#happy pavlove on streaming day | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

mokuhchi-manuscripts · 3 years

Note

Spring troupe (separately) finding notes in their pockets from their s/o reminding them to take care of themselves and that they love them?

A/N: I wrote this as if it was an event that happened regularly! Hope that’s what you meant :) Also I loved writing this so much! This request was so cute, thank you so much anon ;^; Also Masumi has abandonment issues bc I said so and it makes a lot of sense with his character. And apologies Citron’s is the shortest, I’m still working on figuring out his character tbh

CW(s): slight mention of abandonment issues for Masumi

❀ Sakuya Sakuma

He’d be beyond himself when he found the first one

He blushes really hard whenever he reads them you’ve almost pavloved him into blushing every time he feels a piece of paper in his pocket

After a couple times of finding a note, he’ll definitely look forward to days where he finds them

He doesn’t do anything like run to his hoodie and check all his clothes everyday but when he happens to find one it always brings a smile to his face

He’d definitely text you to say thank you and respond with his own small message

He especially needs the reminders to take care of himself during spring though, as theatre takes up so much of his mind and he can get easily preoccupied

Sakuya sat outside in the courtyard, reviewing his script for the nth time. A cool breeze passed through and tousled his hair. He placed a hand in his hoodie pocket, not wanting to get cold; as soon as he reached in he felt a scrap of paper scrape against his hand. Sakuya immediately began to blush and quickly pulled out the paper.

"Reminder to eat today! Hope you have a great day and good luck with rehearsals <3"

He couldn’t help but let a giant grin spread across his face. Then the realization that he hadn’t eaten yet hit him. Omi had just been out not too long ago, or so he thought, to remind him dinner was ready. Sakuya had responded that he’d be there momentarily, but got distracted by the new script.

He quickly got up and began to make his way to the kitchen and dining room. There at the table he saw a handful of the Mankai Company members, including Omi.

“There you are! I was about to go remind you again dinner was ready.”

“Sorry, I got distracted. What did you cook today?”

Omi shook his head. “I didn’t. Izumi did.” Sakuya nodded in acknowledgement, knowing exactly what that meant,

“It’s alright. Now sit down and eat!” Sakuya grabbed a plate and served himself some curry and found a place at an empty seat. He pulled the note out from his pocket again, reading and rereading it again and again just like he did with every note.

After he ate dinner he made sure to text you a thank you.

❀ Tsuzuru Minagi

The first time he found a note he was shocked; he didn’t really have enough time to process it as he was on his way to one of his part-time jobs but during his shift he continued to fumble as he couldn’t get it off his mind

Tsuzuru reached into his pocket for a pen, fingers crossed he didn’t forget one to his server job. He quickly found the writing utensil, but next to it he could feel a scrap of paper. He figured it must have been a reminder he wrote for himself that he forgot about. He pulled the small piece out of his pocket and froze in his tracks once he read it. It wasn’t a note he had written for himself, instead it was a note you had written for him.

"Remember that I care about you and don't forget to take care of yourself today!"

He could barely register the words as he read them, but the immediate emotion he felt was absolute love for you.

He most likely finds any note on his way to a college class or while working one of his part-time jobs

If he finds one while he’s with a member of the Mankai company he probably won’t read it as he prefers to read them when he’s alone since they’re personal and special to him

He tries to keep them but sometimes he just gets disorganized so he may accidentally throw them away; he still has at least half though

He tries his best to follow the notes when they’re reminders (e.g. eating when you remind him to eat) as he doesn’t want to somehow accidentally disappoint you

He definitely needs the reminders when he’s writing scripts as he will not step away from his computer once it comes time for another play; if you leave him a note to eat or drink water there’s a higher chance he’ll at least eat something small or take some sips of water

Since he’s someone who tends to look out for other people, knowing someone is looking after him just makes him incredibly happy

❀ Masumi Usui

He froze as soon as he opened the first note he received as he could barely think; his thoughts were too full of his love for you and he didn’t want it any other way

He probably immediately texted you as soon as he reads it to tell you he loves you and has continued to text you a thank you or ‘ily’ every time he gets a note and decides to check on you in the same message

He loves checking his jackets after he sees you to see if you’ve left a note; and once Tsuzuru told you he checks you started leaving them after every time you went over

He keeps all the notes in a jar on his desk; just seeing them all collected in one place brings a smile to his face

Whenever he feels lonely, or his abandonment issues act up, he brings the jar up to his bed and reads them one by one

Masumi sat in his desk chair, exasperated. He had messaged you a couple times throughout the day and you hadn’t responded despite looking at his messages and he was growing concerned. His mind was beginning to race and he began to assume and fear the worst. Then the jar on his desk caught his eye. He carefully grabbed it, tucked it under one arm, and climbed up to his bed. There he unscrewed the lid and one by one pulled out and read each and every note he had ever gotten from you.

“Reminder that I love you!’

“Remember to eat and drink water <3”

“(ღ˘⌣˘)♥ love you!”

“This song made me think of my feelings for you- Stupid for You by Waterparks <3”

“Good luck with rehearsal today! (ɔˆ ³(ˆ⌣ˆc)"

Tears began to well in his eyes and he made sure to wipe them away with the back of his hand, lest he ruin one of the precious notes with his tears. Never had he felt so loved before you, and he mentally noted to tell you how much he appreciated you the next time he saw you.

After having dealt with his parents not being there and growing up with no friends, he values you and your reminders an immense amount

He may try to leave you notes as well, but he’d much rather express his love for you in person

❀ Itaru Chigasaki

The first time he found one of your notes, he was overwhelmed with love for you; he could practically see the ‘+10’ affection points above his head as he read it

Itaru probably finds the notes once he’s at work if you put them in his jacket

His morning is much too hectic to be able to read it while at the dorms, so he tends to read it every time he drains his LP (yes, every time; your notes brighten his day)

Itaru stepped away from his desk. He had been watching the clock as his lunch hour ticked closer and closer, and once the time was reached, he made his way out of the office. Once he got to his car and began to drain his LP, he reached into his pocket to pull out the note you had left in his pocket that morning.

"Don’t forget to refill your stats! Remember to eat something and drink water, and keep in mind that ily <3"

He couldn't help but smile at the note, unlocking his phone to both drain his LP and to message you a quick thank you in response to your nerdy reminder.

If you use gamer lingo or nerdy references in the notes he will be positively enamored

He tends to just put them somewhere in a designated desk drawer, sometimes taping his favorites down to the top of the desk to make sure they don’t get lost and to see them while he games

If he’s streaming and he sees one of the notes on his desk out of the corner of his eye, he always ends up smiling and tends to have a habit of taking a drink of water when he sees one

If you leave a note in his gaming sweatshirt, it may take a bit for him to find it but when he does he’s very grateful -even though he has a smaller chance of actually listening to it-

At times when he’s very preoccupied, he may forget that you leave him notes at all so it’s like a new surprise all over again

❀ Citron

He was incredibly happy when he received his first note from you

After the first note he received, he began leaving notes for you as well

Sometimes the notes can be hard to decipher due to him forgetting and switching up words but it’s the thought that counts

You had left a note on Citron’s desk the night before, and when you arrived at the dorm the next day he thanked you for it and gave you a tight hug. While you were there he was telling stories of his home country. He spoke of the food, the towns, and his pet Juliano.

Eventually it began to get dark and you had to bid your boyfriend a farewell. He gave you a kiss on your cheek as you departed, and offered a smile and wave as you exited out the door.

Once outside the bitter winds nipped at your skin, so you placed your hands in your pockets in an attempt to keep them warm. But once you did so, you could feel a scrap of paper scratch against your fingertips. You quickly pulled it out, wondering what it could be. You unfolded it and there in familiar handwriting you found the following note:

"Remember that I am loving you always! Have a safe trip home and do not forget to crink water!!"

You could assume he meant ‘drink’ instead of ‘crink’. His struggle with language definitely found its way into the notes he gave you, but if anything it made him that much more endearing. On your way home, you made sure to buy a bottle of water.

His notes may sometimes come off as nonsensical due to his issues with language

If you really need help translating it, just ask another troupe member and they should be able to help

He doesn’t check his pockets for notes since he loves the surprise of finding them

❀ Utsuki Chikage

The first time he found a note in his pocket he felt so happy and appreciated it more than anything, although you wouldn’t have been able to tell if you were there due to his amazing poker face

Chikage has guilt and baggage and the fact that you stay with him amazes him, but he’s so grateful

After reading them he does throw the notes away, not because he doesn’t like them, but because they feel so special to him he doesn’t want anyone else to have the opportunity to read the words you wrote especially for him

Because of this, he does his best to memorize them

It was originally difficult to know if he was even finding the notes since he’d never let you know or anything of that such

You had been leaving notes in your boyfriend’s pockets for months now. They were simple notes, things such as, ‘Don’t forget to eat today!’ or ‘Remember I care about you and like you no matter your past’. It shouldn't have made you so nervous that you couldn’t tell if Chikage had actually found them, or if he found them annoying, but knots of anxiety were developing in your stomach. So you decided to call him.

