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Losing weight should't be expensive or complicated. The ideal process would reduce our stress while driving results. Dr. Z weaves together his perspective on physical and mental health and the powerful way that fasting can connect these two spheres of our lives. Let's move toward total wellness and a holistic vision of health and healing. Learn more at SimpleFasting.com
It's that
feeling that something is missing.
Do you ever have that before?
Where? A dial.
You would turn it down one out of ten,
feeling that something is missing.
It's kind of like a little melancholy
sensation.
You're like, oh,
I don't know something else,
but we can't quite put our finger on it.
But then turn up that dial
all the way up to level ten.
Something is missing.
Doesn't that turn into the experience
of a craving?
Right. I need something else.
And I need it now.
Going to dive in on a craving.
Feeling here today.
Is this something that you ever struggle
with?
Or am I the only one
craving I was thinking of
is like a glue
I was thinking like craving.
Feeling the emotion of it
is the type of thing that can glue us
in, like us, in to a pattern.
Start to deviate from the pattern.
Then we see something is missing,
the pattern is missing,
and we feel this.
It's like gravity pulling us back,
the glue keeping us in the routine
so it can be good or bad, right?
We'd say, well, don't judge
a craving necessarily.
I had a craving just yesterday,
but it was good.
I wanted to go for a run.
It was a beautiful day in
Madison and I am a runner
and I haven't been running too much
as in this season.
And it was just that crisp, cool,
but still kind of warm fall and leaves
coming down in the sun.
And I said, I've got to get out
for even a tiny little bit.
So let's look at craving in our life.
How do we want the things?
How do our cravings transform them
into good things that help us to be moving
in the healthiest direction?
Look at cravings
that we say are not really serving us.
Where does something like that come from?
We're going to try to dive deep into it
with some thinking
from this beautiful
book, Atomic Habits James Clear,
giving us an easy and proven way
to build good habits and break bad ones.
I would at least say it's a way.
Is it easy?
Well,
maybe it depends on your point of view,
but I will say let's keep an open mind.
We try to make it as easy as possible.
That's the goal fasting space.
We're here in this space, this moment.
If we're starting our day.
If you're here with me, live. Welcome.
So nice to have you here.
And if you are catching us on the replay
some other time.
Hey, whenever you are listening,
take a moment,
dial in the mindset with me
and we will do our best to strengthen
the mind and move forward in health.
Taking powerful steps,
powerful and gentle.
That's what I say. Whatever.
Pick the edge of the line that you are
on today.
All right, so I'm in chapter ten.
I'm reading through chapter
ten, Atomic Habits.
And here I just picked out this, line
that I thought was great.
A craving is the sense
that something is missing
is the desire
to change your internal state,
this gap between your current state
and your desired state provides
a reason to act.
And so I just really sat with that
yesterday as I was reading it.
How does it sit with you?
It was really the thought
that was coming to me was,
I try to spend a lot of time
on this issue on the channel,
our discussions,
what is the internal state
and to me.
This is why it is, I think
the deep layer say
we're trying to dig down.
We're trying not to have
a superficial approach to things.
You know, a superficial approach is like,
oh, things are easy.
Oh, I'm just going to change.
Like this thing. Okay.
The deeper level that this book, this is
why I question the subtitle the easy way.
Okay.
It's like, well, that sells books I think.
But then look what the book does.
It's like you got to get down
into the deeper layer, the internal state.
That's what it's saying.
Isn't the internal state
part of what our identity is?
And to me,
I think that's a deep thing to me.
I think that's a difficult thing.
I know I don't
do you like, spend a lot of time?
Is it easy?
Just dig down deep into our identity and
think about who we are and what we want.
Why do we feel the way we do?
To me, these are the profound things
that can help us really get into a space
sustainable, fundamental change
that we can experience in our life,
help us move forward in health
in a powerful way.
So I love thinking about internal state.
An internal state of peace
and contentment.
This is the thing that I want the most.
This is like the driving idea
behind simple fasting
that we can find these moments
of contentment.
Maybe that's having a coffee or a tea
I call coffee contentment in a cup
because I don't know about you,
but I can sit in the morning
with a coffee for a long period of time
and just feel great
that I don't need anything else.
