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Two Men Being Vulnerable About Their Struggles With Weight and Body Image · Millennial Mental Health Channel

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And I had just gotten done fasting for forty eight hours straight, and I
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looked at myself on the footage and I was like, man, I still
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look fat like I just I hated that. This is Millennial Mental Health Channel.
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I'm doctor Justin Romano, a Child and Adolescent psychiatry fellow, and I'm
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Eddie Creo, a licensed clinical therapist. Our podcast is here because we wanted
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to start a much needed conversation about mental health. Our goal is to teach
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you as much as we can by sharing our own experiences and interviewing experts in
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the mental health field. We will discuss topics like mood disorders, psychotic disorders,
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substance use, personality disorders, and many more. Millennial Mental Health Channel
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buy Millennials for everyone. We hope you enjoyed today's episode. MMHC is a
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production of Spreaker from iHeartMedia. A Happy New Year twenty twenty three. Eddie
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and I are back MMHC. We took a break. How are you doing
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at the beginning of the year, My friend refreshed. I just told you
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I was like gonna go off for a little bit, but now I'm like
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blanking, no, no, no, I'm good. Refreshed. I do
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have to tell you, I'm gonna keep it short because if I tell the
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whole story, it's like a fifteen minute story. But I was a part
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of like the cancelations of flights over the last couple of weeks, Like I
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was trying to fly home, but thankfully I was with Alaska and not Southwest,
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so like my cancelations like weren't as bad. So I made it home.
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Like long story short, I made it home. My luggage didn't,
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so I had to live six days without a luggage. So so Alaska,
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if you're listening, I'm excited for my reimbursement check because it was a lot
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of money. So I'm really looking forward to that. Thankful I was not
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on Alaska, but it was good to go home. I am refreshed,
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I got to do all of that. I made it home. I really
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should be thankful because I was still able to make it home the same day
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I was expecting to just hours later. I had a long travel day,
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but that's totally fine, Like I should just be happy with that again,
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feeling refreshed, excited. Today was the first day of work with students back
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on campus. It was about as hectic as I expected it to be.
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So just glad the day is over. But yeah, how are you doing
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doing well? Yeah? Christmas was great, New Year's was great, great
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to see family feel refreshed. It's nice. We haven't taken a break really
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because we didn't do one over Christmas or New Year's last year, so we've
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pretty much have been cranking for the past two years without a break, so
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that it was good for us. It was good for us to take a
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little break fifty two weeks of like this and like, I guess, like
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I think it's paying off. I mean, it feels pretty good. So
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yeah, I'm glad we took a break. It was kind of nice.
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Well, on the topic of New Year, everyone's making New Year's resolutions,
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everyone's talking about them, and we noticed that so many of them are focused
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on weight and exercise, and there's a lot of just false and misleading information
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out there about dieting and exercise. So we wanted to give you some information,
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some advice, see if we can change your mindset a little bit about
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this kind of stuff to put your health, your physical and mental health as
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the top priority. We also want to explain why there's such a problem with
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weight in this country and why it's not really our fault. Typical on this
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show, I'm going to talk about the diet in corporations again, but this
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is such a huge topic. It's really hard to boil it down to do
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at forty five minute episode. But we will do our best. And if
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anyone you know you feel like it's struggling with an eating disorder or anything like
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that, we conveniently have a whole episode on eating disorders that you can check
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out, So please go and check that out if you would like. We're
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going to shout outs here. I have a huge shout out from my co
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host Eddie forgetting last place in our Fantasya League two years in a row.
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Eddie, you did it. You did the impossible. The worst part is,
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like you know how I said, like I got last place in the
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group chat. That was a legitimate reaction, Like I was like in the
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hunt to maybe make the playoffs like squeak In and I somehow got last place.
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And this is what I will say to anybody listening that cares. I
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at least won some games this year, because last year I went oh for
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fourteen and that was awful, and I was trying my best, so I
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guess to do it two years in a row is special. I'm gonna take
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this time to thank my supporters. I've really put a lot of long,
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hard hours into fantasy football. So no, yeah, thanks, I appreciate
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the shout out. My shoutout will be, Well, the thing is,
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you don't suck at fantasy football. You know what you're doing. You make
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good trades, you're like active, and you're not just letting you You're not
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letting it go. And for some reason it just it went to hell.
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I don't I don't know who I upset or what fantasy football deity is upset
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with me, but um yeah, I'm paying for it. So anyway,
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my shout out is just gonna be to a I had a student came by
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recently who had graduated that I had worked with, just to say hi and
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to see me, you know, coming back from from visiting town. And
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that was really special for me, and I think it really makes me feel
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and remind me like how like lucky and fortunate I am to have the job
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that I do and to work at the school that I do and get to
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do the things that I get to do, Like it's it's super cool.
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And it sounds cheesy, but I mean, so there are times where I
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do feel like I have the best job ever, so I get to do
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that every day. That was really rewarding for me to get to see the
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student again. Yeah, that was really cool. So also, I'm gonna
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shout out my mom. She has listened into all the episodes and she just
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told me that recently that she made it a goal to listen to all our
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episodes and she's done that. So shout out to my mom. She will
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probably listen to this one. Cool, very cool. I think that's it.