He picked up on the fourth ring, “Chikage Utsuki speaking.”

“Hey, Chikage.”

“Oh, hello. To what may I offer the pleasure of this call?”

“Um,” you paused, collecting your thoughts, “so, I’ve been leaving these little..notes? In your pockets? And I was just curious if you had gotten them or if you found them annoying because if you do I can stop-” a laugh on the other side cut you off. “What? What’s so funny?”

Chikage continued to chuckle, “No, I’ve found them.” He lowered his voice to a whisper, like he didn’t want anyone else but you to hear, “I really appreciate them. Thank you.”

“Oh! Well I’m glad.” you were almost positive Chikage could hear your smile through the phone.

“Was that all?”

“Yeah, sorry. I’ll see you later. Bye!”

“Goodbye.” the click of the end call button rang in your ears, but you couldn’t help but continue to smile.

After a while, it’s easier to tell when he has recently read a note as he may come off as somewhat more affectionate but whether he does it on purpose or not you can’t completely tell

· · ─────── · ☆ · ─────── · ·

Navigation | Masterlists | Before you Request

168 notes · View notes

princeanxious · 4 years

Note

On a scale from 1 to hell yes, how much does Janus enjoy being bitten by vamp Virge? Is it one of those "vampire saliva makes it feel good" sort of scenarios?

It’s only until after they start dating that the constant biting/marking presents itself-(So like, the only times Virgil ever legitimately full out bit Janus b4 they were together was when he needed to feed, which Virgil also did w/ Remus, trading back and forth so neither are really affected by the small blood loss long-term)

But heck, when they start dating and become official? Virgil’s favorite form of giving affection is pressing kisses, hickeys, and love bites to any expanse of skin that finds itself near his mouth. And Janus, a rather romantically and platonically touch starved individual in general? He melts for it, every. single. time.

Virgil sneaks up behind Janus and presses a teasing bite to Jan’s shoulder or back of his neck? Janus’s reaction usually involves stifling the helplessly reactionary noise he makes and melting into his buff himbo of a cackling vampire boyfriend’s chest, red faced and huffing but not daring to complain lest it causes the affection to stop.

Virgil’s saliva is indeed laced w/ a moderate amount of feel good chemicals among other healing properties(cant let your prey bleed out, or you cant come back for more!) its a bit controlled by how much Virgil choses to use per bite bc its a combo of saliva and injected venom? The saliva has the tingly numbing/healing properties, the venom has the feel good & sedation chemicals, though the venom doesn't need to enter any main blood stream to work its magic, just pricking skin is enough?

For most normal onetime bites, the victim will feel relaxed and a little drowsy but overall its painless even with a minor amount of venom. But Janus consistantly recieving doses of V’s venom leads to a bit of a pavloved response when Virgil bites him, even playfully, bc Virge will often use his venom on Jan outside of deep bites, just to be a little shit and tease Jan and/or make him relax and feel good bc Jan adores all forms of physical affection. It p much leaves his brain to just associate ‘bite = feels good’ and often makes him melt into a puddle of happy chemicals when he feels like it

So, it's definitely at a hell yes point on the scale, because every bite, nip, or kiss is usually followed by being enveloped in big strong arms, a small rush of endorphins, and being cuddled and kissed by an oversized bat that floats. 💛

(Once the venom wears off, any abrasions will have healed, and the area bitten is as sore and visible as a hickey/light bruise would be for the rest of that day. Janus rarely ends his days without at least one or two, and will not openly admit it but he likes these just as much xD)

#anxceit #mvv au #modern vampire vee au #luka’s aus #tw biting #tw vampire #vampire!virgil #tw blood mention #tw kissing mention #tw hickey mention #vampire Vee has a strong fixation on feeling Jan’s pulse- especially w/ his mouth #janus has comflicted feelings abt it but theyre mostly positive??#ask to tag

162 notes · View notes

nickgerlich · 5 years

Text

Pavlov’s Dogs

One of the greatest marketing coups of the modern era has been the victory of Apple in convincing its legions of customers to bow down to its altar. We...and I use the first-person plural with good reason...are a loyal lot. We upgrade our phones every couple of years. We buy iPads. We own Mac Book pros. We love our Apple TV.

Because the company has created an ecosystem that is hands down the best anywhere.

Its products play well together, better than any set of disparately manufactured products could ever come close to achieving. Once you get sucked into that ecosystem, brand switching costs are high. It’s a lot like buying a Canon, Nikon, or Sony, because once you get in and start buying lenses, you find they are not compatible with anything else on the planet.

So when Apple made its big announcement last Monday, lots of folks got to thinking, as they should. It was a big day. It took 130 minutes for Apple to spit it all out, between Tim Cook, half the senior managers, and a bunch of aging A-listers, but the message was clear: Apple is now suddenly all about the service side of the equation.

The question is whether customers will lap up every word they said and respond later this year when they are available, much like Pavlov’s dogs when they heard his assistant coming down the hall to feed them. Saliva, anyone?

And it is a very legitimate question. How much more can Apple fans buy? Will they just reflexively say “yes” to everything Apple tosses out there? Is there any limit to the mayhem?

As for me, I am willing to go another $10 a month, on top of my three other streaming services. My stipulation is simple: It needs to be different from what I already have. I am not going to give up what I have, because my daughters and I rather like them. I don’t need Apple Music, because I already have Spotify, and am quite happy. If Apple wants my money, it will either be for Apple News+ or Apple TV+, but only if I see the perceived value.

Apple should not be so quick to assume that just because 1.4 billion people own one of their phones that they will just automatically start drooling when they hear Tim Cook walking onstage. Jenifer Aniston may be hot, but I still see her as Rachel on Friends. She’s going to have to do more than hang out in a fictional coffee shop to keep my attention, even if she is wearing the same tight black leather pants that Ross wore on the show.

But I digress.

The proof has been in the music pudding lately, though, because while Apple may be in a strong second-place position with 50 million subscribers, it still represents less than three-percent of its iPhone customers. To say “Meh” was the response is an understatement.

Given that Apple was rather vague in most of its new service announcements last Monday, I’d say they are watching and waiting for public reaction so they can tweak things before final release. I hope they are understandably a little nervous, given the relative unsuccess of Apple Music. They can have my $10, but whatever I latch onto better be good.

Because I could just as easily hear the footsteps of another corporation spokesperson coming down the hall, and it wouldn’t take much to salivate in his or her general direction. There’s always another coup waiting to happen.

Dr “Ready To Drool“ Gerlich

Listen: https://soundcloud.com/nickgerlich/pavlovs-dogs

#marketing #Apple

0 notes

borisherrmann · 6 years

Text

Episode 11: Stress Hacks for Weight Loss

youtube

Look and feel great from the inside out. A delicious low-calorie blend of green tea extract, gut friendly probiotics and powerful antioxidants to support your health, metabolism and vitality.

Learn More

Premium Retail Partners:

Show Notes

The panic button effect http://www.psychsummaries.com/2011/05/glass-et-al-1969.html

Meditation article https://stressteflon.com/meditation-doesnt-work/

MIND Awareness article

https://stressteflon.com/clarity-people-suck-meditation/

Podcast Transcript

Greg: Welcome to the body science podcast. The centre of Fit Happy and Healthy. And speaking of fit happy and healthy, I’ve got two gurus here to talk today in relation to that exact topic. We’re going to discuss how to hack into the weight loss mindset.

With me, Harriet Walker, dietitian, sports dietitian, lifter.

Harriet: Hello. Thanks for having me.

Greg: On my left, Luke Mathers wrote a book called “Stress Teflon.” If you haven’t read it, grab it. Where can you get it from, Luke?

Luke: You can get it from stressteflon.com.

Greg: OK. And you also do a lot of motivational talking in relation to stress and stress management and your big thing is stress is not bad.

Luke: No, it’s not. It’s really good so long as we learn how to use it. Hopefully that’s some of the stuff that we’ll talk about today.

Greg: And Harriet, how much is stress related to weight loss? Let’s not muck around. We’re talking about weight loss mindset here.

Harriet: Well I think stress is a very big factor.

Greg: Very big?

Harriet: Yes. I see this probably — a few times a week there’s somebody who is battling with overeating due to their lifestyle; they are over worked, they’ve got kids, they try to balance everything, and they are eating their emotions. It happens quite commonly.

