How to Hack Hunger and Cravings Using Science With a Doctor Trained at Harvard, Columbia, and Cornell

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Speaker 1 Hey, it's your friend Mel, and welcome to the Mel Robbins podcast.

Speaker 1 Today, you and I are going to get real about cravings, appetite, hunger, how to rein in the emotional eating. For me personally, I've got a bag here.
These are black truffle potato chips.

Speaker 1 These are the bane of my existence.

Speaker 1 Oh my God.

Speaker 1 My kids have introduced me to these things. I have to tell you,

Speaker 1 I have this insane craving

Speaker 1 for black truffle potato chips every single day around two o'clock in the afternoon. And

Speaker 1 I can plow through an entire bag of these things. I don't even know if I'm hungry or not.
I just all of a sudden, Boom, two o'clock hits. I have to have a potato chip.

Speaker 1 And I don't know if you've you've ever been stuck in that cycle of yo-yo dieting or you're finished with dinner, you promise yourself you're not going to eat something and all of a sudden you got to have ice cream.

Speaker 1 What is that about? Well, today we're going to dig deep into the science. Dr.
Amy Shaw is a double board certified doctor. She received her training from Cornell.

Speaker 1 She did a residency at Harvard and a fellowship at Columbia. She's an expert on intermittent fasting, food allergies, hormones, and you guessed it, hunger, cravings, appetite.

Speaker 1 In fact, you have been asking for Dr. Amy Shaw to come on the show.
Her latest book, I'm So F and Hungry, Why We Crave, What We Crave, and What to Do About It. Dr.

Speaker 1 Amy Shaw's here to tell us what to do about it. Dr.
Amy, it is such a pleasure to meet you.

Speaker 2 Such a pleasure to be here and to meet you.

Speaker 1 One of the reasons why I wanted to talk to you, Dr. Amy, is you are a licensed and trained nutritionist with Ivy League degrees, and you are also a medical doctor, and you understand

Speaker 1 nutrition and the science of nutrition. And so, when

Speaker 1 I'm listening to somebody who's a wellness expert that got themselves in shape, who has figured this out in their life, I listen to them differently than I listen to a medical doctor who is also a nutritionist and understands it from the inside out.

Speaker 1 And so, I'm thrilled that you're here. And I want to start with the difference between hunger, appetite, and cravings.
So we're all on the same page. Great question.

Speaker 2 The simplest way to think about it is when you're sitting at dinner and you've had this amazing dinner, appetizer, drinks, you know, entree,

Speaker 2 and you are full, you're ready, you're ready to go. And the waiter comes out and says, we have these special desserts that we just made tonight and they are out of this world.

Speaker 2 And everyone looks at each other and they're like, well, we're full, but we really want that dessert. That's cravings.
Oh, that's not hunger. You're no longer hungry.
Yeah.

Speaker 2 You're actually pretty full, extra full, right?

Speaker 2 But you're working on that cravings pathway. And that cravings pathway is super strong.
It's the same cravings pathway that alcohol uses, drugs, sugar. Cravings is a dopamine pathway.

Speaker 2 Whereas hunger is your natural need to get nutrients. Actually, you can go for many days, even a month without food.

Speaker 1 A month? Yes.

Speaker 2 People fast for a month. From my background, my family is Jane, and they fast for long periods of time.
And there is a fasting month where you actually eat nothing and just drink water.

Speaker 2 So our hunger signals are reminders to eat because your body does not want you to go a full month without remembering to eat so ghrelin you might have heard of this hunger hormone it's released to remind us to eat so that same time every day you get hungry you get reminded to eat and your ghrelin comes and goes so some people just aren't hungry in the morning some people get very hungry at night no matter what they've eaten all day because of that ghrelin cycling.

Speaker 2 So if you understand that it's a cycle, it's a reminder. You don't always have to take that reminder, but it's a reminder.
Huh.

Speaker 1 So what is appetite? Appetite is the overall

Speaker 2 interest in food. Have you ever seen a dog when they're sick, they're just like not interested? Their appetite is dampened.
It will dampen your cravings and your hunger pathways. Huh.
Okay.

Speaker 1 So hunger is like this, this need to eat, right? That is tied to the biological imperative to stay alive. Appetite is the the desire for food.

Speaker 1 And we've all had those periods in our life where we've felt sick. I mean, my

Speaker 1 allergies are crazy right now, and I'm not that hungry. Yes.
Normally, I would be ravenous right now. So my appetite

Speaker 1 is the correct word. I don't have much of an appetite.

Speaker 1 And then cravings, this is one of the reasons why I love your book, I'm So F and Hungry, so much, because I've learned that our cravings and the eating patterns that that we have that aren't healthy for us based on the brain, not based on emotion, but that actually there is a whole hormone cycle to this thing.

Speaker 2 Oh, it's so complicated. So there was a French philosopher in 1825, Jean-Claude Savarin, and he said, show me what you eat.
and I'll show you who you are. And even today, that stands true, right?

Speaker 2 Show me what you eat and I'll tell you who you are. Because our lives are dictated through food.
We have now food addictions.

Speaker 2 And some of it is not our fault. A lot of it is not our fault.

Speaker 1 Yeah, you actually say that in this book, that you say that, you know, you get into these habits of eating unhealthy things, the pulling up at the drive-through and ordering the extra large fries and the burger on the way home from work.

Speaker 1 And then you feel like crap and then you have a craving and then you eat something else and that it's not your fault. How is it not your fault if you're the one putting the food in your mouth?

Speaker 2 Think about it. Have you ever been to Miami? I always talk about a Miami phenomenon.
Okay.

Speaker 2 The first time I went, I was in med school and I saw all the flashing lights and the people and the music and the craziness and I was like, oh my God, my dopamine receptors were firing. Yep.

Speaker 2 That's what happens the first time you eat a sugary food like an ice cream or a McDonald's burger, you get a huge burst of dopamine.

Speaker 2 And then on day three of being in Miami, all of a sudden, it doesn't seem loud. It doesn't seem as entertaining.

Speaker 2 You need to turn the volume up. You need to go to the club now because you're kind of used to it.

Speaker 2 You don't even feel excited or happy just from being out in the street. You actually need to turn up the volume.
And so that's what's happening to us.

Speaker 2 We're having this Miami South Beach effect in our brains when we're eating all of this sweet food, these processed foods foods that they don't occur in nature.

Speaker 2 That dopamine explosion happening day after day after day.

Speaker 2 And so

Speaker 2 the problem is you need more and more and more to get that same dopamine release. And guess what happens, Mel, on the other end?

Speaker 1 I don't know.

Speaker 2 Dopamine has this weird after effect where it makes you irritable. It makes you uncomfortable.

Speaker 2 And it makes you crave that food so badly that you just want to like almost make yourself not feel the pain anymore.

Speaker 2 And so dopamine has this effect on us that we'll eat it, we'll get the pleasure, but then there's like that pain aspect to it.

Speaker 1 Because you want it again.

Speaker 1 There was something that you just said that really caught my attention. I've never heard anybody say this before.
It's that you get the dopamine rush.

Speaker 1 from eating things that are not available in nature. Yeah.
Can you explain that?

Speaker 2 When you eat an apple,

Speaker 2 you get the sugar,

Speaker 2 but you get water, electrolytes, you know, antioxidants,

Speaker 2 and fiber,

Speaker 2 most importantly.

Speaker 2 That

Speaker 2 is how sugar is made in nature.

Speaker 2 So you see a fruit tree, your dopamine pathway, we think was made to help us survive and want to find that tree with the ripe fruit to keep us going, to keep us agitated enough to like try to look for more food just to keep us surviving.

Speaker 2 Okay. Now take it, you know, thousands of years later, we have ultra-processed foods, which I will define for you later,

Speaker 2 that don't have any fiber, that don't have any vitamins to tell the body that you've eaten something.

Speaker 2 And they pack the sugar in such a small amount of food that the explosion of dopamine you get is similar to a drug like cocaine.

Speaker 1 Or being in South Beach. Yeah.
Yes. It's like, boom, boom.
And then you have a drop and then you crave the candy bar or the whatever it was that you just had that was ultra processed.

