In part two of our ANEW Insight conversation, psychologist and overeating specialist Dr. Glenn Livingston walks us through the playbook behind his method and book, Defeat Your Cravings. If part one told the “why,” this chapter is all “how.” We cover the smallest possible habit that flips identity, the exact breathing protocol that de-automates urges, how to spot the half-truths cravings whisper, and why guilt and shame often exist to drive the next binge—not prevent it. We also examine the modern food environment that hijacks our survival brain and how to regain agency without all-or-nothing rules.
Start Tiny to Change Identity (Not Just Behavior)
Glenn’s program begins with one low-bar, winnable rule—something you could and would keep on your worst day:
- “I’ll put my gym clothes out before bed.”
- “I’ll put my fork down between bites.”
- “I’ll only have pretzels at Major League baseball stadiums.”
Why so small? Because consistency triggers what he calls the identity function: repeat a tiny behavior and your self-story shifts from “I should” to “I am.” Identity then starts to drive more choices with less white-knuckling. In his words: set bars you can clear even when you don’t have your mojo.
Create a Tripwire: Bifurcate the Thoughts
Once a simple rule is in place, use it as a tripwire:
- Aligned thoughts (“I’ll honor the rule”) = your higher self.
- Break-the-rule thoughts (“Start tomorrow, you deserve this”) = the primitive survival voice (call it your “food monster,” “pig,” or simply “lower brain”).
Naming the voice isn’t the point; noticing it is. You can’t intervene on autopilot.
The 7-11 Breath: Tell Your Brain There’s No Emergency
Cravings feel urgent because the survival system thinks food equals life. Glenn’s first intervention is physiological:
- Inhale for 7 counts,
- Exhale for 11 counts,
- Repeat several cycles.
Longer exhales cue the parasympathetic (calming) system and de-automate the urge so your reasoning can come back online.
Expose the Half-Truth (and the Bigger Lie)
Craving thoughts are persuasive because they mix truth with fiction:
- Half-truth: “Weight is genetic.”
- Bigger lie: “Therefore, nothing you do matters.”
Respond skillfully: acknowledge the kernel of truth (genetics influence risk), then rebut the lie (daily choices still dominate outcomes). This turns debate energy into aligned action.
Reconnect to Your “Big Why” (and Check Real Needs)
With calm restored, ask:
- “What outcome would make me proud if I keep this rule for a year?”
- “What do I actually need right now?”
- Sometimes it’s nutrition (protein, fiber, healthy fats, hydration).
- Sometimes it’s a break, a walk, sunlight, or human contact.
One physician Glenn coached realized she didn’t need the gas-station chocolate; she needed the same break minus the bar.
What 40,000 People Revealed About Stress and Snack Types
In Glenn’s large survey, stressors loosely correlated with go-to foods:
- Chocolate → loneliness/broken-hearted, low mood.
- Crunchy/salty snacks (chips, pretzels) → work stress.
- Soft/chewy starches (bread, pasta, pizza) → home stress.
They’re not destiny, but they’re useful clues. If you’re reaching for chips, is there unresolved work tension? If you want bread or pasta, is something at home feeling heavy?
Shame Is a Setup for the Next Binge: Commit Perfectly, Forgive Dignified
After slips, many hear an inner critic: “You’re hopeless. Start over tomorrow.” Glenn argues that voice exists to make you feel too weak to resist more. Instead:
- Commit like an Olympic archer when aiming at the next choice.
- When you miss, analyze how much and why, extract the lesson, and convert guilt into responsibility. Your brain releases the guilt once it trusts you learned how not to “touch that hot stove” again.
You’re not alone, and you’re not broken.
The Modern Food Environment: Why “Mindful Chips” Is an Oxymoron
From Glenn’s former industry vantage point, ultra-processed products are engineered to keep you eating:
- “Variety impulse” exploitation: micro-flavor shifts across batches keep you chasing the next bite.
- Plausible deniability: labels like “with avocado oil” can silence scrutiny while the overall item remains ultra-processed.
- Packaging & additives: design and certain chemicals can dull satiety signals and nudge overeating.
- Vitamin “theater”: money moves to packaging and claims rather than nutrition density.
Bottom line: The more ultra-processed food you eat, the more you’ll crave it. Mindfulness still matters—but it’s an uphill battle against products built to bypass it.