So this is definitely a topic that I wrangle each week. And it’s not going anywhere, because we’re probably not as adept at dealing with our stress levels as we might need to be.

Greg: When someone comes sees you in a clinic to talk about, hey, I want to lose weight or gain weight or whatever it is that they talk to you about, how much of it does have to do with stress the emotional side of dieting?

Harriet: There’s an individual variation there, but very commonly, like, there is an element of stress that I am assessing as we go through their initial assessment. So I’m not just talking about nutrition intake, for the probably the first half hour I’m talking about their lifestyle and what are the some of the things that impact the way they eat. So I’m looking at their work and their ability to prepare food. Where do they get their food from, and are they eating. So very commonly I’ll get these people saying — oh, I eat this perfect diet — I’m like, cool, but if you ate just like that we wouldn’t be here right now. So what else is going on?

And that’s when they’re like — oh, well, I have a bad day and I eat this, or my boss has got mad at me, so I go to get that little sugar hug that I get from food. Sometimes I’m referring out before I get into my meal plans; I’m making sure they’re OK emotionally.

Greg: So if I’m getting sugar hugged, Luke…

Luke: Little dopamine lollipops.

Greg: Yeah. Dopamine lollipops. What should I be doing? You’ve written the book “Stress Teflon.” What should I be doing?

Luke: One of the cases in Stress Teflon is talking about self awareness. You got to sort of understand what you’re thinking and why you’re think it and whether it’s helping. And one of the hassles that you get when you’re having a bad day and — now your kids are being little bastards and your husbands not being so nice, and your boss…

Greg: Your kids are beautiful things. They are.

Luke: There’s loads of stresses that come on and you have no control over. And stress makes you feel uncomfortable. It’s designed to make you do something. Supposed to spur to action. You’re a caveman, it’s supposed to get you to run away from tigers. The hassle is there are not tigers around the place any more, so we just want something that makes us feel comfortable. A little dopamine lollipop, like grabbing a Mars bar, or a bit of cake, might make you feel good for a little while, but the long term benefit to that probably don’t have much of a hassle.

Greg: We’re going to take Mars bar out of that. Just so you know. We’re going to write that down. No brands.

Harriet: Yeah.

Greg: So, can you just say — so we go for a lolly a sweet or cake or something…

Luke: So when you have that problem and you’re feeling terrible and you got to do something, the something you do, is you reach for a cake, or you reach for something sweet, then you’re going to undo all your diet issues and you’re going to put yourself on a little sugar up and down roller coaster for the rest of the day that’s really hard to get off.

Greg: So what should we do?

Luke: I think if you can sort of stop at that point where you can feel that, yeah, I’m starting to get cranky, I’m starting to get like I’m not feeling comfortable with myself, and just take a couple of deep breaths and take a couple of moments, and do whatever you’re going to do deliberately from then. The hassle is we just go into whatever is right next to us and we can get that instant gratification.

And food’s awesome instant gratification. You can feel better straight away. Think how great chocolate tastes. Or… That sort of stuff. That’s awesome. And you do feel better straight away. But instant gratification, it doesn’t work as a long term stress relief. It’s got a half-life of about ten minutes.

Whereas, when you do something, like you breathe a few times and then work out what you’re going to do deliberately, you then don’t end up with guilt and shame and all of those other things that add to more stress, and…

Harriet: Absolutely.

Luke: — and snowball on top.

Harriet: That’s definitely a big cycle there. The shame and guilt felt after eating the food that people know that they probably shouldn’t, when they did it reactively, and they don’t have that — I’d probably refer to as mindfulness — that, what you’re talking about, that the breath and the stopping point, it’s a really powerful one, and until people are aware of that cycle that we’ve got in this picture here, they don’t know how to stop. And I think that’s a really important pivotal moment there.

Greg: So if we could do a premortem and step back a little bit on that, what’s happening in our bodies at that time where that stress has hit us, and Luke’s saying, stop, take a breath and think about where are you going next — what’s happening in our body there that’s driving us towards sugar?

Harriet: There’s a few different things that are going on when we’re stressed. The idea is it’s a fight or flight reaction. So what happens when we need to fight or we need to run is that we need glucose to fuel that movement. So we’re either fighting something or running away from it. Either way we need extra energy. So we get glucose mobilization. So, excess blood glucose levels. We get increased awareness, so, sort of our heightened senses. We might get a bit of tension throughout our muscles. So we get a lot of physiological factors. We might get increase in breath rate, increased blood pressure, just so that we’re ready to go.

But the problem is, a lot of the time we’re having these reactions sitting down and we’re kind of almost stewing in our own blood sugar [laughs] because we’re not…

We might be having that response to a bill that we’ve just opened, or we might be having that response because partner is over there upset at us for something. Or there’s lots of different reasons why we might have that stress response. Might be work. But we’re not utilizing that blood sugar level.

So are a couple of different things. We might be storing that excess blood glucose level as fat and very commonly we see that as visceral fat. So we’ve got subcutaneous fat, which is a fat that is just below the skin and it doesn’t really have any negative necessarily health implications, but it’s a visceral fat that is around the center, and it is really encasing the organs and it’s actually impairing their ability to do their job.

But also what we see with stress is we also get loss of appetite initially. Because it doesn’t bode well that if I’m stressed and I’m about to run away from something that I need to have a quick snack. So our body turns off our hunger cues but we might actually get an amplified response later on. And we try and replace those stores that we might not have had at that time. And generally speaking sugar is the go to. When we’ve got decreased blood sugar levels, we might get a corresponding sort of craving for something that’s really going to bump them up again.

So there’s a few different things and it’s a sort of a time phase at which it happens. But, yes, stress is really associated with that belly fat around the middle which is, again, implicated with things like metabolic disease, diabetes, pre-diabetes, and whatnot, cardiovascular disease. So we’re really trying to avoid or trying to reduce our creation of fat around the belly.

Luke: The main thing with that — you summed it up perfectly. The fastest place the body can get glucose from is from your liver. The liver has got a lovely little glycogen score sitting there ready to go. So once that cortisol and adrenaline hit the system, the glucose goes in the blood stream, you have heaps of it there. And you then get an insulin response, which is why it then crashes a little bit later, and then you throw in food on top of a lot of glucose that’s already in the system. So when it goes back to the liver, the liver then says, OK, I’m going to store this new [inaudible][08:58] and that’s where you get the visceral fat that you were talking about.

Harriet: And then there’s also the association of a stressful situation with eating sugary foods and that becomes a learned behavior as well. So that’s very much like the old Pavlov’s dog ring a bell and get a response. We say that with people that, every time until they break the cycle, they’re associating stressful occasions with that food hug that gives them that sort of small dose of —

Luke: Dopamine lollipop.

Harriet: — dopamine lollipop. Yes, we’ve all got different names for it so obviously it’s a thing. [laughs]

Greg: I’m sitting there. I’ve just been reamed by my boss, or had a fight with my partner. Luke, and you say, stop, think, take a few breaths…

Luke: Yep.

Greg: What’s going on there? Like, seriously, how many people are doing that? And how do we engage that?

Luke: with your boss. You’re going to work out, the first thing you do whenever there’s any danger is you’re going to get away from the thing that’s causing you stress.

Greg: Yep. I’m talking about that crossroad. Like, the point where, left or right…

Luke: Yeah. You do get to that fork in the crossroad. One of the things in I talked about in the book — there’s always a fork in the stress road. And you can either take the fork that takes the stress as a challenge… And when you take that road, you don’t actually get that cardiovascular response and stuff that people talk about as being bad as associated with stress. It’s actually more like a challenge. So it’s more like I’m going to climb a mountain. You’re body’s response to that is actually — bring it on, let’s do it.

Whereas when you take the threat road at the fork in the stress road, then you can go into this spiral of, oh, no, this is terrible, it’s awful, look how bad it is — and then all of a sudden, you’re in this little vortex.

Harriet: And it closes your mind off to solutions as well I suppose, when you’re in that situation where you’re in that cycle and it’s all negative.

Luke: You become defensive and dumb.

Greg: So how do you catch yourself?

Luke: Stop. You just got to stop and connect. What I talk about in the book a lot is that you’ve got an old brain and your new brain. And our brains have gone on in layers. And your old brain is going to take over. And it’s going to be reactive and all that sort of stuff.

Greg: When you say “old brain” what are you talking about?

Luke: Your old brains are sort of… Your limbic brain, right in the middle that has all your emotions and has all your fears and has all that sort of stuff. It’s got your amygdala. It’s got all your memories and all of that sort of stuff.