Speaker 1 So I want to make sure that everybody just heard that. The connection between your cravings and your appetite and your hunger and how this is attached to dopamine.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 The rush of dopamine, the drop of dopamine, the craving cycle that you're now trapped in. So what does ultra-process mean?

Speaker 2 Ultra-process is really simple.

Speaker 2 If you could not make it in your kitchen or any kitchen

Speaker 2 because the ingredients are not ingredients of food, then it's ultra-process. Ultra-process means you cannot recreate that food in your kitchen, even if you had access to any ingredient in the world.

Speaker 2 So that's a lot of things.

Speaker 2 you know, Doritos, Kit Kats, Sundaes. If you think about it, we have often the option of getting the minimally processed or non-processed version, but it's often easier.

Speaker 2 It's easier to, the shelf life is easier when they're in packaged foods. But the ingredients in there, we don't even know exactly what each one of them does.

Speaker 2 We just know that when you consume them at the highest quantities, you have 80% more mental health days than someone who's consuming the lowest quantities.

Speaker 1 You just said that if you eat more whole, naturally occurring foods, that you will be 80%

Speaker 1 better when it comes to the number of days that you are feeling good mentally. Is that, is that true?

Speaker 2 Yes. Why?

Speaker 2 We are starting to understand that ultra-processed foods not only make us more inflamed, which we can talk about why inflammation is bad, but it makes, it ages you, it gives you cancer, diabetes, heart disease.

Speaker 2 That's the root of all of it. It makes you sad, anxious, and it lowers your length of life.
Like, so if you look at all cause mortality, ultra-processed foods will shorten your life.

Speaker 2 And yet, Mel, we live in a world

Speaker 2 where kids are eating over 70% of their diet is ultra-processed.

Speaker 1 You said this thing earlier, and I didn't want to interrupt you.

Speaker 1 I'm almost like embarrassed to ask this question. How do you know when you're full?

Speaker 2 It's such a good question. We've forgotten, right, what it feels like to be hungry or be full.
We're almost always just relying on external cues to tell us that.

Speaker 2 So there's various ways to feel full. So we have a couple of hormones that make us feel full.
Leptin is one of them. CCK is another one.

Speaker 2 And there's various signals that they give our brain, mostly just to stop eating.

Speaker 2 And so, if you feel full,

Speaker 2 you won't want to eat food. However, the cravings pathway kicks in.
So you may want to eat desserts, but you won't want to eat real food. So, a quick way to test this

Speaker 2 is: would you eat a bowl of vegetables right now?

Speaker 1 Are you now? No.

Speaker 2 Then you're not hungry.

Speaker 1 So, can you explain to us what is going on in our bodies as it relates to feeling hungry?

Speaker 2 We now know, Mel, that our brain is not just in charge of our cravings and our mood and the way we show up in the world.

Speaker 2 We always think, oh, if you feel sad, do therapy or start to think good thoughts.

Speaker 2 But we now know that there's this connection between the brain and the gut.

Speaker 2 When we're an embryo, they're connected. They're one.

Speaker 2 And then they stretch out and they move apart to the different ends of the body yep so you could say that they kind of happen from one ball of cells yep

Speaker 2 and we can definitely say with confidence that changing our gut environment has a bigger impact on our brain than we ever thought and when you eat food there's an impact in your gut that's sent directly to your brain and your brain then sends signals back down to your gut.

Speaker 2 And the way you show up in the world is a result of this communication.

Speaker 1 In my mind, what I'm visualizing is chat GBT right now and AI and how you just insert this thing and it spits out that thing. I'll take what I ate for lunch.
So I had a salad.

Speaker 1 I had a handful of walnuts. I had a couple scoops of a chocolate mousse keto thing.

Speaker 1 I had

Speaker 1 a coconut macaroon. And I'm thinking that all of that represents input into like the chat GBT and what gets spit out from that is a message to my brain.
Am I getting, am I tracking right?

Speaker 2 Exactly what's happening. In fact, it's two ways.
So you have to remember that our body's really smart. So they usually use two different pathways for each thing.

Speaker 2 So when you eat sugar, for example, it stimulates your brain straight from your mouth. And then you have these other receptors, these neuropods in the gut that sense the sugar also.

Speaker 2 And they are making their own assessment and sending it to the gut. So the gut's like, oh, yeah, it's sugar because I knew it was coming because I felt it from the mouth.

Speaker 2 And now you guys are telling me the same thing. So everything matches and that you get the response.
So it's, they like work together

Speaker 2 in understanding what's happening in your body. Wow.

Speaker 1 It's amazing how sophisticated our bodies are. It's amazing.

Speaker 1 Like as I'm mindlessly chucking walnuts into my mouth, I'm not thinking about the fact that there are these neurotransmitters, there's all this signaling going on. Yes.
That is so interesting, Dr.

Speaker 1 Amy. Tell you what, let's hear a quick word from our sponsors and let's pick right back up on this topic when we return.
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Speaker 1 Welcome back. I'm Mel Robbins, and I'm here with Dr.
Amy Shaw. Her latest book is Why Am I So F and Hungry.

Speaker 1 We're talking cravings, hunger, appetite, and most importantly, what you can do to get yours under control. And so you, in your book, Dr.

Speaker 1 Amy, you write that if you're in a cycle of emotional eating or if you're in a cycle where you have all of these cravings and you're always hungry and you're eating the wrong things, that it's not your fault.

Speaker 2 It's not your fault.

Speaker 1 And it's not your fault because your brain...

Speaker 1 and your hormones are getting triggered by all this ultra-processed food. Yes.
And the ultra-processed food, it sounds like, is food that keeps you you craving it. Yes.

Speaker 1 Because it's not occurring in the natural world. And so your brain is like, holy smokes, this Snickers bar is incredible.
Oh my gosh.

Speaker 1 Whatever it is that I pulled out of a box and ripped out of a package and stuck in to the air fryer. This is tantalizing because...
It's got all these chemicals in it.

Speaker 2 Yeah, it's the Miami Beach phenomenon, right? You get to South Beach and you're like, whoa, I want like your brain is like, I feel good right now. And I want that again

Speaker 2 and then it's I want more of that again right and the problem with our world is we're not educated about that right I as a physician I said to myself how many times was I rewarding myself with Starbucks and you know peppermint mochas and I would say to myself

Speaker 2 oh, I, you know, I did a good job today, so I'm going to get this sweet thing. And then it was every day.
And then it was twice a day.

Speaker 2 And by the end of it, I had to recognize myself that this was happening to me. We need to talk about it more because if we can make ourselves happier, less irritable, less chasing things,

Speaker 2 we're going to be happier people. We're going to live longer.
And so for me, this was like, okay, all these companies know about it and they're creating foods to trigger that pathway.

Speaker 2 Why don't we know about it? So we actually can be in control.

Speaker 1 Well, you know, when we hear food, you think calories. Yeah.
You think how many grams of fat, how many grams of sugar.

Speaker 1 I don't, I, I've never talked to anybody about the fact that there is this dopamine, serotonin. All of these hormones are impacted by it.

Speaker 1 And it's also being driven by this kind of craving cycle in your brain. Yeah.
And so What do we do if we're not responsible for this situation? How the hell do we fix it? Where do we all begin?

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 2 You know, the thing is first understand that food creates mood.

Speaker 1 Food creates mood.

Speaker 2 So we're always trying to find out ways to make ourselves happier,

Speaker 2 think more clearly, be more satisfied, right?

Speaker 2 And so that's why I got so interested in this work, because with my background in nutrition and being a doctor, I thought, well, if we can control our mood,

Speaker 2 through food and the actions that we take on a daily basis. Why aren't we talking about this? Why isn't this first-line therapy?

Speaker 2 There's really good research, a new study from South Australia that the combination of diet and exercise

Speaker 2 was 1.5 times more effective for depression than the leading medications.

Speaker 1 Now explain why, because that's a big research result that just through food and exercise,

Speaker 1 it's was found to be one and a half times more effective than medication alone.

Speaker 2 And if you think about it, they actually even put therapy and medications, kind of the traditional treatment into one category.