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I mean, shout out to the listeners as always, thank you for
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being here because without you, we wouldn't be here recording today. So thank
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you, guys, and thank you for letting us take a break. We
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appreciate the support. We definitely got some good support when we said we had
6:24
taken a break, so that was really cool. And now that we're back,
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share this podcast with everyone, you know, every soul you bring it
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up, you're like, Okay, we've been listening to this podcast recently because
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we found out that, Yeah, word of mouth is a huge reason why
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this show has gotten so much bigger in the past year, so we appreciate
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you so much. Story time. I grew up a little overweight. I
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remember shopping for clothes with my mom and she told me that I was husky.
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I remember she used the word husky, and I thought that was interesting,
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and I shy it away from using words like chubby. That's typically the
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word I use when I talk about my weight. When I was younger,
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It's like I was chubby, and I still kind of consider myself chubby now,
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But I thought husky was actually a good word. And it must be
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so hard for a mom to be talking to their kid about this because it
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is such a sensitive subject, And now that I'm about to become a parent,
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I realize even how much more now it must be hard to talk about
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young people, to talk about this with young people. So when I was
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about ten, I remember one of my neighbor girls mentioning that like David Beckham
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was so hot because he had the super hot six pack. So I thought,
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in order to be hot, I also had to have a six pack,
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and this really stuck with me for some reason. I think I even
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may have mentioned it in a previous episode. And I remember even shopping for
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underwear and like all of the models on the underwear packages are just like crazy
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ripped, and I'm just like, I look nothing like that guy. I
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have never had a six pack, nor have I ever really been that close.
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But every few years in my life growing up, I'd come up with
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these unhealthy diet and exercise plans to lose a lot of way really fast,
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to see if I could get that elusive six pack. I would even stop
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eating for days in a row. And now that I'm older and in psychiatry,
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I realize that that's kind of the beginning stages of eating disorder. So
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I'm glad it didn't really stick and I didn't do it for long, but
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there would be periods where I wouldn't eat for forty eight hours straight, and
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yeah, not the healthiest thing in the world. I even remember filming a
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movie with my friends in high school. Used to make these terrible movies,
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and I had just gotten done fasting for forty eight hours straight, and I
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looked at myself on the footage and I was like, man, I still
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look fat, like I just I hated that about that. I remember that
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so vividly, seeing that footage and being like, wow, even after all
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that, even after starving myself for two days straight. I still am not
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happy with how I look, So I really wanted to just tell the story
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to highlight how simple moments in your life, those little moments and interactions with
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others, can act the way you think about your weight and your body image.
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Typically, females get a lot of this attention about weight, and absolutely
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it's well deserved, and there's so many unsafe and unhealthy things in terms of
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body image with women, but men have it too, and I think that's
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one of the things I wanted to highlight on today's episode. Well thanks for
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sharing that, dude. I mean, like we talked about it right before
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we started recording, Like it's just we don't like talk about this kind of
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stuff. It's almost like there's like this I don't know what I want to
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say, like a cone of shame or like it's just it's not talked about.
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But like we like know, I don't know, like there's this like
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untalked about, undiscussed rule or shared experience that like we kind of go through
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and like I don't know, I guess say, well, one again,
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I appreciate you sharing that because I know it's not easy to it's not easy
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to be vulnerable like ever, so it's not easy at all, So I
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appreciate you doing that. So I think it's my turn to at least try
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to be a little vulnerable, I think to you, like I always kind
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of grew up on the heavier side, and thankfully I started like playing sports,
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so that kind of prolonged something or push something back for a while.
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Like I played soccer growing up, I did baseball for like a year,
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and then I got to playing football, and like at that point, except
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for like middle school, where there was like a weight limit, like you
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had to make weight, but then you get to high school and it's like
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the goal is to like be bigger, faster, stronger, so like there
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wasn't a weight limit anymore. So I guess thankfully for me, like that
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prolonged pushed the can down the road in terms of like needing to like manage
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my weight, I guess, and I got to pretty much get away with
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whatever, Like I could kind of eat whatever. I was working out a
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ton, I was practicing a ton, and I'd go to the doctors and
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everything would be totally fine, Like you know, there's no It was different
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from when I was younger When I was younger, there was concerns of like,
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oh, you know, you want to watch your way, maybe eat
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a little less this than that. But then when I got to like middle
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school, high school age, those concerns went out the window because it was
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like, well, you're working out a ton, you're in great shape,
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like you just way more. But it's okay because you're working out and doing
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all these things. And then you get to college and it's basically the same
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thing, like you bigger, faster, stronger. Again, it's Division three
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football, so I'm not going to say that I played at the highest level,
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but as yeah, it's like prolonging it. And I think the hard
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part that I think about now as I start to get older, trying to
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change those habits after a long time, after years and years of doing something
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is really hard, and like I really feel for kids and teens that have
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to go through, like I think, an exponential amount more of pressure and
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needing to follow these certain ideals or needing to think and look a certain way
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because they're they're getting it from so many directions, from Instagram, from Snapchat,
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from TikTok, from whatever it is that they're using, from the friends,
