Latest / Empower Your Menopause / Episode 94: Do we really make our own choices when it comes to our health?

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Episode 94: Do we really make our own choices when it comes to our health? · Empower Your Menopause

• 0:13
  SPEAKER_02: Hello and welcome back to Empower Your Menopause after our rather long summer hiatus.
• 0:19
  SPEAKER_02: This is the podcast all about health, happiness, and hormones for women 14 above, and I'm Coach James Ellis, and with me I have Coach Julie Medacy.
• 0:29
  SPEAKER_02: So today we're going to explore a really simple question that's come up.
• 0:34
  SPEAKER_02: It's come up from a lived experience that Julie's had recently.
• 0:38
  SPEAKER_02: And the question is how much of what we think we want is actually our own idea?
• 0:43
  SPEAKER_02: So let's say that again.
• 0:45
  SPEAKER_02: How much of what we think we want is actually our own idea?
• 0:48
  SPEAKER_02: So generally, as human beings, we like to think that we know why we make the choices that we make.
• 0:53
  SPEAKER_02: Right?
• 0:54
  SPEAKER_02: We choose what we eat, we know what we like, we decide whether to exercise, pour ourselves a glass of wine, order a takeaway, eat some sweet treats, whatever they might be.
• 1:04
  SPEAKER_02: But how much of that decision making actually happens in the moment, and how much of it has already been influenced by a load of stuff that's happened before it.
• 1:13
  SPEAKER_02: So as health coaches, Julie and I always talk about mindset, habits, willpower, personal responsibility.
• 1:21
  SPEAKER_02: But you know, a lot of that behavior doesn't happen in a vacuum, right?
• 1:24
  SPEAKER_02: Our choices are influenced by all kinds of things: advertising, repetition, the availability of things, how convenient things are, the culture around us, around our families, around social norms, stress, sleep, habits, learned associations, physical environment around us, all kinds of things have an influence on why we might choose one path or another.
• 1:46
  SPEAKER_02: So today we want to talk about this, but we want to move the conversation away from any kind of judgment but towards curiosity so we can give you some practical ways to design the environment that actually supports the health choices that you genuinely want to make and maybe reduce some of that influence that's coming from outside sources.
• 2:04
  SPEAKER_02: So, Julie, this largely comes, as I said, from one of your lived experiences that happened recently when you're over in America.
• 2:11
  SPEAKER_02: Why don't you tell us how seeing some adverts for Haribo actually triggered something for you?
• 2:19
  SPEAKER_02: What happened?
• 2:21
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it's it's really interesting because my my father passed away July 1st.
• 2:27
  SPEAKER_00: So I was uh in America for about a month helping to sort out the affairs, and things were pretty chaotic, and I decided to have one completely down day where I wasn't running around doing so many things.
• 2:42
  SPEAKER_00: And while I was there, because I don't have a TV, I haven't had one for almost 25 years, I just don't watch it.
• 2:48
  SPEAKER_00: I decided to watch some TV and some old episodes of NCIS, a program I used to like.
• 2:54
  SPEAKER_00: And I was sitting there, because there was a marathon going in the afternoon, I was sitting there watching it, and I started to get increasingly annoyed because of the number of commercial breaks.
• 3:05
  SPEAKER_00: And me being me, I decided to grab a pen and paper and I started tracking the commercials.
• 3:11
  SPEAKER_00: Remember, this was an entire afternoon, so there were four or five episodes.
• 3:16
  SPEAKER_00: And I started writing down all the different commercials, counting how many there were and what the top what the products were that were being marketed.
• 3:24
  SPEAKER_00: And there were 53 commercials during every hour show that I watched, and that took up 18 to 20 minutes.
• 3:34
  SPEAKER_00: And I just thought, 53 commercials, can you imagine all of that just coming at you all the time?
• 3:40
  SPEAKER_00: But one of the adverts that happened more than 20 times in that afternoon was haribo for the haribo gold gummy bears.
• 3:48
  SPEAKER_00: Now, I don't have a big sweet tooth, but I do like haribo gummy bears.
• 3:54
  SPEAKER_00: But when I started watching the show, I had absolutely no desire to eat anything sweet and have any desire to have gummy bears.
• 4:02
  SPEAKER_00: But I noticed over the next few days, I started thinking about the gummy bears.
• 4:09
  SPEAKER_00: And by the end of the trip, I had such a strong craving for them that I went to a shop at the airport to buy some.
• 4:19
  SPEAKER_00: And and now fortunately, I discovered they were eight eight dollars and fifty cents for a bag.
• 4:24
  SPEAKER_00: And I thought, well, you know, there's there's a limit to how my cre how much I'm willing to pay for my cravings.
• 4:30
  SPEAKER_00: But I started to reflect on that and I noticed it was really interesting because I knew exactly what was happening, right?
• 4:36
  SPEAKER_00: I understand nutrition, I have a business degree, have studied marketing and advertising.
• 4:40
  SPEAKER_00: And as Master Health coaches, James and I both studied um behavior change psychology.
• 4:46
  SPEAKER_00: So I knew exactly what was happening, but it still happened.
• 4:50
  SPEAKER_00: I wasn't hungry at all for sweets.
• 4:52
  SPEAKER_00: But then I saw all these commercials, I started seeing them in the supermarket, in the service stations, pretty much everywhere we stopped were these harible gold gummy bears.
• 5:01
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm not saying that the advertisements caused my cravings, but all of that continued and repeated exposure just made them so ingrained in my brain that by the end of the trip I was actively craving something that I'd had no desire for at the beginning.
• 5:20
  SPEAKER_00: And I started thinking, you know, I we're trained in all of these things.
• 5:24
  SPEAKER_00: And I was observing what was happening as these cravings came up for me.