Practical Navigation in a Processed World
- Know your kryptonite. You might be fine with kettle fries but not chocolate—or vice versa.
- Choose “closer to the ground.” Restaurant or homemade versions, air-fried potatoes, or a simple ingredient list beat ultra-processed analogs.
- Don’t vilify foods; compare effects. Notice how your body and mood respond to the chain-pizza versus homemade. Use your own data to decide what belongs in regular rotation.
- Behavioral > grand overhauls. Tiny, daily, science-based habits outlast heroic sprints.
Where Glenn and I Completely Align
We use different words, but the engine is the same:
- Pause the urge, calm the nervous system.
- Name the pattern, spot the half-truth, reconnect to values.
- Pick sustainable behaviors that build identity, not shame.
- Favor real food, yet allow room for pleasure and culture.
- Design for the day you have no mojo. That’s the day your system proves itself.
Try This 5-Minute “Craving Reset” Today
- Name one low-bar rule (e.g., “Fork down between bites,” or “Chocolate only after dinner on weekends”).
- When a craving hits, do three 7-11 breaths.
- Label the thought: “This is the lower brain talking.”
- Spot the half-truth and disarm the lie in one sentence each.
- Choose one aligned action (a glass of water, 5-minute walk, protein snack, or simple wait-out).
- Log one sentence about what helped. Identity grows where you place attention.
Key Takeaways
- Start tiny. Low-bar habits flip identity and compound.
- Use rules as tripwires, not prisons. The goal is awareness and pause.
- Calm first, then choose. The 7-11 breath de-automates urges.
- Half-truths drive binges. Acknowledge what’s true; reject the lie.
- Processed food is engineered to win. Tilt the field back with simpler, closer-to-whole options.
- Replace shame with analysis. Commit perfectly; forgive with dignity.
- Personal data beats dogma. Compare how foods feel in your body and decide accordingly.
👉 Listen to the full conversation on the ANEW Insight Podcast.
👉 Start your own transformation with the Deprogram Diet Culture course.
👉 Prefer to dive deeper with a book? Get Deprogram Diet Culture.
Here is the Full transcript:
20250416 Dr. Glenn Livingston Part 2
Dr. Supatra Tovar: [00:00:00] Welcome back to the ANEW Insight podcast. We’re back for the second half of our interview with overeating specialist and psychologist, Dr. Glenn Livingston. Glenn gave us some really invaluable insight into his history with overeating, how he was able to overcome that, and what inspired his eighth book, you guys, his eighth book.
Dr. Supatra Tovar: So Dr. Glenn, welcome back.
Dr. Glenn Livingston: I liked to write. Thank you for having me. Thank you for having me back.
Dr. Supatra Tovar: Yes. So give me a picture of the structure of Defeat your Cravings. Kind of give me the overview of what people can glean from the book, and then we’re gonna go into some more specifics and veer off into other areas.
Dr. Glenn Livingston: You would start with one simple rule and [00:01:00] I, let me just say that in the book itself, there are a lot of ways to address concerns over rules, and I know that probably a lot of people listening will have concerns over rules, but let’s just assume you can get over that. I’d have you start with one simple rule. This is something that you could and would do that wouldn’t be too burdensome, but will really let you know that you’re moving the ship in the right direction. I’ll never go back for seconds again. Or I’ll always put my fork down between bites. Or I’ll only have pretzels at Major League baseball, stadiums, something like that. Or I always put my gym clothes out before I go to bed. You want a low bar because what most people tend to do is set up a whole diet with high bars, a difficult thing to do ’cause they really want to get the weight off fast. And besides the fact that puts you in a feast and famine environment and your brain’s going to want to hoard food the moment that you break, it, it’s also difficult to maintain. It’s [00:02:00] easy to maintain when you have your mojo. But one day you’re gonna wake up without your mojo and just not feel like it. And if you have a low bar, then you can jump over it when you don’t have your mojo as well as when you do. The reason that’s important is that you trigger what we might call the identity function. if you see yourself putting your gym clothes out every night before you go to bed, after a month, you’re gonna start saying to myself, I must be someone who wants to go to the gym. I must be someone who wants to go to the gym. I wonder what else someone who wants to go to the gym might do. Before you know it, you’re drinking a little more water or doing a couple of pushups before you go to bed, or you know, actually going to the gym and you’ve got this. If you’ve got this identity that really directs your behavior. Identity is a collection of character traits. A character trait is nothing more than what you do at the moment of temptation habitually. So you’re developing this as a personality so that you don’t have to white knuckle it all the time. This is just who I am. [00:03:00] Ask people, could you give up chocolate forever? Absolutely not. You ask them, could you become a person who doesn’t need chocolate? They’ll say, maybe. Really interesting. So once you have that one simple rule in place, you use it to bifurcate your thoughts. So any thought that suggests that you will follow the rule is your higher self or you, any rule that suggests that you’re going to break the rule. Any thought that suggests you’re gonna break the rule is your lower self or your food monster, or your inner pig or whatever you wanna call it. It sounds kind of silly it. If you don’t know when these thoughts are active, then you don’t know when you have to take action. And so setting up this kind of an alarm makes all the difference in the world. Once you set up that bifurcation, then you start to listen for that rebellious part of you to this is what we want.