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from at school. So I feel for these kids, like because I
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think for us growing up, like maybe we didn't have it as bad,
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but it's like now as an adult, like it's really tough, Like it's
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tough to try to like change all of these habits that you've had for like
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a really really long time. And I feel like I resonated with what I
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resonated with a lot of what you said justin but like one of the things
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you were saying of like trying to come up with, like these diets are
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like what am I going to do to like lose weight in a short amount
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of time? I remember specifically I was going to like a pool party when
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I was in eighth grade, and I was like, Okay, the pool
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party is in two weeks. What can I do to like And I laugh
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about it because I'm like why would I, Like young Eddie was having stupid
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thoughts, but like what can I do in two weeks to like be ripped
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or like to like look better? Right? And it just like there's nothing
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that was going to be sustainable and nothing that was going to work, So
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try to be vulnerable for a little bit to say, like it is tough,
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Like it is hard like it's not talked about it enough. There's not
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enough like openness about it for very good reason. But like way being overweight,
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trying to manage your weight when you're younger as difficult as an adult,
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can get harder if we're not like slowly trying these things. I think that's
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the hard part too, of like needing and wanting like instant results, like
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that's a thing that like is just not happening, Like we're not going to
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do anything today that's going to make a huge difference tomorrow, Like it needs
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to be these small steps, and I think, like thankfully, and I'll
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just speak personal experience, like I'm trying to do some of those things just
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for my own well being in health. But I think for years, for
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like the last few years for me, it's been like like that almost like
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that get rich quick scheme of like what can I do quickly to make changes
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now? But I think over the last maybe like six or seven months has
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been more of like, Okay, this is like a more prolonged thing,
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Like this is changing habits is really hard and it doesn't happen overnight. It
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takes some time to do and almost like reminding myself of like not being discouraged
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if it takes a little longer. I honestly almost feel like this cathartic experience,
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like getting to share some things that I think about a lot. So
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thank you for listening, and thanks for Sharon too. I loved your insights
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and your stories are so good. I think you made an excellent point.
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A lot of athletes have that same issue where their entire life they are exercising
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for hours every day, so they're burning so many calories. They can eat
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whatever they want when they're young, and then when they're no longer doing their
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sports, they still eat like they're still doing their sports because they don't know
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anything else. They don't know anything different. Yeah, exactly. I mean
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I think back to like my senior year in college, like for example,
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like I felt like I was in like this amazing shape, Like I was
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like the strongest I've ever been and will ever be in my life. I
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don't ever plan on having the like lift weights like that again, and like
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running like I remember doing the conditioning test like for senior year of football in
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college and just like being just like feeling on top of the world of like
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God, I'm in such amazing shape, like this is I can do whatever,
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and now it's like, oh damn, this is like this is kind
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of tough. Like I'm like sore for like two days after like a hard
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word. It's just so different and like to your point, like nobody and
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I'll just say athletes specifically because I was like where I came from, Like
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no one talks about like the identity crisis that happens after you're done being like
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an athlete. And I think specifically for some sports like things like baseball,
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like softball, basketball, swimming, like you can continue to do as an
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adult, but like playing football is like once you're done, Like that's one,
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like you're done. Like yeah, you could try to play like flag
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football. I've seen like semi professional adult leagues where they like you pay to
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like play a bunch of like watched up adults, but like that's that's like
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different, Like that's not it's not the same thing, you know what I
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mean. It's like like when you're done playing football, when you're done even
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like yeah, like I don't know what other I can't I can't think off
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the top of my head, but like football is one of those ones.
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Was like when you're done, you're done, Like, that's it. So
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like no one talks about the identity crisis that you're about to have once it's
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all done, Like it takes a while. But like months after my first
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game, it was like, well, what, like what do I do
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now? Like no one's writing me a workout to do, no one's telling
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me, Like, no one's making me wake up at six am to go
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work out and run around for two hours. Like that's not happening anymore.
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So like, how do I do that myself? You don't, you know,
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it's like it's just it's not sustainable. No, excellent point. Excellent
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point. It's all of a sudden, something that you've done for ten years
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is just no longer a part of your life whatsoever. That's crazy. That's
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a huge transition. Well, let's throw some stats and facts here away one
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of our favorite sections on the show. So in order to stand understand where
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we are, we have to take a look back at where we came from.
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So, according to the American Psychological Association, in the sixties and seventies,
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and these are the nineteen sixties and seventies, I'm talking about, the
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obesity rate for adults was about thirteen percent and for children, it was about
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five to seven percent. Today. According to the most recent numbers from the
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CDC, the OBC rate in twenty seventeen was forty two percent, so we
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went from thirteen percent to forty two percent. Children went from five to seven
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percent to twenty percent, so one in five children are obese. The overall
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rate of being overweight in adults in the United States is seventy three point six
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percent, so almost three quarters of people are overweight in this country. So
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wouldn't you think it's more of like a social problem than an individual problem.
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And the global obesity rate, to give you context, is about thirteen percents.