• 5:28
  SPEAKER_00: And I was just thinking, a lot of the times when we talk to our clients and they're struggling with food, they think they don't have enough willpower or enough discipline, and they don't understand where those cravings come.
• 5:40
  SPEAKER_00: If I'm someone who studies this and understands it, doesn't it make sense that we have to start realizing that some of these things that are happening with our clients aren't because they don't have willpower or discipline?
• 5:55
  SPEAKER_00: Our brains can play a lot of tricks on us.
• 5:58
  SPEAKER_00: So I I'll hand that over to you, but that just really got me thinking about this stuff.
• 6:04
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, and I mean it it shows, doesn't it, the influence of external things.
• 6:09
  SPEAKER_02: There's a there's a uh an illusionist who you may have heard of over here in the UK called Darren Brown.
• 6:15
  SPEAKER_02: He's very, very famous, and he does a lot of thought experiments whereby you know one of the famous ones that he did was he got three different people from three different advertising agencies to come and do a pitch for a job that he'd wanted them to do.
• 6:30
  SPEAKER_02: He had them picked up from their advertising agencies opposite ends of London and then drive them to this location.
• 6:37
  SPEAKER_02: On that drive, he had a certain number of specific advertisements going on on like billboards and things like that, that each one of the three creative leads for this thought experiment, they didn't know they were in a thought experiment, by the way.
• 6:52
  SPEAKER_02: They all saw those on the way, and he'd also staged little interventions along the way.
• 6:56
  SPEAKER_02: When they arrived at the at the location and they were given the brief, they had like an hour to put together a sketch of what the brief might look like.
• 7:05
  SPEAKER_02: They all had a sketch that had exactly the same influence on it because they'd been so influenced subconsciously by the things that they'd seen on the way there.
• 7:14
  SPEAKER_02: So that just shows how subtle this can be.
• 7:17
  SPEAKER_02: It doesn't even have to be a big in-your-face advertisement running like 20 minutes in an hour that you see.
• 7:23
  SPEAKER_02: It can be really small things that can affect your choices as well.
• 7:26
  SPEAKER_02: So we we think that the decisions originally um originate with us, right?
• 7:32
  SPEAKER_02: You know, I decided that I wanted to do that, I chose what to eat, I know what I like, I just need more discipline.
• 7:38
  SPEAKER_02: If I really wanted to change that, I would.
• 7:40
  SPEAKER_02: But really, human behaviour is much, much messier than all that, with all these different things that are going on.
• 7:47
  SPEAKER_02: So here's just a list of things that I sort of like think can affect people's decisions when it comes to their health.
• 7:54
  SPEAKER_02: So familiarity and repetition, that visibility, obviously, you'd seen that ad so many times that it's there, right?
• 8:01
  SPEAKER_02: Is something available, you know.
• 8:03
  SPEAKER_02: Generally, there's a rule in nutrition that we're both very familiar with.
• 8:08
  SPEAKER_02: If you've got something in your house that you don't want to eat, if it's there long enough, eventually someone will eat it.
• 8:14
  SPEAKER_02: So visibility is is key, right?
• 8:17
  SPEAKER_02: Is it available?
• 8:18
  SPEAKER_02: Is it convenient?
• 8:19
  SPEAKER_02: What are the social norms around things?
• 8:21
  SPEAKER_02: What have you done previously?
• 8:22
  SPEAKER_02: How have you acted previously?
• 8:23
  SPEAKER_02: What are your previous uh experiences?
• 8:26
  SPEAKER_02: Do you have any emotional associations with it?
• 8:28
  SPEAKER_02: I'm an absolute apple fiend because me and my dad used to go to the market once a week and buy a huge box of apples, and they would always sit on the top of our cellar and be really um, really cold.
• 8:40
  SPEAKER_02: And that has led me to having a love of apples all my life.
• 8:43
  SPEAKER_02: Part of me thinks that that is linked back to that association of going and buying those apples with my dad when I was a young kid.
• 8:49
  SPEAKER_02: Then you've got stress and fatigue, you've got habits, marketing and media, our friends, people around us.
• 8:56
  SPEAKER_02: So it doesn't mean that we're absolutely powerless because all this stuff's going on.
• 9:01
  SPEAKER_02: Quite the opposite.
• 9:02
  SPEAKER_02: In fact, once you're aware of the influencers, like you were, you you picked up on the fact that you were being influenced, then that gives you more opportunity to actually put a stop in and make a genuine choice because you know what's triggering you to have those cravings or to choose those behaviors, whatever it might be.
• 9:24
  SPEAKER_02: So, Julia, why don't you take us through a little bit about why this we're calling it the Haribow effect based on your um based on your experience?
• 9:32
  SPEAKER_02: I kind of wonder whether we should try and get sponsorship from Harrybo for this particular episode because we've mentioned them so many times.
• 9:38
  SPEAKER_02: But let's talk about why that effect is not actually imaginary then.
• 9:43
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and it's it's really interesting because it there's a there's been a lot of research around this, and just talking about how that repeated exposure can change, it can increase something's familiarity.
• 9:57
  SPEAKER_00: You know, we talk about brand recognition, it's one of the purposes of marketing and and advertising.
• 10:03
  SPEAKER_00: Um, things become really familiar to us, which makes us feel more comfortable with them.
• 10:09
  SPEAKER_00: And in some circumstances, it can make us prefer those things if the marketing and advertising is done well.
• 10:15
  SPEAKER_00: Psychologists call it mere exposure, right?
• 10:18
  SPEAKER_00: Just by merely being exposed to something repeatedly, um it has it can have an influence on us.
• 10:24
  SPEAKER_00: And it doesn't have to be immediate.
• 10:27
  SPEAKER_00: We don't have to immediately run out and buy what we just saw.