Dr. Glenn Livingston: We wanna stimulate that rebellious part. You start to listen for what it might be saying. When you hear it say something [00:04:00] like, come On. It’s genetic. Your parents were fat, so you’re doomed. You say, wait a minute, that’s not me. That’s my inner pig. Let me take a breath. Let me breathe in for a kind of seven and out for a count of 11.
Dr. Glenn Livingston: I’m not doing it now ’cause it takes some time. But that helps to get you into your, relaxed self, into your parasympathetic nervous system. Another way of saying that is that it tells your brain that there is no emergency. Overeating is your brain thinking that you know, binging is gonna keep you alive. That chocolate bar is gonna keep you alive, that there’s an emergency that it has it right now. That’s what people feel like they’re not there. That’s why they feel like it’s so automatic. So we’re trying to de automate that. So you breathe in for a kind of seven and out for a count of 11. that works is that if you were being chased by a hungry bear, you’d be going like, and you wouldn’t have time to breathe out for longer than you breathed in. So we call those 7 11 breaths, and Lori Hammond taught me that. Then [00:05:00] what you wanna do is ask yourself, how is the pig lying to me?
Dr. Glenn Livingston: It usually lies. Tells you a half truth to be seductive, and then there’s a bigger lie. the half truth here might be, there is a genetic component to obesity. As a matter of fact, it’s pretty high. Diet and But dietstyle factors are more important,
Dr. Supatra Tovar: Absolutely.
Dr. Glenn Livingston: Right? And besides, if I was dealt a bad hand of cards, does that mean that I should give up and get as fat as I can? Or should I play like the hand of cards the best that I possibly could? So you ask why is the pig wrong and you acknowledge the true part of it so you don’t waste energy trying to fight the truth. Then you take another 7 11 breath. You should be feeling calmer at this point. You should be feeling less interested in overeating. And you say, well, what would make me feel happier or like a better person if I stayed with my rule right now? And usually you’ve set this up [00:06:00] beforehand and kind of run through an exercise to figure out what would happen in a year if you could stay with this rule.
Dr. Glenn Livingston: And you really kind of believe in the value of this rule But for argument’s sake, let’s say, if I if I don’t have chocolate on a weekday or yeah, if I don’t have chocolate on a weekday and I do that for a year, then, I’ll probably be at least 20 pounds thinner and I’ll have less worries about cardiovascular disease and diabetes and kidney problems, and my skin will be clearer and my, immune problems will be gone. And I’ll feel proud of myself. I’ll be able to be present without obsessing about food all the time. You kind of connect to your big, why. You connect to the reason that you’re doing all this in the first place. Take another 7 11 breath and then ask yourself, do I need to eat something like there, a lot of times the pig will present it as, look, you can have this chocolate bar or you’re gonna starve. And that’s what overeating is about. You can say, you know [00:07:00] what? I don’t have to have that chocolate bar and I still don’t have to starve. So maybe, maybe I need a green smoothie or maybe maybe I need some protein or maybe I need some fat or whatever it is.
Dr. Glenn Livingston: Whatever your dietary philosophy is. Sometimes you need to eat. Sometimes you just need a break. I worked with this doctor one time and she used to, drive over to the convenience store to have a chocolate bar at work ’cause she was just overwhelmed. And I said, well, why don’t you just take the same amount of time for a break? And it hadn’t occurred to her because her pig was saying. No, the chocolate bar is what’s keeping us alive is not the break.