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We're way above that. You also need to look at not you specifically
17:33
justin but like, oh, we need to look at just obesity rates and
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how they're impacted by cultures, like how the different cultures impact like someone's individual
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weight or like a just weight in general. So statistically we have the African
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American adults have the highest obesity rate at about fifty percent, and Hispanic adult
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women are second highest at forty five percent. And one thing that I think
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about, like as I'm reading that and and like saying it is I remember
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like when I was younger, like before I played I was playing football,
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like in the doctor's office, like the like doctor specifically telling me like you
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know, oh, like cut back on certain things or like how can you
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what are ways that we can cut back and like thinking of like, well,
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I guess I need to eat less like tortillas, and like that was
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the thing that like not everybody has to think about, Like that's we growing
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up. We had like rice and beans and tortillas with every meal, right
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or like almost every meal. So I feel like it's hard when when people
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are or like sometimes medical professionals are just people in general or like saying like
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well you need to do this or and cut this out or cut that out.
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But if I cut this out, that's like the main ingredient or peace
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to like my food or like my meals at home. Like that's that's so
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tough, and like it's the there's it's a lot of like generalization and general
18:48
statements of like this is what you can do to cut back on like your
18:52
overall body weight instead of like, Okay, how can I like tailor this
18:56
specifically to you and your family and your culture and the things that you do
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and the thing that you eat for kids. Just going off of looking at
19:03
culture, the obesity rates are highest for Latin X boys at twenty seven percent
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and African American girls at twenty nine percent. So obviously a lot has changed
19:12
within the last fifty years that is causing in like this obesity epidemic. Things
19:18
have been either like put in place, things are not being put in place
19:22
where we're not teaching certain things, we're not learning certain things. Like there's
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a lot that has gone into this, And the hard part is like a
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lot of people, I think are made to feel that it's an individual problem,
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like you said justin like it's an individual thing and it's like your own
19:33
fault as opposed to like what the actual answer is. Totally, the messaging
19:40
around this is, well, you're overweight because you can't make good decisions,
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and it's not Oh, you're surrounded by unhealthy food, no healthy food options,
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and everyone around you is eating unhealthy food, so it's your fault.
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It's not quite making sense, it doesn't add up. One of the main
20:00
messages we want to convey on this episode today is overweight and the obesity epidemic
20:06
is not the individual's fault. We are a product of our environment, and
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our environment is unhealthy, so let's causing this obesity epidemic. The message gets
20:25
blurred because there are so many people pointing the finger in this world. But
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primarily it's diet. People are generally less active than they were fifty years ago,
20:34
one hundred years ago because there's less manual labor jobs. People drive cars
20:40
more so there's less walking, less getting yourself around with your own body.
20:44
But overall, diet is the main factor. Our eating habits have changed dramatically
20:51
over the past hundred years, and overall we're consuming a lot more calories than
20:55
ever before. There are lots of reasons why food and the standard American diet
21:00
is so unhealthy, and one of the main things we wanted to focus on
21:03
for today is the shift to processed foods, and it's that is probably one
21:10
of the main reasons why our diet is so unhealthy. We're eating more processed
21:15
foods and highly processed foods than ever before. In our research, it was
21:18
hard to find like repudiable sources that said exactly how much processed foods were eating,
21:22
but most estimate that most estimates said that about seventy percent of the food
21:26
Americans eat is processed that numbers even higher in kids. A source here is
21:33
MPR's Marketplace. In an interview with Melanie Werner, who wrote Pandora's Lunchbox,
21:37
Yeah, I feel like we've we've talked about it before on the show,
21:41
but just in general, like I think maybe because I worked in needing disorder
21:45
treatment too, just hearing like a lot of talk about processed foods, and
21:48
like, I know, an eating disorder treatment, like you're not really supposed
21:52
to talk about what foods to avoid. Really, what we talked about a
21:55
lot is how you could really like take that out of like you don't need
21:59
to necessarily avoid certain foods. But the one that really was like talked about,
22:03
like okay, maybe you could avoid this is like trans fats. And
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I don't remember exactly what the reason was, but I think it was because
22:08
of like how processed it was and like how much it's like not good for
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you just in general, like trans fat is not good for you, Healthy
22:17
fats good for you, trans fats not good for you. But yeah,
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like the hard part too, is like the processed foods like those end up
22:26
a lot of the times end up being the ones that are like affordable,
22:27
right, and if they're affordable and it's processed, then like it lasts.
22:32
Like it's affordable, it happens to be processed, it lasts longer. If
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it lasts longer, this means someone who maybe doesn't have access to food all
22:40
the time, or if money all the time, they keep those foods around
22:42
because those are the ones that last longer, and they're the ones that you
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know, I can buy this, I know I'll still be able to eat
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this in a month or two. It's like damned if you do. Damned
22:51
if you don't type thing right, Like it's there's just like not a good
22:53
option for some people, and like that's just that ends up being kind of
22:56
the society we live in. I know. I just watched a video on
23:02
an African American woman who was trying to survive on minimum wage, and she
23:06
explained she would go to the store, she'd buy a healthy food, it
23:10
would go bad, and then she wouldn't have enough food stamps to get more
23:15
food, So she focused on buying the unhealthy stuff because it has a longer
23:18
shelf life and she didn't have to throw any of it away. So that's
23:22
huge in and of itself. You made an excellent point that the processed food
23:26
oftentimes helps it last longer, which is a big factor. But processed food
23:32
is unhealthy because a lot of the healthy parts of the food are taken out,
23:36
like vitamins, minerals, fiber, and water. The fiber and water
23:40
are two big factors that help a meal make you feel full or satiated when
23:45
it's done, and most of that is taken out in the food processing process.
