DeepSummary
The episode starts by discussing Judd Brewer's work on habit change, particularly his previous research on helping people quit smoking by applying mindfulness techniques. This led to insights about how habits are not driven by willpower but by awareness and creating a 'prediction error' to update the brain's reward value for a behavior.
The conversation then shifts to applying these principles to eating habits and emotional eating. Judd emphasizes that the book is not about diets, nutrition, or weight loss, but rather about changing our relationship with habitual patterns around food. Key topics include distinguishing hunger from emotional cues, bringing mindful awareness to our eating experiences, and finding 'bigger, better offers' that are more rewarding than the habitual behavior.
Throughout the discussion, Judd stresses the importance of self-kindness, curiosity, and improving interoceptive awareness to reconnect with our body's natural hunger signals. He provides actionable steps to create new associations and reward values around food, aiming to cultivate freedom and choice rather than restriction.
Key Episodes Takeaways
- Approach emotional eating as a habit pattern to be disrupted, not through willpower but by increasing awareness and creating 'prediction errors' to update the brain's reward value.
- Distinguish between true physiological hunger cues and emotional 'hedonic hunger' drives to eat.
- Practice mindful observation during eating to notice what is truly rewarding versus unsatisfying habits.
- Cultivate self-kindness and curiosity to reconnect with the body's inner wisdom about hunger and fullness.
- Identify 'bigger, better offers' that meet emotional needs in more rewarding ways than habitual eating.
- Aim for freedom of choice in eating, not restriction or shame-based control.
- Shift perspectives by asking 'What do I actually need?' rather than feeding passing cravings.
- Be willing to experiment and collect data on different approaches to update reward associations.
Top Episodes Quotes
- “So this actually does point toward the question that you were asking is, how do we, you know, how do we find this third step more easily and how do we condition this?“ by Judd Brewer
- “The key is to be breaking that autopilot and truly observing as we're eating.“ by Judd Brewer
- “There's something about that that's wonderful. It's like, as you say, waking up from the spell in that second step where you realize, wow, they've been tricking me, right?“ by Rick Hansen
- “And so here I'm thinking about the if we're eating because of an emotion, if it's a hedonic hunger, then we can ask ourselves one, what does eating my meet actually get me? Where we become disenchanted with it.“ by Judd Brewer
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Episode Information
Being Well with Forrest Hanson and Dr. Rick Hanson
Rick Hanson, Ph.D., Forrest Hanson
3/4/24