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The Food Addiction they don't want you to know about · Connor with Honor: AI, Real Estate and Real Life

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: Day seven, three hundred and eleven point six pounds, lost nothing.
• 0:04
  SPEAKER_00: Not a tenth of a pound.
• 0:05
  SPEAKER_00: Actually, I gained two tenths from yesterday.
• 0:08
  SPEAKER_00: I need to tell you something about this because I think it's where most people quit.
• 0:12
  SPEAKER_00: So day one, 317.2, day two, three ten point five, day three, three oh six point six.
• 0:18
  SPEAKER_00: Day four, I hit 301.2.
• 0:20
  SPEAKER_00: It's almost 17 pounds, and I felt like I was bulletproof as I have so many times before.
• 0:26
  SPEAKER_00: And then as I have so many times before, then day five popped back to 306.4, day six, three eleven point five, and today 311.6.
• 0:35
  SPEAKER_00: That's one one-tenth of a pound.
• 0:37
  SPEAKER_00: Seven days.
• 0:38
  SPEAKER_00: Pizza and donuts and crap.
• 0:42
  SPEAKER_00: Seven days in, and I'm essentially back to where I started, minus five and a half pounds.
• 0:46
  SPEAKER_00: Now, if I would have continued, it would have been sub-295, 290, maybe.
• 0:51
  SPEAKER_00: So my brain is screaming at me right now.
• 0:53
  SPEAKER_00: It's telling me that this isn't working.
• 0:56
  SPEAKER_00: That's the same story it tells me every time.
• 0:58
  SPEAKER_00: It worked once, but again, it's telling me to go eat something because clearly the discipline isn't paying off.
• 1:05
  SPEAKER_00: And it's telling me that this attempt will end the same way that every other attempt has ended.
• 1:11
  SPEAKER_00: And that voice, that voice right there, that's the addiction talking.
• 1:15
  SPEAKER_00: It's not the food, it's the addiction.
• 1:17
  SPEAKER_00: And I think it's time we talked about that word because nobody uses it for food.
• 1:21
  SPEAKER_00: You can walk into an emergency room in America and say I'm addicted to oxycodon and they'll find you a bed.
• 1:27
  SPEAKER_00: They're going to find you a program.
• 1:29
  SPEAKER_00: They're going to find you insurance coverage.
• 1:31
  SPEAKER_00: And you can say I'm addicted to alcohol.
• 1:34
  SPEAKER_00: Someone's going to hand you a pamphlet for a 12-step meeting before you even finish the sentence.
• 1:40
  SPEAKER_00: Try walking in and saying I'm addicted to food and see what happens.
• 1:44
  SPEAKER_00: And they'll tell you to eat less and move more.
• 1:47
  SPEAKER_00: And maybe hand you a pamphlet about calories.
• 1:50
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe suggest you talk to a nutritionist, but nobody is going to treat it like what it actually is.
• 1:56
  SPEAKER_00: It's an addiction.
• 1:57
  SPEAKER_00: It's a real one.
• 1:59
  SPEAKER_00: With the same neural pathways, the same dopamine hijacking, the same compulsive behavior loops as cocaine, as gambling, as nicotine, and as alcohol.
• 2:08
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not an expert educationally, but I'm an expert in method because I am an addict.
• 2:13
  SPEAKER_00: You got the same triggers, same shame, same hiding, the same lying to yourself, the same relapse cycle.
• 2:19
  SPEAKER_00: But here's the thing that makes food addiction, I think, the hardest addiction on earth.
• 2:24
  SPEAKER_00: You can't quit food.
• 2:26
  SPEAKER_00: If you're addicted to cocaine, the strategy is clear.
• 2:29
  SPEAKER_00: You never touch it again.
• 2:31
  SPEAKER_00: Ever, no matter what circumstances.
• 2:33
  SPEAKER_00: I have that relationship with alcohol.
• 2:35
  SPEAKER_00: Can't ever touch it again.
• 2:36
  SPEAKER_00: Not even one.
• 2:37
  SPEAKER_00: If you're addicted to gambling, you stay out of the casino.
