World Renowned Food Psychologist: 6 Habits To Stop Food Controlling Your Life - Professor Jane Ogden

0:00Fizzy drinks make our bones thin. Fizzy drinks often have phosphates in them. Phosphates decalcify your bones. Why is that a treat? How can we tell if we have emotional hunger or real physical hunger? That's a kind of million-dollar question. Dr. Jane Ogden is a world-leading health psychologist, author of The Psychology of Eating, and professor at the University of Surrey. For decades, she's researched the psychology of eating, dieting, and behavior change, and how our relationship with food shapes our lives. Remember that your mind and body are so intricately linked that you can't look after one without looking after the other.

0:38Why is our relationship with food just not about food? It's so much more than that and so emotional. If you feel guilty after you've eaten or you feel hungry after you've eaten or if you're thinking what to eat next, then it's taking on other kind of emotions. Let's talk solutions. You can't sit there criticising your own body and then wonder why your child develops body issues. So they shouldn't say this piece of cake is a treat? I think... Different forms of fasting. Would you advise people to follow those types of fasting diets?

1:15Jane, who are you and what do you do for a living? Well, I'm a professor in health psychology and I work at the University of Surrey. So I've been an academic for 38 years. I've done an awful lot of research looking at why people eat what they eat, problems with weight management, under eating, over eating. So I've been a bog standard academic. I write books, I write research papers and I teach students. I've also done various different bits of media work around the edges. So I've always been passionate about getting out of my ivory tower, really, and making things accessible to people. My subject area is all about mind-body relationships.

1:52So it's all about how our mental state, our thoughts, our feelings, our childhoods, our learning, then influence our physical bodies. So it's all that kind of mind-body relationship. And in the context of that, it's about the world we live in, the childhoods we have, the culture that we live in, and how that influences how we feel about food and our eating behaviour. And then in return, how our eating behaviour makes us feel about ourselves. Why is this topic important to you? uh well i was born in the 1960s and the 1960s was the beginning of the kind of the dieting world so everyone around me during my childhood was trying to lose weight everyone was taking slimming uh foods they were drinking shakes they were trying to eat less they were trying to look like twiggy uh they all went on diets i was surrounded by family who was on diets and i guess it was the beginning of also kind of problems with obesity but also problems with eating disorders.

2:48And so it was always about navigating that process between worrying about being too fat or too thin. And it was very obvious to me that food was just potentially really problematic for people. And it occupied far too much space in their heads and in their lives. And when I went to university, I did my dissertation on eating behaviour, was influenced by Susie Allback in the sort of 1980s and the Fats is a Feminist Issue, got very passionate about that. and they did a PhD on eating behaviour. So since then, I've just been really interested in what food means to people. I'm not a nutritionist, so I'm not that interested in carbohydrates, proteins and fats, but I think it's the relationship with food which is really interesting.

3:31And just watching people struggle. So, so many people struggling with eating too much, eating too little, being anxious around food, worried about food, depressed about how they look, their problems with their body image. and it's just become an issue and I just wish it wasn't an issue and that people could just have a balanced good relationship with food where it's a part of their lives but not everything. Why is our relationship with food just not about food? It's so much more than that and so emotional. I think there's many reasons really I mean partly because of our childhood so I think we learn about food from the moment that we're born, probably even in the womb, we learn about food.

4:13But as soon as we come out, food is obviously important to just staying alive. So our parents want us to stay alive, they want to give us food, and they want to keep us well. But also, they very quickly learn that food can become an issue. So if a baby doesn't breastfeed, the mum gets anxious. If they're weaning the baby and the baby rejects food, then the parents get anxious. And then also they learn very quickly that food is a really good way of modifying behaviour. So, you know, if they want to calm a child down, they give them a biscuit. If they want to treat them, they give them a piece of cake.

4:45If they want to take them out for the afternoon, they give them ice cream. So food takes on all these meanings very, very quickly in our lives. And because of that, it just becomes attached to our emotions. So, you know, we learn treat is food, comfort is food, boredom is food, frustration is food, relationships with other people is food and it just starts to get attached with every bit of our emotional processing and then we go into adulthood we have those emotions and then we just use food to manage those emotions and then you know on top of that we live in this complicated world where we've got a food industry body bombarding ourselves with different kind of foods which aren't good for us we've got social media bombarding us with images as to how we should look and so it all gets kind of in a complicated mess really.

5:32I feel like this conversation is so much broader than what maybe some people might think. I think this is not just about people, I don't know, this will not only relate to people that are struggling with obesity or with anorexia, but I think this is a topic that right now is so much more democratic and more mainstream than what we think. What are the most common indicators that we should be paying attention to in order to understand if we have an unhealthy relationship with food? I think it's when food obviously occupies a space. So I suppose I think of it as a kind of, you know, a kind of 100 % variance of our mindset.

6:09So obviously we have to eat to stay alive. And so food occupies maybe 10 % of our headspace or 20 % of our headspace. But then if it starts to kind of spill out of its box, it can occupy so much more of our headspace and just make us anxious. So obviously we need to prepare your meals, you need to shop for your meals, you need to think about eating well, and then that should be it. But then if you feel guilty after you've eaten, or you feel hungry after you've eaten, or if you're thinking what to eat next after you've just eaten, or if you're feeling the shame because of how you are eating, then it's taking on other kind of emotions.

6:43And I guess you just are watchful. I mean, it's always about being watchful and mindful of yourself, of your wellbeing, and thinking, has food become an issue for me? Am I worrying about it more than I actually should do? And then is it pushing other things out? So, you know, I mean, I guess it's a huge kind of, you know, I don't know, existential question, isn't it, about how we should live our lives, but we should have relationships, we should have work, we should have ambitions, we should have family, we should have, you know, hobbies, and we should have food. But if food is pushing out those other things and taking up too much space, then that's when it becomes a problem.

7:20So if I'm thinking about food after I have eaten, then I have a problem. Is that a simple rule of thumb? I mean, not necessarily. If you're cooking for a family of four and you haven't got very much money and then you're thinking, you know, where am I going to get the next meal from? But if food isn't satisfying you because somehow you've eaten the wrong foods or you're denying yourself the foods that you want, or you're using food to fill an emotional need, then it's not going to be able to do that. So, you know, if you're upset, if you're anxious, if you're worried about your life, if you have low self-esteem and you have low confidence or whatever is going on and you're using food to feed that, it's not going to work.