Speaker 2 And they compared that with changing your diet, with changing your sleep,

Speaker 2 your exercise lifestyle habits.

Speaker 2 And they said, we should be prescribing this as first-line therapy for depression. There's an anxiety, multiple anxiety studies, ADHD.

Speaker 2 I mean, we are missing the boat. Obviously, we're not doing something right because depression is skyrocketing.
So is anxiety. So is obesity.
So is diabetes. So is cardiovascular disease.

Speaker 2 So the status quo is not working. So why not employ these techniques and put them at the forefront?

Speaker 2 So things like we talked about already and that are in the book are teaching you that we have control, that yes, do all the things, but also change the way you eat, change the way you exercise, get more sunlight.

Speaker 1 Well, you might be depressed and anxious

Speaker 1 and struggling with a lot of stuff because of what you're eating. Yes.
And because of your lifestyle right now.

Speaker 1 And so I think it's really great news to hear that you can feel better if you start to eat better.

Speaker 1 And that this whole cycle that you are trapped in in terms of the cravings that never end and the cycle of emotional eating and feeling lethargic and feeling anxious, that you can, based on the research and based on the work that you do with patients around the world, that when you take your food intake seriously, you can profoundly change your mood.

Speaker 1 You can change your body. You can change your lifestyle, all of it.
But it begins with the food.

Speaker 2 So let's talk about food that you can eat to balance dopamine naturally what are those foods yeah so you want to be eating foods that are high in the amino acid tyrosine tyrosine is a precursor for al-dopa in the brain and then al-dopa gets converted to dopamine so that's how we have dopamine so In the past, it was thought, well, you can't really do anything to boost the dopamine levels in your brain.

Speaker 2 Like food has no connection. It's down here.
The brain is up here.

Speaker 2 So everyone used to say, well, it doesn't really matter. It's just about calories, you know.
But now we know that eating more foods that are high in tyrosine

Speaker 2 can help boost your dopamine.

Speaker 1 Wow. What are some of those foods?

Speaker 2 So one of them is dairy foods. So tyrosine is an amino acid.
So high protein foods. So dairy, soy,

Speaker 2 nuts. Cherries.
Okay. So what I would suggest is say you're having a breakfast in the morning.
You want to boost dopamine.

Speaker 2 Dopamine is very closely related to epinephrine, norepinephrine and epinephrine, which is adrenaline. So in the morning, you want to feel awake, alert, and motivated.

Speaker 2 You want to eat things with higher dopamine that are going to boost your dopamine.

Speaker 1 So give me an example of what would be a great thing to eat for breakfast.

Speaker 2 So I love... cottage cheese.
Okay. Okay.
I know cottage cheese is controversial. You do yogurt instead.

Speaker 1 Who's mad at cottage cheese?

Speaker 2 Some people, I mean, just cottage cheese and having a moment on social media.

Speaker 1 Like as in it's bad?

Speaker 2 No, people either love it or hate it. It's a divisive food because of the texture of it.
And so I love it. But some people are.

Speaker 1 People need better hobbies if they're arguing about cottage cheese online.

Speaker 2 It is.

Speaker 2 But it's having a moment, thankfully. And there's the cottage cheese ice cream.
There's all these cottage cheese. Cottage cheese ice cream? Yes.
It's all the rage. It's viral.
What?

Speaker 2 You blend the cottage cheese with a little bit of sweetener and fruit and freeze it, and then you scoop it out like ice cream.

Speaker 1 Wow. Yeah.
Is it any good?

Speaker 2 It's delicious.

Speaker 1 Okay. Who knew? Cottage cheese.
And you. It's the new cauliflower.

Speaker 2 It can turn into anything.

Speaker 2 So cottage cheese in the morning with fruit and nuts. Okay.
And you have got yourself a high dopamine breakfast. Wow.

Speaker 1 Okay. And you also say there's six ways that you can boost serotonin naturally.

Speaker 2 So serotonin is kind of the calm chill happiness hormone. And so that's a nice one to do maybe in the evening.

Speaker 2 So, tryptophan is the amino acid, as you might have heard of tryptophan because of turkey. Yeah, but it's also ever-present in eggs.
It's in

Speaker 2 also dairy food, lean meats, fish.

Speaker 2 And the way you can actually really get your zen feeling from that is pair it with a complex carbohydrate.

Speaker 2 So, sweet potato or squash or quinoa, and have the protein and the carbohydrate, and it gets you this nice burst of serotonin.

Speaker 2 So serotonin is really good for people for obviously mood, but also for sleep because serotonin is very close to melatonin.

Speaker 2 And those people who struggle with nighttime awakenings should try the serotonin boosting foods in the evening.

Speaker 1 Wow. I cannot thank you enough for explaining this to us.
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Speaker 1 Welcome back. I'm Mel Robbins, and I'm here with Dr.
Amy Shop. So, Dr.
Amy, one thing that you said that was very interesting, that Sometimes when you feel hungry, you're actually thirsty.

Speaker 1 How do you know the difference?

Speaker 2 Hunger and thirst are very closely related in the brain and it's often mistaken.

Speaker 2 And as you know, often when you go on a health plan, what trainers, they intuitively know this. They'll say, first thing you do is drink 80 ounces of water.

Speaker 2 And I said, I always used to say, like, there's no science behind 80 ounces of water. There is water.

Speaker 1 I thought you were supposed to drink like.

Speaker 2 No, our kidneys are very smart, very good at kind of titrating how much water at electrolyte balance we have.

Speaker 2 And so, you know, you want to drink about eight ounces for every hour that you're, you know, eight hours a day. So maybe more like 64, but that's even not science-based.

Speaker 2 It's just kind of an estimate, guesstimate. You can't really overdo it.

Speaker 2 So it's nicer to have more. But the big thing that it does is that it helps us.

Speaker 2 calm the hunger because when you're dehydrated,

Speaker 2 your body sends you thirst, but it also feels like hunger. And so when you're adequately hydrating, you're able to kind of feel fuller because you're not getting confused.

Speaker 2 And so I think it's an easy, super easy thing anyone can do is increase their water intake and just watch. You're not going to be as hungry as you were before.

Speaker 1 So if anytime I feel hungry, Should I drink a cup of water? Yes. Or do I ask myself if I want vegetables? What's the trick?

Speaker 2 So both. Okay.
So when you're trying to navigate this and you have, first of all, take out as many ultra processed foods as you can. Okay, that's step one.
Step one.

Speaker 1 So your doctor, Amy, no ultra processed food.

Speaker 2 It's going to be hard to do no. Okay.
But we'll say instead of 60% for adults or 70% for kids, we would want to go to 40 or 30%, right? Okay. So it's the occasional ultra-processed food.

Speaker 2 That way you can actually hear the signals and you're not like getting drowned out by all these altered signaling that's happening. And then you start to take note.

Speaker 2 You say, wow, every day around one o'clock is when, that's for me, I'm giving my own example. After lunch is when I start to crave sweets, even though I'm not hungry.
Yep.

Speaker 2 And so I'll ask myself, and I'm in the office usually, and I'll ask myself, am I hungry or am I just wanting something sweet?

Speaker 2 And that's the first question. And then I'll ask myself that's vegetable test.
Would I want a bowl of vegetables right now? No.

Speaker 2 So then I say, let me just drink a glass of water, see how I feel on 15 minutes. So I get up, I drink a glass of water.
I might have a sparkling water. I try to make it fun.

Speaker 2 You add some lemon or lime. And then ask yourself, like, are you still hungry or craving or are you fine? And that's a way to kind of get back.
with yourself, right?

Speaker 2 We're always trying to be the most authentic version of ourselves. And that goes with what does my body want right now? What does it really want? Yes.
Versus what is the world telling me I want?

Speaker 2 And if you're on a sugar and processed food cycle, you can't hear your own signals.

Speaker 1 How, can you explain the cycle? Because I think a lot of us are on the cycle. But we don't realize it.

Speaker 1 So like you, right around two o'clock, we have a colleague who I adore who always has dark chocolate. Yes.

Speaker 1 And I've worked with her for long enough that now two o'clock rolls around, and I am looking for the candy, looking for the chocolate.