And your new brain is your prefrontal cortex. It’s the smart bit right up the top of your forehead that actually can do the thinking for you. And will make a smart decision if you engage it to make the smart decision.

Greg: If you engage it.

Luke: If you engage it.

Greg: And is that the stop and think part?

Luke: That’s the stop and think part.

The thing about that emotional part of your brain, it doesn’t have any language. It can’t talk. So — you meet someone, you think, oh, I just had that bad feeling about that person. Well, that’s your old brain saying — what this person is saying and what they’re giving off aren’t the same thing. And that’s why you get those feelings that you can’t find to say why.

And that’s where your old brain is the one that’s going off. So you got to get your new brain to click in there and work out why and solve the problem, rather than getting your amygdala hijacked, and the fear center of your brain goes off, and all of a sudden you get cascades of adrenaline, cortisol, and all that, which generally, unless you’re running away from something, aren’t really going to help.

Greg: So you mentioned people tend to demonize their hunger with this theory, where it’s all going, in that they feel bad about what they just ate, and then the loop goes on and on and on.

Harriet: It’s another layer of negative emotion, when we’re feeling shame and guilt about what we’ve eaten. It’s a negative association with eating food. And that pull to self efficacy of — I don’t know how to feed myself properly and I’m not feeling great about that either, and I can’t do anything.

So, it might start with just being a stressful life or a job, and it turns into making eating a really big thing as well which is not necessarily positive.

Luke: I think no one really likes to fail at something. We don’t like to think, oh, we’ve let ourselves down. We don’t like to think…

I know myself, I’ve struggled with my weight for years and years. For 20 years I’ve tried to get under 100 kilos and hadn’t been able to do it. If you’ve tried something for 20 years and failed, you’re pretty shit at it.

Harriet: [laughs] Yeah.

Luke: You’re not very good at it. So your belief that you can actually do this, is really, really poor. So the hassle is then when it comes to a stressful time and you don’t have that impulse control that you’d like to have when you’re the best version of yourself, then you’re going to give in, and then you’re just going to say, look, I told you I was shit, I told you I was shit before and I wasn’t going to —

Harriet: Self fulfilling prophecy.

Luke: Exactly.

And then your one little thing that broke what you were doing all good for the rest of the way then turns into — oh, it doesn’t matter, I’m going to eat whatever I want now.

Harriet: Ah, the F-it. That’s F…

Greg: I got it. I know what you meant.

Harriet: Not effort.

Greg: Speaking of F-it…

So I’ve just had a bad day. I’ve gone and loaded up on doughnuts and cakes. I’m feeling bad about myself — which you tell me happens…

Harriet: Yep.

Greg: What should I do when that happens?

Harriet: This is something I talk to a lot, all my clients about. All of it. Because I said on the other podcast, health is a skill. And the first thing I ask them to do, instead of derailing themselves and saying — screw it, I’m going to eat whatever I want — I ask them to be curious but not judgmental.

So be curious about what happened. You know you’ve buggered up. What can you take away? What data? Or what information can you garner from that situation. Because once we can stop and be objective about it, it’s not because you’re a failure.

And like you were saying. No one likes to fail at anything. And eating is an inherent part about, being we have to eat, so the fact that it can fail at eating, that feels pretty crappy.

Luke: That should be a fairly intrinsic part of —

Harriet: Yeah. It should be.

But when you look at food and your environment there’s a lot of different reasons why that is not the case these days.

But despite that, I ask people to be curious but not judgmental. Because that means when they come back and say, hey, Harriet, I messed up on this — instead of blocking themselves to seeing what the objective data is, why it happened, by being curious about it they open themselves up to be actually able to learn from it. So it’s like you’re learning a new skill in your new job. If you are hard on yourself, and like — oh I screwed up — if you’ve got a boss who, you know, totally rides you for it, rather than being like, OK, you did this wrong, this is why I did it wrong, and let’s help you learn to self-correct — people are, once they’re open to the fact that they might have done something wrong but there also open to the fact that they can fix it themselves, then…

Luke: They know what they’re going to do next time. OK, this is what triggered it. Next time, when I get that trigger, I’m going to do something in a different way.

Harriet: It turns it into data.

Greg: What types of things do you suggest? I know you’re going to say, stop and breathe. But where are we at there?

Luke: I read a book called “When” by a guy called Daniel Pink. He’s really, really cool. Guy from the States. He came up with an idea called a “premortem.” And everyone talks about postmortem, but at the end of the day, saying, oh, that was crap, I did this, I did that — and all the things that went wrong. They talk about that all the time.

But when you sit down to write a plan, it might not be a bad idea to work out what went over your danger zone.

Harriet: Yeah. Absolutely.

Greg: When you discuss that? When you consult? Yeah?

Harriet: I’ve got an e-book — LOL… [laughs]

Greg: Yeah. We love a good e-book.

Luke: E-books are alright. Always.

Greg: Because you wrote a real book.

Luke: I wrote a real book. Mines got pages.

Harriet: You’ve got a hard copy. Mine’s just a picture of a hard copy.

Luke: [laughs]

Harriet: But I get people to do a personal SWOT analysis — so what are you doing now? Strengths. What are your weaknesses? What are the opportunities which are external. And what are the threats which are external?

And I’ve talked about this.

Luke: Anyone that’s ever sat through a really boring work conversation has done…

Harriet: Has done a SWOT. But what about yourself? And it actually brings out some really insightful things it makes people identify. A large part of reasons why generic diets don’t work is because they are not tailored to the individual person’s issues.

Luke: I have a theory on this one. One of the cases of the carrots and sticks in our body is dopamine. Dopamine is your drive to thrive. It keeps you focused to get wherever you’re good to go. And I don’t reckon you get as big a dopamine hit from ticking other people’s boxes.

If you’re going to get a dopamine hit, you want to be ticking your own boxes. You want to do the thing that you decide that that’s what I want to do. And I think that’s the hassle with some diet that you just downloaded off the Internet. You’re ticking other people’s boxes.

Harriet: Yep. And it doesn’t mean anything to you. It doesn’t have any meaning to you specifically. And it’s easy to jump off if it’s generic.

Luke: Yeah. Whereas, you do feel as if, with your clients, you give them that, they’re accountable to you a little bit? Or do you feel that helps?

Harriet: I like to tell my clients that by the end of us working together, I’d like you to figure it out. I don’t want you to need me. It’s a terrible business model.

Luke: Make yourself redundant.

Greg: Education is power.

Harriet: But it’d be nice for them to actually come to me with those questions. Like — OK, this is what happened, this is what I did badly — OK, let’s work through that one this time. What did you do? What the scenario is? And I’m going to help you figure out what do we do better next time?

So that way the next time they approach that situation, it’s like — oh, I’ve seen this before, I remember what happened last time, I did this, and this is what I’m going to do this time.

So I get people to go — OK, what happened. You forgot to bring your lunch to work, and then like, oh, yes, so I ended up buying like a crappy takeaway of some description, I didn’t know I follow my diet plan. I’m like OK, cool, that’s going to happen again, I’ll guarantee you. So what’s the nearest things that you have close by to your office? How do I construct a healthy meal from the 7-Eleven or whatever? And it’s doable. It’s all doable. I get people to figure out what petrol stations meals that they could come up with. Because I mean everyone’s got access to a petrol station, and there’s plenty of healthy foods available.

Luke: That’s an awesome premortem thing to do isn’t it?

Harriet: Yeah.

Luke: What am I going to do when I’m stuck and I’ve only got 7-Eleven for dinner?

Harriet: Yep, absolutely. So —

Luke: Inside of the pie without the pastry.

Harriet: [laughs] But you know, there’s heaps of stuff. If you’re ready for it, again, it’s not about not having those road bumps, it’s about how quickly you can bump over them. And keep going.

Luke: The other thing that we do as a human that makes sense, is we have a negative bias. We tend to focus on things that we do that are negative, and we really remember those. We don’t necessarily remember what we the did on the days when we did it well.

So to sort of catch yourself — I’ve had a really good day today, I’ve stuck with everything I’ve said I’m going to do, my premortem worked out perfectly. I went to the thing I knew I had to go to.

If you’re a manager of a business, one of the first rules of management is you catch yourself doing something well. And we don’t do that with ourselves. We really berate ourselves when we do something wrong, but we don’t actually catch ourselves doing well and saying — I trained really hard this morning, I went really hard up that hill, or I could have eaten cake at lunch time and I didn’t — we don’t actually give ourselves a rep for the times when we do it well. And I think that’s something we need to change.

Harriet: Yeah. Absolutely. It’s not great to be high-fiving yourself in public. It think it’s fantastic, you got to own it. And I think, definitely, I’m all for it. But apparently, it’s not socially acceptable.

