Overcoming Cravings and the Habit of Overeating
Do you ever find yourself eating when you're not hungry? Perhaps it's because you're bored, tired, stressed, or sad? Do your food cravings sometimes feel unbearable? If you answered yes to any of these questions, this is the episode for you. Today we talk to Professor Judson Brewer from Brown University all about food cravings and why we eat. We discuss the neurobiology of why eating food feels so good, why it so hard to change our eating habits, and how we can begin to change them.
Professor Brewer's mindfulness eating app Eat Right Now.
Professor Brewer's book The Hunger Habit.
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Juna Eddie, I have a question for you. Shoot. Why do you think we eat?
Eddie I'm going to go with survival.
Juna Okay. Yes, but what feeling causes us to eat?
Eddie Well. I'm hungry. I need to eat because I'm hungry. That's the obvious.
Juna One. Okay. Yeah, but here's my other question. Do you think you ever eat? Not from being hungry.
Eddie The simple answer is yes, but if you have some more time, I will go into all of the reasons to eat, even when I'm clearly not. Okay.
Juna What are some of the reasons?
Eddie If I'm bored? Yeah, if I'm stressed.
Juna Yeah.
Eddie If I have not slept well. Oh, my God, don't get between me and the chocolate.
Juna Some guys will still be on the phone going over a script, and he'll be like, yeah, I'm on actual number ten because it's like 10 p.m. we're both so tired. So when we eat food, I feel like the last reason we eat a lot of time is from hunger. Like, I think there's these million other reasons why we eat.
Eddie And, you know, there's another part to it, which is sometimes I just get, like a craving for a certain food. And clearly I'm not hungry. I mean, I had lunch, but now I want. Oh, you just you mentioned the fudge cycle. Now I'm thinking about it.
Juna I know for me, like the weather, it's such a trigger. Like when it's warm out, like, now I just want ice cream all the time. Like, even when I'm not hungry. Like, I just want ice cream. And when it's cold out, I'm like, oh, I'm just gonna get, like, a hot drink. You know what I mean? It's just always.
Eddie So you're looking for some balance, at least?
Juna Yeah.
Eddie Well, I think we should spend some time talking about all the reasons we eat that aren't hunger. And maybe. Maybe we'll become just a little bit more mindful about when and what we eat today.
Juna How to overcome cravings. Eat when you're hungry and stop when you're full.
Juna I'm Juna Gjata
Eddie And I'm Doctor Eddie Phillips, associate professor at Harvard Medical School.
Juna And you're listening to food. We need to talk. The only podcast that you're allowed to crave 24/7 with zero consequence is. And now let's take a moment to give a shout out to one of our favorite reviews of the week. Eddie, do you want to do the honors?
Eddie Absolutely. The title is Wonderful Podcast. That was the exclamation point that you put in there from. You could hear it from Joe Detroit. Okay. I listened to several weight related podcasts, and I have to say, this is my overall favorite. The hosts are so nice and easy to listen to.
Juna Oh thank you.
Eddie Oh, that was us interjecting. I learned something every time I listen to an episode. They cover weight and health issues in depth, honestly, with facts as well as emotional information. They have a great mix of episodes, with just the host talking about the topic of the day, as well as some really great guests who do add a lot to the podcast. I highly recommend this podcast if you're struggling with weight and problems like I am. It will inform you and inspire you without the side of guilt that some podcasts have. The advice is science based and down to earth. Give it a listen.
Speaker 3 Yay!
Juna Thank you, Joe Detroit. That is so kind. As a reminder, guys, giving us the five star rating review. First of all, it makes us feel great. And second of all, it helps other people find the podcast. So if you leave us a review narrating thank you so much. We appreciate you all so much. And we just love hearing from you guys and all the different things that you guys love about the podcast, because obviously we also love the podcast. And now to the episode. Welcome to another episode! Today we are joined by Professor Judd Brewer, who is Director of Research and Innovation at the Mindfulness Center and professor and Behavioral and Social Sciences at the School of Public Health and Psychiatry at the Medical School at Brown University. Thank you so much for joining us today.
Speaker 3 Thanks for having me.
Juna So I just have to say, first of all, that I feel like I know Judd really well because.
Eddie You read his papers.
Juna And I read his papers, but no, I downloaded his app, and it's called Eat Right Now during the pandemic. Because the second that I knew, we were at a lot of our houses. I was like, oh my gosh, I'm going to be eating all the time now. Like, what am I going to do? How am I going to keep myself busy? And so I downloaded this mindfulness eating app. I don't even know where I heard about it, but I have seen Judd from months and months of my life because he leads all the meditations pre and post eating. And so I've seen just all these like ten minute videos and I feel like I know him really well, but Judd doesn't know me. But yeah. Thank you so much for coming on the show. It's been four years since I downloaded the app and it's really cool to actually get to talk to you.
Jud Awesome, awesome. Well, we'll get to know each other today. It'll be wonderful.