• 2:40
  SPEAKER_00: If you're addicted to cigarettes, you never light up another one.
• 2:43
  SPEAKER_00: You can remove those substances entirely, but you can't remove food.
• 2:47
  SPEAKER_00: You have to eat to survive, which means every single day, multiple times a day, you have to interact with the thing that's destroying you.
• 2:54
  SPEAKER_00: It's like telling an alcoholic to they have to walk into a bar three times a day, pour themselves a drink, take exactly two sips, and then stop every single day for the rest of their lives.
• 3:05
  SPEAKER_00: That's what food addiction recovery looks like.
• 3:08
  SPEAKER_00: And society doesn't really care because food addiction doesn't kill you fast enough to be dramatic.
• 3:13
  SPEAKER_00: Heroin, that can kill you the first time you use it.
• 3:16
  SPEAKER_00: Fentanyl, that can kill you just touching the vial or the bag of it, but it can kill you before you finish the dose.
• 3:23
  SPEAKER_00: That's urgent.
• 3:24
  SPEAKER_00: That gets attention, that gets funding.
• 3:26
  SPEAKER_00: Food kills you over, well, I don't know, 20, 30, 40, 50 years.
• 3:30
  SPEAKER_00: It takes you apart one piece at a time.
• 3:33
  SPEAKER_00: One piece of pizza at a time, one donut at a time.
• 3:35
  SPEAKER_00: First it's the knees, and then it's the back.
• 3:39
  SPEAKER_00: Then you can pile on some sleep apnea.
• 3:41
  SPEAKER_00: Then the blood pressure meds, they don't help, statins, right?
• 3:45
  SPEAKER_00: Then the type 2 diabetes.
• 3:47
  SPEAKER_00: Then the circulation starts falling and they start talking about amputations.
• 3:52
  SPEAKER_00: Then you have the heart attack, then the stroke.
• 3:54
  SPEAKER_00: Then you can't remember who the hell you are.
• 3:55
  SPEAKER_00: Then it really doesn't matter what you eat, I guess.
• 3:57
  SPEAKER_00: The day you can't wash yourself without help, there's that one.
• 4:00
  SPEAKER_00: The day you can't remember your grandchild's name, there's some brain rest going on there.
• 4:05
  SPEAKER_00: It doesn't take you out in a blaze of glory, just like the Highlander said.
• 4:10
  SPEAKER_00: It's better to burn out than to fade away.
• 4:12
  SPEAKER_00: Well, with overeating, you're fading horribly.
• 4:15
  SPEAKER_00: And it drags you into the abyss so slowly that you you have to adjust to a new level of pain.
• 4:20
  SPEAKER_00: You get used to it, you normalize it.
• 4:22
  SPEAKER_00: You tell yourself, this is just normal aging, this is just genetics, this is just how my body is.
• 4:28
  SPEAKER_00: It's an addiction, and the food that is doing it to you was engineered to do exactly that.
• 4:34
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not guessing.
• 4:35
  SPEAKER_00: The companies making food you are eating spent billions of dollars finding the exact combination of sugar, salt, fat, and texture that overrides your brain's ability to stop.
• 4:47
  SPEAKER_00: They call it a bliss point.
• 4:48
  SPEAKER_00: That's not my term, that's their term.
• 4:50
  SPEAKER_00: They optimized for it.
• 4:52
  SPEAKER_00: They hired scientists to find it.
• 4:53
  SPEAKER_00: A lot of those scientists came from the cigarette people after all their lawsuits were finished.
• 4:59
  SPEAKER_00: And every time you eat their product and feel that rush, that is not enjoyment.
• 5:03
  SPEAKER_00: This is a chemical response that was manufactured in a laboratory and tested on thousands of people to make sure it worked.
• 5:09
  SPEAKER_00: The purpose of the food is to keep you eating it, not to nourish you, not to sustain you, but to keep you buying it, to keep the people making it wealthy.
• 5:18
  SPEAKER_00: And that's why nobody's in a hurry to fix it because, well, follow the money, right?