• 10:31
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes it's just to make that brand or that product familiar and more recognizable and easier for us to recall.
• 10:39
  SPEAKER_00: So, for example, when you're standing in the supermarket and you have 12 different types of the same item, the one that you've seen most recently or more most repeatedly is likely to be the one that you're going to choose because it feels familiar to you.
• 10:56
  SPEAKER_00: So just like when I had that thought of, wow, I really want some gummy bears, um, it felt a bit spontaneous, but going, taking some steps back, I realized where that came from.
• 11:10
  SPEAKER_00: So, especially when it comes to food cues, because we talk about this all the time with our clients, we can have these triggers that make us crave a food or make us feel like we're hungry for a particular food, even when we weren't consciously planning to eat it.
• 11:29
  SPEAKER_00: And things like sight and smell, imagery, you know, you see those gooey cookies and things and the adverts where the chocolate is melted and pulling apart or the caramel or whatever it might be.
• 11:41
  SPEAKER_00: Um, you know, availability of things, as you mentioned earlier, that can all make a difference.
• 11:46
  SPEAKER_00: So, you know, we we can't scientifically conclude, of course, that those ads made me buy gummy bears, but it's that repeated exposure that probably helped me think about it so actively.
• 11:59
  SPEAKER_00: Um, because it wasn't, it definitely wasn't something I wanted until I started seeing those ads.
• 12:05
  SPEAKER_00: And I, you know, this just reminds me because we're I was talking about this with some friends.
• 12:10
  SPEAKER_00: There are still ads and adverts from our childhood.
• 12:15
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, think about that, you know, jingles that you remember or slogans that you remember.
• 12:22
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and I so I I'd love to, you know, just for the those who are listening, think about uh adverts or or jingles that you can remember from when you were a child.
• 12:34
  SPEAKER_00: Can you still sing them?
• 12:35
  SPEAKER_00: Can you still remember all of those things?
• 12:38
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 12:38
  SPEAKER_00: And then but then you go back and think, but how much else can you remember word for word from when you were eight or 10 years old or 20 or or whatever?
• 12:49
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, do you what what ones do you remember?
• 12:51
  SPEAKER_02: What comes to um yeah, so so there's a there's a few really, not always around jingles, but I remember and and luckily, you know, the 70s was largely such a bad era for food uh that was being nice to us.
• 13:05
  SPEAKER_02: Not many of them actually bring up cravings for me, but uh there was one that was very famous here in the UK.
• 13:12
  SPEAKER_02: Um, that was uh some aliens on a spaceship, but these aliens were kind of like robots as well, and they spoke with sort of like robotic voices a bit like this, and um they were uh mimicking the fact that they were looking down on Earth and they saw people making mashed potatoes by actually peeling them, uh chopping them into bits, putting them into boiling water, draining them, and then taking a potato mash them and adding butter.
• 13:41
  SPEAKER_02: And the whole thing, it was a it was an advert for instant mashed potatoes, basically, right?
• 13:46
  SPEAKER_02: So it was just like why why are you guys not just pouring water into this powder and making mash like that?
• 13:52
  SPEAKER_02: And the the the slogan for it was for mash, get smash.
• 13:56
  SPEAKER_02: Smash was the brand of potatoes.
• 14:00
  SPEAKER_02: So that is one that um really sticks with with with me um from the from the 70s that is just really sort of like a classic childhood one for me.
• 14:10
  SPEAKER_02: How about you from from from the US?
• 14:13
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I won't sing the jingles, but there's one that comes up and it's it's one of those, it ends up being an earworm.
• 14:20
  SPEAKER_00: And I just for plasters, the brand name is Band-Aid.
• 14:24
  SPEAKER_00: So in the States, if you if you want a plaster, nobody will understand what you're talking about.
• 14:29
  SPEAKER_00: But if you say, I need a band-aid, yeah, even though that's the brand, people know exactly what you want and you want a bandage.
• 14:36
  SPEAKER_00: And this and the jingle was I'm stuck on band-aid because band-aid stuck on me, meaning they wouldn't come off, you know, for if you got wet or whatever.
• 14:46
  SPEAKER_00: They would stay and help you heal.
• 14:48
  SPEAKER_00: And there was another one for Oscar Meyer Bologna, and it was a little boy with a fishing pole.
• 14:54
  SPEAKER_00: And uh, he was eating a baloney sandwich, and he was singing, um, my baloney has a first name, it's O-S-C-A-R, My Bologna has a second name, it's M-A-Y-E-R.
• 15:06
  SPEAKER_00: And he would sing, Oh, I love to eat it every day.
• 15:08
  SPEAKER_00: And if you ask me why, I'll say, because Oscar Meyer has a way with B-O-L-O-G-N-A.
• 15:14
  SPEAKER_00: And all of our kids in school knew how to spell baloney.
• 15:21
  SPEAKER_00: But yeah, so again, I don't go out and buy Oscar Meyer bolognay now, but I still just think like who say, you know, here we are in the 2020s, and it still comes to mind.
• 15:39
  SPEAKER_00: So it all those familiar things really feel like can feel like like preferences, um, which influences us, obviously, as we just showed, you know, weeks, years, even even decades later.
• 15:53
  SPEAKER_00: Um, because that's the way our brain works.
• 15:56
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, you want to 100%.
• 15:58
  SPEAKER_02: That's the way the brain works.
• 15:59
  SPEAKER_02: And also, you know, I don't want this to be a takedown of marketeers, because I think there is a much wider issue here rather than just advertising and marketing and things like that.
• 16:11
  SPEAKER_02: But marketing gets so subtle these days, right?
• 16:14
  SPEAKER_02: Because you know, you talk about something or you search something, and a company knows what you've searched and therefore can start serving you adverts to it.