Eddie And I just want to start with the name of the app. And I'm trying to figure out where to put the pause. Is it like eat right now or is it eat right now?
Jud What, where.
Eddie Where how do I how do I say the name of the app properly to get the yes.
Jud Yes, I, I specifically made it ambiguous. I love the words. So it's like, you know, from a mindfulness perspective, it's eat correctly in the present moment.
Eddie Oh okay.
Jud Play on what we do all the time, which is we eat right now, right now. Eat eat eat.
Eddie Got it. Okay. I love the play on words. All right. So we will put the emphasis as needed.
Jud Yeah.
Juna So so our first question is why is changing our eating habits so difficult. And I know in your book that you talked about I think it's called The Hunger Habit. You talked about how you want readers to come into this book with curiosity and kindness and why those two things specifically, because I think a lot of times when we try to change our eating habits, curiosity and kindness are like the last two words we're thinking about, right? It's like rigidity, actually strict. I have to not mess up. And it's all these like negative kind of connotations. And then when you said curiosity and kindness, I felt like it. It made it so different.
Jud Yes. Well there's a lot to unpack there. So the let's start at the beginning and we can even think of this from evolutionary time, you know, all the way back to the amoeba. Single celled organisms had these call it machinery a to help them approach nutrient and avoid toxin. The sea slug with 20,000 neurons. They, you know, kind of Eric Kandel, let's just say got the Nobel Prize when he studied their learning mechanisms. And it turns out that they also learn in very similar ways to humans, which is, you know, approach nutrients, avoid toxin. And as humans, it's really, you know, set us up to be able to learn where food sources were and to learn where sources of danger were so that we can avoid them. So think back to what we can't think back, but we can imagine back to before refrigerators and food delivery, when, you know, our ancestors had to literally form a map in their mind, a memory of where food was. And so they'd go out foraging, they'd find some food, and their brain would kick into gear. You know, because we don't our brains don't have the capacity to remember everything that we do every day. You know, they're tremendous. We'd be overloaded. You know, our memory card would be full by the time we had breakfast. So we have to selective really remember things. And dopamine helps us do that. And so imagine foraging, you know, it's boring, boring boring. Boom. Here's a berry patch. We get to the very patch, we eat the berries, and then our stomach sends this dopamine signal to our brain that says, remember what you ate and where you found it. So we lay down emotion laden memories based on surprise and things that are not expected, things that are unexpected. So if it's expected, you know, we're not going to lay down the memory because we've already learned that thing. But if it's a new food source, you can actually distill this down to three key elements a trigger, a behavior, and a result or a reward from a neuroscience standpoint. So you see the food, there's a trigger, you eat the food, there's the behavior. And then this dopamine signal says, hey, the result was nutrients. Go back and do that again. And so we form what I call a, you know, a habit basically a habit loop that helps us learn things.
Eddie Are you getting the dopamine from the food hitting your gut, which is the result of searching and remembering, searching, grabbing the berries from the trees? Or is it the wow, I see the honey, I see the berries, and then you're already rewarded.
Jud There can be a number of different things that can set dopamine off, so surprise certainly does. And that helps us remember where dangerous. Right. So. It's not like we're going to wait until the bear is right on us eating us, saying, oh, this is bad. You know, we see the tiger. We are surprised. Oh no Tiger we run. There's the behavior. And the reward is that we don't become the tiger's lunch. But from a gustatory standpoint, if we look at it from our gut, it's interesting. There are several mechanisms, at least two that are known that will set off dopamine firing. I believe, if I remember correctly, one in our mouth as early as the mouth and one, lower down, I think stomach or something like that. That's based on, different, you know, nutrient density or something like that. Both of those are going to send off dopamine. And that to me says, hey, this is so important. We're going to make it redundant. So, you know, if you miss it the first time, you're going to get it the second time type of thing.
Juna And so why is it so tough to change our eating habits? You think it's because it's kind of hard wired into our brain to get these dopamine hits every time we eat that, like stopping ourselves from eating becomes very difficult.