Dr. Glenn Livingston: So ask yourself, what do you authentically need at that time?
Dr. Supatra Tovar: Good.
Dr. Glenn Livingston: Yeah. And that’s that’s the essence of the technique that we use.
Dr. Supatra Tovar: Oh, I love that. And I think that we are in alignment on a lot of that, even though you’re using the word rule, for me, it’s not about a rule, but it is about, increasing that self-awareness in the moment that you are, experiencing the craving. If you were to [00:08:00] just slow down for a second and really analyze what’s going on in the moment what’s what is that trigger?
Dr. Supatra Tovar: What is that distress that’s coming up for you? And then really, truly asking your body. What do I need? As opposed to what necessarily food. It could be food and it could be something along the lines of chocolate, or it could be, something that you’re, some nutrition that your body needs.
Dr. Supatra Tovar: But just taking that moment, calming yourself down, allows you to have even more of that self-awareness so that you can meet your needs. Maybe not in the same way that you were doing before. Maybe in a more healthful way. So I think that is so powerful. And I’m sure you te tell me a little bit more about the study you conducted that maybe brought you to these conclusions.
Dr. Supatra Tovar: You, you saw 40,000 people, which is
Dr. Glenn Livingston: Right. That was a long, that was a long time. Well, I didn’t see them. I did a survey with [00:09:00] 40,000
Dr. Supatra Tovar: Yeah.
Dr. Glenn Livingston: people.
Dr. Supatra Tovar: But tell us about that and what were the results of that study.
Dr. Glenn Livingston: That’s what led to that conversation with my mom. intercepted 40,000 people at a time when internet clicks were cheap. And I asked them what they were feeling stressed about ’cause they were searching for stress solutions and foods did they have difficulty stopping eating when they felt stressed, and I found some correlations. People who struggled with chocolate tended to be lonely or brokenhearted or depressed. People who struggled with soft, chewy, starchy things like bread and bagels or pasta or even pizza, they tended to be stressed at home. People who struggled with crunchy, salty, snacks, they tended to be stressed at work. And I, I actually thought that was going to lead to the solution because then I just asked people what they were eating and I would kind of know what was happening. But they, there were small correlations that were significant, but they were small. [00:10:00] And I kind of stumbled into these techniques instead, which worked to sever the link rather than solving the stress problem. And then, like, I would liken it to building a really strong fireplace. if the emotions are the fire, you could work to put out the fire or examine the fire, or you could build a really strong fireplace. And I found it was faster to build the fireplace. I still think it’s really valuable to put out the fire or make it smaller. But I find that takes longer and people are less likely to be interested in doing it. It’s more valuable in the long run to do that, but most people, because it can be painful, they don’t wanna do that. So
Dr. Supatra Tovar: Right.
Dr. Glenn Livingston: why I focus where I focus.
Dr. Supatra Tovar: Well that’s so fascinating that these correlations exist, that, and I’ve seen that with my clients as well when you were kind of relaying people who are brokenhearted tend to struggle more with chocolate. People who want salty, crunchy things tend to be stressed by work and people [00:11:00] that want that kind of starchy, chewy thing struggle with things at home.
Dr. Supatra Tovar: So I’m gonna take that with me because I think that’s really interesting and I do see that correlated within the patients that I treat.
Dr. Glenn Livingston: It kind of makes sense emotionally because like, if you’re depressed or down about a romance or something, you want a little, pick me up.
Dr. Glenn Livingston: You’re stressed at work, you might wanna bite someone, say. You’re gonna chew this stuff. Please don’t bite anybody. Everybody in the audience
Dr. Supatra Tovar: Don’t bite anyone, guys.
Dr. Glenn Livingston: No biting. That’s the one rule in Dr. Supatra’s show is no
Dr. Supatra Tovar: biting.
Dr. Supatra Tovar: Yeah. Yeah. No.
Dr. Glenn Livingston: And if you’re stressed at home, you might feel like you need something to fill you up
Dr. Supatra Tovar: yes.