Speaker 1 Explain the craving cycle so that we can spot it when we're in it. Because I'm assuming that is a craving cycle.

Speaker 1 Okay.

Speaker 2 This is the best way to think about the craving cycle. Okay.

Speaker 2 When you eat something that you badly crave,

Speaker 2 it's pleasure mixed with pain. So discomfort.
So you're eating it, but you're almost like, oh, should I be eating this? When can I get this again? Am I having too much?

Speaker 2 It's like, it isn't a pure pleasure feeling. It's a pleasure.
And then when am I going to get it again? I need to stop eating it right now. Most people can identify based on this description.

Speaker 2 some foods that trigger that in them.

Speaker 2 And it could be a warm chocolate chip cookie. It could be, you know, you just eat it and you're like, oh, I can't wait to have a skin or I'm eating too much.
And that's a craving cycle right there.

Speaker 2 And, you know, alcohol is very typical for people because they'll, I have women clients who say to me all the time,

Speaker 2 I crave that glass of wine or two glasses of wine at the end of the day. And it's almost like if I don't get it, I'm irritable and I just, I don't feel right.

Speaker 2 And that's, that's the cravings pathway right there.

Speaker 1 So

Speaker 1 it's interesting to hear you describe it like that because I'm sitting here trying to think, have I ever felt that with an apple? No. I'm like, no.

Speaker 1 Have I ever felt that with broccoli? No.

Speaker 1 But I do feel that in both the case of chocolate, I feel it sometimes in french fries

Speaker 1 or a croissant. The first bite is heaven.
Yes. And then I start this conflicted inner dialogue around it.
What is actually going on inside of us that creates that inner conflict?

Speaker 2 It's the dopamine.

Speaker 2 Dopamine release also activates neural pathways that make us feel uncomfortable, agitated, almost like.

Speaker 1 Huh.

Speaker 2 That's why it's so, if you understand that dopamine pathway that we're describing, now you think about it and you see why people get irritable, they have poor mood, make bad decisions when they are consistently

Speaker 2 like releasing dopamine from foods or video games, Instagram. We live in a world where you could actually deplete your dopamine and you'll feel exhausted and you'll feel, it'll feel like ADHD.

Speaker 2 You can't concentrate.

Speaker 2 It will feel like you're not really interested in anything anymore. Life isn't, you don't want to go work out.

Speaker 1 It sounds like burnout. Yeah.

Speaker 2 It's, it's your dopamine pathways can get burned out in this world that we live in because there's so many excessive releases that if you play the video games, you eat the sugary food.

Speaker 2 And, you know, so many of us do so many of these things. Like I said, I was that person.
Unless you have all those things, you feel uncomfortable and irritable.

Speaker 1 Can you explain the biology of hunger and cravings?

Speaker 2 Yeah, it's extremely important to know the difference and to know the difference, what's happening in your brain and your body.

Speaker 2 when you're hungry you have hunger hormones like ghrelin that are released to tell you to get nutrients from food it's the way we survive in this world

Speaker 2 and

Speaker 2 cravings on the other hand

Speaker 2 also have to do with survival but it's telling us to go for the high impact foods. So cravings is the pleasure hormone cycle.
It's a whole different pathway. Does not use ghrelin.

Speaker 2 It is going through the dopamine pathway.

Speaker 2 Completely different area of your brain. Hunger and cravings are completely separate.
Now, they obviously pair together

Speaker 2 in many ways, like when women diet all the time.

Speaker 2 If you have lived in this world

Speaker 2 and you have

Speaker 2 ever been on some crash diets like I have,

Speaker 2 your dopamine levels, meaning your cravings go up, but so does the volume of your ghrelin.

Speaker 1 Why?

Speaker 2 Because your body is sensing that you're not eating enough, that you skip meals, that you might be going into a deep caloric deficit. And so it is turning up the volume.

Speaker 2 So on the hunger side, it's turning up the volume on ghrelin. On the craving side, it's turning up the volume on dopamine.
So the two separate pathways become one.

Speaker 2 And people will say, when you're dieting after,

Speaker 2 you're just starving, both, you know, for food and for desserts. And just your hunger is just out of control.
And so are your cravings.

Speaker 1 Wow. So that's fascinating to know that it's two different pathways.
Yeah. That a craving is very different and it's signal and part of the dopamine cycle.
Yes.

Speaker 1 And that gremlin, is that what it's called?

Speaker 2 It's called, it sounds like gremlin, but it's ghrelin.

Speaker 1 Ghrelin.

Speaker 2 Ghrelin, leptin, neuropeptid YY, CCK. We have all these hormones that are supposed to remind us to eat, to tell us we're full.
That's all part of hunger.

Speaker 2 The craving pathway is the one we struggle with all the time. It's the, it's the dopamine pathway.

Speaker 1 I really get this. I think I get this because what I'm realizing is you have a biological need to feed yourself or you will die.
Yes.

Speaker 1 But most of us are not struggling with our biological need to eat. We are struggling with the dopamine cycling and crashing that comes with cravings.
Yes. Holy smokes.

Speaker 2 Dopamine is

Speaker 2 the most powerful motivator. And

Speaker 2 food companies, video game companies, gambling, porn, every, they all know that dopamine is so strong, Mel,

Speaker 2 that dopamine is the only neurotransmitter in our body that can get us out of a seat,

Speaker 2 whatever we're doing, stop whatever we're doing, get in a car, and go get that thing that dopamine is telling us to do.

Speaker 1 Yeah, it's like drive, go, do.

Speaker 2 You can't think about anything else. Huh.

Speaker 1 So

Speaker 1 what you just mentioned, lepin or leptin.

Speaker 1 How do you, what is it and how do you use it to hack hunger?

Speaker 2 Leptin is our fullness signal. So the opposite of khalin.

Speaker 1 Okay.

Speaker 2 And it's great because it tells us, hey, you're full. You don't need to eat anymore.
And so leptin, when it gets released,

Speaker 2 makes us just say, I'm good.

Speaker 2 And we want more leptin

Speaker 2 to.

Speaker 2 understand our so here are our hunger cues our leptin often we can't hear it it because everything else is so loud, right? Yep. So one of the ways, best ways to sensitize your leptin is to sleep more.

Speaker 1 Really?

Speaker 2 That's one of the best ways. If you've ever noticed after a bad night's sleep,

Speaker 1 I want to eat. You want to eat.

Speaker 2 Why? And you just don't want, you just don't feel full. Your leptin is 33% less.
You're right.

Speaker 1 You do wake up after a bad night's sleep feeling like you're starving. Yeah.

Speaker 1 But if you have a really good night's sleep, you wake up feeling calm and relaxed. Yes.
And I don't have the hunger pain.

Speaker 2 Yeah. So if you think about it, we want to start to use our inner signaling pathways

Speaker 2 to hear what our body's telling us because our body's really smart. And so leptin, that one of the best ways is to get more sleep.
Another really great way is to eat more omega-3 fatty acids.

Speaker 2 So omega-3 omega-3 fatty acids are one of the things in salmon. For people who don't eat fish, it's an algae oil.
So you can take the algae oil.

Speaker 2 Nuts have omega-3. It's a great way to start to get your leptin back up so that a lot of people will start eating more omega-3 fatty acids.
And all of a sudden, they're not as hungry anymore.

Speaker 2 And part of the signaling is through both leptin and CCK,

Speaker 2 which are both kind of the satiation, satisfaction. Don't we all want to just be more satisfied?

Speaker 1 Now, can you take leptin in a pill?

Speaker 2 There's no leptin in a pill as of yet. Okay.
That would be the million-dollar drug, right?

Speaker 1 Oh, that's true. That's not what that WollCovie or whatever the heck it's called is doing.

Speaker 2 So

Speaker 2 GLP-1

Speaker 2 is a hormone

Speaker 2 that matches, that works in conjunction with leptin to make you feel full. The medications, Ozempic, Vigovi, all of those medications in that class

Speaker 2 are GLP-1 agonists, which means it raises our level, our natural level of these satiation hormones. And so GLP-1

Speaker 2 is kind of like leptin in the sense that it makes us feel full and it's naturally released by our gut when we're full.