23:49
Process food typically has additives like sugars, fats, and extra salt to
23:55
make them more tasty and addictive. There's an estimated five thousand different additives to
24:00
process food, which sounds a lot like cigarettes, doesn't it Like they put
24:06
up a lot of additives and cigarettes, and so pretty much they're doing the
24:10
exact same thing with food. And according to Warner from Pandora's Lunchbox, the
24:15
author of that book, the food industry is supposed to regulate themselves on food
24:19
additives and it's totally voluntary, so naturally they're going to be totally perfect in
24:26
making sure that they police themselves on this. Just crazy, man, Yes,
24:33
no, I think about like what correct me for? I feel like
24:37
you told me this like the whole like got milk campaign that we were like
24:41
fed for a long time, like is not like milk in general is like
24:45
not the greatest for you, like especially like whole milk, like that there's
24:51
I don't know, something something in inflammation, something something whatever you've told me
24:56
in the past, but like milk is like overall not the bet Like you
24:59
don't need it. Like you can get those vitrmins and minerals in other places.
25:03
But if you ask me in nineteen ninety seven if milk was good for
25:06
you, I probably would say I guess because I didn't know any better.
25:11
But like that would like every shack was drinking milk, like everybody, like
25:14
all the greatest athletes in the Serena Williams, like all these people are drinking
25:18
milk all the time. But now we know, like it wasn't the greatest
25:22
for us. So it's like almost to the same point of like we are
25:27
having these other people who were like in control of like what messages were being
25:30
given and like what foods were being given, and like they don't give a
25:34
fuck if it's good for you or not. They just care that you're buying
25:38
it and that you're eating it, and then you're coming back to buy it
25:41
because it has all those additives that you're basically addicted to, and you keep
25:45
coming back for more and for more. Totally, most of the misinformation that
25:48
comes in the diet world comes from really good advertising campaigns with their primary goal
25:55
is just to sell more product, not to actually make you any healthier or
25:57
any better. Yeah, absolutely right. Yeah, milk does not increase bone
26:03
mineral density or help with fragile bones like whatsoever. It's multiple studies have showed
26:08
that too, but so many people are still under that misconception of oh,
26:12
well, milk's good for you, even though a lot of studies allow also
26:15
show it does cause inflammation and increases your risk for autoimmune disorders as well.
26:21
In an article from twenty seventeen, Loos Dig in The Lancet, The Journal
26:26
of the Lancet suggested that seventy two percent of deaths in the US come from
26:32
non communicable diseases or the non infectious diseases we give ourselves through our lifestyle.
26:38
So to give you scope, one point one million people in the US have
26:41
died from COVID right now. That's a rough estimate. That's total over the
26:45
past couple of years. Seven hundred thousand people die every year from heart disease,
26:51
which primarily comes from our diet and what we eat. So around so
26:56
one point one from COVID, one point seven million people have died from heart
27:00
disease at the same time. But the response from the government is, I
27:03
mean, you don't hear you don't see them making any major changes, you
27:06
don't see them freaking out about it, like no one's doing anything. But
27:10
it's causing more death than COVID consistently for years. So I think that sucks,
27:17
and I wish people would take this more seriously because so many people have
27:21
decreased quality of life and decreased lifespan, and it doesn't have to be that
27:25
way. We're doing this to ourselves. Processed food can be so bad for
27:27
you that certain processed meat or processed meat in general, has been found to
27:32
be linked to cancer to the point where the World Health Organization recommends avoiding process
27:37
meat. So some of the things include like hot dogs, deli meat,
27:41
sausage. The other piece to it, though, is I guess that I'm
27:45
thinking as I read this, is that I think we want to also be
27:48
mindful of for some people that's what they can get right. Those are the
27:52
type of foods that they can get or maybe that they can afford, or
27:55
that they're used to eating. I think what's most important, or like just
27:59
a general idea or rule that could lead to maybe a healthier lifestyle or just
28:04
a healthier well being, is things in moderation. For us to sit here
28:11
and say you need to stop eating these, or you or do not eat
28:15
that that is bad. Maybe throws out the idea that some people just don't
28:18
have access to something else, or maybe that they only can of you know,
28:22
can can split their money here and there for maybe some of the foods
28:26
have to be processed, like maybe some of their meats that see some people
28:30
eat have to be these meats, right because that's what they can afford and
28:33
that's what they can have, or that's what they're used to eating. So
28:36
I guess as we say all these things, I think it's I want to
28:38
stop for a second, just give like an important reminder that we are not
28:42
going to sit up here and say you can if you eat this, this
28:45
is bad or you are bad for eating this. I think the most important
28:49
pieces that we can give information, we can learn our information as well,
28:55
and that we make the best decision for ourselves and also understanding that like the
28:59
probably the biggest thing is the moderation piece. Like I'm not going to sit
29:02
here and say, if you drink milk, you're you're gonna be all fucked
29:04
up. But if you're drink a shit ton of it, like maybe something
29:08
bad'll happen, but like if you can just enjoy it here and there,
29:11
like that's that's probably fine, right. I hope that. I hope I
29:15
said that correctly. I guess my biggest thing is like we never want to
29:18
say like you can't do this, or you can't do that, or stop
29:21
doing this. We want to say, like, like a lot of things
29:22
in life, in moderation is probably fine. True. One of the major
29:29
tenants of this show is no judgment, no shame. I do want the
29:34
food corporations to feel some shame for what they're doing, because they're essentially causing
29:38
all of this, and the government for not really our political leaders for not
29:42
really doing anything about it for decades and taking money from the food industry to
29:45
make sure that nothing happens, which is a little disappointing, but that's that's
29:51
our that's our system. Quick Nerdler here, remember that the processed foods typically
29:56
have a lot of added sugars to make them more addictive. Essentially, we've
30:02
seen a lot of headlines over the past couple of years that say something like
30:04
sugar is as addictive as cocaine for kids, and that is essentially true.