Jud Well, this is where it gets really interesting. I mean, the positive and negative reinforcement, which is what we just described, are interesting unto themselves because that's how we form any habit. But if you double click on the eating, this is where, you know, I think if this is the food mode relationship, where it's not just food that can trigger this dopamine signal when something so negative reinforcement is set up to say anytime there's something unpleasant, make it go away. And in modern day we're not constantly being chased by tigers, but we are kind of running away from our emotions. So if something's unpleasant and we happen to have some food nearby. Right. We don't have to go in and hunt, you know, having an argument in the cave or like, oh, I'm feeling angry. I'm going to go out and hunt them. I'm, you know, too dangerous. Yeah, exactly. Now we can say, oh, I'm angry. I'm going to go to the refrigerator and we learn that food tastes good. It can distract us for the moment. And so we learn to associate food with mood. And it can be anything from celebration to consoling ourselves. So think of all the times we went to birthday parties when we were kids. If we were fortunate enough to, you know, get to ten birthday parties as kids, our parents didn't starve us for breakfast and lunch and say, go fill up on empty calories. You know, they they probably did the opposite. They're like, hey, eat some vegetables, eat something before you go so you don't fill up on the cake and ice cream. Yeah. And so, you know, we as kids, we'd go and have the cake and ice cream. Not when we're hungry but when we're having a good time. And so we learn to associate celebrations with food, not with hunger. And so that's one example. And then there's the, you know, the popcorn in the movie theater association. There's all the, you know, social times that we're having coffee with somebody and we get a croissant or we get something, you know, that because it looks good, not because we're hungry, but because we're we're in a social situation. So all these things and then you add to them all the negative things, from boredom to loneliness to stress to whatever. All those negative things also reinforce it. And then we've suddenly overwhelmed our system with all these triggers, the triggers to eat not when we're hungry, but because we're not feeling good or we want to feel better. And in fact, there's a misnomer that had to be coined in science. So we could study this process because it's so prevalent, it's called hedonic hunger hmhm. And that that's different than homeostatic hunger, which is that anger that keeps us alive and says, hey, you're hungry, eat. Get those calories in. Hedonic hunger is a misnomer because we're eating not when we're hungry, but because of an emotion, whether it's a pleasant emotion or an unpleasant one.
Eddie So I love having a question that's been percolating in my head for years, but there's no one I could find to answer it. So. But you're the guy, when I'm at home in a somewhat controlled environment. Me, I'm eating with my wife and any of my kids who still persist in our house. And they're getting older. We eat, and I kind of. And we'll talk about this later of eat to. I'm being full, maybe a little bit less as a trial, but when I go out to eat, then it's like, you just said, like, you tend to eat more with people. Is it because I'm distracted, or is it because I'm having such a good time? And again, like you just said, like food is for celebration?
Jud It could be both and there could be other things on top of this. So, for example, our brains are set up for this thing called completion bias, you know, so it's like we're wired to complete tasks. It feels good to do that. And so if the task is all the food on the plate, you complete it. It feels good having nothing to do with hunger. So I could say it's, you know, those three things and potentially even more as well. Wow.
Juna Can you talk about the hungry ghost phenomenon? I came across it. During your AB. I think that I also read about it in your book, and I think it just describes the way so many people feel around food really well.
Jud Yeah, I'd be happy to. This goes back to the ancient Buddhist psychology, where they had this analogy of a of a hungry ghost. And the idea is that you picture a ghost. However, any of us pictures ghosts, right? That what the ghost looks like is less important than its anatomical features. And so the ghost has a small mouth, a very long and narrow esophagus, and a huge stomach. And so picture that, and you think of it as a supply problem, where if our stomach wants to get full, it's got to get the food in, but it can't because there's a supply chain or as in the mouth and the esophagus won't allow it to fill up because it'll digest the food before it can get enough in there to feel full. So this analogy comes in in terms of us, and I love that they call it the hungry ghost, right? It fits well with food, but it also fits well with anything else that we're trying to do to satisfy ourselves. So whether it's scrolling on social media or any other habitual thing that's like, oh, more and more and more, it's never going to be satisfying and it's just going to keep us literally hungering for more stuck in the cycle. Buddhist called this samsara, which literally means endless wandering.
Juna Yeah. I think the Buddhist philosophy is actually really interesting, especially when it comes to applying it to food. I've done a couple of ten day silent meditation retreats, and whenever I do those retreats, my eating just like takes double the time when I'm on the retreats, because all of a sudden I'm actually aware of what I'm eating and it's so great. And then I come home like life gets crazy and I start inhaling my food again. But it is a really, I think, cool way to like, slow down and actually think about what you're eating to be more mindful while you're eating.
Jud Yeah, yeah. And I'll say, you know, it can be a luxury or even a privilege to be able to eat slowly, totally. And so I'll just say that for those of us that don't have that luxury, it's not all lost because it takes about 15 to 20 minutes to register satiety, know to register fullness. And so as long as we can link, you know, the type and amount of food that we ate. And ideally with our level of hunger at the time with what the result was from what we inhaled, you know, 15, 20 minutes later, we still have our finger on the toggle dial where we can learn from it and say, okay, that much food, too much. That much food. Not enough. That much food. You know, Goldilocks nailed it. You know, that's that's just the right amount. And so we can, you know, we can still learn as long as we take a few moments to reflect back on our experience and line up all of those variables.
Juna What is the connection in your mind between addiction and eating habits? I think you've done work with addiction previously, and I was wondering how you see that connecting to eating habits in general and maybe also binge eating in particular.