Dr. Supatra Tovar: to help you with the
Dr. Glenn Livingston: anxiety. So,
Dr. Supatra Tovar: Yes. Well, let’s talk about guilt and shame. Because that’s a huge part of the work that we do, and many people struggle with guilt when they deviate from eating plans. Now you have kind of the rule, and we’re gonna use, we’re gonna use that word kind of loosely because it’s a rule that these, people are [00:12:00] making for themselves.
Dr. Supatra Tovar: But what advice do you have for people who struggle when they deviate from those rules.
Dr. Glenn Livingston: So, so this is big. Okay. First of all, and just kind of a general sense about the shame. There’s nothing you’ve done with food that I haven’t done, just so you know, gone to seven different drive-throughs and nobody knows what you’re eating, taking things out of the garbage, doing things to it first and then taking it out of the garbage. There’s nothing you’ve done that other people haven’t done.
Dr. Glenn Livingston: People think they’re alone and they’re really ashamed, but they’re almost never alone. More importantly, it turns out when you really examine that shaming negative voice after you’ve had a binge, that it’s got a purpose and its purpose is to make you feel too weak to resist the next binge. Like, oh, you’re so pathetic. You can’t control yourself. might as well just, go to town, eat as much as you want, at [00:13:00] least until tomorrow, right? That’s the only thing that’s gonna make you feel better anyway. And so there’s a secondary gain associated with the guilt and shame, and I like to say the pig just wants more. That that’s what’s happening to the pig wants more. Then remember that, there are no prisons for overeaters. You’re not gonna wake up a cell with four gray walls and your new husband, Bubba because you had too many donuts. Also remember that when food is your drug of choice, you’re largely choosing to harm yourself as opposed to other people. People that drink can get behind the wheel of a car, they could mame or mutilate someone, um, at very least blow out the family finances and Is a real burden? It’s a stretch to argue that people who have too many donuts are doing that. They’re mostly hurting themselves. So I tend to find that overeaters are nicer people than drug addicts that, I mean, addict like some drug addicts also but but I tend to find that they’re just more inherently nicer people and then the [00:14:00] last thing is how can you commit with perfection, but forgive yourself with dignity? So think about an Olympic archer aiming at the target. they don’t go, maybe I’ll ahead it, or maybe I won’t. They don’t let go of the arrow. they see it going into the target, they commit with perfection.
Dr. Glenn Livingston: They purge their mind of that doubt and insecurity because it drains energy from pursuing the goal. However, when they miss, they don’t go, oh my God, I’m a pathetic archer. I might as well shoot the rest of the arrows up into the air. Right? They analyze by how much and in what direction did they miss?,
Dr. Glenn Livingston: What are the adjustments they need to make? This is why I like there to be a really clear bullseye so that you know exactly what happened and how to adjust it.
Dr. Glenn Livingston: And then you make those adjustments. You turn guilt into responsibility. You learn all you can. You absorb all the information you can from the miss, that makes it easier to let go of the guilt when you’ve turned guilt into responsibility. I think that the brain holds onto [00:15:00] guilt. As a protective mechanism I like as a survival mechanism. I think that if you touch a hot stove, your brain is gonna tell you that you’re a pathetic hot stove toucher until you analyze what happened so that you don’t touch the hot stove again. ’cause it’s worried you’re gonna get hurt again.
Dr. Glenn Livingston: Convinced that you know what to do to avoid touching that stove again, then it’s gonna let you let it go. So,
Dr. Supatra Tovar: interesting. So shame can be a self presavatory reaction if we bring consciousness to it and compassion, I would say. And I think that is so important. I also think that. And I wanna go back to your work in the food industry. I think a lot of people shame themselves unnecessarily, especially when their diet contains more of these, doctored highly processed foods that are hijacking people’s brains.
Dr. Supatra Tovar: What do you have to say about that after having worked in that industry?
Dr. Glenn Livingston: I [00:16:00] mean, first of all, my work there was 25 years ago, so this has evolved a lot since then. But there are evolutionary buttons they are really working to press something I like to call the variety impulse,
Dr. Supatra Tovar: Yeah.
Dr. Glenn Livingston: when I. When you look at a field of vegetables and fruit, right? Let’s say blueberries, red tomatoes, green lettuce, purple cabbage, yellow carrots, you’re supposed to eat the rainbow.