8:09So you're going to put the food into your body, but all those needs are still going to be there. you're still going to feel dissatisfied with who you are because food wasn't the solution. So if you're using food to solve a problem when it's not the solution, of course, you're going to be looking for more solutions immediately afterwards. How can we tell if we have emotional hunger or real physical hunger? That's a kind of million dollar question, to be honest with you, because we're not very good at reading our bodies. So hunger is a perception. So there are brain chemicals, there are gut chemicals, and we have a kind of biological process telling us that we're hungry.

8:46But at the same time, hunger is also a psychological process. So it's a perception which has to do with thinking and emotions and focus and distraction. So we can't read our bodily signals in that kind of way. It's not as straightforward as that. It's the same as, you know, visual perception. So when we see things, the object is there on our retina, but we process it, we appraise it and we turn it into something and that's what our brains are really good at doing or it's the same with pain. You know, you can feel a pain in your back and that's not just the nerve sending a message to your brain going, ow, that's your processing, your perception, your emotions, your learning, your childhood, your expectations, translating that into something called pain and hunger's exactly the same.

9:33So it's a perception. So we have to read it. We have to appraise it and make sense of it. So it's very hard to get to, is this real food biological hunger or is this emotional hunger? But I guess, you know, the way with all of these things is to sort of watch ourselves and to monitor ourselves a bit and think, what am I using food for in my life? What function is food serving? How is it making me feel? When am I eating? What am I eating? What's that doing to me? and then we can think, hold on a minute, I'm not eating because I'm actually hungry. I wasn't actually hungry there, but I had a need and I was using food to satisfy that need.

10:15So I don't think it's a pure thing that we can get back to biological hunger, but we can start being a bit more aware of why we're eating and what we're eating and when and what it's doing to us. Does the environment that we live in induce us to feel more emotionally hungry? So perhaps if we live in a stressful environment or if we live around people that are constantly maybe on a diet and going to the gym and overthinking about their body weight. How does this affect the way we feel about food? Well, hugely. I mean, the amount of kind of, if you like, food noise, I know that's the kind of term that people use at the moment, but food noise is just enormous now.

10:52So there's food, physical food everywhere. There's, you know, there's restaurants and there's adverts and there's cafes and there's food available for us at all times of the day everywhere that we are. So this food is triggering us. We can see it, we can smell it, we can anticipate having it. So we're being triggered by those kind of, that food in our environments. But then also people are talking about food more. So there's an issue about whether people are concerned about what they are eating, whether they're under eating or overeating and their worries about food and it's contagious. So obviously we pick up other people's signals and if other people have food anxiety and expressing it, then we catch it.

11:33And how much of our parents' education do we bring into our adulthood relationship with food? A huge amount, really. I mean, we come out, we are born and we are ready to learn. So there are cultural differences, there are financial differences in our families. And then there are also our own parents' own issues with food, which get transmitted through the generations. So if you're brought up by parents who have food anxiety, perhaps because they don't have very much money, and they're worrying about whether food is available, you can pick up on that food anxiety because that's the way you've been brought up.

12:09Or if you have parents who are worrying about their own body size or their own body image because they feel that they're too fat or too thin, then that's going to be contagious and we will pick that up. So I think, I mean, I always think that, you know, we have scripts in our heads about who we are, what kind of a person, you know, am I? I'm clever, I'm funny, I'm stupid, I'm lazy, I'm, you know, I'm bright, I'm ambitious or whatever. Those are scripts and those scripts come from our families. So very quickly they have their scripts which are transmitted to us and they become our scripts. And that's how we define who we are.

12:44What should parents, what would you advise parents? What should they avoid doing? They should try and give their children a good relationship with food by making it just part of life, but not making it everything to do with life. and they need to think about one being a good role model so it's their behavior that matters because as human beings we just copy so we learn by copying other people just basic modeling behavior and so we learn through copying so parents should eat the foods they want their children to eat they should be active in the way they want their children to be active and they should have the relationship with their bodies that they want their children to have So, you know, you can't sit there eating unhealthy foods and then wondering why your children don't eat unhealthy, why your children eat unhealthy foods.

13:34Or, you know, you can't sit there criticizing your own body, saying I'm too fat, I'm too thin, I'm ugly, I'm unattractive, and then wonder why your child develops body issues. You just, you know, you've just got to model it. But you also just have to use the right words. So you use the words around food, which doesn't make food problematic. so you don't talk about things being necessarily, you know, bad for you or healthy or damaging, but you talk about them being tasty or crunchy or nice or, you know, you don't talk about them being treats or special or bad for you. Interesting. You just give it words that help us build the scripts in our heads, which are healthy scripts.

14:12So they shouldn't say, this piece of cake is a treat? I think it's best to avoid that if you can, because if you think about, I mean, it's nice to have, you know, have nice times, it's birthday, it's, you know, whatever it is, it's family time together. And food can be a treat. But if it's always being labelled as being special or as a treat, then as you grow up, and you feel like you need something, that's why you turn to it, because it's been coded. So it should not be used as reward nor punishment? Well, ideally not. It's, you know, in the moment, it's very hard to avoid it as a parent, because it works really well.

14:50So if you want a child to behave, give them a packet of crisps and they'll sit and they will behave because it manages their behaviour. But in the long term, then they're learning a pairing between reward and behavioural management and that food. What does this do to a kid? As a child, it manages their behaviour and then as they grow up and they have choices and they want to reward themselves or treat themselves or they're feeling emotional or down or whatever it is, then they go, oh, okay, what would work in this situation? You know, it's cake. It's not celery. It's not vegetables. We don't think, God, I've had a difficult day at work.

15:29I'll go home and have some carrot because carrot doesn't do treat, but cake does do treat or ice cream does do treat or whatever it is does treat. And so that's the foods that we then reach for. It conditions us. Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I'm, you know, I'm, I suppose I'm a psychologist through and through, and I think it's all learning really. I don't think that foods have an inherent value, but I think we learn that value through just pairing. I want to share with you an example that happened at my home. And I need you to stay a bit with me because I think it can also make sense in other people's homes.