Speaker 2 We can eat things like nuts and certain foods that actually release more GLP-1 naturally. So you can get the same effect naturally.

Speaker 2 So getting more sleep, exercise, these are all ways to actually get more of that natural hormone to make you feel more full.

Speaker 1 Wow.

Speaker 1 Do you have a simple way to stop yourself from overeating if you're just a chronic overeater?

Speaker 2 There's a few simple ways.

Speaker 2 If you want to stop overeating,

Speaker 2 one of the things you can do

Speaker 2 is you pair the good activity,

Speaker 2 a good activity right after the bad activity. So give me a second.
So it's like a positive replacement behavior. Okay.

Speaker 2 So you

Speaker 2 did something that you didn't want to do. Maybe you ate an ultra-processed food that you are trying to cut down.
Okay. Immediately after, go for a sunny walk.

Speaker 1 Okay.

Speaker 2 The positive replacement behavior will slowly get longer and teach your neural pathways that you don't want to be doing the negative.

Speaker 2 The other way

Speaker 2 is to retrain your brain. So, say you crave this candy bar like a Snickers.
Okay.

Speaker 2 What you do instead is you take a dark chocolate, also another pleasure-creating food.

Speaker 1 Yep.

Speaker 2 And you replace the Snickers with the healthier chocolate.

Speaker 1 Okay.

Speaker 2 And the way you do it is intermittent surprise reward.

Speaker 2 So let me explain that to you.

Speaker 1 Okay. So let's just say it's two o'clock in the afternoon.
It's two o'clock in the afternoon. And Mel has for many months been reaching for an ultra-process candy bar.
Yes. And it is now the new day.

Speaker 1 I have heard this podcast with Dr. Amy, and I'm going to try this approach.
What am I doing?

Speaker 2 You are going to intermittently reward yourself with a healthier version of that dark chocolate. So either pick it out of

Speaker 2 a fishbowl with like little papers in it or ask someone that's working with you to say, randomly, three days a week.

Speaker 2 I get a reward. Okay.
But it has to be random because dopamine works the best when you get a random reward. Okay.
And you're trying to rewire your system.

Speaker 1 Okay. To not want that ultra-processed candy.

Speaker 2 And instead crave the healthier version. I call it my 3-2-1 method.
So three random days a week. Okay.
Two minutes telling yourself how much you love this chocolate.

Speaker 2 It's so much, it's such a better choice. CBT, but just cognitive behavioral therapy.
Saying, I'm so happy I chose this. Yep.
One minute savoring it.

Speaker 2 And you have, you do this for two weeks and you have replaced that bad habit with a good one.

Speaker 1 No, okay. Okay.
So let me just make sure I got this.

Speaker 1 So if it's three, two, one method and I'm picking three days this week, could I, if I don't have somebody to do this with me, could I just set an alarm in my phone randomly? Alarm goes off. Boom.

Speaker 1 That's the random

Speaker 1 intermittent replacement. Yes.
Second thing I do is I tell myself the reasons why this is a better choice, the reasons why I'm proud of myself.

Speaker 1 And then the final thing that I do is I pop that sucker in my mouth and I enjoy

Speaker 1 and slow down the process of enjoying it. How the heck after a couple of weeks of doing this would this make my brain no longer want the ultra-processed candy bar?

Speaker 2 Because I'll tell you why.

Speaker 2 If you look at the other way around in the negative sense,

Speaker 2 this happens all the time. That's true.
We get addicted all the time to things that intermittently reward us with dopamine.

Speaker 2 Gambling.

Speaker 1 Oh.

Speaker 2 You don't win, you don't win, you don't win, you don't win. You win big.
Dopamine explosion. Now you want it again.
You do that a few times. And guess what? Now you're craving that.

Speaker 2 And so the way it works in real life is the most addicting, the biggest dopamine releases is when you get an intermittent reward.

Speaker 2 Think about relationships, toxic relationships. Okay.

Speaker 1 Let's talk toxic relationships.

Speaker 2 That guy or gal

Speaker 2 gives you the intermittent rewards.

Speaker 2 They give you

Speaker 2 what you need, just enough to keep you craving and going back for more. You know how this works.
This happens all the time. You won't hear from someone and then you will.

Speaker 2 And it kind of keeps you hooked on that person.

Speaker 2 And the people who do it often know that intermittently kind of giving them love, attention, and affection will be enough to keep them coming back for more.

Speaker 1 It's so true. Because if you think about either the times in your life when you've been stuck in that pattern, or if you have a friend or a family member who's super annoying

Speaker 1 and is stuck in a very toxic relationship dynamic, what do they do? They spend a lot of time.

Speaker 1 explaining those intermittent, inconsistent moments where the person actually was a good person, but he actually did do this.

Speaker 2 They followed through.

Speaker 1 Yeah, they followed through. And so, if I go back to the candy bar idea, this is so fascinating.

Speaker 1 Do you still eat the ultra-processed candy bar during the two weeks that I'm trying this intermittent reward thing?

Speaker 2 You could, so you could, but the ideal version would be to take that and give yourself a new kind of addiction or a new craving that is a healthier craving.

Speaker 2 So you can do that with anything, but candy bar to dark chocolate is a great example.

Speaker 2 We can do that with so many different things in our life, but food, you can create new memories, new craving pathways because dopamine has neural pathways from when you're a kid.

Speaker 2 So reversing those are tough. You have to do this a few, you know, that's why I'm saying you got to do it for a few weeks to really feel like now you've replaced that behavior.

Speaker 1 Tell me about psychobiotics. What the heck are those and how do they help you stop this cycle of craving?

Speaker 2 They found that there are certain gut bacteria

Speaker 2 and they call them psychobiotics because those gut bacteria that's present

Speaker 2 in people who have depression

Speaker 2 are the same.

Speaker 2 And there's gut bacteria that are people that are always like

Speaker 2 happy or they have a positive outlook on life. They have a specific set of gut batches.

Speaker 2 They noticed that there are even studies where you can take pravotella. You can take what's pravatella.
It's a type of bacteria. You can take lactobacillus, a type of bacteria.
Okay. You can add.

Speaker 1 Did I take this? Like, now I'm showing you like, where's my pen? I don't know what to do. I want to be happier, not depressed.
And I don't want to be eating that chocolate at two o'clock. Dr.

Speaker 1 Rainy, help me.

Speaker 2 So, the world of psychobiotics is the next foray for mental health.

Speaker 1 It sounds sexy, psychobiotics.

Speaker 2 Yeah. Like it is that you can actually change your brain

Speaker 2 through the bacteria in your gut.

Speaker 1 So this is very similar to what you said about food and mood. Yes.
So if you start to take what Dr. Amy's saying very seriously, she is making the case for why ultra-processed foods are fucking.

Speaker 1 your mood up and keeping you trapped in these cycles of craving and dopamine dopamine that make you feel miserable, that make you feel out of control.

Speaker 1 And now, if I'm tracking correctly, we're going a layer deeper because if we get specific about the bacteria that you put into your gut, the stuff that's going to break all that crap down and that's going to create some sort of magical elixir in your gut that will then chat GP, send the message up to your brain, that this has implications for depression, for anxiety, for all kinds of mental health stuff.

Speaker 2 Is that what you're saying? That's what I'm saying. And it's not just anxiety and depression anymore.
It is autism, Parkinson's, ADHD.

Speaker 2 Every single mental health condition that we are struggling with in our modern world

Speaker 2 seems to be stemming from that bi-directional. Like I said, they talk to each other both ways.

Speaker 1 The brain and the gut.

Speaker 2 The brain talks to the gut, the gut talks to the brain. And now we're learning that we left this whole half on the table.

Speaker 1 In terms of the gut, you're absolutely right. Because if you think about it, everybody, we have been addressing mental health from the neck up.

Speaker 1 And we've been addressing it typically with talk therapy or some sort of pharmaceutical drug that presumably acts on your brain and your neurotransmitters.

Speaker 1 But aren't the majority of your neurotransmitters in your gut?

Speaker 2 Yes. People will say to me, well,

Speaker 2 those neurotransmitters in the gut are so far from the ones in the the brain. But what's fascinating is that we're seeing a very tight correlation.
Like I said, they talk to each other.

