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Day 9-306 lbs: The Scale Didn't Move. This Is Where Everyone Quits. Here's Why I Didn't. · Connor with Honor: AI, Real Estate and Real Life

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: Day nine, just keeps going.
• 0:02
  SPEAKER_00: 306 pounds, same as yesterday.
• 0:05
  SPEAKER_00: And that right there is when most people quit.
• 0:07
  SPEAKER_00: Are you serious?
• 0:08
  SPEAKER_00: I did everything right yesterday.
• 0:09
  SPEAKER_00: I didn't drop anything, not even an ounce or a tenth of a pound or whatever it is.
• 0:14
  SPEAKER_00: And not on the day the scale goes up, on the day that it doesn't move.
• 0:17
  SPEAKER_00: That's when most people just whack it and say, forget it.
• 0:20
  SPEAKER_00: Because when the number drops, you feel something's working, some kind of sacrifice is pushing you over the edge.
• 0:26
  SPEAKER_00: But when that number climbs, of course, you get angry and you fight harder and you say, What's the point?
• 0:32
  SPEAKER_00: Now, just when it sits there staring back at you unchanged, after everything you did right, after every meal you did not eat, after every craving you walked through, that's the day the voice says, What's the point?
• 0:43
  SPEAKER_00: Let's go get some donuts.
• 0:44
  SPEAKER_00: Well, that voice, that's the addiction talking.
• 0:48
  SPEAKER_00: And on the last addiction, we talk about this, and that voice doesn't scream and it whispers sounds that are reasonable.
• 0:54
  SPEAKER_00: And that's what makes it dangerous.
• 0:56
  SPEAKER_00: I want to share with you something today that hit my desk this week.
• 0:59
  SPEAKER_00: The journal Addiction, one of the most respected peer-reviews publications in the world, published a study this year on the ultra-processed food addiction in older adults.
• 1:08
  SPEAKER_00: Nationally, representative sample.
• 1:11
  SPEAKER_00: Over 2,000 people between 50 and 80.
• 1:13
  SPEAKER_00: University of Michigan ran it, and here's what they found.
• 1:16
  SPEAKER_00: Adults between 50 and 64 had nearly twice the rate of ultra-processed food addiction compared to adults 65 to 80.
• 1:25
  SPEAKER_00: That's nearly twice.
• 1:27
  SPEAKER_00: I'm in there.
• 1:28
  SPEAKER_00: And the reason is not willpower, it's timing.
• 1:31
  SPEAKER_00: The 50 to 64 group were teenagers and young adults in the late 70s and early 80s.
• 1:37
  SPEAKER_00: And of course, thank you, Ansel Keys.
• 1:40
  SPEAKER_00: This is exactly when ultra-processed foods flooded the American food supply.
• 1:45
  SPEAKER_00: We were in a critical developmental window for addiction, heightened reward sensibility, impulsivity, emotional dysregulation.
• 1:54
  SPEAKER_00: And right in the middle of that window, the food industry poured engineered products designed for maximum palatability into the grocery store, every gas station, every school cafeteria in the country.
• 2:05
  SPEAKER_00: We didn't stand a chance.
• 2:07
  SPEAKER_00: And here's what makes my blood boil a separate editorial in the same journal compared the ultra-processed food industry directly to the tobacco industry.
• 2:17
  SPEAKER_00: Same playbook, deny the evidence, argue that calling food addictive is stigmatizing, claim the science is not settled.
• 2:26
  SPEAKER_00: Meanwhile, nearly 300 studies across 36 countries have documented that ultra-processed foods hijack the brain reward system.
• 2:33
  SPEAKER_00: Cravings, loss of control, continued use despite harmful consequences.
• 2:38
  SPEAKER_00: Those are the clinical criteria for substance use disorder.
• 2:42
  SPEAKER_00: Same criteria they use for heroin, cocaine, alcohol, and nicotine.
• 2:45
  SPEAKER_00: And the food companies know it.
• 2:47
  SPEAKER_00: They've always known it.
• 2:48
  SPEAKER_00: A landmark paper in Nature Science called it a public health crisis and said failure to recognize food addiction in diagnostic systems is a dangerous oversight with grave consequences.
• 2:59
  SPEAKER_00: NFDA and NIH have launched a new joint initiative modeled after the Tobacco Regulatory Science Program.
• 3:05
  SPEAKER_00: And that means the government's finally starting to treat the food supply the way it treated cigarettes, and it took decades too long.
• 3:12
  SPEAKER_00: I'm 56 years old.
• 3:14
  SPEAKER_00: I fall right in the middle of that study.
• 3:16
  SPEAKER_00: I was a teenager when they rewired our food, and my mom was always trying to lose 20 pounds.
• 3:21
  SPEAKER_00: And she brought all that high sugar, low-fat, non-fat food home and said, fat makes you fat.
• 3:27
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you, Ansel Keys.
• 3:28
  SPEAKER_00: Have I already said that?
• 3:29
  SPEAKER_00: And I've spent my entire adult life fighting a battle I didn't know was rigged from the start, not because I was weak, but because the product was engineered to beat me.
• 3:37
  SPEAKER_00: And here's the thing that nobody tells you about food addiction that separates it from every other addiction on earth.
• 3:43
  SPEAKER_00: You can't quit.
• 3:44
  SPEAKER_00: An alcoholic can stop drinking.
• 3:46
  SPEAKER_00: I did that.
• 3:47
  SPEAKER_00: A smoker can stop smoking.
• 3:48
  SPEAKER_00: I got that one.
• 3:49
  SPEAKER_00: A gambler can stay out of the casino.
• 3:51
  SPEAKER_00: I just don't go, it's not really a problem.
• 3:53
  SPEAKER_00: But you have to eat.
• 3:54
  SPEAKER_00: At least once, three times, ten times, grazing, whatever it is, you sit down at a table, but at least three times traditionally, you sit down at a table with a substance that's trying to destroy you, and you have to engage with it.
• 4:06
  SPEAKER_00: You have to portion it.
• 4:08
  SPEAKER_00: You have to make the decision over and over, not to let it win.
• 4:11
  SPEAKER_00: There's no cold turkey with food.
• 4:13
  SPEAKER_00: There's only controlled exposure in the thing that wants to pull you back in.
• 4:16
  SPEAKER_00: And that's why the last addiction, that's why that is for so many of us, the lax addiction.
• 4:22
  SPEAKER_00: It's one that we can't outrun, and it's one that we can't avoid.
• 4:25
  SPEAKER_00: It's the one that requires us to stare at every single day and choose not to surrender.
• 4:30
  SPEAKER_00: So today that scale said 306.
• 4:33
  SPEAKER_00: Same as yesterday.
• 4:34
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm still here, not because I'm strong, but because I showed up.
• 4:38
  SPEAKER_00: And that's all recovery has ever been.
• 4:41
  SPEAKER_00: Showing up when the voice says stop.
• 4:43
  SPEAKER_00: Showing up when the number doesn't move.
• 4:45
  SPEAKER_00: Showing up when nobody is watching and nobody would blame you for walking away.
• 4:50
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not your guru.
• 4:52
  SPEAKER_00: I'm the addict sitting in the chair next to you.
• 4:54
  SPEAKER_00: And today we didn't quit.
• 4:56
  SPEAKER_00: Today we do it again.
• 4:58
  SPEAKER_00: Anyway.
• 4:59
  SPEAKER_00: And tomorrow we'll repeat the process.
• 5:01
  SPEAKER_00: I'm Connor with Honor.
• 5:02
  SPEAKER_00: We'll see you tomorrow.
• 5:03
  SPEAKER_00: Take care.