Subscribe
Share
Share
Embed
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
Do you ever have it where you are hard on yourself, or perhaps harder on yourself and you wish you were? But then it actually works. You kinda kick yourself a little bit and it actually gets you going. This is a really dangerous mindset and dangerous, because this type of thinking is one of the core ways that we can start a negative spiral of thinking.
Have you ever been stuck in a negative spiral? We are going to dive into some psychology and this type of thinking today, how negative patterns develop and how we can work our way out of them and be on guard for them. Because think of it this way. What do you think in the long term, if we are trying to move toward a health goal, really a goal of any kind, but what is going to get us there more effectively in a better state and bring us joy on our journey?
It's like negative thinking, punishing ourselves for every mistake we make or positive thinking, lifting ourselves up. Inspiring ourselves by focusing on the good. Celebrating the wins. You know, I want to tell you. We gotta look to the light. That was yesterday. Look to the light. See the good and the positive. And this is the course that helps us to feel inspired and encouraged and bring us along a journey, in a way where we're enjoying the process, growing in our ability to show love and kindness to ourselves, helping that, then to flow out into the world.
Lift ourselves up to greater and greater success. All right. Diving in today, I'm going to show you a picture that I came across as kind of a joke. Well, it's a joke, but we'll frame our discussion. Lifting us up. Okay. And. Here we go. Strong people don't put others down. They lift them up. Darth Vader, philanthropist. I have to do this.
A little tongue in cheek. Okay. Yes. We want to lift others up. We want to lift ourselves up. Not. Not necessarily in the Vader philosophy, but do you ever treat yourself like this, though? You make a mistake when you crush the problem. Not very thoughtful. Darth Vader. Not very thoughtful. Want to lift ourselves up in a thoughtful and gentle way?
And I'm going to give you some great thoughts on that from, this book. Thinking fast and slow. This is a really, fantastic book for getting into the psychology of how we think. How does the brain work? Why do we make the decisions we do and, you know, how does our environment shape our thinking? I have personally really enjoyed getting into some of these thought processes.
Today, the section I'm going to share with you is, all about this, about how we can trick ourselves and trap ourselves into thinking that being hard on ourselves and other people is actually the most, effective way to motivate ourselves. Have you ever felt that way? And then we can get into these reinforced habits of negative thinking, negative actions, and we don't even realize it sometimes.
It can be so twisted around that we come to think of negative as positive and, without even realizing it. It tells a story that we'll hear, about that. And so just at the outset, maybe take some time to think about like, oh, are there places in my life? Are there seasons I can remember? Yeah. I've definitely I've been hard on myself and had negative thoughts, but.
And are those negative thoughts intended even to like, you know, shock ourselves or punish ourselves into some sort of action? The way I wrote it in the description for this video, did you have actions like that and then found that it actually worked for some period of time in improving your performance? I put performance in quotes because performance is just a word in this context that I don't really like, but this is the sort of mindset it puts us in that our actions that we're taking toward health.
When you think of performance, you think of like an act, something someone is, in a theater, they're putting on a show and they're performing, which, of course is a wonderful thing to do. But you say it isn't real like in the sense that our life is real. And like the idea of considering it, we think of the idea of like, oh, we're just going through the motions.
To me, a weight loss process, a health process is a way of being in the world. If we start to look at it that way, that's coming out of this more right brain artistic expression that we're trying to say creating an expression of health, a way of being in the world. This is what we're trying to get toward.
That is a very gentle, grounded, thoughtful space. If you think about what it means. Okay, how do I be in this world in a way where I'm passing through the time in a struggle, free as much as possible, space where I have openness and acceptance for the world and for myself. There is love, kindness and compassion. And then in that space, that's what I refer to as the sailboat that we're just floating along, fasting, a process that is very much like that.
Because if our body is the sailboat or we're in the sailboat of this bodily vessel that's using energy all the time, you don't have to be rowing the rowboat, you know, or paddling the paddle boat or paddling the canoe. You put up the sail moving through the space. The wind is blowing. That's the metabolism. And it doesn't stop.
As long as we're on the side of the earth, metabolism keeps going. A lot of people are afraid if they stop eating okay, the metabolism is going to slow down. The metabolism will slow down with fasting in a in a very long time from now, in an extended fasting period, by ten days. The best literature I've seen.
It will slow it. Will the body try to conserve? But in the short term, it's the inversion. In the short term, fasting as a reset to open up resources to power our body. That's why I call simple fast. In the early stages of fasting. To open up that space, give the body a reset, let the wind blow us through the space.
So that's the line we're trying to find where we are open. We've opened our sail, floating through that space as gently and thoughtfully as possible. That way of being, when you can find that that way of being in the world is not a performance. And so as we that's just it's real. It's the way of being, not an act, not going through motions that we're forcing ourselves to do for some other reason other than, this is how I want to be in the world, then take us into a space to really deeply understand why am I doing what I am doing?
What do I really want out of this life? What do I really set my intention on so that I can move toward it?
That's how we're gonna be in the world. We have an opportunity to practice that today. The countdown is on and it has been on, and we are stepping every day. And here we find ourselves in this moment.
51 opportunities. The only opportunity we have right now in this day to take this step. We can take 50 other steps in the next days to come, but then we center ourselves in the present. That's the only day we can take this step right now. And so take a moment with me. Clear out our thinking of the future.
Clear out anxiety about all these things. We can have plans. We've discussed that we got our plans for the holidays. We're we're trying to refine them so we know what we're going to be eating. We're anticipating emotional difficulties that might arise between family or friends where we know, okay, we know cycles and patterns, we see these things, and we can plan ahead so that we can be emotionally ready to minimize difficulty and struggle, maximize enjoyment and connection.