Speaker 2 And when your gut is producing lots of dopamine serotonin, these gut bacteria are signaling to the brain in at least four different ways that we know.

Speaker 2 to also release dopamine and serotonin. And so what they're doing is they're sending signals through the nerves.
They're sending hormones.

Speaker 2 They're sending these things called short-chain fatty acids, which the gut bacteria make and they go to the brain and they make it feel happy or sad.

Speaker 2 So, we are now aware of at least four different ways that what's in your gut is affecting what's going on in your brain.

Speaker 1 So, Dr. Amy, give me the list.
What are the bacteria need to be taken? And what is a bacteria anyway? Like, how is bacteria different than food?

Speaker 1 I know that's a bizarro question, but if I'm eating an apple, the second that you described an apple, you're like, okay, you got sugar, you got water, you got fiber. Fiber is really important.

Speaker 1 You got certain vitamins that signals to your brain that you're actually eating something and that's going to help you

Speaker 1 make you be fuller. And I didn't even think about the fact that an apple has all that stuff in it.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 Where does bacteria come in?

Speaker 2 Okay, this is such a great question. It goes back to the fact that we're actually not just ourselves.
We're equally

Speaker 2 bacterial cells. Our body is equally bacterial cells.

Speaker 1 I don't even know what the hell that means. Okay.

Speaker 2 So in when you go through the mouth,

Speaker 2 you go into your throat. Yep.
You go into your stomach and then there's these intestines. Yes.
And then there's the anus and you put that out.

Speaker 2 In that GI tract, there is a world that lives there.

Speaker 2 And it's full of bacteria, viruses,

Speaker 2 and even protozoans. So like these organisms, there's a world

Speaker 2 that is living inside of your body that doesn't belong to you.

Speaker 1 Whoa.

Speaker 1 If you really think about your mouth and how your mouth leads to a series of internal tubes that lead to the poop chute to get it all out of there, that that's like an internal sewer.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 1 It is a super highway for outside access through your body. Yes.
And when you put food in your mouth, your entire GI tract is trying to squeeze nutrients from it and get the waste out.

Speaker 2 And guess what? They can't do it without the thick lining of gut bacteria that go all the way through to the anal opening. So what I'm saying to you is that there's more bacteria.

Speaker 2 There's like a thick bacterial lining. There's just like one layer of our own cells that do the work that we need to be done.

Speaker 1 If we didn't have the bacteria in there, what would happen?

Speaker 2 We would damage our body all the time.

Speaker 1 How so?

Speaker 2 What we are learning now is that as we are modernizing, our thick layer is becoming thinner layer.

Speaker 2 And then there's areas that aren't

Speaker 2 even thin. It's almost like blank.
And it's just our one layer of gut cells. So what's happening is they get damaged.

Speaker 2 And they get damaged from the toxins that we eat, the foods, the alcohol, the antibiotics, the ibuprofen, all that shit that we all eat and take in. And what happens is those cell walls get damaged.

Speaker 2 Yep. And you start to have problems because when that cell wall gets damaged, I'll give you a visual.
There's something traveling through your gut. It damages that cell wall.

Speaker 2 All of a sudden, your whole immune system comes there because it's like a cut. Like something hurt you.

Speaker 2 Your whole immune system comes there as if you had a cut

Speaker 2 and says, hey,

Speaker 2 there's an inflammatory response here.

Speaker 2 And this keeps happening all over the place. You have all these fires that are now happening.
Right. And that's inflammation of the gut.

Speaker 1 Oh.

Speaker 2 So when your stomach hurts after you eat it, after you eat gluten, people say, oh, now I can't stand gluten. I can't eat this food.
I can't eat that food. I'm having an allergy or I'm having

Speaker 1 intolerance or whatever.

Speaker 2 That's what's happening. And when you hear the word leaky gut, that's what they're referring to.

Speaker 1 Got it. Okay.
So do we take bacteria? Is this what probiotics are? Like, what is going? Like, I don't even know where to start.

Speaker 2 I love that question because I get this every single day. People are always like, so which bacteria do I take? Yes.

Speaker 1 Is that what a probiotic is? Yes. A probiotic is

Speaker 1 a probacteria, meaning we are for the bacteria. Yes.
Going in.

Speaker 2 A probiotic is an actual bacteria. So we're trying to add more bacteria to that thick lining that can help us, right? Got it.

Speaker 1 Okay.

Speaker 2 But the problem is, is that studies are inconsistent. Sometimes we're seeing lactobacillus and pravitella are boosting, you know, depression, mood.
Other times it's not doing anything.

Speaker 2 Other times it's helping the antidepressant. So we still, we still say, I say,

Speaker 2 hey, I already know, Mel, how to improve your gut bacteria.

Speaker 2 And you don't need pills or a probiotic to do that. You need to eat the food that feeds it, meaning fiber, real food, not ultra-processed food.
So fiber.

Speaker 2 You need to eat food that have natural bacteria in it, yogurt. kimchi, kombucha, all of them.

Speaker 1 Sourkout.

Speaker 2 Sauerkraut.

Speaker 1 Is vinegar good?

Speaker 2 Apple cider vinegar, the raw.

Speaker 1 Okay.

Speaker 2 You need to eat more of that. In fact, they found that four servings, four to six servings a day of probiotic food

Speaker 2 was actually the best at increasing the amount of happy bacteria in your body.

Speaker 1 Wow. Cause it seems like everybody's adding

Speaker 1 probiotics to things.

Speaker 2 Our body is so smart. Our body knows that when you're carrying bacteria

Speaker 2 in your gut, they're going to first try to kill it because because they're they think it's foreign so when you're taking a probiotic pill a supplement a lot of it gets killed because their body's like oh this is bacteria we gotta kill it could be bad bacteria right

Speaker 2 when it's in in the mesh you think about like in the net of the food yes in a sauerkraut and a kimchi even in apple cider vinegar a naturally occurring they let it pass through and so it gets to the lower part of the gut where it needs to be and so we are now realizing that oh wait we should be doing more things

Speaker 2 that increase a happy bacteria. You know what the number one probiotic is?

Speaker 1 I have no idea.

Speaker 2 Exercise.

Speaker 1 How the hell is exercise a probiotic?

Speaker 2 Gut bacteria love

Speaker 2 when you move. Okay.

Speaker 2 And they produce this thing called short-chain fatty acids. And I mentioned short-chain fatty acids before when I was talking about the brain-gut connection.

Speaker 2 When you exercise, those short-chain fatty acids go to the brain, go all over the body and calm the inflammation. They calm your brain.
You feel good. You feel, and they grow the bacteria in the gut.

Speaker 2 It's a signal.

Speaker 1 It's very clear based on the case that you're making that if you were to focus on mostly whole foods and you were to really become diligent about removing as many unhealthy processed foods from your diet, you would see a significant change in your mood.

Speaker 1 You would see a significant change in your energy and a significant change in your overall health.

Speaker 1 If you add in exercise, not only because it helps boost the natural production of bacteria, but we also now know based on this new research study that a change in your diet and consistent exercise can be more effective than taking an antidepressant and going to therapy for depression.

Speaker 1 Because your body is designed to heal itself and to run properly.

Speaker 1 And even if you have spent a lifetime jamming Big Macs down your face and you feel stuck in this craving cycle that you can reverse this, I think that's so hopeful.

Speaker 1 You say that you can get rid of, let's say, like a sweet tooth in 30 days. How do you do that? For those of us that like sugar and a coffee, you know who I'm talking to.

Speaker 1 For those of us that love dessert, we crave it, baby. Like, how do we get rid of it?

Speaker 2 I'm going to tell you something so profound. Okay.

Speaker 1 Okay.

Speaker 2 When they did a study, they planned it to be 30 days, actually, to change someone's diet. very drastically.

Speaker 1 Okay. So like give me the drafts.

Speaker 2 Go from, so if I had to rank the worst food, it would be like high fructose corn syrup soda, so sodas, but drinks also.

Speaker 2 So juices, orange juice from the grocery store is in the soda category, by the way.