Dr. Glenn Livingston: So you get a diversity of micronutrients. You know this better than I do. Well in the industry they know that. And I remember talking to the vice president of marketing for a major food bar manufacturer rename nameless so I don’t get sued. And he told me that, they took the vitamins out of the bar ’cause they were expensive he they put the money into the packaging instead.
Dr. Glenn Livingston: So it would look like it had all these vitamins, so they’re preying in that impulse, but it’s predatory, there’s no, there are no [00:17:00] vitamins like that, or very few vitamins like that in there. The variety impulse also works to keep you eating if you come across a field of vegetables with slightly different tastes because you’re looking for slightly different micronutrients. So when they manufacture a bag of potato chips, it’s usually on multiple assembly lines with very slight variations in flavor. that. The second chip, your taste is gonna be just slightly different than the first one, and you’re gonna keep going.
Dr. Supatra Tovar: Wow.
Dr. Glenn Livingston: Then. Then there’s plausible deniability, which is all the brain needs in order to justify indulging like these potato chips are good for you. You see, because they’re made with avocado oil and everybody knows avocados are good and avocado oil is good. So this heated avocado in these potato chips are really good for you. That’s all the brain needs is to see a little star that says with avocado oil, and it’s not in rational evaluative mode, so it just is okay, stamp of approval and let’s go to town. Ignoring the fact that most heated oil studies show that they’re [00:18:00] carcinogenic, ignoring the fact that nobody really thinks potato chips are nutritious.
Dr. Glenn Livingston: Ignoring the fact that when you heat chips, you can eat potato chips if you want to. I think we can eat, think we can eat things that are bad for us if we want to, but. Eating things that are bad for us and thinking they’re good for us, gets us into a lot of trouble.
Dr. Supatra Tovar: Yes.
Dr. Glenn Livingston: In most studies on heating potato chips or, potatoes to that level says that they produce heterocyclic, immunes, or acrylamides.
Dr. Glenn Livingston: I.
Dr. Supatra Tovar: Yeah. Acrylamides.
Dr. Glenn Livingston: There’s no way around it. It’s not really healthy for you to have a bag of potato chips. But I would fight for your right to do it if that’s what you, if that’s what you want to do. So, I mean, and there are chemicals in some of the packaging that turn off your ability to know when you’re full. So, this is a this is an obstacle to mindfulness. Like we wanna just eat as mindful as we can. But when you’re trying to eat a bag of potato chips, mindfully, those chemicals are busy trying to interfere with your ability to be present and aware and know when you’re actually full. [00:19:00] So, yeah, and they’re all types
Dr. Supatra Tovar: So how do you help people navigate through that? Because we have, I mean, these types of products are everywhere and they’re very difficult to avoid. And do we avoid them? What do we do with highly processed food?
Dr. Glenn Livingston: You start with an awareness of which ones you can control and which ones you can’t.
Dr. Glenn Livingston: I really wanted to, I don’t really want to, but I could eat a bag of potato chips and put it down. I’m not a potato chip guy.
Dr. Glenn Livingston: I couldn’t eat a chocolate bar and put it down. My sister folds up two little pieces and puts it back into her purse and she says, I’m gonna have the rest later. I don’t understand that gimme the box and then gimme everything, behind the counter while you’re doing that. So I’m very aware of the things I can have and that I can’t have. And I find that it’s different for different people and it’s different for different substances. So some people can’t have sugar, but they can’t have flour.
Dr. Glenn Livingston: People can’t have potato chips that they can have sugar and flour.
Dr. Glenn Livingston: It’s really start with an awareness. You start with a general principle [00:20:00] the more processed food you eat, the more processed food you’re going to crave. I tell people my program is diet agnostic. I’m kind of a whole Foods plant-based person myself. but my program is diet agnostic
Dr. Glenn Livingston: If you want to eat processed foods all day, I can’t help you.
Dr. Supatra Tovar: Exactly.
Dr. Glenn Livingston: Yeah.
Dr. Glenn Livingston: I
Dr. Supatra Tovar: think it’s so important for people to understand what’s going on with the food industry so that they can make that a part of their choices. If you know they do want potato chips, there’s a variety of types of potato chips out there. You have these super ultra, highly processed, chemically altered potato chips and you may have potato chips that you make home or that you know are just straight up kettle chips that you get from a restaurant or from a deli that make them there.
Dr. Supatra Tovar: And they’re very different things. And I.