• 16:24
  SPEAKER_02: So I was looking for a particular probiotic yesterday because somebody had talked about it on a webinar that I was on.
• 16:30
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and then since then I've been literally flooded.
• 16:33
  SPEAKER_02: My social feeds have been flooded with ads for that particular um probiotic.
• 16:37
  SPEAKER_02: And then I was reading the other day about there's a long debate about these long life sources like ketchup and brown sauce and things like that.
• 16:45
  SPEAKER_02: Do you keep them in the fridge or do you keep them in the cupboard?
• 16:49
  SPEAKER_02: Well, notionally, from a shelf life point of view, there's absolutely zero difference between their life if you keep them in the fridge or in the cupboard once they've been opened.
• 17:01
  SPEAKER_02: And um but taste-wise, ones that are at ambient temperatures, or room temperature, taste a little bit better than the ones that are from the fridge.
• 17:10
  SPEAKER_02: Because when you get the fridge, the cold from the coldness of the product is dumbing your dulling your taste buds a little bit.
• 17:17
  SPEAKER_02: But interestingly, from a marketing point of view, um you don't eat things as readily if they're in the cupboard as you would if they're in the fridge.
• 17:27
  SPEAKER_02: Because you open the fridge 30 times a day, right?
• 17:31
  SPEAKER_02: But you don't open your cupboard 30 times a day.
• 17:34
  SPEAKER_02: And so I think it might have been Heinz, started putting on their ketchup bottles, keep refrigerated, not because it preserved it better, but because they wanted it to have more line of sight visually when people were opening the fridge because it made them consume it more.
• 17:49
  SPEAKER_02: I'm thinking, my god, that is how nuanced some of these things get, right?
• 17:53
  SPEAKER_02: When it comes to third parties want to influence us other than the influence that we we have from other people in our lives, other than just marketing and exposure and exposure that way.
• 18:04
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, so I guess let's talk a little bit about sort of how the brain processes these a bit.
• 18:09
  SPEAKER_02: And I know that a lot of this isn't directly um related to female midlife health or or the menopause transition, but there is a challenge here because one of the things that people talk to us a lot about is how they feel as though they're really affected by cravings, how that doesn't help them manage their weight as well.
• 18:30
  SPEAKER_02: So let's look at a little bit then about sort of like how this might be playing out in people's minds and in their brains.
• 18:40
  SPEAKER_02: You know, there's a often used term we talk about our brains being lazy, and you know, that we we we take the simple choice, but really your brain works in kind of like an economical way, you know, we've got finite attention, we've got finite cognitive resources, so our brains therefore sort of automate an enormous amount of stuff that's happening on an everyday basis.
• 19:05
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and so that is happening, that automation is happening more often than we probably think, and more often than is actually requiring some kind of cognitive deliberation to make a choice.
• 19:17
  SPEAKER_02: So that makes the things that are really easy, familiar, visible, or habitual really have they have a kind of like as when it comes to choice, it gives them a considerable advantage over actually sort of like people making a conscious effort to something.
• 19:32
  SPEAKER_02: And it's really relevant when you're tired and you're stressed and you're distracted, overwhelmed, you're hungry, yeah, you might be emotionally depleted, you might have been making decisions all day.
• 19:42
  SPEAKER_02: If your brain can automate tasks for you, is it little wonder then that sometimes it just takes over and happens?
• 19:48
  SPEAKER_02: You know, people often talk to us, and I know it's happened to me in the past as well, that before they know it, they can be at the snack drawer grabbing something because it's just an automated almost habit that it's not the person actually being lazy, sometimes it's just your brain just going, right?
• 20:05
  SPEAKER_02: I know that that's a shortcut to dampening my or my hanger, is to actually say the snack drawer, right?
• 20:14
  SPEAKER_02: So the problem is sometimes not that I don't know what the healthier choice is, often we know really well what it is.
• 20:21
  SPEAKER_02: Most people are schooled in in the basics of nutrition at least these days.
• 20:26
  SPEAKER_02: But what is often the biggest problem is the other choice feels much easier?
• 20:33
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, so so that is why people often make some of the choices that they make.
• 20:38
  SPEAKER_02: So why don't we talk a little bit about how this works or how it can work as a chain and how sometimes, because if we do leave it to that stage where we've got hungry, hangry, whatever you want to call it, yeah, is there a place where that we could intervene earlier in that mechanism that might make us make a better choice the second time if we recognize that we have been making choices almost on autopilot, if that makes sense?
• 21:06
  SPEAKER_00: Sure, sure.
• 21:06
  SPEAKER_00: And and I mean decision fatigue is a real thing, right?
• 21:10
  SPEAKER_00: Every day we have a thousand decisions to make about everything.
• 21:15
  SPEAKER_00: And then we've got notifications popping up, and we've got, you know, in our social media feeds, as you said, and adverts and billboards and um radio and you know, who whatever we might be doing, things are strategically placed around.
• 21:30
  SPEAKER_00: And I I think the big issue comes because we spend so much time and energy when we talk to our clients, they're spending so much time and energy trying to control their behavior once they already have that desire or that craving for a particular food.
• 21:49
  SPEAKER_00: Right?
• 21:49
  SPEAKER_00: The biscuits are open, and we think, well, I'll just have a couple, or the takeaway app is open, and they're feeding us all kinds of information from different.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_00: Different restaurants.
• 22:01
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe the wine bottle's already open, and you think, well, I'll just have a glass or something.
• 22:07
  SPEAKER_00: And oftentimes, especially for our clients, they're exhausted, they've been looking after everybody else, they're starving, they didn't maybe skip lunch and they didn't plan anything for dinner.
• 22:18
  SPEAKER_00: So what are we going to do, right?
• 22:19
  SPEAKER_00: We're going to just grab what's easy.
