealing with a new level of abundance of food and ease of food and the fact that the food is not as nutritious as it was, you know, we do need to respond to that, but it's really hard in just one lifetime; you're not going to rewire your brain. So again, like just making the conditions around it work with the way our brains work by pre-gaming our food, reducing background noise, making sure I got a good night of sleep, being on my intermittent fast, so it's just off the radar; it's just not even possible; and then letting myself eat freely in the window that I'm allowed to eat freely—all those kinds of things are ways to um really work with our brain and with the end goal of reducing the amount of shame we feel, reducing the amount of internalized stigma that we carry. Because if I can reduce my self-talk and my self-shame and my self—like having that visceral reaction when I'm monitoring what I eat or what I weigh, if I can reduce that, then I'm already reducing 40% of what damages my body from my thoughts anyway—my thoughts about my weight. So you can weigh more, and if your thoughts—if you're not internalizing that stigma, you're still going to be healthier than someone who weighs less but who's shaming themselves constantly. So that's what this video is for.
If you want more ways to help work with your brain and naturally lose weight, I have a just a 5-day reset—super easy, super simple; not about calorie counting; it's about lifestyle changes. So one of the days we do work on sleep; one of the days we introduce a different—each day—and it's super easy; we do focus on going through background noise um and seeing how we can reduce that stress; we focus on different areas of your life that you can easily modify without fixating too much on actually what you're consuming because we know we're not trying to rewire your brain, um but we are trying to work with our new environment and what we've got going on. So in that um course I also give you some key supplements that are very, very helpful, and I hope you'll join me there if you think that could be something that would help you work with your body and reduce the amount of shame and internalized stigma that you say to yourself. Because what I really want to do is reduce poor self-talk; I want you to treat yourself better, and because of that, your body's health will be better. Okay, so I hope this was helpful, and if you want to join my class, I'd love to see you there.