• 5:21
  SPEAKER_00: Health insurance companies are not going to fund food addiction recovery programs.
• 5:26
  SPEAKER_00: Think about what would happen if they did.
• 5:27
  SPEAKER_00: If they actually treated food addiction the way we treat substance abuse, if people stopped eating processed food at scale, diabetes rates would collapse, heart disease would collapse, the food pharmaceutical industry would lose hundreds of billions in recurring prescriptions.
• 5:43
  SPEAKER_00: Hospital systems would lose their most reliable revenue stream.
• 5:48
  SPEAKER_00: It's ugly to say, ugly, but it's true.
• 5:51
  SPEAKER_00: No financial incentive to cure this.
• 5:54
  SPEAKER_00: The sickness is the product.
• 5:56
  SPEAKER_00: So where does that leave us?
• 5:57
  SPEAKER_00: That leaves us on our own.
• 5:59
  SPEAKER_00: And I guess that's why I'm doing this out in the open.
• 6:01
  SPEAKER_00: Because the best rehab clinics in the world, the Hazeldon, Betty Ford's, the places that actually get results with substance abuse, they all use the same core strategies.
• 6:11
  SPEAKER_00: And those strategies work on food too, believe it or not.
• 6:14
  SPEAKER_00: Nobody's offering them for food, however.
• 6:17
  SPEAKER_00: So let me offer them right now.
• 6:18
  SPEAKER_00: Here's one strategy one, cognitive behavioral therapy, CBT.
• 6:23
  SPEAKER_00: In every top rehab program, this is the foundation, you learn to identify the thought that comes before the behavior, not the food that's the thought.
• 6:32
  SPEAKER_00: The thought that says you deserve a reward after a hard day.
• 6:36
  SPEAKER_00: The thought that says one more bite won't matter.
• 6:39
  SPEAKER_00: The thought that says you already ruined today, so you might as well go all in.
• 6:43
  SPEAKER_00: CBT teaches you to catch that thought before it becomes an action, to examine it, to challenge it, to replace it with a different thought that leads to a different behavior.
• 6:54
  SPEAKER_00: That's not willpower.
• 6:56
  SPEAKER_00: Willpower, although willpower has its place, willpower is a battery, battery that drains.
• 7:02
  SPEAKER_00: This is rewiring the actual sequence.
• 7:05
  SPEAKER_00: Thought, feeling, action.
• 7:07
  SPEAKER_00: If you change the thought, the action changes on its own.
• 7:11
  SPEAKER_00: Here's the second one, second strategy.
• 7:13
  SPEAKER_00: Motivational interviewing.
• 7:16
  SPEAKER_00: This is about resolving the war inside your own head because every addict has two choices: the one that wants to change and the one that wants to stay comfortable.
• 7:26
  SPEAKER_00: There's two voices: one that wants to change and the one that wants to stay comfortable.
• 7:31
  SPEAKER_00: Motivational interviewing does not try to silence the comfortable voice.
• 7:36
  SPEAKER_00: It draws out the change voice.
• 7:38
  SPEAKER_00: It asks the question, like, why does this matter to you?
• 7:43
  SPEAKER_00: What does your life look like if nothing changes?
• 7:46
  SPEAKER_00: What does it look like if everything changes?
• 7:50
  SPEAKER_00: When I've asked myself those questions, honestly, the answers terrify me.
• 7:55
  SPEAKER_00: Because the path I was on had a very clear ending, and it wasn't the ending I want.
• 8:00
  SPEAKER_00: Here's a third strategy: environmental restructuring.
• 8:04
  SPEAKER_00: In rehab, they call it community enforcement.
• 8:07
  SPEAKER_00: You redesign your environment to support recovery instead of sabotaging it.
• 8:11
  SPEAKER_00: That means the food in your house changes.
• 8:13
  SPEAKER_00: The routes you drive change.
• 8:15
  SPEAKER_00: If you're a drive-thru junkie and on autopilot 90% of the time, and you fire off in there, fire in that donut shop, you have to change those routes.