Speaker 1 Wait, orange juice from the grocery store? Yes. Is in the soda category?

Speaker 2 It's heat pasteurized. Okay.
It's hot. So all those vitamins that we were hoping for are nuked.

Speaker 2 The fiber is filtered out.

Speaker 2 And all you're left with is the water and the sugar. So it's like people drink juice as if it's a health food, right? Soda has a bad connotation, right? But juice is just as bad.

Speaker 2 Like it rivals a soda.

Speaker 1 Wow. Okay.
What's another one?

Speaker 2 So high fructose corn syrup soda is probably the top.

Speaker 1 Okay. Okay.

Speaker 2 Processed meats.

Speaker 1 What is a processed meat?

Speaker 2 So processed meats means not your grass-fed burger, but the one from the drive-thru. There's additives in it.
It's not just the meat. Bacon often have nitrates and they have flavoring and sugar.

Speaker 2 So processed meat, hot dogs is a great example. Okay.
They're just basically putting a bunch of meat together, but they're adding all these other non-food items. Okay.

Speaker 2 So they said, let's just switch their diet so drastically and actually do it in a clinical center where they're only allowed to eat with us. And they change it to a high vegetable

Speaker 2 fruit, no juices or sodas, no processed meat.

Speaker 2 They started to look at their stool to see what the gut bacteria were doing. So you can find out, okay, like how long does this really take?

Speaker 1 How long does it take?

Speaker 2 Guess

Speaker 2 how long it took to see a marked difference.

Speaker 1 I have no idea.

Speaker 2 Three days.

Speaker 1 Three days?

Speaker 2 In three days of this rapidly shift in diet.

Speaker 1 Okay.

Speaker 2 You had a whole new gut bacterial colonies happening.

Speaker 1 That's all it took?

Speaker 2 That's all it took. This is a study in nature, the highest level journal in, you know, in the world.
It's like the Harvard of journals. The big picture here is you have the power.

Speaker 2 Like you always say, and I always say this too, we can save ourselves. We can change our mood.
We can change our lifespan. We can change how we come into this world every day.

Speaker 2 We have the power and it takes three days.

Speaker 1 Wow. Talk to me about drinking warm water.
Why warm water? That sounds horrendous.

Speaker 2 It is. It's not meant to say that water, I would say, is so good for you.
Yeah. Whether you drink it cold, whether you drink it warm.

Speaker 2 But there are some theories that if you drink water warm or room temperature, it's more easily absorbed for you.

Speaker 1 And it can give you

Speaker 2 your body. And so there's no warming that needs to happen because, you know, we are internally, we're 98 degrees or.

Speaker 1 Oh, that's true. How do you know if you're getting enough sleep based on the things that you study?

Speaker 2 Yes.

Speaker 1 You're here eight hours. Yeah.

Speaker 2 How many, how many hours do you sleep, by the way?

Speaker 1 The older I get, the more boring I am. So I would say nine or 10.

Speaker 2 Yeah, I love that.

Speaker 2 People who sleep less than six hours have a higher mortality. They have lower mood,

Speaker 2 and they are hungrier, as we said, with the leptin.

Speaker 2 What you want to do is really

Speaker 2 to realize how much sleep you need is when you sleep without an alarm.

Speaker 2 How many hours do you sleep? And not when you're sleep deprived, but oh, I bet I sleep 10 hours.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 If I don't have an alarm on,

Speaker 1 I sleep way longer than I think I'm going to.

Speaker 2 When you look at the last couple of weeks of your life,

Speaker 2 the best days, the when you felt the most refreshed, the best mood

Speaker 1 were the days I got the best, the highest amount of sleep.

Speaker 2 That's

Speaker 2 that's how much sleep you need. And every American that's listening to this is going to be like, I can't sleep that much.
But you think about your.

Speaker 2 best days of your life happened when you slept adequately. It changes your hunger hormones.
It changes your hormones in general. You know, for women, especially as we get older,

Speaker 2 this is important. It changes your mood.
It changes your ability to

Speaker 2 make decisions. Yeah.

Speaker 2 And your interactions with other people. So why would you want to skimp on that? Why would you say that you'll be like everybody else? You know, sleep when you're dead.

Speaker 2 When you look at the data, the data says opposite. It says, if you you don't sleep, you'll be dead much earlier.

Speaker 1 That's true.

Speaker 2 If you don't sleep, you will be more depressed, more anxious, have more

Speaker 2 hunger and craving

Speaker 2 signals. You are going to be a version of yourself that

Speaker 2 is a shell of what you want to be.

Speaker 1 Can you walk us through what you would recommend? What is on our plate and when are we actually eating? Okay.

Speaker 1 For

Speaker 1 like, you know, complete hormone. Yes.

Speaker 2 Um, we didn't even talk about circadian rhythms, but Mel, sunlight and darkness run our bodies.

Speaker 2 We have internal clocks in every one of ourselves. So routines are excessively important in terms of our mood and our body, our nutrition.
So when you wake up in the morning, you want to get sunlight.

Speaker 1 I have a rule.

Speaker 2 When you wake up, go get sunlight first.

Speaker 2 Sky before screens.

Speaker 1 Oh, I love that.

Speaker 2 So, sky before screens is how you should start your day. Your body is wired to see sunlight in the morning, even if it's a cloudy day.
It just has to be bright light. Okay.

Speaker 2 You can just walk out outside. For me, it's my back door.
Just walk out for a few minutes. It could be two to 10 minutes.
You could do,

Speaker 2 for me, I'm usually just in my pajamas. So I'm coming back in and getting ready for the day.

Speaker 1 Okay.

Speaker 2 So you don't want to have food or caffeine

Speaker 2 in the first 45 minutes of your day.

Speaker 1 Why?

Speaker 2 I'll tell you why. When you wake up, you feel groggy, right? Yep.
That grogginess is partially, mostly from adenosine in your brain.

Speaker 1 Adenosine.

Speaker 2 Adenosine. Okay.
And it clears out within 30, 40 minutes. It clears out.

Speaker 2 Then you have your coffee. Then you eat your food.
And the reason why is coffee blocks our adenosine receptor. It just blocks it from actually

Speaker 2 binding. Okay.
So if you don't let the adenosine clear out and you just drink your coffee, when the coffee wears off in a couple of hours, that adenosine is still there.

Speaker 2 And it just binds those receptors and you feel excessively tired.

Speaker 1 And that's why you think you need another cup of coffee.

Speaker 2 And then you're fully dependent. Like the people that wake up and they need the coffee right then and then they need it again at like 10 o'clock and and then they need it again at one o'clock.

Speaker 2 It's because you're not letting that adenosine

Speaker 1 go.

Speaker 2 Okay. You need to let that clear out.

Speaker 1 I'm guilty of this. So I am going to try this tomorrow.
I'm going to wake up. I'm going to wait 45 minutes.
Then I'm going to have my coffee. I'm going to see if I have a craving for a second cup.

Speaker 1 Yes. That is fascinating.

Speaker 2 Okay. So you want to let it clear out naturally because it's not going to clear out naturally if you start the caffeine cycle right away.
Got it.

Speaker 1 So clear it out for 45 minutes. Get our sun in.
What's next?

Speaker 1 Eat.

Speaker 2 Okay. So no intermittent fasting.
So everybody, I love intermittent fasting.

Speaker 1 Then why are we eating?

Speaker 2 Because I do it the opposite way.

Speaker 1 Talk to me.

Speaker 2 There's very good evidence that for thousands of years, we ate in one scheduled way,

Speaker 2 which is daylight hours. Oh.
There was no microwaves, Uber Eats, you know.

Speaker 2 They had a fire and you'd maybe eat an hour or two after sundown. That's it, right? Yep.
You are not snacking at midnight. There's nowhere to store the food thousands of years ago.

Speaker 2 Our internal clocks are set so that when melatonin hits two to three hours before bed,

Speaker 2 your organs shut down.

Speaker 2 You cannot process sugar as well as you did. You can't take it into your muscles.
You're not releasing digestive enzymes.

Speaker 2 When you're eating late at night, you're waking your body up in the middle of the night and asking it to do a math problem.