16:03So when I was a child, my parents, particularly my mom, and I know she meant well, but particularly my mom, she wanted for me to finish my plate. And it wasn't about how full I was. Maybe I had enough, but there was more the financial or economic condition of me not wasting food. Look, that was more important to her, like instilling that in me than perhaps me building a healthy relationship with my hunger levels. So then I feel like as I became an adult, I didn't have a good understanding of when I was full because it was all about is my plate empty? What do you think of this? Well, I think it's exactly as you say.

16:40So, I mean, I think with parents, they've put time and effort and money into preparing food and they don't want it to be wasted. And they think that they need to get that food into their child because they don't want that child to under eat. And they trust that as a parent, they have created the right amount of food for that child. So they don't want it to not go into that child because they think that's what's good for that child. But exactly as you say, I think we need to learn our own levels of fullness and we need to be able to make our own choices. And often good parenting, what people think is good parenting can lead to eating related problems because they're not giving the child the choice to work out what they want, when they want and how much they want.

17:22And then as you go through into adulthood, you're making choices based upon what's there as opposed to how you actually feel. And then you don't feel that you have the right to stop. So you carry on eating because it's there rather than because of what you actually need. But there's also on top of that, and I've done quite a lot of work on looking at feeders and I think feeding behaviour is really interesting when we overfeed other people for various different reasons, not because of their needs, but because of our kind of personal needs. And being a feeder of someone else is often because you're offloading food from yourself so you don't want to eat it.

17:56So you give it to somebody else. It can be about not wanting waste. It can be about showing love and it can be about a kind of relationship dynamic but actually you're using food to feed another person and if that person is a child then they're learning to respond to your needs rather than their own needs that's so interesting that's so interesting because i'll disclose it i've done that i've done that myself i've as i've shared with you earlier i've been on on a wellness nutritional journey in which at the initial stages of that journey, I was restricting myself from eating, from what I would consider back then overeating.

18:36So then I could achieve a physical performance and an aesthetical version of myself that perhaps was unhealthy. Now I came to realize that that was unhealthy. And in many occasions, I would go out with my friends and I would like serve them and that would give me pleasure. And I genuinely think a part of me wanted to be generous and give them things. But now if I'm even brutally honest with myself, hearing you say this, maybe a part of me was unconsciously just trying to give them the food that I wish I would eat. But at the same time, I want to make my decision easier because if I put the food on your plate, then there's nothing left for me, which is mind blowing.

19:19No, absolutely. So you're offloading the food that's on your plate because you don't want to eat it because you want to stay thin so you give it to someone else and then you watch them eat it and you get a vicarious pleasure so you don't get your own pleasure from eating it but you get a vicarious pleasure of watching them eat it but without the shame of the fact that you've eaten it i've had this conversation in a slightly different angle with some other friends so perhaps we go for dinner and then we're not only focusing on what we are eating but we are sort of regulating the amount of food and the type of food that we're going to order based on what everyone else is eating.

19:54Is this unhealthy? Should we only focus on our plate, our relationship with food, and not look at what everybody else is eating? If they're eating sugar or not sugar, like that's irrelevant to our relationship with food in that particular eating setting. I think it works in both ways, doesn't it? I mean, obviously you want to regulate your own food based upon what you like and what you want to eat. But also social eating is really important in terms of just the chat. So if you're not careful, food becomes the focus of your life. And so food can sit on the table and you can end up talking about the food and eating the food and then talking about the food after you've eaten it and then planning the next food after you've eaten that food.

20:34So food then takes up too much space. And social eating, what social eating does is it means that if there are problems around the table, then sometimes that can be minimised and helped through social eating because you just end up just chatting and having the fun around the food and putting food back into its box a little bit so it's just there to facilitate relationships and that's really helpful I mean I think in family settings that's why it's so good to eat as a family in friendship settings it's so good to eat with friends because again the food is just part of it it's not kind of everything and then you can just chat and when you chat you eat and you're eating and you're thinking less about the food, which can sometimes be a good thing.

21:16As opposed to us eating by ourselves, which then it becomes only about food. It just becomes about food. And then that becomes, you know, if you have an issue with food or you're developing an issue with food, then the emotional attachment to that food and the anxiety or the shame or whatever it is attached to that food can become too important to you and take up too much space. Whereas whether you're on other people and you start chatting about whatever it is that you want to chat about, work relationships, what you're watching or whatever it is, then you just eat and then that's fine. And then again, food becomes less important to you.

21:48And what do you think about eating while watching TV? Well, because food is a perception as opposed to just a biological process, we need to focus on it and to process that information. And if you're eating while you're watching TV, it doesn't actually fill you up in the same way. So it's not just a matter of calories into the body versus amount of fullness that you feel. you can put calories in the body in different ways so if you put calories into the body and you're thinking about it focusing on it it fills you up more than if you put calories into the body and you're either walking or in the car or in the cinema or watching tv and the problem is obviously if you put calories into your body and you're distracted you don't feel full so you're more likely to eat more later on that brought me to a different kind of scenario so some days I feel hungrier than other days but when I look at when I compare both days from a physical activity point of view and from a stress level perspective they seem to be very similar so I cannot understand why is it that I am one day hungrier than the other so my first question would be why does that happen and then my following question would be when that happens should I just listen to one extent to my body and eat more that day and then less the other day if I feel less hungry?

23:09I think it's because, again, because hunger is a perception, so many things influence how hungry we are. So it could be how much food we've eaten on that day. It can be how much food we've eaten the previous day, because there's going to be a spillover from day to day, depending on how much exercise we've done and how much food is still sitting in our bodies or where our energy levels are at. Obviously, it can be a stress factor, because stress can burn up calories, if you like, emotionally and physically and make us feel more hungry. Or it can also just be a processing thing so if you're more bored uh you're less active you're more focused on how hungry you are then you're going to feel more hungry because you're just thinking about it more so again you don't want to just then respond to that feeling of hunger because you know we don't know whether it's biological hunger or whether it's perceptual emotional whatever you want to call it hunger um so i would argue that the easiest way to manage all of that is just to try might be quite routinized in what you eat.