30:10
All addictive things do that same thing to your brain. They release dopamine in
30:15
your reward and addiction pathway. New imaging technology allows us to measure how much
30:22
that addiction pathway lights up and when you get certain substances in response to those
30:26
substances, So we found that sugar, especially to kids, lights up that
30:32
reward and addiction pathway about as strong as it does for cocaine or other addictive
30:37
substances. So when someone says they're like addicted to sugar or they're having a
30:40
hard time giving up sweets, as a society look at them like, oh,
30:44
they don't have enough willpower. But it is as addictive as cocaine to
30:48
some people, like cocaine is wildly addictive. Luckily, I don't know firsthand,
30:52
but I think we need to start viewing this the same as we would
30:59
give people the grace for an addiction like that is such an addictive drug.
31:03
Food is the same thing. That food is just as addictive as a lot
31:07
of our most potent drugs. And so that's that's my nerd alert. I
31:11
wanted to just make that point. We can't have an episode like this without
31:15
giving some advice. Again, I don't think we say this is enough.
31:18
This is not a substitute for therapy or anything. This is just our own
31:22
personal opinions, maybe professional opinions. But we do at least want to give
31:25
some advice. So we're going to start to throw out some advice, some
31:27
things to think about, because this is a tough topic to think about.
31:30
This is a tough topic to talk about. It kind of gets swept under
31:34
the rug or something else ends up taking the spotlight instead of this. So
31:38
we want to at least give some type of advice or things to think about.
31:41
So first piece we want to share is that our society has constantly given
31:45
us mixed messages about food. We're told that the reason why we're overweight is
31:49
because we don't make enough good decisions. We know that's not true. There's
31:53
a lot more that goes into it. This is absolutely wrong. The world
31:56
was not always like this. The problem is that society has played in a
32:00
situation where healthy food is less appealing, more expensive, and harder to access.
32:05
It. Really, like this is like a very generalized example of it,
32:08
but I've seen over the years like a very similar or even the same
32:13
like meme or picture where it's like on one side, you have like an
32:15
order from McDonald's, which is like, you know, a burger, fries,
32:19
and a drink five dollars or whatever it is. And then on the
32:22
other side you have like things that would take to make like a healthy to
32:25
make like one meal, like a healthy meal or whatever, something that someone's
32:30
considers healthy, and it's like fifteen dollars, And it's like for some people,
32:34
like the quick five dollars meal is like what fits best for them at
32:37
the time. And like you shouldn't just be like shamed into like eating like
32:40
that or eating certain things like that. Sometimes that's just what best fits your
32:46
situation. So given all that, we want you to try and rethink this
32:51
completely focus on being healthier, having healthy lifestyle habits or things that you you
32:57
incorporate into your overall overall well being, whether that's physically, whether that's mentally.
33:01
It is a process like if this is something that we're trying to share
33:07
with you all to think about it in a different way. It is Excuse
33:09
me, it is going to be a process. It's not just going to
33:12
change over tonight. We do have to relearn a lot of these habits and
33:15
a lot of these things that we're used to. So we say all that
33:19
to know that this is a process. This is something that we need to
33:22
try to rethink. We need to try to incorporate into our life so that
33:25
we overall can be in a better position, you know, three or four
33:29
or five or six months from now, learn from our mistakes. Eddie and
33:32
I talked about at the beginning how we would go on these crash diets when
33:37
we were younger to try and lose as much weight as possible. It's about
33:40
slow changes over time. A good rule is to try and eat less processed
33:47
foods or more eat more unprocessed foods, like whole foods, like vegetables,
33:52
fruits, nuts, seeds, whole grains, beans, and like gumes.
33:57
I really like nutrition facts dot org. It's a good resource for learning about
34:00
diet nutrition. Look for foods with plenty of fiber and water, avoid foods
34:06
with added sugars and fats and salt. Avoid fast food because fast food is
34:10
cheap, it is addictive, and it's really unhealthy. A lot of the
34:15
time you can have healthy fast food, but it's harder to find. Mark
34:20
Hyman was actually just on Ja Shetty's podcast and he had a really great line
34:24
and he said, if it looks like it comes from a plant, eat
34:29
it. If it looks like it was made in a plant, don't.