You know that here's just a little world
and you say the body's
still running and we don't have
to be putting energy into it.
And this is showing us just even in a,
even if it's ten minutes, you know,
internal state coming to contentment.
All right.
And as we're thinking about cravings
and food and diet
and like this whole landscape of
wellness
that we are trying to move forward, to me
it's it's just a simple grounding space
that is showing us
maybe this internal state
that we're looking for, maybe cravings
that we are struggling with.
If we are finding a space
sometimes without them,
maybe we can expand that in a bigger way
for fully and gently over time.
And can you see
if we are resolving that interstate?
You see this dissonance
that it's describing?
Maybe we can bring that dissonance.
You know, we did a session once,
something like desiring nothing.
If the desire for anything else
is settling down,
the reason to act is disappearing.
The craving is dissolving.
This is the idea that I
want to move forward.
Today.
He goes on in a different section.
Your habits are modern day solutions
to ancient desires.
New version, new versions of old vices.
Or we could say new versions of old
anything.
The underlying motives behind
human behavior remain the same.
The specific habits
we perform differ
based on the period of history.
And aren't
we in a different period of history now?
We are a very, very interesting time.
So I hear he is listing
then many of these drives
that are the underlying patterns
and what we're going to see
as we step forward in
this is if we can start to connect
habits, patterns
we have to underlying drives, good things.
Then we can start to unpack
them, re-imagine them, reprogram them.
That's where we're going to try to go.
So conserving
energy here is like a big drive.
Human beings inventive right.
And one of the primary reasons. Right.
So we don't have to do as much.
The idea is like, oh well, we'll
get the the machine to do it for us.
And here we are, aren't we?
Trying to
build the ultimate expression
of that today, AI systems.
We're going to have robot assistance.
I'm I'm I'm skeptical.
I am skeptical, but we'll see.
But conserving energy
you can dial in, you say okay,
hard to get out of bed and go for a run.
But we see, well, there's a good thing.
It's like, maybe we're going
to need the effort somewhere else, right?
Obtain food and water. Basic drive.
You know, these so basic.
We don't really think of it
in this modern context.
Right.
But it's is hardwired
into the programing of the body.
And so, you know, cravings can be anything
we're seeing.
Where do cravings come from?
Can be anything that is tying
into these fundamental needs.
But obtaining food and water is like,
we got to stay alive.
And so something that can seem so simple
trying to get a snack right, should I do
I want to do it, do I not?
It's tapping into primal
centers in the brain, right.
Connect and bond with others.
Right.
So here are primal sort of drives
and isn't food like deeply tied into
how we do this.
And so when we're thinking about
where do habits come from?
Where do cravings come from?
If we dial up the emotion
there, it's like, oh, like connection
like very positive thing.
And we connect food with connecting
with others because it's how a big way
of how we socialize.
Social acceptance and approval
of a data session
somewhere along the way.
Fasting when everybody else is eating,
there's there's a trick, right?
That's not the culture.
That's not how we connect.
And we were looking at
how for so much of history,
you know, we had into these deep places
people, tribal sort of people.
Isn't it still that way? And
with eating right, it's like, oh,
it's like we want to be perceived
as part of the group, right?
Reducing uncertainty.
Where's the next meal that is coming
from? Right.
I'm hungry now.
I've got like the food is here
now, right.
Do you think historically deep history.
Right.
You got to take advantage of moments
like that.
You know,
maybe the food is not there later.
Maybe we have to be somewhere else
as they were going to eat it.
Now it's like, do you see the urgency?
Isn't that what a craving feels like?
Like we need to take advantage
of this now.
Achieve status and prestige.
This one you know was on the list.
I don't it was that was harder harder
for me to connect in.
But it's on the
list. See what you think. So.
Here he is listing primal urges
deep things.
And then we layer things on top of this.
And this is where.
Things get tricky for us, right.
This is where it gets
tricky is we map things on top
of of these
deep emotional states, he says.
There are many different ways
to address the same underlying motive.
One person might learn to reduce stress
by smoking.
Another person will go for a run.
Your current habits not necessarily
the best way to solve problems you face.
They're just the methods
that you learn to use, right?
It's something that worked once, right, or
more than once for a specific situation.