Jud Yeah. Yeah. Well as an addiction psychiatrist I spend, you know, 20 years clinically trying to help people who struggle with addiction. And I remember distinctly learning a simple definition of addiction back in residency, which was continued use despite adverse consequences. And that stuck with me one because I could remember it. Yeah, even as a sleep deprived resident. Yeah. But also it made a lot of sense. And it didn't limit that definition to chemical addictions, you know, alcohol, cocaine, heroin, you know, cigarets. I could start to see how anything. Well, I won't say anything, but many things in excess can really lead to adverse consequences. So. And it's controversial whether there's food addiction or not, I won't get into the controversy. You know, the folks that fight about it, they can fight with each other about it. Pragmatically speaking, as a clinician, I just want to see if my patients are suffering. Right. So is there eating contributing to mental and physical health issues, you know, adverse consequences? And then, you know, whether they call that an addiction or not doesn't matter as much as what are we going to do about it?
Eddie And so does that definition cover, what do they call like process addictions like gambling or shopping.
Jud Yes.
Eddie Okay. So it's the adverse reaction even though you keep you processed even though gambling is no good for you.
Jud Yes. So adverse consequences gambling is a great example of that. Somebody can just get stuck in something, whether it's gambling or gaming or, you know, texting. You know, texting has been shown to be as dangerous, if not more dangerous than drunk driving. And there are so many people that when they're paying or the ring comes on their phone, they just can't not check to see who texted them.
Eddie So can you talk about reward hierarchies? Is that is that enough of a question?
Jud Yeah. Absolutely. Yeah. And this also goes back to the, you know, some of the earlier question like, well, why are we stuck in this mess? Because our current in the context in the messaging is, well, you need more willpower. You just need to, you know, gird your loins, you need to you just do it. And it's interesting.
Juna Just gird your loins, damn it.
Jud Yeah, exactly. Whatever that means. I just I love it. I kind of like that phrase all the time. Yeah. Gird their loins for.
Juna The new season. Bridgerton is out, so I feel like it's very on theme for what's going on. Yeah.
Jud So they gird their loins there?
Juna Yeah, they gird their loins all the time, I think.
Eddie I was thinking like Roman, but.
Juna All that too. Okay.
Eddie Yeah.
Jud Yeah, my wife's a Bible scholar. And so my guess is there's some biblical reference security delights.
Eddie But you have to have her on next.
Jud Yeah, yeah, she can give the etymology. So wherever girding your loins comes from. Back in 1963, when Weight Watchers was founded, Lay's Potato Chips came up with their famous saying, bet you can't eat just one. Now, I'm sure somebody could weave together a conspiracy theory around that, but it was probably just a coincidence that Lay's came up with this great slogan that you still hear, you know, today. Bet you can't eat just one. And the dot dot dot is because we designed it that way, right? So more and more food is being engineered to be addictive. There was great book and a New York Times article by I think it was Michael Moss who just highlighted all the way that food, you know, is engineered to be addictive. And so, you know, in modern day, we not only have an abundance of food, we have ready availability of food, and we also have the, this food mood association that we learn that we've talked about. And so all of those things are kind of ganging up on us so that it makes it really hard to change our eating habits. And so what do we learn? Well, you know, just stop doing it. Right. And so we are told that we need willpower. And if we fail, it's our fault we don't have enough willpower. And so all these things that you highlighted at the beginning around, you know, it's you got to you got to be tough. You got to grit your teeth. You got to courage your loins. It's our fault. There's something wrong with us. That's what we're told. Yeah. And we just have to get more of something that we don't have. Yeah, well, ready for this? Here's the spoiler. None of that has any neuroscience basis.
Juna Oh, my God, none of it.
Jud Full stop. And I, you know, you can take that out of context because a lot of, a lot of life is about, hey, you just have to have more willpower and do you can do X, you.
Eddie Know, neuroscience basis to that.
Jud Willpower. You know, neuroscience basis for willpower. So we are told something that is not only false and not true, but something that gets us to shame and blame ourselves for being insufficient, for there's something being wrong with us, which is terrible.
Eddie I'm feeling bad. I should eat.