• 22:22
  SPEAKER_00: We've got cravings, and there's that something that we've been repeatedly exposed to.
• 22:27
  SPEAKER_00: And you know, that even happens when it comes, this isn't just food-related, it comes to healthier habits like exercise.
• 22:35
  SPEAKER_00: Um, you know, now we spent the entire day sitting down, and somehow we expect ourselves to suddenly feel energized and want to go running to the gym or go outside for a walk or a run.
• 22:47
  SPEAKER_00: And then suddenly we're demanding that discipline of ourselves and and the and willpower.
• 22:52
  SPEAKER_00: So we're waiting until the hardest point in that whole behavior sequence, if you will, to actually stop the process and intervene.
• 23:02
  SPEAKER_00: So what if we started thinking about that a little bit earlier?
• 23:07
  SPEAKER_00: We talk about planning ahead, we talk about um trying to think about these things before they become an issue.
• 23:16
  SPEAKER_00: So instead of saying, well, how do I stop myself eating this right now?
• 23:19
  SPEAKER_00: Think about what happened before you actually wanted it.
• 23:22
  SPEAKER_00: That was the big exercise for me with the gummy bears, certainly.
• 23:26
  SPEAKER_00: You know, instead of saying, Oh, why can't I make myself exercise?
• 23:29
  SPEAKER_00: I never feel like it.
• 23:30
  SPEAKER_00: Well, what would make it easier to get more movement into your day?
• 23:34
  SPEAKER_00: Um, you know, things like putting your shoes by the by the front door and just going out for a walk.
• 23:40
  SPEAKER_00: You know, what would make that easier for you?
• 23:42
  SPEAKER_00: Don't worry about discipline.
• 23:44
  SPEAKER_00: Think about why is the behavior you don't want easier than the behavior you do want?
• 23:52
  SPEAKER_00: Because we don't want to just get better at fighting ourselves, right?
• 23:55
  SPEAKER_00: We want to create fewer battles.
• 23:58
  SPEAKER_00: Those behaviors, as James and I both mentioned, rarely just appear out of nowhere.
• 24:04
  SPEAKER_00: We don't just suddenly decide to behave a certain way or or crave a certain thing.
• 24:10
  SPEAKER_00: So we have an exercise that we love to do with our clients to this end, and it's called breaking the chain.
• 24:16
  SPEAKER_00: James, do you want to talk about that?
• 24:18
  SPEAKER_02: Sure.
• 24:18
  SPEAKER_02: And I I would say that this is probably the exercise that we use the most with with our clients.
• 24:26
  SPEAKER_02: So we're struggling, particularly when it comes to things like binge eating, emotional eating, cravings.
• 24:33
  SPEAKER_02: And I mean it works for any behavior, but it's where we tend to see it coming up most because as we said, most people kind of know what good nutrition is these days.
• 24:41
  SPEAKER_02: It's the actually doing it, following through uh not on trying to not allow ourselves to be influenced by loads of the things.
• 24:49
  SPEAKER_02: That's that's where people tend to struggle with.
• 24:51
  SPEAKER_02: And this exercise called breaking the chain kind of helps with that.
• 24:56
  SPEAKER_02: And basically, what we we do is we talk to people about the fact that you know the final choice is just that, it's a final choice, but there's often a chain of events that have actually led to that final choice being made.
• 25:10
  SPEAKER_02: That final choice doesn't just come in isolation, it's the product of a number of other things that might have happened.
• 25:15
  SPEAKER_02: So if I just give you a kind of listeners a bit of an example of how this might work, and believe me, even people like myself and Julie, who supposedly know this stuff, yeah, we we we're susceptible to this kind of thing as well.
• 25:29
  SPEAKER_02: So, typical example might be you have a really stressful day at work, so you skip lunch, come three o'clock, energy is tanked, it's on the floor.
• 25:41
  SPEAKER_02: You know, let's assume that in this office it might be the only office that would be like this in the world, but there are no snacks around, and so you jump in the car or on the train and go home or whatever it may be.
• 25:51
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and you by that time you're sort of like absolutely exhausted, you're probably slightly wired, you're probably ravenous.
• 25:57
  SPEAKER_02: Um, you've failed at some point during the week, you've not really planned what you're eating for dinner that night.
• 26:04
  SPEAKER_02: Not you've failed, but you you you've really not planned anything that that that might be ready.
• 26:09
  SPEAKER_02: So while you're deciding what to eat, you're absolutely wired, you want to relax a little bit, you open a bottle of wine, um, then you start cooking, but now you're hungry, and the wines absolut actually work to sort of wet your appetite even further.
• 26:23
  SPEAKER_02: There's a bit of grazing going on while you're cooking.
• 26:26
  SPEAKER_02: Then it comes to food, and because you're so hungry, it becomes a real sort of like get everything in as quickly as possible because you're getting everything as quickly as possible, you're probably not in tune with your hunger cues, so you've eaten beyond being comfortably full, then you feel frustrated because you feel as though you've done that, you blame the lack of willpower because, and believe me, willpower had nothing to do with all those other events that have happened, so and then you beat yourself up about it, and then the cycle starts again.
• 26:57
  SPEAKER_02: And that many people might be familiar with that, and if you're not familiar with that second half of it, you may be familiar with that change just stopping at the three o'clock, you're absolutely exhausted, you're ravenous, you need to pick me up the office cookie jars there, so you grab grab some some cookies.
• 27:14
  SPEAKER_02: Um so the question we kind of need to ask ourselves quite often when it comes to these things around food, around cravings, is not what was the challenge with the food at the end, but where did it actually begin?
• 27:29
  SPEAKER_02: Where did that whole thing kick off?
• 27:32
  SPEAKER_02: So, within that chain of events, there are probably several different places earlier along there where you could have made a small intervention that would have would have changed what happened next.