Once you associate a solution
with the problem
you need to solve,
you keep coming back to it.
And then we say, well,
we want that to be a good thing.
It's like,
pick the running over the smoking
like as many times as we can.
Right.
Can you picture that?
Do you you see it in your mind
when I'm bringing that up?
Are there certain habits or cycles
or things that you keep
coming back to that you say, I don't want?
And then you say,
are there things you can identify?
You keep coming back to that are good?
Lean into those.
That's like lean into that side
a little more,
and we try to diminish the other side
just a little bit
more.
Habits are all about associations,
he says.
Remember he was telling us about cues,
and we learned about some of that
in some other books, too.
But it's like we perceive a cue brain's
running a similar
simulation, making a prediction
about what to do in the next moment.
Right?
Maybe you did not experience a craving,
but then someone sent the pastries down,
and then you have it right.
The cue happened,
and then the emotional state follows.
Isn't this how it is so many times?
I know it's how it is for me.
Two people can look at the same thing,
right?
Someone looks at a cigarette,
one feels the urge to smoke,
the other finds it repulsive.
Right?
Same exact thing.
Two people, same everything.
Except the experiences opposite.
Isn't that fascinating? Right.
So we're saying, where do cravings
come from?
You see, they're coming
internally generated through this system,
relying on our experience,
our patterns, calculations.
What is worked?
Same queue
can spark a good or bad habit,
depending on the prediction.
One person predicting
this is going to make me feel better.
One person predicting all I'm going to do
this is going to make me
feel worse.
Prediction precedes them.
I think this is a fascinating space
to get into and to think about.
Okay,
where are these feelings coming from?
If we start to see, oh, these are
calculations, predictions running.
Remember when we did that thinking
fast and slow series, we start to realize
not every thought that comes into this
thing is like me.
You know, we get a feeling,
something arises, an idea,
and then we think, oh,
I need to listen to my body.
Oh, I need to listen
to like, these thoughts.
Okay.
There are idea generators and predictive
algorithms running there.
Just throwing stuff out there.
You know, they're trying.
It's like a pallet.
And when we start to realize like, oh,
they're ideas coming here.
Just because the idea pops
in might not be best.
In fact, if we are being very
thoughtful and very aware,
we should really have an internal dialog.
We start questioning some of the emotions
and feelings that start to come
to us and like, really test them.
Is this just an idea?
Is this a prediction?
Is this the glue that is keeping me
stuck in a cycle?
And can we make a different choice?
Can we see that different people
in these same scenarios
coming to a different place?
To me, getting
this is getting to an abstract layer right
above the physical, raw feeling of it.
And this is as close as we can get,
I think, to reprograming it right.
No. No keyboard, you know, not an Android
can't open up the like data on Star Trek
and just reprogram in something,
you know, but we can
get a level up
in our thinking a little metacognitive
where we are
getting into this sort of space,
which I like.
Predictions lead to feelings,
which is how we typically describe
a craving.
Right? It's a feeling, a desire and urge.
All right.
Feelings and emotions transform the cuz.
We perceive
the predictions
we make into a signal that we can apply.
Do you see?
This is the process that is happening.
We can intervene in this sort of process,
say a process is happening
that is transitioning us
from observations and states
into actions.
This is why I started
and I think end with are we there
even are not quite.
But this is why I want to get
just into that internal state.
Right?
Because if the process
that any habit is running through
is running through an internal state
that is grounded and at peace
and finding contentment,
living in the present,
taking a deep breath,
keeping our stress level under control.
So the parasympathetic flow,
I think about it like building a wall.
Like if we are if we are in an environment
in our world, stress is happening, right?
The modern world is just stress factory.
We've brought
in, you know, one of my favorite concepts
to realize this health in the body
is not the natural state of the body.
In so many ways.
We're bringing in the dysfunction
of society into our body.
Fasting space.
One of the big benefits of it
is a way, see, we're not bringing anything
into the body for a period of time
just as far as it serves us.
But at least for that bit of time, right
then, the dysfunction of society,
we're not bringing it in
for a little while.
We're giving the body a chance to take
a breath, kind of take stock of things.
All right.
That's like a deep breath in the body.