24:02So you have breakfast, lunch and dinner, and you eat about the same amount for both the meals, you know, every day. And then you're not fluctuating too much. Because if you're trying to respond to an increase in hunger, which is actually because you're anxious or you're stressed, or you're worried, then your food intake will go up. Whereas really, you want to try and keep things as level as you possibly can. Interesting. So we should be ideally eating the same quantities of food for breakfast, as lunch and dinner in spain we have i'll try to translate this to see if this makes sense in english too but there is a very very well-known phrase and and for all the spanish speakers listening to this they will 100 relate to it um and it basically says that for breakfast we should eat as kings for lunch we should eat as i think the translation conversion would be as lords or nobles yeah and then for dinner you eat as a peasant yeah we have the same phrase okay you Okay, you have it here.

24:57Is this wrong? Eat dine as paupers, I think. Well, no, I suppose. So when I was saying we should eat the same amount, I don't think we should eat the same amount for breakfast, lunch and dinner, but I think we should eat the same amount each day. But I think that phrase probably, you know, worked 200 years ago. So I think, what do we say in English? We say breakfast like a king, dine like a, must be dine, lunch like a lord. Yeah, lunch like a lord and dine like a pauper, is what we say. And I think that's, you know, there's lots of evidence now that timing of day influences how our metabolism works.

25:28So if we eat later on in the evening, then we can't metabolise it. And then the later we eat, this is why you have kind of fasting diets as well, isn't it? And reducing your feeding window is that you eat during the day, you don't eat in the evenings, because if you eat in the evenings, you can't metabolise it, it's more like to be laid down as fat. And it doesn't give you energy in the same ways. The problem with that is that life isn't really set up like that any longer. So most people don't have, you know, in the old days, we had a mum who was at home who would have got up two hours before us, cooked us a massive big breakfast, and then we would come down, we would eat our breakfast, and then we would go off and live our days.

26:05We don't have that kind of social structure any longer. So culturally, you can see that that's just fading out because nobody is prepared to get up two hours before their children or their husband and prepare a massive meal for them to have the day. So it's not like that any longer but i think metabolism wise it probably is better to eat like that but it's just not really feasible from you mentioned different forms of fasting would you advise people to follow those types of fasting diets i don't think i advise people to to do or to not to do particular diets i mean i think if you're trying to lose weight uh or eat well there's so many many many possible ways of doing it and we're all so different and our lives are also different then you do the thing that works for you.

26:52The thing about some of the fasting diets is that they play into our need for boundaries so it's much easier to have clear rigid boundaries and to stick to them around our food than it is to have flexible kind of wishy-washy boundaries. So if you wake up in the morning and say today I'm going to eat less or today I'm going to try harder or today I'm going to be healthier. That's such a vague intention. It's very hard to stick to it. Whereas if you say today I'm going to fast and I'm only going to have one meal or I'm going to only have, you know, 500 calories or I'm going to just, you know, drink water or something, that's such a rigid rule.

27:33It is actually easier to follow. So rigid rules tend to feed into our need to make things clearer. But the problem with rigid rules is that they're not sustainable for a long period of time. So we can't stick to them for very long. And also they can end up with us craving the very things that we're telling ourselves not to have. So if we become very black and white about what we should and shouldn't eat, it gives us a rigid rule, which feels better in the moment. But actually we start to build up a kind of a need, to preoccupation, obsession with all the things that we're banning ourselves. So in the long term, those are what we kind of want to eat.

28:10And we start to change our relationship with those foods because we sort of demonize them. And human beings aren't good at denial. So you deny all of these sorts of foods and they then become the foods that you want to eat. And you share the same view with other forms of dieting, not necessarily only fasting diets. I think if you want to lose weight, then you need to change what you eat, whether you call it a diet or not is kind of up to you. But you need to build new habits, which are sustainable for the long, long term. I mean, that's what it's all about, really, isn't it? It's about eating well for the rest of our lives.

28:44So you don't really want short fixes. You want things which build a good relationship with food that means you can eat well forever. So then it's not a diet. Yeah, exactly. Because a diet has a beginning and an end. Yeah, that's right. And then typically then we would gain back our weight because we're going back to our old habits. And you haven't learned new habits during that process of a diet because it's so unrealistic. So if you decide to eat 800 calories a day, you know, fair enough, you can do it. But when you come off it, you can't carry on eating 800 calories a day because it's just not enough.

29:14So then you haven't learned new ways of eating. How many calories a day should we be eating? Oh, well. As the average adult. I'm not a nutritionist, but about 2 ,000, something like that, isn't it? But it obviously depends on how active you are and, you know, know your age and and how and how you're eating those calories but yeah about 2000 a day when does trying to be very healthy from a nutritional perspective from a food point of view become unhealthy i suppose two things really one on a biological level if you're denying yourself the nutrition that you need um and much as we you know we think we know a lot about nutrition and we mostly don't.

29:57So there's a hell of a lot that we don't know. So what's good for us is to have a varied diet with a bit of everything that is different. So we need different carbohydrates, different proteins, different fruit and vegetables, different kinds of fats. Nobody really knows exactly what we should be having of all of those things. So if a diet becomes too rigid or too narrow, the chances are we're cutting out something that we probably actually need. So if you become super healthy and you decide, right, I'm not going to eat carbohydrates, then you're missing out on the carbohydrates that you do need.

30:29Or if you demonise certain proteins, the chances are that those proteins have something in them that's good for us that we do need. So that's when it becomes a problem biologically because we're going to become nutritionally in deficit because we're just not having things. But then, you know, psychologically, if you're trying super hard to be healthy all the time and you're becoming anxious around food and you won't always be able to do exactly what you want to do because of your friends or your family or the environment that you're in or you're going on holiday or you're working late or something's going to interrupt your desire to be super healthy.