34:31
I thought it was a really simple way, a nice easy way to keep
34:35
it simple as to what foods are generally going to be good for you and
34:37
what are going to be worse for you. We want to tell you that
34:42
the OBCD epidemic is not your fault or not our fault. Where a product
34:46
of our environment, and if over seventy percent of the population is overweight,
34:51
it means that our system is setting us up for failure. We get a
34:53
ton of ads all the time just telling us to eat more things that could
34:58
be considered unhealthy, highly process addictive foods. This is a good example that
35:05
Justin brought up. But it's like, when is the last time that we've
35:07
seen a commercial for broccoli? Right? We get a lot of commercials for
35:12
fast food. We get a lot of commercials for food that may not be
35:15
the best for us. This is a little off topic, but if you
35:17
were watching Monday Night football this week, there's a very scary incident involving a
35:22
player who hopefully is recovering now and being you know, moved in the right
35:27
direction healthwise. But during that time where it was happening, the broadcast kept
35:34
going to commercials and all you kept seeing was commercials for burger king, like
35:37
like that was and it was turned into like a joke like on TikTok.
35:40
People were like watching like them it was like point of view, you just
35:44
watched the most horrific accident happened in the NFL, and then the NFL just
35:50
burger king, burger king burger Like it's that's what we're being given, Like
35:52
that's we're getting it all the time. So it's like, really, really
35:57
don't blame yourself, Like there's so many influences that are making us want to
36:00
like have certain foods or do certain things, and not just food, like
36:05
do certain things, we're certain clothes, act a certain way. We're having
36:08
all these influences all the time. It's hard for us to have maybe an
36:13
original thought at any point, right, it's just so tough. We're not
36:15
being put in a position to succeed in that way. So just remember it
36:20
is not it's not our fault like we are being bombarded. It is strategic.
36:23
It is on purpose. It is not an accident that we're getting all
36:28
these types of ads all the time. I was so glad you noticed that
36:30
too, because I was just like, oh my god, these commercials are
36:35
so out of place. They'd be like, this is one of the worst
36:38
events in the NFL history. We haven't seen this. The ambulance is on
36:42
the field. Whopper Whopper, Whopper whopper, chicken bacon bakhopper, And it
36:46
was just like, oh my god, are you serious, You're I couldn't.
36:52
It was awful. Yes, Another main point we want to make is
36:58
to try and avoid the yo yo diet. And what we mean by the
37:02
yo yo diet is like, like a yo yo, your weight goes up
37:06
and your weight goes down. So the diet industry is a multi billion dollar
37:09
industry. They want you to do wild and unsustainable things to lose weight in
37:14
the short term, gain it all back and pay for the next big diet
37:17
trend. And yo yo dieting has been shown to actually increase your weight over
37:22
the long term. So how many people do you know who are constantly on
37:28
and off their diet that I even heard people over the holidays say like,
37:31
once the holidays are over, I'm going back to cutting carbs again. I
37:36
personally have a little vendetta against low carb diets. They're really popular because they
37:42
work right well, actually not really. A lot of studies show that low
37:46
carb diets just play a trick on your body. They deplete your body of
37:51
glycogen, which is how your body stores carbohydrates, and glycogen is very osmotic.
37:55
It holds a lot of water where it attracts a lot of water,
38:00
So when you cut out carbs, it burns up all your glycogen. The
38:02
water goes with it, which is why most of the weight loss of the
38:07
beginning of a low carb diet is just from that water. It's a lot
38:09
of water weight. So people think they're losing a lot of weight and losing
38:14
it really fast, so it must be working, but it's not, and
38:16
it's not very healthy for you. So low carb diet is just one example
38:21
of a diet that's not sustainable long term because carbs are or carbs can be
38:27
good for you, especially if they're coming from whole grains, starchy vegetables,
38:31
fruits. It's your body's preferred energy source and your program to crave them,
38:37
So cutting them out completely is just not sustainable. When I was working in
38:40
eating disorder treatment, when we were working with someone who maybe struggled with either
38:46
binge eating disorder or binging and purging, and we wanted to stop the binging
38:51
episodes, it was really important that our patient was eating their meal plan because
38:57
the more that they stuck to their meal plan and the more that they were
38:59
eating in the appropriate amount of food, the less of a chance that they'd
39:01
have that they would they would afterwards like binge or have a binge episode because
39:07
their food, their body was getting enough foods and energy that they needed and
39:12
they weren't being depleted like at all hours. So just something to think about,
39:15
like things like you're mentioning, justin these yoyo diet, these these crash
39:17
diets, we're basically depriving ourselves of food and nutrients. The reason why people
39:23
end up maybe a higher weight or just back to where they started is because
39:28
it's just not sustainable. Our body will somehow figure out a way to convince
39:31
us to get the food that it wants or the amount of food that it
39:35
wants, and it's just not going to last long term. So something else
39:37
to think about from, like maybe another another side of it, like from
39:40
the perspective of maybe someone who struggles with a needing disorder. The main point
39:46
that we're trying to make, especially with the entire diet industry, is that
39:50
it wants you to be on and off diets because eventually people are going to
39:52
gain the way back and they have to pay for a new diet plan.