Luke: You don’t have to tell anyone else you’re doing it.

Harriet: I think there’s nothing wrong with owning it.

I used to be quite bashful if someone gave me a compliment. Now, I’m going to say “thank you.”

Luke: Yeah.

Harriet: Yeah, that’s it. That’s all you have to say.

Greg: Good job, Harriet.

Harriet: Thanks Greg.

Greg: Quick question. The tribe. So you’re doing a meal plan for someone. A diet plan. How important is a tribe, like around Luke’s book talks about he tribe a lot. So how important is that tribe around — and you can talk about what a tribe is in a second, Luke — how important is it to talk about the environment outside of the individual?

Harriet: Really, really important. I think it’s almost a make-or-break. Like, “who’s on your bus?” I say. There’s people who will make or break… It’s the person who, if you decide to give up alcohol, who’s a guy who’s going to be like — oh come on, just have one, you’re boring, you used to be cool and now you’re not — or, your cake-eating buddy — oh, what, we’re not eating cake any more? What do we have in common now? — as opposed to a friend who’s like — oh, OK, that’s a really interesting, I’ll come for a walk with you instead, good on you for that trying to make a change.

It’s not until you try make a health change that you’ll find out who your friends are. I found this really, really quite apparent when I was bodybuilding. I was cutting for a competition, and I probably shed 50 percent of my friendship group. Some of them were really supportive. I’d go out. I’ve made a big point of going out. I wasn’t drinking. But I was still going out having a good time. I don’t think I’m a boring person, unless I’m talking about politics which I don’t know anything about. Or there’d be like — oh, come on just do this one thing — they weren’t supporting me. They were looking for ways to bring me down.

And a lot of the time, they took it as an insult, like I was somehow indirectly insulting them. “You saying I’m a big drinker?” No, I’m just not drinking. Oh, well, you saying I’m fat? No, no, not, that’s your read on the situation.

Luke: There’s a bit of human nature with that, that people don’t want to feel as if someone’s going to leave them behind.

Harriet: The grievings.

Luke: I don’t want you to get too ahead of yourself and that way you might not like me any more — and it’s a really terrible part of human emotion, but it’s something that people actually do do.

Harriet: Yeah. And they want you… It’s like social loafing. Like, when you’re in a workplace, you’ll either, if the positive health environment, if the majority of the population in the workplace are following a healthy way of life, then you’ll follow suit. Whereas if it’s a less optimal you tend to sort of fall to the less optimal way. Unless you’ve got a very strong resolution otherwise. If you’re 50/50 on something you’ll tend to fall to the majority. So that having a really strong Why and having a really strong support network — your tribe — that makes a really big difference to success outcomes, and that’s not just nutrition-wise. That’s probably across the board.

Greg: So why is a tribe important to us, Luke?

Luke: We’ve talked about there being carrots and sticks. We have things that send us… Carrots are the good things that send you in a certain directions. Cortisol and stress hormones are the sticks. They kind of guide you in the right direction, but they also hit you on the ass when you need to go and be faster.

And there’s things like oxytosin and serotonin. Serotonin is your “pride from inside” hormone. So it makes you think the thing that makes you feel good about being you. But you don’t get that when you’re by yourself. You need someone else to do that. You need your tribe to actually get serotonin. It’s a thing that has brought tribes together. Same with oxytosin which is like your “tend or befriend” hormone. It’s the thing that makes you… It’s the thing you get when you hug your friend. And the thing that…

Harriet: Women after childbirth.

Luke: Yeah, they’ve just passed this massive thing out their vagina and all of a sudden they’re going — oh, that’s lovely — and hugging them and they’re fine. And that’s just because they’ve got this massive hit of oxytosin. It’s a lovely hormone. And that’s part of the things that builds tribes and it’s part of human nature.

Let’s face it, we’ve only got really small claws, not very sharp teeth, and we don’t run very fast. If we’re in the jungle, we’re toast. I mean, everything is going to mow us down and eat us for lunch. But the reason we were able to survive for the last few million years is that we have a tribe and we have these hormones that pull us together.

Harriet: Yeah. It’s an interesting one. I think we are always searching for a tribe these days. Like I think it’s interesting that we don’t tend to have that same sort of family unit that we used to. We don’t seem to have the sort of potentially religious sort of ties that we might used to have. Which is why things like finding your tribe on social media, or finding your tribe via a local gym, or something like that is definitely something we crave. But it just shows you the importance of having that backing from a group of people is so important. Together we can go fast but we can go further when we’re with a group.

Luke: There’s things about the tribe, and if you have got that tribe that is, they’re training together and they’re doing things together that are really positive. I get massive amount if I know I’m stuck somewhere and everyone else is training. I fully get If I’m just not happy with that at all.

Harriet: Yeah. Hundred percent.

Luke: Somehow my friends might be somewhere doing something that’s — it might even be a sweaty session that we did the day before, but they’re doing it without me and I hate that.

Harriet: Yeah. And there’s also great research around group exercise and that shared experience and the endorphins impacts of that. There’s actually a scientific explanation as to why group exercise over individual exercise is a lot more compelling and a lot more positive I think. So it’s definitely something to that as well.

Greg: Oh, when you watch one of the Nonette Raleigh sessions and hang around afterwards, the camaraderie is massive. It’s a whole new level.

Harriet: Hundred percent. Because you all have just been beaten down exactly the same way and you’re all doing it together, but there’s something about doing the group session at Raleigh Street, you push that extra one percent for your teammates definitely.

Luke: And the more you do those… It’s like the army people that come back from war. The people that they’ve shared those really hard experiences with, they become even tighter with. So doing those things that are difficult. And doing those really hard gym sessions with people actually makes the bonds even tighter.

And it’s one of the things I talk about in the book about how to make stress non-stick. Is, you got to have the safety of a tribe. You’ve got to feel like you’re contributing to the tribe, and you got to have honest self awareness.

I think when you have those three things, sticking to things like your fitness goals and stuff, certainly become a lot easier. They do for me, anyway.

Greg: What are some of the steps to making that tribe.

Luke: I think probably the biggest thing with a tribe is sort of the giving rather than getting. And I think a lot of people sort of look at those sorts of things.

I did a talk the other week which was for Business Networking International, and their catch cry is “give is gain.” You’ve got to give to the people in your tribe. Not with any sort of expectation of what you’re going to get in return. But just give because it’s a good thing to do, and it’s going to help that person.

Harriet: Like deliberately developing… Like corporation that are deliberately developmental. They are looking for ways to grow. They’re looking for ways to support each other as opposed to looking at ways of progressing their own individual careers. And it makes a big difference.

Luke: Exactly.

Greg: Do you want us to stop?

Hang on. Before you hit Play. So we just went — what, some of those companies that do blah blah blah…

Who owns the expectancy theory?

Luke: I don’t know. Just a theory in some cultures. Nothing to do with weight loss or anything.

Greg: Which psychologist came out with it?

Luke: I didn’t make it up. I changed the words.

Greg: Let’s jump on this.

Ready?

So getting back into the weight-loss mindset, and how to hack stress — this is one for you more than Luke, Harriet — is what are some of the things you feel like when you feel hungry. Like, what’s making us feel hungry?

Harriet: There’s few different things there. There’s a physiological hormone. Ghrehlin is the hunger hormone, and that’s what’s impacting our drive to eat. There’s also people’s wants to eat as well can make them feel hungry. Like, I know, when they’re bored, they sort of say, oh, look, I’m not hungry, I know I’m not getting that grumbly feeling, that empty feeling in my stomach. And some people actually forget what it feels like to be hungry. The actual hunger. Because they’re eating so frequently they forget the physiological response of that sort of empty feeling. They got that slight spike in the ghrelin hormone, which is driving them to start looking for food.

We know when we’re a little bit more stressed we might be going for food even though we’re not physiologically in need of a meal. And so actually being aware of your body’s cues and tuning in on those a little bit more is actually really effective, and it’s mindful eating. It’s tuning into eyes those cues that tell us when we’re good to eat, and when we’re ready to stop.

I think we don’t tend to listen to those as well as we used to. I think as kids we were all told to eat until we’ve eaten everything on our plate. And there’s a generation of people who don’t know what it feels like to be pleasantly full, but not you know stuffed to the eyeballs these days.

So there’s a few physiological things that are going on in terms of hunger and that’s definitely the hormonal drive there. But then…

Luke: There’s a few things that feel like that too. Like, you think of those feelings when you get knots in your stomach and you’re feeling anxious about something. That feels a lot like hunger.

Harriet: Yeah. Absolutely it does.

Luke: It feels exactly like hunger there. And part of that is cortisol is turning off your digestive system, so there’s all blood running out of your digestive system, because it doesn’t feel like it needs to digest while it’s [inaudible]

Harriet: Yeah.