• 8:23
  SPEAKER_00: The people you eat with will either support you or they don't get to sit and have you eat next to them, or you just remove yourself from those situations.
• 8:32
  SPEAKER_00: An alcoholic doesn't keep bourbon on the counter for guests.
• 8:35
  SPEAKER_00: A food addict doesn't keep trigger foods in the pantry for the family.
• 8:39
  SPEAKER_00: This isn't extreme.
• 8:40
  SPEAKER_00: Literally, this is survival.
• 8:42
  SPEAKER_00: Here's the fourth strategy: relapse prevention.
• 8:45
  SPEAKER_00: This is the one nobody talks about with food.
• 8:47
  SPEAKER_00: In drug and alcohol recovery, relapse is treated as a data point, not a failure, it's a data point.
• 8:53
  SPEAKER_00: So, what happened before the relapse?
• 8:55
  SPEAKER_00: Where were you?
• 8:56
  SPEAKER_00: Who were you with?
• 8:57
  SPEAKER_00: What were you feeling?
• 8:59
  SPEAKER_00: The Marlap model of relapse prevention teaches you to map your high-risk situations before they happen.
• 9:05
  SPEAKER_00: You build a plan for every scenario.
• 9:07
  SPEAKER_00: There's stress at work, here's what you need to do instead of eating.
• 9:11
  SPEAKER_00: Fight with somebody you love, well, here's what you need to do instead of eating.
• 9:14
  SPEAKER_00: Bored at 10 p.m., here's what you need to do or I do instead of eating.
• 9:19
  SPEAKER_00: You don't wait for the trigger to show up and then try to muscle through it.
• 9:22
  SPEAKER_00: That might work a little bit, but case in point, when pizza calls and donuts call, if you're not prepared for the call, you're going to answer it.
• 9:30
  SPEAKER_00: You plan that response before the trigger arrives.
• 9:33
  SPEAKER_00: Here's the fifth strategy: accountability and community.
• 9:36
  SPEAKER_00: The 12-step model works because you're not alone.
• 9:39
  SPEAKER_00: You show up, you tell the truth, you listen to other people tell their truth.
• 9:42
  SPEAKER_00: Some people, everybody's telling their truth, and there's a lot of people trying to one-up everybody else, but that shame that you have starts to dissolve because you realize you're not the only one.
• 9:51
  SPEAKER_00: In a lot of cases, you're like, oh my gosh.
• 9:54
  SPEAKER_00: Well, that's what I'm trying to build here.
• 9:55
  SPEAKER_00: It's not a diet plan, it's not a fitness program.
• 9:58
  SPEAKER_00: All that stuff has its place.
• 9:59
  SPEAKER_00: I love me some weightlifted, but a community of people who know they are addicts, that's important.
• 10:04
  SPEAKER_00: Then who accept that food was designed to hook them, and who are willing to do the hard work of rewiring their relationships with something they can't live without.
• 10:14
  SPEAKER_00: Day seven, 311.6.
• 10:16
  SPEAKER_00: I gained a tenth of a pound.
• 10:18
  SPEAKER_00: And I didn't eat my way through disappointment.
• 10:21
  SPEAKER_00: That's the win today, not the number, the behavior.
• 10:24
  SPEAKER_00: The best clinics in the world will tell you the same thing.
• 10:26
  SPEAKER_00: Recovery is not a straight line.
• 10:28
  SPEAKER_00: It's a series of decisions made one at a time, over and over, in the face of a brain that is screaming at you to go back to the thing that's killing you.
• 10:35
  SPEAKER_00: I'm Connor.
• 10:36
  SPEAKER_00: I'm a food addict.
• 10:37
  SPEAKER_00: And today I chose differently.
• 10:39
  SPEAKER_00: Today I fasted.
• 10:40
  SPEAKER_00: And that's enough for today.
• 10:41
  SPEAKER_00: We'll see you tomorrow.
• 10:42
  SPEAKER_00: Thelastaddiction.com, and I hope you're well.
• 10:46
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks for watching.
• 10:47
  SPEAKER_00: Take care.