Jud Right. I I'd tell me. Right. Tell me how well that works. Haha. Yeah, but the idea is we're kind of set up to fail. And then it's a great marketing strategy because whatever the diet or the fad diet or the program is, they can say, oh, our formula is correct. You just didn't follow it. It's your fault. Sign up for another year. Right. So I learned in medical school and I think this is still taught in medical schools today. Calories in calories out right. Yeah. So if you have more calories in then out you're going to gain weight. That is a true statement. But it's not as simple as that. It has you know. So physiology plays a role. Genes plays a role. our environment plays a role. And all these things that we learn play a huge role. It's not just about calories in, calories out, but the calories in, calories out gives us the simple formula that says, hey, here's the formula. Just follow it. Right? Yeah. And and again, we're set up for failure. So to answer your question about reward hierarchy, all of that is a preface for what our brains actually do. So as a neuroscientist, yes. Not just as a. Yeah, right. Right. So as a clinician, I see this fail all the time in my clinic and I see my patients come in defeated. As a neuroscientist, I want to study what's going on and what we can do about it. So it turns out that our brains are set up. So there's this reward based learning that we've talked about positive and negative reinforcement. They lay down memories. But it's not not every memory is the same. Some are better than others. And this is actually set up to help us be efficient as we go through life. So if we broccoli. And chocolate, let's say from a caloric standpoint, those are very different. The density of chocolate is much higher than broccoli. Our survival brain says more chocolate. You know, whatever the the stereotypical cave person, you know, speeches. Right. So our brains is more chocolate and then our, you know, our health conscious TikTok watching, you know, what should brain that says, oh, but broccoli has fiber and it's it's a crustacean is vegetable. It is, you know, all this stuff. I should eat more of it. And that should, you know, that joke? We should. All of our ourselves. Yeah, right. That thinking brain has nothing on the feeling and body. Because the feeling body is what drives the action. And that's all based on this reward hierarchy. So we set up this reward hierarchy that says, hey, chocolate is more calories than broccoli. So when given a choice, eat the chocolate. Right. And we also learn like ice cream and cake. We associate those with good things. We get this composite reward value. So we form a certain reward value for like sweet things. Celebratory feels good, distracts us all this stuff. And if it's high in the reward hierarchy, there's no way we're going to think our way out of it. It might help once or twice and we're like, oh, I shouldn't eat the cake. But then when we're really, you know, when we're on the ropes, so to speak, our brain is like, oh, I'm so tired. Oh that cake, I oh, chocolate, you know, and then we just go for it. So there are a couple of things here. One is that we've set up this reward hierarchy. The only way to change that reward hierarchy is not the real power, but it's through awareness. So I think of awareness as the essential ingredient for habit change. Let's use a pragmatic example. So let's say that a new bakery opens up in my neighborhood, and I go in there, right. And I see so my current favorite truffle is this mango habanero truffle. Ooh. So like sweet by a little bit of heat. You know, 15 seconds later, you know, and I actually learn to make my own with avocado so you can make them vegan. But anyway, so, you know, this great truffle, I've got a reward hierarchy where, like, that is the queen of truffles. It's got to be that one, or I'm not going back. So I go in that bakery. And if if I have, like, the best mango habanero truffle ever, my head explodes. I'm like, wow, I just said dopamine firework show. I learned, hey, this is a good bakery. They know how to make mango habanero truffles. So I get what's called a positive prediction error. It's error because it's different than expected, but in the positive direction. So I learned opening fires and I learned good bakery. Okay. So. So it updates my reward hierarchy that says this bakery is better than my homemade mango habanero truffles. On the other hand, if I eat it, I'm like cardboard. You know, I get what's called a negative prediction error. And I learn also get dopamine firing. And I learned, hey, this isn't as good as mine. My travels. I'm not coming back here. Notice how I learned in both instances? And notice how both of those depended only on awareness. Nothing else. It wasn't the marketing. It wasn't, you know how nice the person was behind the counter. It wasn't that they said that they locally sourced the chocolate from Worcester, Massachusetts, which would I would question in the first place. You know all that. It's about awareness. And that's how we form the reward hierarchies and that's how we change them. Does that make sense? Before we go on? And I can actually talk about some science, but yes, it does.
Juna So you're saying like we just have to pay more attention when we're eating things, basically to change the way that our brain is perceiving that, like, you can have the same exact thing that doesn't taste as good, but if you're not paying attention, your brain will think it tastes better than it does.
Jud Absolutely. If we've set a certain reward value for it in the past. So for basically eating it habitually. So yeah, for example, you know, if I eat my mango habanero truffle mindlessly, I'm not paying attention unless something crazy happens where like I got it ahead of extra habanero in my mouth on fire. I'm just going to be like, yep, that's the same as last.
Juna Can I give you an example? I am obsessed with Tara bubble tea, and I got this really good at this local place one time. I'm not going to have a place to badmouth it, but I got a good one and I'll.
Eddie Put the recipe on food we need to talk about covered.
Juna I got one for the first time from this place, and it was incredible. And I was like, this place is so weird because they use real taro. And I was like, oh, they always use powders. The other ones, I was super into this place and I went there. Guys, I wish I was kidding. I went there another eight times and my friends kept saying like, that's weird. Whenever I go there, it's not that good. And I'm like, no, no, no, this is the best place. This is the best place. And I went another eight times, guys, before I realized like seven out of these eight times it's been really bad. And just because my first one was really good, I've gone another seven times, and then by the eighth one, I was like, why am I still going here? Like, it's been bad a majority of the time because I had this initial like great experience I had in my mind that like, this is a really good bubble tea place.
Jud Yeah, yeah. As you bring up an important, point here, which is the outlier effect. So if we get a data point that's off the charts, like very, very different than the others, it's going to take a while for our brain to figure out, hey, is that an anomalous data point or is that the North Star? And I need to find that North Star. And so, you know, the first time you went there, it sounds like you, you know, you hit the lottery and then literally you kept gambling and it's like, nope, nope, nope, nope. And eventually you're now you're learning. Hey, don't don't waste your money at that spot in.