31:04That's just going to create guilt and shame and anxiety because you're breaking your own super hard rules. So it's better not to have those rules in the first place, be more flexible and then you can be a bit kinder to yourself. I feel like in this day and age particularly through the integration of social media and our everyday lives there is just so much nutritional advice out there and it becomes very hard for us to be able to filter the ones that are healthy and beneficial to us and the ones that are just rubbish how can we differentiate this uh the the basic rule is sort of moderate I know this is old-fashioned and you know not very exciting and it's certainly not kind of clickbait and it's not going to make me famous in any way whatsoever but the basic rule is just moderation you know there mostly aren't good and bad foods uh you know you need to eat plenty of fruit and vegetables if you eat carbohydrates eat carbohydrates there's nothing wrong with them but eat brown ones um and eat things in moderation what do you mean by brown carbohydrates well brown bread brown pasta brown rice um as opposed to ones which have been processed so you get your fiber in there um and then they are they're not they don't give you the sugar highs and they they break down more slowly and we keep full for longer why is fiber important oh well for your digestion um and for your energy levels um and for your gut um and to protect us against all sorts of different kind of cancers.

32:40Yeah, very important. And would you advise then the rest of the world, because you've mentioned sugar, to not eat sugar or should we eat it sometimes? I mean, I'm not a big fan of bans on everything forever because I don't think that that works, but there's not much to be gained from eating pure sugar. So sweets, which are just sugar, are not really going to be very good for you. And that's why you have brown bread rather than white bread, because the sugar content is lower. But sugar is, you know, it's part of cakes, it's part of ice cream, it's part of life. So you can't just avoid it completely.

33:15But just try not to have things which are high sugar in them, because then you have a sugar spike, and then you just get a kind of crash afterwards, and then you can feel tired. And that's not good for you. Have you come with nutritional advice that has become mainstream that you would like to abolish altogether, that you would not recommend anybody to adhere to? I don't, I just don't like demonising foods. So I'm always surprised when people talk about, I've cut out, you know, I've cut out carbohydrates. I don't know why you would cut out carbohydrates. You know, people who are very anti-sugar don't eat fruit.

33:50Why on earth would you not eat fruit? Because, you know, fruit is good for you. So anything that's demonising a food group, then I think, I mean, apart from fizzy drinks, which I think should be demonised. so high sugar fizzy drinks are not good for us um but apart from that most things can be eaten drunk in moderation i want to talk directly to the person that is listening to this that right now is cutting on carbohydrates particularly in the ramp up to summer because i know a lot of people are in that journey what would you tell them so if they cut carbohydrates out of their everyday life and diet what's going to happen to them at a psychological level um they are going to start craving them so if you've decided i'm not going to eat pasta rice and bread and you put that you know on one side and you're going to demonize that then that might work in the short term one one it makes it quite hard to snack because that's what a lot of snack foods are and that's not a bad thing not to snack but those foods there are a mainstay of so many of the different ways that we eat, that ultimately you're going to be building them up as being the things that you want.

35:01So you crave the things that you can't have and you don't have them for a certain amount of time and then you start to crave them. So when you give in, which you will do, then you'll probably eat more of those than you would have done in the past. But also we need carbohydrates. We need carbohydrates in our body. They're a good source of energy. They have other things in them. You know, they're not just carbohydrate. No food is just this one thing. you know it has other things in it it has fiber in it it has minerals in it it has vitamins in it and so if we cut it out we're missing out on all those other things um and you know then you think why am I doing this I'm doing it so that I can take my clothes off on a beach walk around in clothes so people can look at me and feel better about myself well is that a really good aim you know that you could just get a bit more naked on a beach and feel better about yourself that's a short-term aim maybe you need to feel better about yourself for how you look now and live with that and be a bit kinder to yourself about how you are looking so I suppose I'm a big believer in kindness to yourself and being compassionate to yourself and if you're setting yourself these unattainable goals you probably will fail and then what happens then then you feel rubbish and then you criticize yourself and then you're on a cycle of sort of downward spiral of being critical of who you are and that's not good for any of us a lot of people right now are doing what is called cheat meals or cheat days so for a particular meal they eat whatever they want in abundance whether it's the fizzy bad drinks that you've mentioned or the junk food and then they don't do it for a prolonged period of time but on that particular meal or that particular day they are all in what are the psychological impacts of this and the physiological impacts too yeah i mean the idea of a cheat you know i mean food has been branded forever as good or bad or healthy unhealthy or treats or you know cheating foods or and that the idea of cheat is so filled with shame and guilt and denial that living your life like that in the longer term can't be good for you psychologically because you're indulging yourself then you're feeling shame and you know grim the following day so that's going to come with with negativity so the day after a cheat day if you've eaten all the foods that you've told yourself not to eat on that day maybe you get some pleasure from it the following day you're going to feel unpleasant and guilty and grimy and grubby and then you're going to be critical of yourself so that's not good psychologically and I suppose that that cycle that spiralling or that kind of living your life up and down isn't good for you either psychologically because it's not it's not a calm way of being is it there's going to be a build-up to a cheat day which is going to be a craving so as the days come up towards the cheat day you're going to be craving on the cheat day you indulge yourself the days after the cheat day you're going to be built with shame and then before you know it you're going to be back in denial and back into craving again and that doesn't feel particularly healthy um but also if you don't want to put those foods into your bodies because they're unhealthy foods why would you cram them in to your body anyway you know why would you i don't know drink loads and loads of fizzy drinks which are full of sugar and phosphates you know those phosphates make our bones thin so why is that a treat fizzy drinks make our bones thin fizzy drinks often have phosphates in them so if you look on the label they have phosphates in them and phosphates decalcify your bones that are very strongly linked to osteoporosis so particularly in your teenage years up to about the age of 25 we're loading our bones full of calcium if we drink lots of fizzy drinks and those phosphates stop the calcium going into our bones and cause osteoporosis so why is that a treat I don't understand why treat to your body would be doing something to your body that's not good for it you know a treat to your body should be going for a walk or fresh air or you know laughing or dancing or seeing your friends or you know having a moderately balanced meal that's the kind of treat i'd like to talk about diagnosis i think the majority of us when it comes to food disorders we only know the two most common ones so either obesity or anorexia Can you describe to me all the in-between?