Luke: So that feeling of having knots in your stomach and stuff, feels a helluva lot like hunger. And it’s also that discomfort which then goes back to the thing we were talking about before, you want to do something that makes you feel good, and eating makes you feel good.

Harriet: Absolutely.

Luke: And unfortunately then you do eat, and then it puts it into a system that’s already full of sugar and then you feel crap about yourself and you get even more stressed — then you start storing fat round your liver.

Harriet: It’s a funny little sort of feedback loop. But I definitely think the feeling of hunger is definitely something that we’ve kind of forgotten. A lot of people have forgotten. I’m getting people to sort of tune in to their cues, their hunger cues, and they’re like — oh, I actually had forgotten what it feels like to be hungry.

Greg: So what’s a hunger cue?

Harriet: Just that general feeling of like, emptiness.

Greg: Grumbles?

Harriet: Yeah.

Luke: But thirst will do it as well. I think you guys did a podcast on fasting a little while ago. That, you lose a lot of salt with that. So you might not be quite as hungry as you thought but you lost a lot of salt because you’ve done that. So you’re craving the salt. Might not necessarily be the food. Part of it that you’re after.

And you talked about ghrelin before. I love looking at graphs of what ghrelin does during your day. And it spikes exactly when you would normally eat. Ghrelin is like a habit hormone. It’s the thing that fires up at the times when… If you’d normally eat lunch at one o’clock, that’s when you’re really hungry and that’s when your ghrelin is going through the roof.

Harriet: Well, we’re creatures of habit. Definitely.

Luke: It’s actually one of the things that I’ve really loved. Is to find things in those habits. Whenever you have a habit, there’s always a cue. It might be 12:30 and it’s time for lunch. Then there’s something that you do and there’s a reward that you get. And I think that you can’t change the cue. You’re either, you get the cue or you don’t. It’s there no matter what. But you can change what you do in the middle. So if you can change from — I would normally go and eat cake and chocolate biscuits, to, I’m going to have a protein bar or a salad. The thing that you do in the middle is the thing that you can change.

Harriet: Absolutely. Absolutely. And I think there’s different triggers for people who are overeating or undereating and sometimes it’s off the back of underrating too much that they get to five o’clock and they are just ravenous. They go to the cupboard and they just —

Greg: Game on.

Harriet: Yeah. They’re eating.

Greg: No off switch.

Harriet: Party bags. And bag of bananas and bread…

Greg: Kids lunches.

Harriet: — and that kind of stuff.

So there’s a lot of different behavioral factors that need to be addressed with eating. And like I said before at the start, a lot of the time it’s not about the food, it’s the behavior associated or the lifestyle factors that play into it.

Greg:�� And that that’s a good point you guys just mentioned. I’m in the cabinet and I’m halfway through six muffins, donuts, whatever.

And you said to stop, think, and breathe. So, say I do stop, think, and breathe, and I’m many, many calories into my dopamine lollipop. I’m on my second packet.

What do I do right then? And this is a real life. People who are struggling with weight loss, this is what they’re doing. They’re hitting the cupboard. They’re in there. They’re feeling bad so they get in the loop and they go and checking out the Chawki bikies and grab those ones over there, or the chocolate or whatever.

How bad is it? And what should I do?

Luke: I reckon the key to that sort of thing is, if you’re going to have a fight between the world and your willpower, the world is going to win. Guarantee you. If there is a fight between your willpower… Willpower is good in the morning, use it, the better it gets, but it’s also like a muscle, it’s got a finite amount of strength.

So what you’ve got to do is change your world in such a way that that’s not an issue.

Greg: What is willpower?

Luke: Willpower is doing the harder thing, when the harder thing is the right thing to do.

Harriet: Yeah. So, intrinsic motivation. That thing that’s your Why, as to why you’re doing things. And it’s doing the things that when no one else is watching you’ll still do.

Luke: Like, it’s doing the harder thing when the harder thing is the right thing to do. I thought that’s pretty cool.

Harriet: Fantastic.

Luke: So if you think about it, you’re not going to have a fight with the entire world, and your willpower is not going to win, so you’ve got to move yourself into a different place. I find if I’m really struggling, in those last couple of hours before bed and I don’t want to eat anything, I actually go into a media room which is outside of the kitchen and watch TV in there and I never eat in there.

So just changing your environment. Do something little that changes your habit. Go for a walk —

Harriet: Yeah. Distraction at the start.

Luke: I have an issue at work as there’s always junk food out the back, and whenever, if I’m having a busy day or a stressed day or whatever, I’ll go out and eat it. And I’ve actually been stop and going into my room and just doing some meditative breathing for two minutes. And lie down and belly breathe for two minutes and then come out and say — OK, I’ve got a little dopamine lollipop from that, I don’t need to eat the chocolate now. And I find that’s helpful.

Greg: So you going to put some lie down belly breathing into your programs.

Harriet: I always put mindfulness in. Like when people have got those issues with all that struggling with being able to stop and actually recognise hunger versus stress. Definitely be encouraging people to take up things like mindful eating, mindful breathing.

Greg: So, how do we get through it like, obviously, when we’re stressed I’m not driving a tender tuna.

Harriet: No.

Luke: No one has ever come home from a big day at work and says I want some fat-free Homer Simpson Celery. It’s never happened.

Greg: So, what are we doing in that play? Do we have a little area that we go — OK we’re going to be naughty so we go to the naughty corner? Or do we… How do we handle this stress?

Harriet: I don’t think you need to go from doughnuts to celery. I think it’s a couple steps along the way that you can sort of transition with. Which is important.

That’s also coming down to identifying when your hot spots are. And once you know what the hot spots are, it’s doing the premortem and going — OK, I normally hang with a chocolate at 3PM — and that’s really common — what am I going to have instead? I’m going to have a chocolate flavored protein shake, and like a homemade bliss ball or something. So it’s not perfect but it’s something as an interim to acknowledge that, yep, that’s something that I’m working on.

Greg: Can you just say, we’re going to have a homemade protein ball. Because I think bliss ball is a brand name.

Harriet: Oh, OK.

So we’re going to have either a protein shake or a homemade protein ball — something like that. Something a little bit sweet, a little bit nice, but it’s not as boring as chopped veggies, which I do put on people’s meal plans that very rarely get eaten. [laughs]

Greg: I’m stressed. Give me some chopped veggies.

Harriet: Yeah.

Luke: There’s a really cool thing when you’re on that strict eating plan, called the panic button effect. And they did this study in the States, where they got people to do a really difficult cognitive task. So they’re on the computer and they’re having to do this really hard problem, and they got this really loud noise in the background, and it’s making this really annoying loud noise. They did one group of people and they said, look, the noise is there, try not to worry about it. And they did the task, and they got the marks that they got. The next group of people they got in there, the same task, same noise, but they gave them a button, and said, look, if you want to stop, hit the button, and the noise will stop, but we’d rather you didn’t because it’s part of the test so please don’t do it. No one hit the button, but all their scores were way better. So just knowing that you have some control over what you can do —

Harriet: That’s really interesting.

Luke: — can actually hack your brain a little bit, and say, look, I’m not quite as stressed, but I can do this if I want to. I’m not going to, but I can do it if I really wanted.

Harriet: Yeah. A little support blanket or something like that.

Luke: I did that with protein bars. I have them at work all the time, and I say to myself, I’m not going to break the fast, I do what I’m going to do yet, but I know I’ve got them there if I’m going to. That’s going to be the fall back of what I’m going to go to.

Greg: Picture on the wall. Protein bar. Picture on the wall.

Harriet: Oh.

Greg: You just said, you’re not going to eat it. So is there a picture on the wall?

Luke: I actually have a thing I invented and then found out someone had already invented it before me. And it’s a little safe that you, it’s like a timer lock…

Greg: A food safe. [laughs]

Luke: Yeah. You put your food in, and you press the little button. And I actually store my protein bars inside the safe. So I know I can have a protein bar, but it’s not going to open for another hour and a half. So I know I’m going to have it. I know it’s there. But I can’t have it.

And you know that thing when you start eating something and then you eat the entire package of chocolate biscuits — I’ll have two out of the chocolate biscuits, put it in the safe, I’ll lock it, and I can’t have any more. And by the time it unlocks, I’ve forgotten about it.

Harriet: The time is past. Yeah.

But it’s also learning to sit and be a little bit uncomfortable as well. I think it’s important to —

Luke: Get comfortable with discomfort.