Eddie It's a good time to take a quick break. Hurry right back, because we're going to talk about cravings. And I can't wait. Food We Need to Talk is funded by a grant from the Ardmore Institute of Health. The home of Full plate Living. Full Plate living helps you add more whole plant based foods to meals you're already eating. These are foods you're already familiar with apples being strawberries and avocados. It's a small step approach that can lead to big health outcomes. Full Plate Living includes weekly recipes and programs for weight loss, meal makeovers, and better blood sugar management. Best of all, Full Plate Living is a free service of the Ardmore Institute of Health. Sign up for free at Full Plate Living Dawg. And we're back with Professor Judd Brewer from Brown University.
Jud So if we ask the question, well, how long does it take to change a habit? You know, let's say let's use over eating, for example. So my lab did a study to see how long it takes to update that reward value and that change, that reward hierarchy and what the consequences are, what the results are. So we did a couple of studies with people who were, you know, struggling with overeating or even eating junk food. But let's focus on the overeating. And we had them use our You Right Now app and basically added in what we call the craving tool, where we had them pay attention as they overate. And then we had them answer simple questions afterwards so we could calculate the reward value of that eating episode. If you had to guess, how long do you think it takes for somebody to make that reward value of overeating go below zero. How many times of paying attention as they overeat? Any guesses?
Juna I would think you would take like ten times or something.
Eddie I'm going to go lower than that if you're paying attention and your stomach's aching and you're saying like, why did I. What? What was that other ate? I can't believe I ate the whole thing.
Jud Yeah.
Eddie I would, I would go with three.
Jud Well, both of you are right in the range there. So in our first study in our, we did a pilot study, with about, I think, 40 individuals. And we found that it was about ten, 10 to 15 times where that ding ding ding. Then we did a second study with over a thousand community sample members, and it was only about five times it just came. So but you're both highlighting something really key here, which is the more we pay attention, the faster we that reward value changes because we're seeing very, very clearly what the results are. And the more we can remember that, the faster the habit changes. So there are all these myths on the internet about how it takes 21 days to change a bad habit or form a good one. It's actually, I give a tongue in cheek nod to that in my Hunger Habit book, where I set up a 21 day program. Yeah, where I basically split out all the practices over 21 days, which is pragmatic, but also, yeah, it gives a nod to that internet. Yeah, we can change a habit much faster than 21 days if we're really paying attention and seeing the cause and effect relationship, seeing that behavior and what the results are very clearly.
Juna So what do people pay attention to? Like, I'm sure there's a lot people listening that they know they eat, not because they're hungry. Like, I know I eat not because I'm hungry. Right? And it can always be different reasons. It can be stress. It can be boredom. It can be I'm tired. It can be emotional. Whatever. What are you paying attention to when you're eating to change that habit?
Jud This is the critical question. So what are we paying attention to or paying attention to the felt experience that comes as a result of, say, over eating? So we pay attention to what our stomach feels like. And it typically takes, you know, as I mentioned, 10 or 15 minutes. So we it's not just right afterwards because we might not have hit that gut bomb, might not have hit our gut yet. You know, we've got to pay attention afterwards to what our body feels like and also what our emotions feel like, what our thoughts are. So, for example, for me, I used to be addicted eating gummy worms. And when I would pay attention, I would get this sugar rush and crash and I would have to eat the whole bag because they were so addictive. So I didn't like that out of control feeling. I'd feel guilty. You know, all these all these negative consequences that came from eating the gummy worms. And so when I really paid attention, not only did I notice that there's, there's like, the sickly sweet petroleum. Yeah. Like everything was off. It was just slightly off, but it was off. It's like, oh, it's not quite the right sweetness, not quite the right mouthfeel, definitely not the right color. They look like a filler, you know, they're.
Juna Like neon too.
Jud I guess you could say they hooked me. Yeah, but we have to pay attention to all those aspects. And this is where the feeling body being much stronger than the thinking brain comes in. So if we feel those results, we become disenchanted with the behavior pretty quickly.
Juna And do you have people journal afterwards, like how do you have people really cement these feelings in their head?
Jud If it's helpful, if people like to journal, journaling can be helpful or they can just, you know, sometimes it's helpful to say it out loud to themselves to be like, was that did that really happen? Yes. I feel like this, this and this. Sometimes it can be helpful to talk to a loved one or a partner or a friend. Be like, hey, when I ate this, it was like this. Or simply just notice it, right? Just pay attention.
Juna Can we talk about overcoming cravings and surfing the urge? This was one of the biggest things, I think, that I used eat right now for, and also a concept I've seen a lot when people are, overcoming, like quitting smoking or something like that. Where, after you've decided that you don't want to do a behavior anymore and a lot of time, if that behavior is really deeply ingrained, it can feel like the end of the world if you don't act on those urges. So can we talk about like, what are cravings and how do we get through them?
Jud Yeah. So I think we can operationally define cravings, you know, as an urge or a craving. I don't I don't think we need to get to esoteric.