Speaker 2 Your body is going to be like, I don't want to do this. That's what happens when you eat late at night.

Speaker 1 Holy smokes.

Speaker 1 You put your body in conflict with itself.

Speaker 2 Yeah. And so intermittent fasting, everyone's doing it the wrong way.
They're eating way late into the night and then they... Don't eat all day when the sun is out, right?

Speaker 2 Like that's the time that you're what your body's ready for food, right? So ideally, you know, you wait an hour because it's nobody needs to be eating every minute of every day.

Speaker 2 Americans just, we just eat 14 to 16 hours a day. It's just too much, right? So you wake up, maybe you get some movement in, you get your sunlight, you eat about an hour or two even after you wake up.

Speaker 2 You don't need to push it to two, three, four o'clock. Like people are doing this thing.
There's good evidence that skipping meals is actually bad for you.

Speaker 2 And that people who do it habitually actually have worse health outcomes. Okay.
Got it. So eat your breakfast.
You You want to have a high dopamine breakfast? Yep.

Speaker 2 Let's have, you know, cottage cheese, eggs, tofu scramble, veggies, nuts, berries.

Speaker 1 Great. When do I eat next? Then you eat.
Because I'm already hungry. Well, no, am I hungry right now? Yeah.

Speaker 2 Would I eat vegetables?

Speaker 1 I would eat vegetables right now. So that must mean I'm hungry, but I got to have a glass of water first and then ask myself that again.
Yes.

Speaker 1 I'm learning.

Speaker 2 Then you tune in with the inner Mel, you know, the brain-gut mouse. Yep.
Okay. So then you can eat when you're hungry.
Again, you can use your inner cues.

Speaker 2 It could be 12, could be one, whatever your inner cues. Okay.
You'll notice your ghlin is set to on a timer. Every day you'll get hungry at the same time.

Speaker 1 So hello, ghrelin. Yeah.
Just dumped on it. It just, it just, I think, dumped on me.
Yeah. So what do you eat for lunch?

Speaker 2 The healthier you eat earlier in the day, the better your chance of

Speaker 2 sticking to it. So I always say exercise and eating healthier foods, breakfast and lunch is your best chance.
So for me, I try to eat the same things every day.

Speaker 1 So what do you eat for lunch?

Speaker 2 So I eat a salad for lunch. I usually put a protein source on it.
It could be different beans, nuts. It could be tofu.
It could do eggs.

Speaker 2 You could do salmon, whatever you want, protein and veggies, a salad with protein on it.

Speaker 2 And I always have a fermented probiotic food with my lunch because that's the best time for you to get in at least one to two servings of the kimchi, of the sauerkraut.

Speaker 2 It could be kombucha for a drink, apple cider vinegar in your dressing. Yep.
So that's when you have the best chance. Really simple.
It can be very simple.

Speaker 2 And then your dinner is when you want to eat. If you are someone.

Speaker 2 Yes,

Speaker 2 you're learning.

Speaker 1 I'm paying attention.

Speaker 2 So if I know it's not sexy to say eat carbs, but carbs actually can be very healthy for you, especially in vegetable form, sweet potato, quinoa, whatever it is.

Speaker 2 You can eat that later in the day if you want to have that big boost of serotonin and what about snacks if i'm like legit hungry but i'm not really craving anything yes but i'm legit hungry midday what's your go-to snack so remember that protein has this effect on your body that it tells your hunger to hunger hormones to stop so if you want more leptin

Speaker 2 Eat more protein. So your snack can be yogurt.
Your snack can be a protein shake. Your snack can be

Speaker 2 a

Speaker 2 piece of cheese. It can, you know, something with protein because that will keep your dopamine levels up and it will keep your hunger hormones stable.

Speaker 2 So protein snack, I think women especially, we're eating just too little protein. There is a theory

Speaker 2 that the reason we get fat from eating ultra-processed food is because it's so low in protein that your brain never gets the signal that you're full. Your Your protein threshold is never met.

Speaker 1 Wow. One final thing I want to ask you because we didn't really cover it, gluten.
Everybody I know is gluten-free. Yeah.

Speaker 2 It's not the gluten. There's very few people who are actually allergic to gluten.
And like I told you, I have a degree in allergy.

Speaker 2 And the way we look at it is that if you're allergic to gluten, you'll have anaphylaxis. That's gluten allergy.
It is

Speaker 2 very common to have GI issues with processed gluten. So when you eat a lot of bread, pizza, carbs, but that's not the gluten itself.
It's the fact that you're eating processed food.

Speaker 2 So gluten gets mislabeled all the time. What I say to people is go gluten-free for a few weeks, three to four weeks.

Speaker 2 See how you feel.

Speaker 2 When you add the gluten back, don't add back the bread, the cookies, the cakes, and the processed gluten. Add back a small wheat bulgur like in a in a salad.
Okay.

Speaker 2 Add back

Speaker 2 a healthy sourdough bread.

Speaker 1 Okay.

Speaker 2 Add back, you know, wheat in small unprocessed amounts and then see how you feel.

Speaker 2 And what I realized is that people villainize gluten all the time. And in America, gluten-free

Speaker 2 has become such a tagline that those foods are more unhealthy.

Speaker 1 Oh, because of all the processing.

Speaker 1 Look at you, Dr.

Speaker 2 Amy.

Speaker 1 Is there anything else on this topic that we did not get?

Speaker 2 I think we covered so much. I think,

Speaker 2 like you said, and I have taken this to heart, is that there is no pill that's going to save you. There is no person that's going to save you.

Speaker 2 You, when you learn about all this, when you actually listen to your own self, you're going to be the one who saves yourself.

Speaker 1 Well, Dr. Amy Shaw,

Speaker 1 let me just say thank you. Because without this information, we can't save ourselves.
And you've explained the internal,

Speaker 1 extremely elegant, but complicated systems inside of us so that it makes sense, so that we understand why

Speaker 1 these choices, these substitutions, why it actually matters. Like that's my huge takeaway.
I have never

Speaker 1 actually understood any of this at the level that you just explained. And that's an enormous gift.
So thank you. Thank you.
Thank you.

Speaker 2 I appreciate you. You give so much amazing information to everyone that it's just a gift to be here and to speak to you.

Speaker 1 Well,

Speaker 1 feelings mutual, babe.

Speaker 1 Wasn't she great?

Speaker 1 Well, you know who else is great? You are. So before we go, I just want to remind you that I love you.

Speaker 1 I believe in you, and I believe in your ability to take back your health, to make a million happy psychobiotics yourself. Now, go make a bowl of raw vegetables, put down the potato chips.

Speaker 1 See, I'm learning. I hope you're learning too.

Speaker 1 I wish I had not worn these high-waisted pants. It's like wearing a tourniquet when you sit down.
We have 10 minutes before Dr. Shaw arrives.

Speaker 4 Hand me those potato chips.

Speaker 1 I

Speaker 1 cannot stop eating them.

Speaker 1 This is not an ad, by the way.

Speaker 1 Okay.

Speaker 1 All right. I'll start over.

Speaker 1 This is so good.

Speaker 1 Yum.

Speaker 1 But I don't think you want me chewing. I'm trying to enjoy it.

Speaker 1 I'm sorry, guys. Here we go.

Speaker 1 Is there anything like teeth? How's my personal?

Speaker 2 She's coming.

Speaker 1 Take these paper chips.

Speaker 1 Oh, and one more thing. And no.
This is not a blooper. This is the legal language.
You know what the lawyers lawyers write and what I need to read to you.

Speaker 1 This podcast is presented solely for educational and entertainment purposes. I'm just your friend.

Speaker 1 I am not a licensed therapist, and this podcast is not intended as a substitute for the advice of a physician, professional coach, psychotherapist, or other qualified professional. Got it? Good.

Speaker 1 I'll see you in the next episode.

Speaker 2 Stitcher

Speaker 5 at Capella University, learning online doesn't mean learning alone.

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Speaker 4 You'll also get a designated academic coach who's with you throughout your entire program. Plus, career coaches are available to help you navigate your professional goals.

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Speaker 1 Hey, it's your friend Mel. If you love the Mel Robbins podcast, you're going to love this.

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