39:23And yeah, all the in-between, please. Thank you. Well, there's many, many, many ways that you can have a problem with eating behavior. So you can obviously be overweight, you can be obese, or you can be a normal healthy-ish weight, or you can be underweight. So that's your physical body. And then on top of that, you can have different ways of thinking about food, which can be disordered in many ways. So you can think about food in that you overeat too much and food becomes a preoccupation. So you eat it or food becomes a preoccupation. So you don't eat it. And it's that preoccupation with food, which is on the spectrum, which then causes anxiety or levels of depression or lowers your self-esteem or cause guilt or shame.

40:07And it's that emotions attached to food. And that's what can cause a problem. So, you know, there's binge eating disorder. there's eating disorders no not really specified ednos it's called there's orthorexia where people are becoming super super concerned about being super healthy but underlying it all really is about an anxiety with food which then results in either overeating or undereating and for lots of people it's just woven into their daily lives so it won't be diagnosed because you don't have the physical manifestations of an eating disorder but underneath it all you have a issue with food because it's making you upset in your daily lives can you can you perhaps talk about that particular example and how someone that is right now listening to the episode doesn't think that they have an eating disorder but maybe they do have one so would you maybe what what would be the questions that you would ask them?

41:05I suppose if you were to go into a social situation with your friends or your family and you couldn't entirely control what, when and how much you ate in that social situation, would that be a problem for you? And would it therefore make you avoid that social situation? So are your concerns about food impacting upon your relationships with others? so obviously if you live you know if you live on your own and you eat on your own then you probably don't quite recognize that you have a problem because you're so able to do exactly what you want when you want but if that then spills out and is detrimental to the rest of your life then that's starting to have a problem and maybe you've got to a point where you don't eat socially any longer or you manage to avoid social situations but then think why is that and that's because I I can't eat what I want, when I want, how much I want, when I'm with other people.

42:04And that feels to me that that's worrying because it's having a negative impact on how you live your life. Is there a particular growing trend on a specific eating disorder? At the moment, I mean, I think the one I've probably come across the most more recently is orthorexia, as well as anorexia and binge eating disorder, but is orthorexia. I mean, in my career, I've talked a lot of nutritionists and dietitians, and they are super healthy in a way that I sometimes think is a bit worrying. So they know, you know, every single calorie, every single nutrition value of everything that they eat, and they're very watchful of it.

42:48And because of that, food has become a bit demonised. So I suppose that's the one that's kind of increasing at the moment in my sphere in the world that I live in and that is worrying because it's obviously good to be healthy so the messaging that you want to get out there is to be healthy but you don't want to be healthy in such a way that it's actually psychologically not healthy and it's always that mind-body balance you know put food into your body which is healthy but don't be so obsessed with what your food you put into your body that it's no longer psychologically healthy because it's creating anxiety.

43:20Do typically both men and women suffer from the same type of eating disorders? I think it's expressed in different ways. So I suppose stereotypically women have always wanted to control their body to make it smaller. So there's been very much a concern around taking up space. And I suppose, you know, that's where the sort of fat as a feminist issue came from in the early 80s was that women make themselves physically smaller so that they aren't taking up space because they don't feel that they have the right to take up space. So a lot of that's been around being smaller. For men, it's been around creating the body beautiful.

43:59So, you know, body image issues can be about not attaining, you know, the perfect jaw or the perfect muscular body or the perfect six pack. So it's not necessarily about being smaller, but it's about subscribing to some kind of body ideal. and often that can be about being bigger but that very much kind of varies with the fashions I suppose so in the 1980s 1990s particularly around kind of HIV epidemic when people are scared of being thin then the body beautiful for men was to get bigger to show that they were healthy and they were super fit whereas now I think that kind of super muscular body is now changing but it's about perfection in other ways.

44:40What is the relationship in between our definition of beauty from an aesthetical perspective, from a physical point of view and being healthy? Are they the same thing? If we see someone in the beach with a six pack, does that mean that that person is physically healthy? Absolutely not. So you can eat rubbish, you can get no fresh air, you can do very little exercise apart from making sure that you have a six-pack and you can look on the outside as if you are you know muscular and supposedly healthy but on the inside you might not be healthy at all there was a study which was done a long long time ago after the Vietnam war when there was a lot of young men who obviously dying because of the war and they looked at their cardiovascular systems and they were shocked at how young 19 year old men who on the outside who were soldiers look physically fit on the inside already have the beginnings of cardiovascular disease.

45:35So the relationship between outside and inside is not a clear one at all. In the same way that somebody who looks overweight or can look a bit chubby can actually be quite fit and quite healthy if they're doing exercise and they're eating the right kinds of foods. So no, it's a mistake to think that how we look on the outside reflects what's going on inside in our bodies physically. but then again also you know emotionally so because somebody looks well on the outside doesn't mean to say that they are well on the inside

46:08let's talk solutions if someone feels stuck in a cycle of dieting and guilt and they feel emotionally dysregulated and the relationship with food it's not great where should they start um one self-awareness I think is a good thing. So I'm a great believer in writing, journaling, keeping a diary, you know, somehow of kind of record keeping so that you keep an awareness of where you are in your life and what cycles you're in, what the triggers are in your life and how things are making you feel. So write things down and get some kind of insight into what's making you feel unhappy. And then I think the best time to make a change is when something naturally changes in your life.

46:56So we're all creatures of habit and we all get stuck in our routines and our rituals and our daily lives feed the way that we feel about ourselves. But then there are times when we're sort of ready for a change. And I think of these as being like teachable moments or epiphanies, or just when things have been kind of shaken up. But things like, you know, coming back from a holiday, things are different. That's the time to make a change. Moving flat, things are different. Having a new relationship, breaking up with the relationship, starting a new job, having a new commute, just something that's changed already.

47:29Life throws things at us, which brings about the possibility for change. And because of that, then is the time to think right now, actually, I'm going to grab this moment. This can be my epiphany, and I'm going to try and reinvent myself. and that makes it a lot easier to change when other things around you are changing. So watch yourself, find that moment to change. And then I think the ways to do things are to make small manageable changes. Don't radically reinvent yourself, but have a look and think, what can I build into my life to make my life a healthier life? And the other thing is often to add things rather than try and take things away.