• 27:44
  SPEAKER_02: You know, could it have been that you planned a 15-minute lunch and you knew what you were gonna have?
• 27:50
  SPEAKER_02: Could it have been that you had some afternoon snacks that you have ready?
• 27:53
  SPEAKER_02: It might just be, you know, a couple of things.
• 27:56
  SPEAKER_02: You know, I know we talk about trying to reduce processed foods and and things like that, but you know, a pack of beef jerky or a couple of protein bars in your office drawer are gonna be a good, easy, convenient way of breaking that chain by giving you something earlier in the day.
• 28:16
  SPEAKER_02: You know, or could it be that if you um if you know that a stressful day is coming up or you think that it might be stressful, you've got a couple of easy dinner options that are available to you.
• 28:29
  SPEAKER_02: Um and so by by looking at those things in the chain, we can perhaps recognise how stress particularly can affect the way that we eat and drink and the choices that we make.
• 28:46
  SPEAKER_02: So we give our clients um a really simple sheet that it's branded fabulous beyond 40.
• 28:55
  SPEAKER_02: You don't need to use our sheet to do this, um, but you just ask yourself some questions, just grab a pen and paper and think what was it that led to that choice and do it once you've you know, stop beating yourself up about the final choice that you make, if that choice is a chocolate bar or a bag of chips that you didn't want to eat, and maybe just take the time out afterwards to just write down the events that led up to it and see if you can't identify what are the things that stop you making progress and lead you to that decision, and which of those things can you change next time?
• 29:29
  SPEAKER_02: So the question really is which link in the chain will be easiest to change, not what's wrong with me, which is what most of us tend to do.
• 29:38
  SPEAKER_02: So, right, using that exercise, breaking the chain, it helps us recognize situations that come up all the time and allows us to plan for them rather than really trying to reply on rely on willpower all the time, which we know willpower is a resource that is not infinite, and it comes and goes depending on a million other factors that play into our into our lives.
• 30:04
  SPEAKER_02: So sure, those links aren't always obvious.
• 30:08
  SPEAKER_02: Sometimes the influence could have happened hours or days earlier.
• 30:12
  SPEAKER_02: So I'm gonna pass this over to you, Julie.
• 30:14
  SPEAKER_02: Let's talk about some more parts of the chain then.
• 30:18
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so you know, we were talking at the beginning of the episode, we talked a lot about the adverts that I that I saw when I was in the States watching television.
• 30:27
  SPEAKER_00: And advertising can be part of the chain.
• 30:29
  SPEAKER_00: And as James said, advertising and marketing can be very subtle.
• 30:32
  SPEAKER_00: The way, you know, the place that products are placed in the shops, um, you know, shelf height, where are they positioned?
• 30:40
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, the the links aren't always obvious.
• 30:43
  SPEAKER_00: Like we said, it it may have come from days or weeks or hours earlier, depending on the situation.
• 30:50
  SPEAKER_00: So maybe you saw it, um, maybe somebody mentioned it to you.
• 30:54
  SPEAKER_00: There's a good people in work are always talking about food and where they ate out and something amazing that they had.
• 31:01
  SPEAKER_00: Um, you know, maybe you saw an influencer on social media.
• 31:05
  SPEAKER_00: Again, you've got the delivery app, because I know a lot of people are using delivery apps now.
• 31:10
  SPEAKER_00: You you pass it, there are multiple displays in the supermarket.
• 31:13
  SPEAKER_00: Um, you know, eventually you're gonna have that.
• 31:16
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, I really fancy this thing, right?
• 31:19
  SPEAKER_00: Because the original, it's hard to connect them a lot of times because the original cues or the progression of cues and the event actually happening or the craving or whatever it is may be difficult to actually connect again because there's that um series of events.
• 31:38
  SPEAKER_00: So, you know, just like I was talking about with the with the haribo story.
• 31:43
  SPEAKER_00: So it wasn't me standing at the airport looking at a bag of harible gold gummy bears that was the event, it was the chain that had started developing when I started seeing all those advertisements, and I got to see them in all of the shops.
• 31:59
  SPEAKER_00: And and you know, our environment has a huge amount to do with how all of this plays out, don't you think?
• 32:07
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, 100%.
• 32:08
  SPEAKER_02: We see this all the time.
• 32:10
  SPEAKER_02: The environment is so key to things, and the environment has been shaping us for much longer than social media ever has, right?
• 32:22
  SPEAKER_02: You know, family, school, friends, culture, your socioeconomic circumstances, traditions, rewards, diet culture, you know, your workplace, your relationships, previous experiences, all those are sort of influences, and many of them are learned behaviours.
• 32:43
  SPEAKER_02: We learn things like what our family constitutes a normal portion.
• 32:47
  SPEAKER_02: I know that when um I grew up in Greece, and a couple of times my parents were supposed to be divorced.
• 32:53
  SPEAKER_02: When I came back a couple of times to stay with my dad, just for a few weeks at a time, uh, and he'd remarried and I acquired three stepsisters and stepbrother.
• 33:03
  SPEAKER_02: I was absolutely shocked by what they considered a normal portion to considered to what I would have thought a normal portion was before.
• 33:12
  SPEAKER_02: Suddenly, like normal portions, the regular portion in my head became much bigger than what I'd been used to because I saw this new new behaviour.
• 33:20
  SPEAKER_02: We learned whether desserts are a reward or not.
• 33:23
  SPEAKER_02: I'm still shocked by the fact that my kids went to our local primary school, and if they did well in their maths tests on a Friday, they would be given, once again, a bit of free advertising for Haribo, they'd be given one of those little mini-packs of Haribo at the end of the week for doing well in their maths or their spelling tests.