Maybe we're deep breathing, too.
That's keeping parasympathetic flow going.
That's the opposite of adrenaline. Right.
And so.
We're trying even milliseconds.
Right.
I think we're even trying
to create milliseconds
of space
right between stimulus and response.
And if we are staying in
that really grounded space,
isn't that giving us a buffer
of even a tiny bit of time to be less
reactive, to see a craving for what it is
and to say, oh, I see what is happening,
I'm going to reprogram that here, this,
little excerpt I took from
a later place in the chapter.
He's talking.
He's telling a story about a man
who is using a wheelchair,
and then he is asked if it is difficult
being confined to the wheelchair.
Right.
The man responds,
I am not confined to the wheelchair.
I am liberated by it.
If it wasn't for the wheelchair,
I would be bend bound.
I would never be able to leave my house.
Do you see that?
Isn't it an incredible
reframing of what is happening?
Can we find
parallels like that in our life,
where we are seeing something
from a negative point of view,
where we are stuck in a cycle
that is seeing the negative
and the discouraging, when the reality is
so much different
that we have opportunities.
Really,
I think the big thing when we're trying to
get into this space, change a craving.
Maybe it's just a snack, maybe
we're trying to open up fasting space
for even a little while
or a longer period of time.
We're trying to reach deeper
into the body, find deeper
levels of contentment, unlocking energy
that is with inside of us.
Right?
Very hard to see things
always from the positive point of view.
In the midst of the swirling
negativity of culture,
we are in a consumption culture
niche places on the internet, right?
That like fasting. Okay.
It's like it's,
I think, good to lean into something
like that if you're trying to do that.
A big message from this book.
You want to make things easier.
Surround yourself with like minded people
who trying to do the same thing.
It's the benefit of what we're trying
to do with a session like this.
Just speak out the
process and connect to it.
Help it to feel more normal, right?
Because for many periods of time
is very normal in history.
Now we are in this
period of history
like one of our first slides
said, you know,
we're in an interesting
period of history where
we're trying to consume our way to health.
Want to reframe it?
See the positive opportunity
in the craving and the space
instead of the struggle with it.
This is what I want
so much is don't struggle with things.
Try to limit the struggle
and flow through them.
There's like water through the stream,
right?
That's the way to go.
Not white knuckled it, breathing
and flowing through things.
How can we reframe it around
a simple snack?
That's what I want people to think about.
How do we do it?
That's the way to bring it down
to the very small thing.
We don't have to talk about alternate
daily fasting or some,
you know,
some some big, you know, fasting thing.
Say, oh, I wasn't going to be eating.
I don't think this is like
serving me in a certain way.
How do we frame it?
Here is the thing
I wanted to bring it back to.
Com content and present.
Hey, thank you so much. That's awesome.
This is the thing
I want to dial in to center us home.
What is the internal state.
If we're going to try to reframe
one simple thing
a snack that we don't want,
dial into that internal state.
And, you know,
don't judge it, but say where is it at?
You know,
a snack, snack you can have snack
isn't good or bad, right.
And so maybe the option is to, you know,
have it, but be thoughtful about it.
The thing that I really want to dial in
for folks is, what about the time
where you say the snack is here,
but I don't want it and it's difficult.
Someone put it here.
It wasn't even my choice.
And then we're getting into that space,
the craving sort of space.
Say something is missing. We don't even.
We didn't know it, but now we can see
it because it's right there.
Wouldn't it be better if we have it?
Hey, here.
We're in a space where we can really
think about it and we can practice it.
This is the other thing
that I would really bring into this space
is we can put so much pressure
on ourselves to.
It's like all of all,
we have this realization.
We realize, oh, fasting space,
we could be doing these things.
I watch some videos,
some person is fasting for days
and they said it was easy
and all these sort of things.
But that's not my experience then, right?
See, isn't it
the case that so many things in life
would just compare ourselves
to other people?
And then we bring their experience
into our experience,
and then we judge ourselves
when we don't,
meet someone else's life, you know?
My husband.
A cheese last night,
which I don't even like,
but because he had them,
I felt like I was missing something.
Thankfully, there were none left out,
but that's awesome.
Well,
that made it more difficult and easier
at the same time, I guess I would say.