48:11So, you know, frame things in a positive way. So I'm going to add in more healthy eating. I'm going to add in more fresh air. I'm going to add in more exercise. I'm going to add in more time to spend with my friends. And that kind of positive framing of the things to do more of is much easier to stick with than trying to take things out and tell yourself what I'm not going to do. If I've just finished my meal, lunch or dinner, And then I see myself within the next 30 minutes opening the fridge five different times and just looking at the fridge, staring at it, not grabbing anything because I'm confronting myself.

48:44Should I eat? Should I not eat? Because I've just had lunch or I've just had dinner. What would you advise people to do in that moment? Leave the house, go for a walk, listen to music, dance around, distract yourself in whatever ways that you can distract yourself. But also, what have you just eaten that wasn't enough? So are you trying to restrict yourself in that meal? And if you are, next time you cook that meal, you need to cook more, make more, so that you're not feeling deprived. You're feeling deprived for some reason. So that meal didn't tick the box that you wanted it to tick. It might not have ticked it nutritionally.

49:19You might be underfeeding yourself, but it might not have ticked the box emotionally either. So you might have chosen something which doesn't match kind of what you actually need. But, you know, that's also the problem from, you know, working from home, from eating in spaces which aren't designated eating spaces. So, you know, if you're working from home and here is your desk and that's where you have your lunch and there is your fridge, then you finish your lunch, you look up and the fridge is still there and you're still working at your desk and you haven't kind of moved away from it. Whereas if your desk is over here and this is where you have lunch, you come down here, you sit at your designated eating space, you have your lunch, shut the fridge door, or go back to your office, and then lo and behold, you're not being triggered by food any longer to then think, what else should I be eating?

50:07So keep food separate. So I think we need eating spaces in our lives, which we then go to and then we can move away from. That's so interesting. I want to quickly revisit something you've mentioned. So I've experienced myself that sometimes when I eat low-calorie types of foods, like low-fat yogurt or low-calorie yogurt, things like that. Even if I'm perhaps eating more because there's less calories in it, then I feel less satisfied. Does this make sense? Yeah, no, absolutely. So I think there's two things going on there. One is that the labeling makes us feel deprived. So some foods are naturally, you know, if you buy an apple, an apple doesn't say on it low calorie, it doesn't say on it low fat, it's just an apple.

50:54So we eat the apple expecting it to be the apple. if we buy the food which is called the low calorie version it's got low fat on it low whatever written on it and that then changes our expectations of it so we feel a bit deprived so yogurt should be yogurt you've taken something out to make it low fat and so therefore we feel psychologically deprived um so my advice would always be to eat low fat foods but don't eat foods which are cool low fat because then they set up this kind of paradoxical effect and often to be honest with you the foods which are called low fat have a load of sugar added to them so they have something else in them that they shouldn't have so you're better off just eating the yogurt which is called yogurt and not getting all those kind of other other things that are in there um so if it should be a fatty food eat the fatty version if it should be a sugary food eat the sugar version but don't have them unless you don't want don't need them and don't deprive yourself by watching watching that label so I think that's that's quite problematic so there is definitely an expectancy effect that goes on and so we feel deprived because of the label if we're at a lunch or dinner and we see ourselves overeating and for some reason we can't control ourselves what would you advise us to do in that particular moment because the food is still there um I mean if you want to if you if you should eat less because you are really overeating then you know you can drink water you can take yourself away from the situation you can push the food away you can try and put a boundary around it um but if you've just stuck yourself on a silly diet which is telling yourself not to eat it then I think just be kind to yourself in that moment and, you know, let it go, really.

52:44It's just one meal. It's not the end of the day. You're not a bad person. You don't have to feel guilty or shamed about it. It's just a meal in the day and you can sort it out later on. It's fine. What's one thing people should stop doing if they want to have a healthy relationship with food? I suppose they should just stop beating themselves up about it. You know, just be kind to yourself. Life is long. you know, I mean, you're 30, I'm 60. Life goes fast and it's short and long at the same time. And we've got a lot of life to be led, but also it goes very quickly. And you just want to live a nice life from year to year to year.

53:28So it's food is what it is. Our bodies are what they are. There's so much more to life than that. You know, we're living in a world where dreadful things are happening all the time. take perspective, look outwards and then feel grateful for what you've got. But be kind to yourself, really. You know, it shouldn't be that big a problem. And there's so many other things to love and so much joy to be found and fun to be had. Try and focus on all of that. Is there anything else about food and our relationship with it that we didn't talk about that we should talk about? I suppose the thing that I would like to talk about as well is the way that we interact with others around food.

54:12So I am interested in this kind of idea of how food is situated in relationships between people. And a bit we talked about earlier on about being a feeder. But I think that in dynamics, food is not only our relationship with food that matters, but it's our relationship with other people and how food sits between people. So within couples, particularly, or within households or within families, then food kind of sits in the middle of those relationships. And sometimes if a person tries to change their behaviour, it disrupts that relationship. And I think that's really interesting. So, you know, if I was living with you and you said to me, I'm going to stop having breakfast, and our thing was to have breakfast together, that would be your change, but it would impact upon me.

54:59And that sort of triggers a system change. And what people sometimes do is they sabotage each other. And I do find that really interesting. So we don't like it when the people that we are with make changes to their behaviour because it impacts upon us. And that's when people can try and overfeed someone else so they can sabotage their attentions to be healthy. And then the other thing which I also think is really interesting is the way that we collude with each other in relationships. So if I make bad decisions, then a good friend will say you're making bad decisions. Don't do that. But most friends don't.

55:35We just collude with each other. So food sits there between us all and can change our relationships. And when that happens, things happen in relationships to try and maintain the status quo. I've seen something similar within my family context, but also with friends. So one of us is on a diet, which we have agreed that it's not something you would advise because it has a beginning and an end. And we need to make life changes, lifestyle changes, but they're on a diet because I want to lose weight. And then maybe the people around this person are not too happy about this person's choices because not necessarily in relation to the fact that this diet is going to happen our dear friend or our dear family member, but because of how it makes us feel about ourselves.