Juna About, you know, what happens in the brain. Like it's not because you're not hungry a lot of time when you're craving something. So where does it come from?
Jud Yeah, well, it's a complex, you know, there's a lot going on in the brain because it's such a big survival strategy and mechanism, but a couple of networks that are involved there. One is this reward based learning network, this dopaminergic system that has to do with the ventral tegmental area and the nucleus accumbens and, and basically what are called the basal ganglia. And it's interesting that you first learn and get this dopamine firing in the nucleus accumbens. It's more in animals described as the ventral striatum. But then that dopamine firing moves more dorsally, more toward the back, into what's called that, the dorsal striatum, which is more associated with habits. And then there are other brain regions and networks like the the default mode network, which is what is basically the self-referential network. It's been shown to be activated, especially hubs of it, like the posterior cingulate cortex that are activated with all sorts of, drug and behavioral cues, ranging from gambling to cocaine to cigarets to chocolate, to even worrying and ruminating. Like when somebody is worrying about the future, it gets activated. We've actually done some research in this, in this area and, and found that that network and the posterior cingulate in particular gets activated when we're caught up in our experience. So think of it as getting caught up in a craving. And we've also found that we've studied experienced meditators and found that they specifically deactivate, let's say, that network or the posterior cingulate. And so with mindfulness, right. Mindfulness training, think of this is like learning to be curious. We can learn to get curious about what a craving feels like instead of fighting it or succumbing to it. And so, you know, like how you mentioned earlier that, you know, these urges can get really strong. I remember a patient this is back when I was working at the VA hospital, just out of residency. I was in West Haven, Connecticut, and I had a patient who came in who said, hey, doc, if if I don't smoke, I feel like my head's going to explode. And, you know, it's crap. I didn't learn about chief complaint of head exploding in medical review, so I fell back on my old habit, which was to go to my whiteboard in my office, and I asked him to describe what head exploding felt like in the moment. And so he started describing tightness, tension burning, and then also the intensity was going up and up and up and up, and at one point it peaked and then started going back down and his eyes got really wide. And I said, why did you know what's going on? And he said, well, I always smoke before it peaks. And I didn't realize it's going to kind of go away on its own or peak on its own. And so he learned that head exploding is not a, you know, it's not a terminal illness. Cigaret smoking likely is, but not loading. So he learned that he could be with his experience simply by noting it out loud, and that this craving was made up of these physical sensations and thoughts, and it would come and go on its own, and that he could be with it instead of habitually react to it. And in fact, we did a study where we compared mindfulness training to gold standard cognitive therapy for smoking cessation. We got five times a quit rates of gold standard treatment by helping people learn to ride those cravings out. You know, think of it as a wave that comes up. And if you learn to surf, you know, instead of drowning in that craving, you can actually ride it. Not necessarily be enjoyable at first, but you could even learn that it's not so bad.
Eddie So he rides this. He surfs the urge, but his reward is that several minutes later the urge starts to come down. And is he then feeling better cognitively and emotionally because he's resisted that cigaret as well? And are there other kinds of urges or, addiction, you know, true addictions where it just gets worse and worse? Like if you're withdrawing from an opiate, it doesn't get better that for a while.
Jud Yeah. So let's let's bookmark that for a second and let's definitely talk about that. So for him one it was it was mind blowing. Haha. that, that he, he felt like he had control. And the paradox was that he didn't have to resist the craving. The less he resisted, the faster it went away. Right. There's. The saying, what we resist persists. So if we fight a craving, it's going to give it fuel and it's going to stick around longer. But if we just open to it, you know, there's a saying the only way out is through. And so if we, instead of running away from what you were and run toward it, and you know, the things that help us run toward it are kindness and curiosity, if we get curious instead of going, oh, no, here's this craving goes, oh, here's the craving. It helps us turn to it, open to it, and see that we've got all this space because craving of tightness, you know, tightness going to make my head explode. No. How about restlessness? No. And whatever. And we can also learn. And I have patients do this. I say just time it. See how long that craving lasts. You know, no patience. Ever had a craving that's lasted forever. Otherwise, they would have brought it into my office. And I think the longest on record so far is 13 minutes. It's actually not that long for for a lot of people it might be unpleasant for 13 minutes. It's kind of like a lot of turbulence. But then you know that the air kind of smooths out and we're back to, you know, back to flying again. And we realize, oh, I, I actually have a lot more power than I thought. So it's important to differentiate craving from physical withdrawal. So for example with opioids the typical detox is, you know, about five days. That's how much insurance will often allow somebody to go to a detox center. And it gets pretty bad for, you know, a couple of days. I love the Trainspotting movie where that I think is the Ewan McGregor character. You know, he goes to detox and locks himself in a room with three buckets, and he basically says, pardon my English when looking for shit, when looking for vomit. One bucket for piss, you know? And so it's it's like it's not going to be pleasant. But he knew that he could detox. So that's that's our body saying, hey, where are my opioids? And I'm going to let you know that my receptors are a little out of whack, and it's going to take a little while to get back in sync. So physical withdrawal is unpleasant, but that's not the same thing as a craving. It might trigger a craving because we've learned, hey, when I'm in withdrawal, if I take whatever it is that led to the withdrawal, it'll stop that withdrawal, whether it's a cigaret or an opioid or alcohol or whatever. Now, I just want to be very clear for anybody listening. Alcohol is can be lethal. Alcohol detox. So opioids pretty unpleasant. You're going to have a messy bathroom but typically doesn't kill somebody as long as they stay hydrated. It's very important that somebody is medically supervised when they're trying to detox from alcohol because they can literally die. So I just want to highlight that.