Harriet: Yeah. Getting uncomfortable with little with a hunger, or getting comfortable a little bit of discomfort of I know that I want to eat that, I don’t have to eat it, this feels really uncomfortable. Because a lot the time they say, is well, we try and overlap discomfort with — scrolling through social media when we feel… Rather than facing that threat full on, face to face, we try and look for distraction. And distractions have their place, definitely.

But I also think — and this is really on track with what you’re saying — is that we got to be comfortable. We are to learn to be able to deal with stress in a positive manner and we got to learn with discomfort of not eating crappy food all the time. It’s uncomfortable to make change.

If we go into it knowing it’s going to be a little uncomfortable we can make that discomfort — oh, yep, I expected this, I knew this was coming — that’s that discomfort I was feeling fifteen minutes…

Luke: And it’s going to pass. Your little waves of ghrelin where you’re really, really hungry, just surf those things, you’ll get through them. They go away.

We have this tendency to want to be veneer about things. Like, if I had breakfast at 8 o’clock and at 11 o’clock I’m hungry, imagine how hungry I’m going to be at 2. You know what I mean? You’re going to be ravenous. And it’s actually not all veneer thing. You’re no more hungry at 2 o’clock than you would have been at 11.

There’s a guy called Daniel Kahneman who won a Nobel Prize. He won a Nobel Prize for economics and he’s a psychologist, and he talked about how we don’t understand duration. “Duration neglect.” So we can actually put up with something being a little bit uncomfortable for a while, and later on we’re not going to remember how long it was, we’re just going to remember we were a little bit uncomfortable for a bit.

Harriet: Interesting. We’re very funny organisms, us humans.

Greg: Nice.

So, just wrapping this up. Luke, top three hacks for being stress Teflon in life?

Luke: Well if you’ve got the three foundations.

Greg: Let’s go. Let’s hear it.

Luke: Three foundations. You’ve got to have the safety of the tribe. You’ve got to have pride from contributing to that tribe. And you’ve got to have owner self-awareness. You can’t bullshit yourself.

Greg: Nice.

Harriet. Top three hacks for stressful eating.

Harriet: Well, I’m going to pick off the back of Luke’s and say — be curious but not judgmental. So looking at the reasons why. I think changing environment where possible. So if you have a pack of little chocolate frogs in front of the top drawer, get rid of them and make it a little bit harder for you to access those foods. And also doing that that premortem is being aware of when your hot spots are, and then sort of be completely ignoring them — coming up with a plan for what you’re going to do next time and being proactive and on the front foot with those ones as well I think is my top three. And they’re probably very complimentary.

Greg: Nice. Any good reading in this part from Stress Teflon? Any good reading in this area?

Harriet: I think the general mindful movement is lots. If you just type in mindfulness, there is mindful eating; there are lots of great reads.

Luke: I’ve put a chapter in there about — I call it mind awareness — I just couldn’t bring myself to call it mindfulness, because it just…

Harriet: It’s almost…

Luke: It just sounds so terrible.

Harriet: It’s almost too done now.

Luke: I actually call it mind awareness. So just understand what you’re thinking and why you’re thinking it. And I really love that concept. Rather than “mindfulness.” Because the hassle is we all had this idea that we want to be best at stuff. And no one wants to be that silent monk in the corner of Tibet sitting by himself. And he’s the best at mindfulness. So we don’t want to go down that road.

Harriet: Also, emotions are very transient things, too. Like we give too much credit to our emotions we’ll be flip flopping every five minutes — it’s playing a long game in terms of mood and approach to food, and the long game is always the most important when you’re going to have crappy days. And you’re just waiting for them I suppose, rather than being — without being totally negative — understanding there’s going to be hard days, and you become better at them the more you choose to sort of face them front on, I think.

Greg: Nice. I’m going to end on that one.

Luke, thanks for coming in. Harriet, thank you again.

Harriet: Thank you.

Greg: Stress Teflon available at StressTeflon.com.

Luke: It is.

Greg: Grab yourself a copy. Have a good read.

Harriet, thank you again. You’re a legend. You’ve sat in Big Mac’s seat today. How’d it feel.

Harriet: Oh, there’s big shoes on the floor here that I haven’t quite filled just yet. But feels good.

Greg: Yeah. Going to get you back down, talk about metabolism with him very soon. OK, game over. Thanks guys.

Episode 11: Stress Hacks for Weight Loss published first on http://www.bodyscience.com.au/

#Body Science #Body Science Podcast #Fat Loss #fitness

0 notes

milligramspoison · 5 months

Text

Christmas came early, happy Pavlove coming to streaming services day to those who celebrate

#currently listening to her for the third time in ten minutes 🫶

4 notes · View notes

bodyscienceau · 6 years

Text

Episode 11: Stress Hacks for Weight Loss

youtube

Look and feel great from the inside out. A delicious low-calorie blend of green tea extract, gut friendly probiotics and powerful antioxidants to support your health, metabolism and vitality.

Learn More

Premium Retail Partners:

Show Notes

The panic button effect http://www.psychsummaries.com/2011/05/glass-et-al-1969.html

Meditation article https://stressteflon.com/meditation-doesnt-work/

MIND Awareness article

https://stressteflon.com/clarity-people-suck-meditation/

Podcast Transcript

With me, Harriet Walker, dietitian, sports dietitian, lifter.

Harriet: Hello. Thanks for having me.

Greg: On my left, Luke Mathers wrote a book called “Stress Teflon.” If you haven’t read it, grab it. Where can you get it from, Luke?

Luke: You can get it from stressteflon.com.

Greg: OK. And you also do a lot of motivational talking in relation to stress and stress management and your big thing is stress is not bad.

Luke: No, it’s not. It’s really good so long as we learn how to use it. Hopefully that’s some of the stuff that we’ll talk about today.

Greg: And Harriet, how much is stress related to weight loss? Let’s not muck around. We’re talking about weight loss mindset here.

Harriet: Well I think stress is a very big factor.

Greg: Very big?

So this is definitely a topic that I wrangle each week. And it’s not going anywhere, because we’re probably not as adept at dealing with our stress levels as we might need to be.

Greg: So if I’m getting sugar hugged, Luke…

Luke: Little dopamine lollipops.

Greg: Yeah. Dopamine lollipops. What should I be doing? You’ve written the book “Stress Teflon.” What should I be doing?

Greg: Your kids are beautiful things. They are.

Greg: We’re going to take Mars bar out of that. Just so you know. We’re going to write that down. No brands.

Harriet: Yeah.

Greg: So, can you just say — so we go for a lolly a sweet or cake or something…

Greg: So what should we do?

Harriet: Absolutely.

Luke: — and snowball on top.

But the problem is, a lot of the time we’re having these reactions sitting down and we’re kind of almost stewing in our own blood sugar [laughs] because we’re not…

Luke: Dopamine lollipop.

Harriet: — dopamine lollipop. Yes, we’ve all got different names for it so obviously it’s a thing. [laughs]

Greg: I’m sitting there. I’ve just been reamed by my boss, or had a fight with my partner. Luke, and you say, stop, think, take a few breaths…

Luke: Yep.

Greg: What’s going on there? Like, seriously, how many people are doing that? And how do we engage that?

Luke: with your boss. You’re going to work out, the first thing you do whenever there’s any danger is you’re going to get away from the thing that’s causing you stress.

Greg: Yep. I’m talking about that crossroad. Like, the point where, left or right…

Harriet: And it closes your mind off to solutions as well I suppose, when you’re in that situation where you’re in that cycle and it’s all negative.

Luke: You become defensive and dumb.

Greg: So how do you catch yourself?

Greg: When you say “old brain” what are you talking about?

Greg: If you engage it.

Luke: If you engage it.

Greg: And is that the stop and think part?

Luke: That’s the stop and think part.

Greg: So you mentioned people tend to demonize their hunger with this theory, where it’s all going, in that they feel bad about what they just ate, and then the loop goes on and on and on.

So, it might start with just being a stressful life or a job, and it turns into making eating a really big thing as well which is not necessarily positive.

Luke: I think no one really likes to fail at something. We don’t like to think, oh, we’ve let ourselves down. We don’t like to think…

Harriet: [laughs] Yeah.

Harriet: Self fulfilling prophecy.

Luke: Exactly.

And then your one little thing that broke what you were doing all good for the rest of the way then turns into — oh, it doesn’t matter, I’m going to eat whatever I want now.

Harriet: Ah, the F-it. That’s F…

Greg: I got it. I know what you meant.

Harriet: Not effort.

Greg: Speaking of F-it…

So I’ve just had a bad day. I’ve gone and loaded up on doughnuts and cakes. I’m feeling bad about myself — which you tell me happens…

Harriet: Yep.

Greg: What should I do when that happens?

And like you were saying. No one likes to fail at anything. And eating is an inherent part about, being we have to eat, so the fact that it can fail at eating, that feels pretty crappy.