• 33:39
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, it's it's crazy that that kids from that age are taught in an era which is meant to be more enlightened than when I grew up and when you grew up.
• 33:49
  SPEAKER_02: They're taught to associate doing well at school with getting a treat from the school.
• 33:56
  SPEAKER_02: You know, we learn whether we consider exercise to be punishment or pleasure.
• 34:00
  SPEAKER_02: Some people really, really enjoy it because that's the way that it was always approached within their family and within their schools and things like that.
• 34:06
  SPEAKER_02: Other people absolutely hate it because that's might be learned behaviour that's passed on from their environment, from their parents, or or whatever it may be.
• 34:13
  SPEAKER_02: The other classic one is um, you know, you can't have any dessert until you finish the food on your plate.
• 34:19
  SPEAKER_02: So we we as kids, you know, as human beings, even inherently we have sweet tooths that have been with us for through evolution, but suddenly you're told that you've got to eat beyond what may be actually full before you're actually allowed to be given um to be given a dessert.
• 34:39
  SPEAKER_02: I remember one of the things, you know, the big famine when I was a kid growing up in the 1970s was in Biafra.
• 34:44
  SPEAKER_02: And my mum would guilt us into into finishing food by saying, you know, there are kids starving in Biafra, um, yeah, be glad of that food.
• 34:54
  SPEAKER_02: And my sister used to say to her, Well, do you know send it to them in a by airmail or whatever then in the way that she was?
• 35:01
  SPEAKER_02: So, yeah, there's lots of things that affect us throughout our lives.
• 35:07
  SPEAKER_02: Um, you know, what does a celebration involve?
• 35:10
  SPEAKER_02: Does it involve cakes and lots of sweets and jellies and treats and all that kind of stuff?
• 35:16
  SPEAKER_02: You know, what foods do we associate with things like comfort, family, love, belonging?
• 35:20
  SPEAKER_02: I know something you've talked about a heck of a lot, Julie, is you know, your memory of sitting eating popcorn on the couch with your mum, right?
• 35:28
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, so popcorn's got a real emotional driver for you, and there's loads of things that come around.
• 35:33
  SPEAKER_02: And then, you know, it's on top of all those learned behaviours, all those experiences that we've dealt with for all our lives, and add on modern advertising, social media, the algorithms, the influencers, food delivery apps, they all add on more.
• 35:48
  SPEAKER_02: So, you know, a lot of what we think is inherently just us and us potentially making at times poor choices, is really a complicated mix of biology, learning, repeated experience.
• 36:03
  SPEAKER_02: And the truth is that just because you've learned something in a certain way doesn't mean that you can't unlearn it or you can't reprogram your brain.
• 36:13
  SPEAKER_02: The brain's very good at being able to adapt to new norms if you can actually do that.
• 36:18
  SPEAKER_02: So obviously, there's a genetic element to this as well.
• 36:21
  SPEAKER_02: And I know Julie, you've got some thoughts on uh on the genetic side of it.
• 36:27
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and I I'm just gonna be really brief here because I think this is a whole episode on its own talking about genetics, because people a lot of times will say, Well, uh it I it's genetic, it's just how I am.
• 36:40
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I I have this sweet tooth and it's just how I'm built.
• 36:44
  SPEAKER_00: There are definitely genetic influences on things like taste and appetite, even body weight and different health outcomes.
• 36:52
  SPEAKER_00: But our biology in our environment are continually interacting, and there's a uh science uh called epigenetics that are showing that we can turn certain genes on and off.
• 37:04
  SPEAKER_00: So genes are not something that's absolutely concrete.
• 37:09
  SPEAKER_00: We're not, even if we're predisposed, it doesn't mean we're predestined to express those genes or express those behaviors.
• 37:18
  SPEAKER_00: So instead of asking whether something is entirely genetic or entirely environmental, we have to think about, you know, given the situation, given the hand that I've been dealt, what can I influence?
• 37:32
  SPEAKER_00: And the things we've been talking about, environment and and choices and making the behaviors we want easier, those can all have a huge impact and and change the change the outcome for us, basically.
• 37:47
  SPEAKER_00: And you know, we'll we to avoid uh just beating on the the the dead horse of this now, let's talk about how this is important, especially for our listeners, and then how to address it, maybe.
• 38:02
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, so we're probably running super long on this episode, but it's really super interesting as well, I think.
• 38:08
  SPEAKER_02: But we've talked so, like I said before, a lot of this comes back to general life.
• 38:15
  SPEAKER_02: There's there isn't anybody who isn't affected by some of the things that we've been talking about so far in this episode.
• 38:21
  SPEAKER_02: So, why does this matter then in midlife for women?
• 38:25
  SPEAKER_02: So, you know, there's a lot going on.
• 38:27
  SPEAKER_02: We've talked about this a lot.
• 38:29
  SPEAKER_02: Changing bodies, changing hormones, the demands of careers and work, and how some of those symptoms from the changing hormones and the changing bodies might actually be affecting career and work as well, and what effect that might have on mental health.
• 38:43
  SPEAKER_02: You've got caring responsibilities, you've got Asian parents, parenting down to kids as well.
• 38:48
  SPEAKER_02: You've got your other relationships with your friends and your and your family, and extended social groups, you know, whether that be the PTA or whatever it might be, some village association or some town association that you might be part of.
• 39:00
  SPEAKER_02: And then you've got the disrupted sleep, the stress, huge decision overload, and decades, absolute decades of diet messaging.
• 39:08
  SPEAKER_02: You know, we talk about it all the time, how many diets women go through in uh in midlife or until they reach midlife.
• 39:18
  SPEAKER_02: Sorry, I just tried to get rid of the glare on my uh camera there, and the camera came up and stuck while I was talking about that.