56:20and I've seen that maybe some negative comments are thrown at that person. What should we do in those moments? So if you're A, either the person that unfortunately has these maybe negative thoughts and you're projecting your own insecurities into this person that is trying to drive some meaningful change into their lives. So that's one question. And the second question is if you are on the receiving end of this criticism, what should we do? I mean, talking about it really is just, you have to kind of deal with the conflict, I suppose. So, you know, because we collude with each other in relationships and because we basically want everything to be nice all the time, that we become quite conflict avoidant.

56:57And sometimes you have to say, no, actually, I am trying to look after myself. You know, I'm trying to eat well. I'm trying to build a better relationship with food. I know that you don't find this easy because it's changing things. But I need to do this for me and you need to help me help myself. And I can see what you're doing. and it's not necessarily a criticism of them because they might not even know they're consciously doing it. You know, so if you say, I don't know, say for example, you decided to go to the gym and then you say, oh, I can't bother to go to the gym today because I'm a bit tired.

57:29Then partners will say, yes, that's, oh great, stay at home and we'll watch a film. That's collusion. And they shouldn't. They should say, no, actually you should go to the gym because it will make you feel better. But they don't, we collude with each other. So you have to pick them up on that and say, actually, can you be a better friend by not colluding with me and try and help me be the better version of myself. And again, with sabotage, say, actually, you're undermining me. And I know you don't mean it from being unkind, but the kind thing is to help me be the better version of myself. It's all about talking, really.

58:00I mean, that sounds quite obvious, doesn't it? But it's just about talking to each other. This is how it makes me feel. And I know you're not trying to be cruel, but, you know, for my sake, can you be kind to me, but by helping me do what I want to do? Yeah. I agree with you. Sometimes communication is not as easy as it seems. I once went to visit a friend of mine. He lives in Germany and we wanted to work out in the morning, early in the morning. And for some reason, we sort of like needed to snuck out the house where his parents lived because his parents don't work out on a regular basis. And then it would make them feel bad with themselves if we're doing it and they're not doing it.

58:39And then my friend also didn't want to eat things like Nutella on that particular trip, but because his parents were around and were grown up adults, right? But he was eating Nutella in front of them just to sort of please them. And I feel like that's something that can happen in different contexts. And your advice would be to just have an open conversation with whoever it is that is making him feel uncomfortable with him. Yeah, no, absolutely. And it's not a criticism. I mean, they're not being mean necessarily. They don't even know they're being mean. They probably think they're being kind. a lot of the time people think they are being kind but um you know there's a whole phrase isn't there killing with kindness that we can be kind to people but actually it's in there it's not in their best interests but yeah to have those conversations and say look you know i'm trying to take care of myself and be the best version of myself i can be can you help me because then it can be very wrong if you're hiding yourself your true self from the people that you love so you're working out in secret or eating things behind their backs or not eating things behind their backs yeah yeah and that's far worse from a psychological perspective right yeah no that's right and that's not a very honest way to live your life is it um and also the chances are then you know if my children were doing that to me pretending not to be themselves in front of me i wouldn't see them as much and i want to see them so i'd much rather they felt they could be honest in front of me then i would have a better relationship with them and as a parent what would you do in those circumstances so if your kids are doing something that is not something you agree with?

1:00:03I would try and find a way of saying it. I mean, I talk a lot about sideways talking, and I think sideways talking is a really good way of dealing with difficult situations. So it's much easier to bring up difficult situations or conversations when you're going for a walk, or when you're in the car and you're going for a drive, or, you know, when you're cooking side by side and side by side conversations are great moments to talk about difficult things over dinner opposite each other is quite hard because there's nowhere to go and it can feel quite confrontational but when you're walking along and you're looking at the scenery and you're listening to the birds then all sorts of stuff can be said and it's a much easier way to have conversations which can be quite tricky interesting so you would not advise anybody to talk to their parents or that one friend in a meeting format or setting so it's not like you need to book it like today at 3 p.m i'd like to have a serious conversation with you about food like you wouldn't have okay so we should be doing like something else people dig their heels in if you do that because if you feel challenged then you're going to get angry and then you're going to dig your heels in and you're not going to be open to listening to it and i mean the other thing you know i think side-by-side conversations are great and then also often on the back of something else so you wait for the right moment so you don't say, I mean, you can do, I need to say something.

1:01:20That's fine if you've got that kind of relationship. But otherwise, you know, watching the telly together and something comes up on the telly, then that's the moment to have that conversation because it's in the context of something that's happened outside. And then the other person is much more likely to hear and listen and take it on board than they are to get angry and cross and just reject you. Thank you. My last question to you is the following. If you had to compress all your knowledge into one essential piece of advice, only one that we must implement in our daily lives, what would it be?

1:01:55I think be kind to yourself, really, and don't set your expectations too high. Don't expect them too low. Have a good enough principle for everything. And just remember that your mind and body are so intricately linked that you can't look after one without looking after the other. So be kind to yourself in terms of what you put into your body, but how you feel about what you put into your body as well. And aim for something which is kind of good enough and sustainable into the longer term. Thank you so much. As I was sharing with you earlier, I have a special connection to this conversation because I've had my own personal eating disorders that I struggled with when I was younger.

1:02:42And right now I feel a different version of myself. And the reason why I wanted to have this conversation with you today on the podcast is, well, you're one of the leading voices in this topic, but because when I was struggling with my own eating disorders, or I would call them with my unhealthy relationship with food, I found that there was a lack of knowledge out there. And there was very complicated advice out there, which made it very hard for me to understand if A, I had a problem, and then B, if I have a problem, what is it that I need to do? I think right now we grow up in environments at an educational level, whether it's school or university, in which they teach us very important things about life, but they don't teach us the one thing that we do on a daily basis, which is eating.

1:03:25This is something that we're going to do multiple times a day. And we're not developing a healthy relationship with it because there is no science-backed advice. Our parents are teaching us how to develop this relationship with food, but they are not experts. And they are also probably struggling with their own relationships with food. so I really enjoyed our conversation I thank you for coming for your time for sharing your wisdom your knowledge I'm very sure that this is going to resonate deeply with much of our audience and I'd love to have the opportunity to have this conversation again perhaps in the future because the world of food and nutrition and our relationship with it is evolving very quickly no fabulous thank you for asking me it's been brilliant do ask me back thank you

1:04:11you