Dr. Glenn Livingston: air fryer, and
Dr. Supatra Tovar: You can get an air fryer.
Dr. Glenn Livingston: Yeah.
Dr. Supatra Tovar: Exactly. That’s why I don’t have like food [00:21:00] rules for my clients because a lot of them struggle with highly processed foods and that kind of addictive quality in them. And I recommend them. I say, we don’t need to take that off the table.
Dr. Supatra Tovar: You can eat that, but why don’t see how you feel from something that’s more closer to the ground or homemade versus that. And a lot of times people really realize the difference in when they’re really tuning into their bodies, how their bodies feel when they have something, say it’s a, pizza from one of the major chains or a homemade pizza, a very different thing.
Dr. Supatra Tovar: And that’s why I think it’s so important not to vilify foods because, people in Italy have been eating pizza forever and not necessarily struggled with weight or shape because of that. And so how can we increase people’s mindfulness, have them understand and really gauge for themselves how food feels in their bodies and
Dr. Supatra Tovar: compare them [00:22:00] so that they then can become their own best expert. And they don’t necessarily have to say, I will never eat this thing again. I don’t know if that’s realistic. I don’t think that’s necessarily, like a fun way to live, but maybe they can incorporate it into their diet in a more healthful way so that they feel the of that type of food versus highly processed foods.
Dr. Supatra Tovar: And it does sound like too, and we’re very similar on this, that, the rules that they’re making, especially if they’re behavioral, they’re based in, science based behavioral change, which is, tiny changes incorporated and put into daily routines are much more sustainable and are much more long lasting than these
Dr. Supatra Tovar: big, giant, changes or rules. So you and I think, have a lot in common and we’re aligned in a lot of ways. We just tend to use different terminology. I don’t know if I’d ever use the word pig [00:23:00] because I really love little piggies, and I think they’re adorable.
Dr. Glenn Livingston: I love little, this is not like a wild boar I know.
Dr. Supatra Tovar: No, I know. I, but I think our terminology is a little different, but we really are on the same path and the same mission to help people really increase their self-awareness become more mindful, learn how to tap into their parasympathetic nervous system, which I think is.
Dr. Supatra Tovar: Everything. Because when we are really online as opposed to offline we’re so much more in tune with our bodies and how to make these smaller changes last a lifetime so that they’re sustainable. So, Dr. Glenn I’m so glad to have met you and to know you. Please tell people how they can get ahold of you, how they can work with you, how they can find your book.
Dr. Glenn Livingston: Oh, it’s easy. It’s easy. Everything’s at the website defeatyourcravings.com and I’m delighted tohave been here defeatyourcravings.com. you Click on the big blue button, it’ll take you to a page where you can [00:24:00] sign up for the reader bonus list. You’ll get a copy of the book for free in a Kindle no PDF format, or you can get to the traditional formats for traditional charges if you want. you Also get food plan starter templates that walk you through coming up with your own food plan, or behavioral plan. And I know that it’s weird that Supatra has a doctor on with a pig inside of him. So I recorded a whole bunch of coaching sessions so you can hear what that’s like. You can hear how people go from feeling kind of desperate and confused and hopeless to feeling powerful and excited, and confident in just one session. So it’s defeatyourcravings.com. Click the big blue button.
Dr. Supatra Tovar: I love it, Dr. Glenn. I’m so proud of the work that you’re doing and how you are helping people. I think that if more of us can do this. It’s an inner work, it’s an inside job. We may not be as reliant on external sources to [00:25:00] try to get us to where we want to be in terms of our health. I think we’re headed into some real weird, dangerous, not so great territory with a lot of these weight loss medications and just this.
Dr. Glenn Livingston: Yeah.
Dr. Supatra Tovar: return to emaciation and thinness as the ideal. So the more that we can just really kind of delve in, ask ourselves the whys, and then figure out the how naturally we’re gonna see a lot more sustainable change. So I really thank you for the work that you’re doing out there.
Dr. Glenn Livingston: Thank you for having me. This was delightful, thank you.
Dr. Supatra Tovar: Yes, absolutely.
Dr. Supatra Tovar: And everybody thank you for tuning into the ANEW Insight podcast. We’re looking forward to the next exciting interview. Hopefully it’s as exciting and informative as this one, and we’ll see you next time.
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