• 39:24
  SPEAKER_02: Um, you know, and quite often women end up in these environments that are designed to capture your attention, to encourage consumption, to remove the friction, to go for the easy choice.
• 39:38
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and then you know, the advice that many women are given is well, just make better choices, but that's really simplistic.
• 39:46
  SPEAKER_02: So trying to understand the environmental influence doesn't remove the personal responsibility of it, it just helps us understand the conviction conditions in which that responsibility that we have a personal responsibility to ourselves has to operate.
• 40:00
  SPEAKER_02: So we can take responsibility for what we do without necessarily taking all of the blame.
• 40:08
  SPEAKER_02: So we are rounding up.
• 40:09
  SPEAKER_02: I do promise you.
• 40:10
  SPEAKER_02: I know we've gone a little bit long on this one.
• 40:11
  SPEAKER_02: Julie, let's talk a little bit about um a suggested listener experiment then before we before we wrap up.
• 40:18
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so we would love to challenge you now for the next week to become your own detective.
• 40:24
  SPEAKER_00: When you have a craving or a behavior that you're trying to change, um, when those things come up, don't immediately try to stop it.
• 40:33
  SPEAKER_00: Don't start berating yourself.
• 40:35
  SPEAKER_00: Start to get curious about it.
• 40:37
  SPEAKER_00: Step back because the good thing is that curiosity and shame cannot live together.
• 40:44
  SPEAKER_00: So when we get curious, we can step back and look and say, okay, what made me want this?
• 40:48
  SPEAKER_00: Am I am I physically hungry?
• 40:50
  SPEAKER_00: Did I see an advert on social media or on television?
• 40:53
  SPEAKER_00: Did somebody talk about it?
• 40:55
  SPEAKER_00: Um, was somebody else eating or drinking it?
• 40:57
  SPEAKER_00: You know, we go out with people all the time and maybe change our choices because they order something that we think, oh, I'd like to have that as well, right?
• 41:05
  SPEAKER_00: Um I tired?
• 41:07
  SPEAKER_00: How stressed am I?
• 41:08
  SPEAKER_00: How bored am I?
• 41:10
  SPEAKER_00: Is this something that is just familiar?
• 41:12
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I can't tell you how many times during the workday, if I'm there's a task I'm avoiding or I'm feeling stressed about, how many times I find myself standing in the pantry looking for a snack, even when I'm not hungry or it's not mealtime.
• 41:26
  SPEAKER_00: Um is it the easiest option available?
• 41:30
  SPEAKER_00: Is that why I'm choosing it?
• 41:32
  SPEAKER_00: So don't attach that judgment or moral value to these things, to the food or the behavior, whatever it is.
• 41:39
  SPEAKER_00: Um, you're gathering information, be curious, be a scientist, and do this experiment so that think about how you can work backwards from how you got to that point and identify the chain of events that might have happened.
• 41:52
  SPEAKER_00: And then think about what is that link that I can break next time.
• 41:57
  SPEAKER_00: What can I how can I prepare for this better the next time it comes up?
• 42:01
  SPEAKER_00: Because once you can actually start seeing those cues, you'll have a lot more power to decide what actually happens next, and then make the choice that you want to make.
• 42:11
  SPEAKER_00: And even if you choose the thing, at least you're doing it consciously rather than unconsciously and habitually.
• 42:19
  SPEAKER_00: Um that's that I would love to know, or we would love to know if you want to comment about how that goes for you.
• 42:28
  SPEAKER_00: Do that experiment and then let us know what you find.
• 42:31
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 42:32
  unknown: Great.
• 42:32
  SPEAKER_02: So let's start to wrap up then.
• 42:34
  SPEAKER_02: So today's episode has not been an argument for avoiding the gummy bears, wine dessert takeaways, or anything else you might genuinely enjoy.
• 42:41
  SPEAKER_02: Sometimes you might genuinely just want some gummy bears.
• 42:44
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, buy them, eat them, enjoy every gelatinous little bugger of a gummy bear that's in that packet.
• 42:50
  SPEAKER_02: So the question isn't whether you made the perfect choice, it should really be about whether you made a conscious one or not.
• 42:56
  SPEAKER_02: You know, you good health isn't built by winning hundreds of tiny battles with ourselves every day, it's built by creating the conditions in which fewer battles are actually needed.
• 43:09
  SPEAKER_02: So, yeah, let's stop waiting until the desire appears to decide what you're gonna do about it.
• 43:14
  SPEAKER_02: Look upstream, try and find the chain.
• 43:17
  SPEAKER_02: Instead of constantly trying to become stronger than your environment, start making your environment work a little bit harder for you.
• 43:24
  SPEAKER_02: Now, we talked about the break the chain exercise.
• 43:27
  SPEAKER_02: Um quite often when people do this, it can bring up some really strong feelings for them and some and some challenges.
• 43:35
  SPEAKER_02: So, as you all know by now, hopefully, Julie and I offer a free call, 45 minutes of our time, a free coaching session, so you can we can help you get to somewhere, but you can also see what it's like to actually be coached.
• 43:48
  SPEAKER_02: So, if you want to jump on one of those, we're happy to take you through the break the chain exercise if that's what you'd prefer, and we're we're happy to do that.
• 43:55
  SPEAKER_02: So you can book one of those at freecall.fabulousbeyond40.com.
• 44:01
  SPEAKER_02: So that's it for this week.
• 44:04
  SPEAKER_02: We'll pop some notes, uh that we'll pop that link in the show notes.
• 44:07
  SPEAKER_02: We will see you next time.
• 44:09
  SPEAKER_02: In the meantime, we've been James and Julie from Fabulous Beyond 40.
• 44:13
  SPEAKER_02: Stay strong, stay fabulous, and we will see you next time.
• 44:18
  SPEAKER_01: Bye.