But that is
that is the emotional sort of space.
And that can be so many difficult spaces
like that to navigate.
Right?
If you, if, if you are with friends
and family and, and people, not everybody
on the same place all of a sudden
so many dynamics getting into that space.
But it's just so interesting.
All you say, I wouldn't have wanted it,
but then I saw it
and it gets us into a space
or now we're having this craving for it.
Say, I want that something is missing now.
And so this,
space
worthy of much thought and consideration.
And so taking just examples like that,
thinking about it ahead of time,
I think is another really good strategy,
especially, you know, a journal can help
to kind of see that so many times
when we're eating,
you know, the surveys of people, you know,
we know the things we generally eat.
But what did you have three days ago?
Most people, you know,
it starts to disappear a little bit.
And so having a little bit
of a written record, especially if you're
trying to unpack something,
why do certain habits and patterns repeat
even a few phrases in a day about it
can start to help us to see?
Oh, like, here is a time where
I was kind of struggling with this issue.
Or here's a pattern that happened,
you know,
and then we can start to unpack it
and plan for it ahead of time.
A very difficult thing,
especially in the food space,
is like the unexpected thing hits us
and then we have to do
all the processing,
you know, right in the moment.
And I don't know what
the right analogy is,
but it's like the, sometimes it overloads
the processing power.
Right?
If we can spread that out, say,
oh, here, I'm going into a situation
here, it's the evening, here's someone
is probably going to get out something.
And then it might make me think
and feel a certain way if we can offload
that processing ahead of
time to realize this whole,
sequence that we've
gone to, prediction algorithms
going to start running, emotions
going to get put
in, might feel like I'm missing something.
Get out ahead of that is
and have a plan B say
and you know, maybe the plan is like,
if this happens, then I'm going to,
you know.
Go put on a T, right.
That would be the evening for me.
If I am trying to do it in my house,
it's people putting on the popcorn, right?
The popcorn goes on, kids
going to make a popcorn.
And then,
I know if I hear that going,
I'm just going to put on the T
and then I will sit and I will watch kids
having a good time with the popcorn
and, and I will have a beautiful tea
and then I know
and then I will think
about the opportunity of it, about
when I am lying in bed
and I'm going to be feeling
the beautiful start of a fasting space
instead of a stomach full of popcorn.
And, you know, have you ever had that,
you know, you had the thing
and then you're laying in bed
and then you feel like, oh, I just
wish I didn't have that.
I had that the other day, you know?
Then you get a reminder you have grace
to yourself because I have that too.
But I've I've just had it.
Whereas like, you eat late
and then it's just like,
oh, I just did not need that, you know,
not good for sleep for me.
I spent some time over the weekend.
I was writing a talk.
You know, I have a tendency,
I start talks, I don't always finish them,
but I probably will have a collection of
talks I started, but I was reading papers
on mitochondrial function over the weekend
and just so fascinating.
And I found a bunch of papers
on fasting impacts on mitochondria.
Very fascinating.
No. Marie asked for some
further thoughts on that.
One of the
papers I found that I'll be diving into
is some interesting research
from Frontiers in Neuroscience
looking at,
fasting ability
through the mitochondria to,
you know, chew up all these extra proteins
that build up in neurons
that lead to neurodegenerative diseases.
And I think that that is totally
a fascinating
obviously think we need a great deal
more research on that.
And then I was really fascinated
to see that
in the same, well, in literature,
not in the neuro space,
but just out in the rest of the body
that we give fasting
space and opportunity.
Mitochondria
do the same thing that the neuron does.
It's like fasting space happens
and we can clean up all these extra
chemicals and lipid products and,
and so many things that can clog up
the mitochondria and,
and actually help it to work better
as far as generating energy for us.
So I'm going to be trying to, synthesize
those thoughts into a talk for us.
And, to me,
that is very, very interesting
connecting in, you know, in this couple
of the studies that I were reading
were kind of 18, six sort of studies,
and they're identifying
these mitochondrial effects
even into 18 hours of fasting.
And then some of them were longer.
But that is like
I was saying in that discussion
we did the other day of this doctor
that was saying, oh, was like 16,
eight is worthless.