39:55
These things that we're seeing on TikTok, on Instagram, on social media,
39:59
just the loudest people in the diet industry, The loudest people in the fitness
40:04
industry tend to be the people that are full of it, tend to be
40:07
the people that are not telling you everything that you should know. Case in
40:10
point, did you ever hear the liver king? Justin Oh? It rings
40:15
a bell, but I can't remember exactly. So the liver King got very
40:20
famous on TikTok. He was this very buff, muscular man who also said
40:27
he didn't shower, which I can only imagine how musty he was, but
40:30
he would like always talk about being primal and like he used to like film
40:35
these tiktoks of like this is what I'm eating, like after my huge workout,
40:38
I'm meeting twelve cheeseburgers, no buns. I meeting this, and of
40:45
course the liver king concoction, which I still to this day don't know what
40:49
the liver king concoction is, and I don't want to know. And then
40:52
he said, and I always got to finish it off with some livers.
40:55
He would say, all this thing of how he was like working out hard
40:59
and doing all these things. Come to find out, this motherfucker was on
41:00
steroids the whole time. Nobody denied it to so many people said how he
41:07
was natural from the beginning, and then he got caught, and then he
41:10
got outed, and now he came up with some lame excuse as to why
41:15
he did it. But I say all of that just to like really like
41:19
push home the point that like a lot of the things that we're being told
41:22
in the influences that we're getting, we're not getting like the loudest people are
41:27
not giving us the best advice, they're not telling us the best things that
41:30
we need to hear or that could be helpful. So I wanted to say
41:34
that before I go to our next point. These diets that the diet industry
41:37
are throwing out are not always the most sustainable. Really, What's I point
41:42
is making healthy lifestyle changes. If you can't see yourself continuing to change for
41:46
the rest of your life, don't do it. If you can't cut out
41:49
carbs for the rest of your life, don't do it. If you can't
41:51
work out three times a week or three times a week is good, three
41:54
times a day for the rest of your life, don't do it. If
41:58
you just can't see yourself actually doing these things for a long time, just
42:01
don't. I mean. Lifestyle changes can be as simple as switching from something
42:06
to white, from white bread to whole grain, trying to reduce your processed
42:09
food intake when possible and when it best fits, trying to drink more water
42:15
during meals to feel fuller, switching out drinks that have calories to drinks that
42:20
have no calories, whether it's diet soda, whether it's water, whatever it
42:23
is, carbonated water, Lacroix, Lacroix, however you want to say it,
42:29
Doing things like that can really have, like have a good impact on
42:32
you overall. Switching out things like processed snacks like chips with other alternatives like
42:37
fresh food, eating more salads as meals, going for a walk after dinner.
42:43
All of these things are things that can be lifestyle changes that can be
42:46
long term, that can be lifetime, that are not just until June or
42:52
July when it's bathing suit season. These are things that you can continue for
42:54
a long time. Try to avoid things like juice cleanses, short term diets,
43:00
crash diets, short term starvation like I did when I was growing up.
43:05
Weight loss shouldn't be about losing as much weight as possible in the shortest
43:09
amount of time. It should be about your life journey to be healthy.
43:14
And I think we need to change the focus in this country because it is
43:17
really unhealthy right now and it is preying on people. I mean, it
43:22
starts with conversations like this, like this, I will I will admit it
43:25
online on live air. I guess it's not really live air because we edit
43:30
it and then we posted later. But going into this episode, for me,
43:34
just thinking about the topics that we were going to talk about them,
43:37
Like I was going into it like I'm almost like a little nervous because this
43:40
is like stuff that I've struggled with, like in my life. But I'm
43:44
glad we're having the conversation. I'm glad we can at least share with you
43:46
all, like we're all real people. We all have these things that we're
43:51
struggling with, and we're here with you, like we're trying to work through
43:53
these things with you, Like you're not by yourself. You're not the only
43:57
person that struggled with these things. So thank you guys for listening. Thank
44:00
you guys for giving us a chance to at least share some thoughts that we
44:04
have related to just overall weight, well being, healthy lifestyle, what our
44:10
society has put us, the position our society has put us in, Like,
44:14
thank you guys for letting us talk about it. Well, then play
44:16
us out. I think that's all we got for him today. I'll do
44:20
it. Thank you guys for listening. Happy New Year. Thank you for
44:24
letting us take a break. It was very nice, but we're happy to
44:28
be back. We will be posting every couple weeks like we have been,
44:31
so we're excited for what we got in store for you all. This new
44:35
year where you can find us. You should know by now if you made
44:37
it this far, but if you don't know, I'll let you know.
44:40
You can find our podcast wherever you get your podcasts. If you listen on
44:44
Apple Podcasts, feel free to leave us a five star review. You can
44:46
also leave us a comment that we can read and feel good about ourselves later.
44:51
If you Spotify, you can leave a five star review that helps us
44:53
feel good about ourselves too. You can find us on TikTok, Instagram,
44:58
Twitter, and YouTube all at Millennial MHC. Thank you all for listening again.
45:02
Happy New Year. We appreciate each and every one of you, and
45:07
as always, take care of your mentals