Eddie Thank you.
Jud Thank you. Cigarets. Not so much. You know, chocolate? Not so much.
Juna Are you sure about the chocolate?
Jud Well.
Eddie You just feel like you're going to die.
Juna I know.
Jud Yeah. So it's just really important to see the difference and know the difference between physical unpleasantness and, you know, a psychological craving.
Juna We, unfortunately, are running out of time. There's so many things we want to talk to you about, but we're going to continue our conversation over on The Talk. But before we come off of this episode, I just wanted to ask you, what advice do you have for people who are looking to change their eating habits? I'm thinking specifically people who know that they emotionally eat, that they board eat, that they stress eat. What advice do you have for them?
Jud Yeah, well, they certainly don't need to read my book, because the simple thing here, and I'm not saying it's easy, but the simple concept that anybody can start playing with right now is one to be able to map out what these habit loops are around eating, be able to figure out what the difference is between actual hunger that homeostatic hunger and the non, you know, eating in the absence of hunger, the hidden hunger map out those habit loops around the hedonic hunger. You know, is it boredom? Is it stress? Is it, you know, anxiety? Is it not feeling good, whatever it is. And then the second step in this is about rewiring that reward. Hierarchy is really paying attention as they do the thing. So if somebody pays attention, whether it's eating something that might not, you know, like gummy worms, for example, pay attention to what the result is and ask a simple question, what am I getting from this? And that helps us line up the behavior and the results of the behavior. So our reward based learning system can kick in and say, hey, let's let's see if it really deserves that spot on the reward hierarchy. The third thing we can do is what I call finding the bigger better offer, the BBO. So if if I learned that gummy worms, you know, aren't so great, then my brain is going to say, okay, well, give me something better. What's that bigger, better offer. And so for me, I started exploring and I learned for me it was blueberries. Like game over. Blueberries are so good now. I even compared blueberries to mango habanero truffles. Although I have made blueberry chocolate like this. Like freeze dried blueberries plus chocolate so you can get the best.
Juna Well, that is young.
Jud Yeah, but but the idea there is, it's not me, you know, eating a ton of freeze dried blueberry chocolate. It's about paying attention, enjoying the taste of it, and then being, you know, being content with 1 or 2 as compared to 20 or 30. So seeing where you know how much is enough as compared to just mindlessly eating them. And so it's really a simple, not necessarily easy three step process, you know, map out the habit loop. Ask what am I getting from this so that we can update that reward value and the reward hierarchy and then find what that bigger, better offer is. And it might be as simple as not eating as much of the thing as we used to.
Juna Well, while I know you were very humble and said that people don't need to buy your book, but I will just say the app was extremely helpful for me. Eat right now. And Judd's book is called The Hunger Habit Why We Eat When We're Not Hungry and How to Stop, which I think is something so many people I know struggle with. And the book lays it out like day by day, step by step. It gives you like a 21 day thing. You can read a chapter a day and just work through it on your own time and do all the exercises. I think it's really, really helpful. So thank you for all of your work in this topic. I think it's so needed today, and I just appreciate how well you explain everything. And it's just it's so easy to listen to and it's so approachable. And it doesn't sound, you know, restrictive and scary the way so many other eating plan sound.
Jud Well, here's to bringing kindness to the process. Right into ourselves. Into the world.
Juna Thank you so.
Eddie Much.
Jud Thank you. It's my pleasure.
Juna Thank you so much to Professor Brewer for joining us on today's podcast. We will link to his work on our website, including his app and his book. And if you want to hear the rest of our episode with Jad, where we talk all about Ozempic and whether or not Ozempic makes all the awareness stuff unnecessary or not. Hmhm head over to food. We need to talk.com/membership or click the link in our show notes. You can find us on Instagram at food. We need to talk. You can find me on Instagram at the official uni and unit on YouTube and TikTok. You can find Eddie.
Eddie Surfing the urge to eat that next punch to call.
Juna Food We Need to Talk is produced by me and is distributed by PR.
Eddie Our mix engineer is Rebecca Seidel.
Juna We were created by Cory Goldberg, George Hicks, Eddie Phillips and me.
Eddie For any personal health questions, please consult your personal health provider to find out more. Go to food. We need to talk.com. Thanks for listening.