I was like,
well, like, here's another data point.
It's like we can get some mitochondrial
benefits.
You know, something
that we don't usually think of, right?
We don't usually think of that.
And we don't have to either.
Here is something like that.
You know, the idea of,
saying, oh, a mitochondrial metabolism,
you know, we can go so deep
and it is very interesting.
And I think it is worthwhile.
But like the other side of it,
it's like you don't have to know
cellular biology to be able to,
you know, experience fasting and,
you know, the the bigger question
that we really want is,
you know, just do I feel better,
you know, we can just keep it
in a very simple, practical way.
If I open up some space here,
do I feel more energy in my life?
And maybe that ultimately is because,
some mitochondria are working better.
Might be the whole body works better.
This has just been my experience
in a fasting, in fasting science
and fasting physiology,
many ways that the body just works
better when you give it periods of space,
you know, and we can almost go through
everybody system and just find ways
that the system is optimized.
And, I think that this will be
just another little point.
You know, to me,
the idea of kind of hitting
these different points, you know,
we do a talk on insulin resistance.
You know, I do a talk on acid reflux.
You know, it's like these are just
different lenses to view
how different systems of the body benefit.
When you give it a little break,
you know, give it a chance to rest
and a chance to heal.
And anyway, I really enjoyed
that thought
and we will dive deeper on it.
Let me know if you have other topics to
that you want to dive in on.
And I, I do my best.
I'll do my best to do it.
Hey happy Monday to Pat.
Absolutely. Hello.
I hope you are doing well.
Nice to have you with us.
Energy and optimal mitochondrial function
is very interesting.
Yes, we will dive in on it.
Mitochondria just in general.
You know, I don't know about you.
I mean, I know about mitochondria, okay.
But it's like you can forget about them.
But it's just so fascinating to read about
and to think about.
How did it come to be.
How did it come to be
that we got cells inside of cells
and they everybody working together?
It's just what a marvelous system is.
Just a miracle.
Total miracle.
But already yesterday,
I don't know, I probably spent,
I don't know, just two hours
reading these papers yesterday
and it was giving me,
just a deeper appreciation already.
Like we think of a mitochondria,
I know I do as just like a static thing,
like, oh, it's just one thing
and it just sits there and does
what it does, but it's just so dynamic.
Like everything in the body is so dynamic
and it changes and it
it changes based off the cellular
internal environment of the body,
how much we are moving,
how, when and how much
and what types of foods we are eating.
Like that session we did last fall.
Everything matters, you know.
It really does.
And then I think,
hopefully what we can see from the talk,
what I'm going to just
try to try to bring in is
How everything matters in
such a practical level in the cell.
I love thinking of it that way.
Like sometimes it can feel hard
or overwhelming.
You know, we do a talk like today,
like cravings,
a big emotional thing in the body.
It's like sometimes like break
that all the way down into
just a tiny little level,
like a little cell.
And I like to think about,
can we just take care of a little cell,
you know, and what does it need,
and how can we help it?
And to me, it's less so less intense
because the cells
so tiny helps us to show
isn't not that big a deal here.
Like cell could use some of this.
It's not like some big thing.
And to me, that kind of idea
breaking things
down, that would be like truly going
atomic habits.
Right?
Getting in the cellular level,
we're not quite atomic, but we're getting
close on the cellular level.
Going to be diving in on doctor Z method.
Do you have friends or family people
you know that have type two diabetes?
Hey, send them over to doctor Z.
Method
is like the only thing I'm selling, right?
Doctor Z method.
I got a low monthly subscription.
Come in.
People get a course,
and people can connect with me.
I got a lot of thinking for type
two diabetes.
Anybody also can come in there if you
want to get on kind of a zoom call.
I do like a zoom type call every week
and we talk face to face is always fun.
And so do check that out.
very nice
to share these thoughts with you.
Thank you for being here.
Let me know how this works for you.
Do you find these thoughts
kind of the meta level?
Getting in to the abstract
layer over cravings.
Is that beneficial in helping
you move forward in a thoughtful way?
Share
a thoughts and experiences
in the comments.
I'd love to hear
about your experience with it,
and I will look forward
to being back with you tomorrow.
Have a beautiful day, everybody.