Luke: That should be a fairly intrinsic part of —

Harriet: Yeah. It should be.

But when you look at food and your environment there’s a lot of different reasons why that is not the case these days.

Luke: They know what they’re going to do next time. OK, this is what triggered it. Next time, when I get that trigger, I’m going to do something in a different way.

Harriet: It turns it into data.

Greg: What types of things do you suggest? I know you’re going to say, stop and breathe. But where are we at there?

But when you sit down to write a plan, it might not be a bad idea to work out what went over your danger zone.

Harriet: Yeah. Absolutely.

Greg: When you discuss that? When you consult? Yeah?

Harriet: I’ve got an e-book — LOL… [laughs]

Greg: Yeah. We love a good e-book.

Luke: E-books are alright. Always.

Greg: Because you wrote a real book.

Luke: I wrote a real book. Mines got pages.

Harriet: You’ve got a hard copy. Mine’s just a picture of a hard copy.

Luke: [laughs]

And I’ve talked about this.

Luke: Anyone that’s ever sat through a really boring work conversation has done…

Harriet: Yep. And it doesn’t mean anything to you. It doesn’t have any meaning to you specifically. And it’s easy to jump off if it’s generic.

Luke: Yeah. Whereas, you do feel as if, with your clients, you give them that, they’re accountable to you a little bit? Or do you feel that helps?

Harriet: I like to tell my clients that by the end of us working together, I’d like you to figure it out. I don’t want you to need me. It’s a terrible business model.

Luke: Make yourself redundant.

Greg: Education is power.

So that way the next time they approach that situation, it’s like — oh, I’ve seen this before, I remember what happened last time, I did this, and this is what I’m going to do this time.

Luke: That’s an awesome premortem thing to do isn’t it?

Harriet: Yeah.

Luke: What am I going to do when I’m stuck and I’ve only got 7-Eleven for dinner?

Harriet: Yep, absolutely. So —

Luke: Inside of the pie without the pastry.

Luke: You don’t have to tell anyone else you’re doing it.

Harriet: I think there’s nothing wrong with owning it.

I used to be quite bashful if someone gave me a compliment. Now, I’m going to say “thank you.”

Luke: Yeah.

Harriet: Yeah, that’s it. That’s all you have to say.

Greg: Good job, Harriet.

Harriet: Thanks Greg.

Luke: There’s a bit of human nature with that, that people don’t want to feel as if someone’s going to leave them behind.

Harriet: The grievings.

Greg: So why is a tribe important to us, Luke?

Harriet: Women after childbirth.

Harriet: Yeah. Hundred percent.

Luke: Somehow my friends might be somewhere doing something that’s — it might even be a sweaty session that we did the day before, but they’re doing it without me and I hate that.

Greg: Oh, when you watch one of the Nonette Raleigh sessions and hang around afterwards, the camaraderie is massive. It’s a whole new level.

I think when you have those three things, sticking to things like your fitness goals and stuff, certainly become a lot easier. They do for me, anyway.

Greg: What are some of the steps to making that tribe.

Luke: I think probably the biggest thing with a tribe is sort of the giving rather than getting. And I think a lot of people sort of look at those sorts of things.

Luke: Exactly.

Greg: Do you want us to stop?

Hang on. Before you hit Play. So we just went — what, some of those companies that do blah blah blah…

Who owns the expectancy theory?

Luke: I don’t know. Just a theory in some cultures. Nothing to do with weight loss or anything.

Greg: Which psychologist came out with it?

Luke: I didn’t make it up. I changed the words.

Greg: Let’s jump on this.

Ready?

So there’s a few physiological things that are going on in terms of hunger and that’s definitely the hormonal drive there. But then…

Luke: There’s a few things that feel like that too. Like, you think of those feelings when you get knots in your stomach and you’re feeling anxious about something. That feels a lot like hunger.

Harriet: Yeah. Absolutely it does.

Harriet: Yeah.

Harriet: Absolutely.

Greg: So what’s a hunger cue?

Harriet: Just that general feeling of like, emptiness.

Greg: Grumbles?

Harriet: Yeah.

Harriet: Well, we’re creatures of habit. Definitely.

Greg: Game on.

Harriet: Yeah. They’re eating.

Greg: No off switch.

Harriet: Party bags. And bag of bananas and bread…

Greg: Kids lunches.

Harriet: — and that kind of stuff.

Greg: And that that’s a good point you guys just mentioned. I’m in the cabinet and I’m halfway through six muffins, donuts, whatever.

And you said to stop, think, and breathe. So, say I do stop, think, and breathe, and I’m many, many calories into my dopamine lollipop. I’m on my second packet.

How bad is it? And what should I do?

So what you’ve got to do is change your world in such a way that that’s not an issue.

Greg: What is willpower?

Luke: Willpower is doing the harder thing, when the harder thing is the right thing to do.

Harriet: Yeah. So, intrinsic motivation. That thing that’s your Why, as to why you’re doing things. And it’s doing the things that when no one else is watching you’ll still do.

Luke: Like, it’s doing the harder thing when the harder thing is the right thing to do. I thought that’s pretty cool.

Harriet: Fantastic.

So just changing your environment. Do something little that changes your habit. Go for a walk —

Harriet: Yeah. Distraction at the start.

Greg: So you going to put some lie down belly breathing into your programs.

Greg: So, how do we get through it like, obviously, when we’re stressed I’m not driving a tender tuna.

Harriet: No.

Luke: No one has ever come home from a big day at work and says I want some fat-free Homer Simpson Celery. It’s never happened.

Greg: So, what are we doing in that play? Do we have a little area that we go — OK we’re going to be naughty so we go to the naughty corner? Or do we… How do we handle this stress?

Harriet: I don’t think you need to go from doughnuts to celery. I think it’s a couple steps along the way that you can sort of transition with. Which is important.

Greg: Can you just say, we’re going to have a homemade protein ball. Because I think bliss ball is a brand name.

Harriet: Oh, OK.

Greg: I’m stressed. Give me some chopped veggies.

Harriet: Yeah.

Harriet: That’s really interesting.

Luke: — can actually hack your brain a little bit, and say, look, I’m not quite as stressed, but I can do this if I want to. I’m not going to, but I can do it if I really wanted.

Harriet: Yeah. A little support blanket or something like that.

Greg: Picture on the wall. Protein bar. Picture on the wall.

Harriet: Oh.

Greg: You just said, you’re not going to eat it. So is there a picture on the wall?

Luke: I actually have a thing I invented and then found out someone had already invented it before me. And it’s a little safe that you, it’s like a timer lock…

Greg: A food safe. [laughs]

Harriet: The time is past. Yeah.

But it’s also learning to sit and be a little bit uncomfortable as well. I think it’s important to —

Luke: Get comfortable with discomfort.

Luke: And it’s going to pass. Your little waves of ghrelin where you’re really, really hungry, just surf those things, you’ll get through them. They go away.

We have this tendency to want to be veneer about things. Like, if I had breakfast at 8 o’clock and at 11 o’clock I’m hungry, imagine how hungry I’m going to be at 2\. You know what I mean? You’re going to be ravenous. And it’s actually not all veneer thing. You’re no more hungry at 2 o’clock than you would have been at 11.

Harriet: Interesting. We’re very funny organisms, us humans.

Greg: Nice.

So, just wrapping this up. Luke, top three hacks for being stress Teflon in life?

Luke: Well if you’ve got the three foundations.

Greg: Let’s go. Let’s hear it.

Greg: Nice.

Harriet. Top three hacks for stressful eating.

Greg: Nice. Any good reading in this part from Stress Teflon? Any good reading in this area?

Harriet: I think the general mindful movement is lots. If you just type in mindfulness, there is mindful eating; there are lots of great reads.

Luke: I’ve put a chapter in there about — I call it mind awareness — I just couldn’t bring myself to call it mindfulness, because it just…

Harriet: It’s almost…

Luke: It just sounds so terrible.

Harriet: It’s almost too done now.

Greg: Nice. I’m going to end on that one.

Luke, thanks for coming in. Harriet, thank you again.

Harriet: Thank you.

Greg: Stress Teflon available at StressTeflon.com.

Luke: It is.

Greg: Grab yourself a copy. Have a good read.

Harriet, thank you again. You’re a legend. You’ve sat in Big Mac’s seat today. How’d it feel.

Harriet: Oh, there’s big shoes on the floor here that I haven’t quite filled just yet. But feels good.

Greg: Yeah. Going to get you back down, talk about metabolism with him very soon. OK, game over. Thanks guys.

#Body Science #Body Science Podcast #Fat Loss #fitness

0 notes