But like for a moment, let's just put all that aside and just realize, okay, we've got this step here right now that already is taking the pressure off. We don't have to win all of those days. Right now. We don't have to bring the struggle of every other day into it. We've just got this one thing to do right now.
The time right in front of us, some open space. What are you going to be eating in the rest of this day? That's enough to focus on. Are you opening up a bigger fasting space? Are you in a fasting space now? And second to end, maybe you're having one meal or two between them. Maybe you have some openness to think today like, oh, I was going to be eating here, but if I'm trying to move toward it, am I actually feeling okay?
This is maybe a question to ask yourself. Hey, you know, I was planning on eating at this time, but how am I feeling actually? Like, do I really need it? And could I give my body the opportunity to practice accessing a little bit more of the energy within it? This is the practice of fasting. This is how we build the strength training.
The body to access the energy that is inside of it. Give the body that opportunity today to the extent that it brings excitement, joy, openness and positivity to your life or curiosity just to have the human experience of leaning a little deeper into trusting the body. Okay, if you're open to that and to the extent you're not okay, that's when you start because of fasting, completely open and voluntary process.
And when it comes to an end, then we think we have opportunities today to choose the healthiest, nourishing food that we can put in our bodies and to keep every toxic, artificial, synthetic thing that is not in alignment with the true function of the body. We can say no to that, and we can throw it out for goodness sake, so that we don't have to keep making the decision to do it.
We just make the decision for now, say, I'm I'm done with that. You know, I am not going to if we think about giving a gift to the body, open a fasting space, let the body rest and reset, run autophagy pathways, clear out toxic stuff. Okay. Also as a gift to the body, just to not put a burden on it.
You know, we got our liver big detox center deals with all the toxic stuff. Helps to change it into less harmful things and get it out of the body. Okay. But like give, give that guy a break, you know, keep the toxic stuff out. All these things. When we're making these types of decisions, these are like lifting us up.
These are lifting us up. We're thinking positive. Here are the positive steps I can take. We're not dwelling on the past. We're saying, look, I can give my body a gift. I can protect my body from toxic things. I can be open to an experience that is focused on love and joy and positivity. This is a way to move forward.
This is really lifting ourselves up, not fake lifting ourselves up. And then it's even, I mean, in the big picture philosophically, I mean, it's even beyond that. I mean, just the opportunity we have right now finding gratitude for the opportunity to just exist, be here, show love and grace and kindness to ourselves and others that kind of mindset to find that kind of space, I think, in the best that I can.
That's how we find joy, meaning, purpose, connection in this present moment. That's the kind of mindset that I say, let's move through and be in that sort of space. All right. I'm going to read you a little passage from this, book, kind of a story that the author tells about an experience that helped them really realize how profound it is that we must think positively and that we must reward our positive experiences instead of flogging ourselves for our deficiency if we want to improve and get better, and how tricky it actually can be.
Okay, this is the author. This little story had my big eureka experience of my career while teaching a flight instruction course to the Air Force about the psychology of effective training, I was telling them about an important principle of skill training rewards for improved performance is using that word. We will say, an improved, a better way of being in the world.
I like that better, working better than the punishment of mistakes. This proposition is supported by much ever evidence from many human and animal studies. When I finish my enthusiastic speech, the most seasoned instructor in the group raised his hand and made a speech of his own. He began by conceding that the rewarding of improved performance might be good for birds, but he denied it was optimal for flight cadets.
This is what he said on many occasions I have praised flight cadets for clean execution of some acrobatic maneuver. The next time they try the same maneuver, they will usually do worse. On the other hand, I have often screamed into a cadets ear for bad execution, and in general he does better on the next try. So please do not tell us that rewards work and punishment does not, because the opposite is the case.
Can you imagine the sky? Just the opposite is the case is like a drill sergeant, you know. Do you ever treat yourself like that? This was a joyous moment of insight when I saw in a new light the principle of statistics that I had been teaching for years. The instructor was right, but he was also completely wrong. His observation was astute and correct.
Occasions on which he praised a performance were likely to be followed by a more disappointing performance, and punishments were typically followed by an improvement. But the inference he had drawn about the efficacy of reward and punishment was completely wrong. He had observed what is known as regression to the mean, which in that case was due to random fluctuations in the quality of performance.
Do you ever have that? Do you have good days and bad days? Are there fluctuations in your ability to be completely walking toward your goal? Everybody experiences that said, this guy is experiencing this with the people he's trying to teach. Naturally, he would praise only a cadet whose performance was far better than average. But the cadet may have been just lucky on that particular attempt and therefore likely to deteriorate regardless of whether or not he was praised.
Similarly, the instructor would scream into a cadets ear only when the cadets performance was unusually bad and therefore likely to improve regardless of what the instructor did. The instructor had attached a causal interpretation to the inevitable fluctuations of a random process. Isn't that interesting? So this you cannot can you already start to see it? There's a fluctuation in things.
I've shown this. Think about this picture that we've looked at before, about our life and our experience as we're trying to move toward our goal. Our 100%, does not look the same every day. Look at the bars. You will not be 100% every day. And that is okay. Progress does not require, perfection. But can you see, like, if this is the performance of the Air Force, guys, like, if they, if they get screamed at down on the red bar, that's a very low.
And then they pop back up and we think, oh, the screaming really worked okay. But there's there's variation in all of our self every day. So you can see how the cycle would develop where, okay, we're really hard on ourselves after we had a bad day and then it got better. Well you know what? We have good days and bad days.
And so if we start a cycle and we're seeing, oh, every time I'm hard on myself, it gets better. Like you can see how it will reinforce that not a good thing to reinforce. Whereas like when we have our best day right to realize, okay, we need to celebrate that there's a template, there's a pattern that shows like how things can improve and get better.
And then we move toward that and it can be inspiring. And then we realize, okay, our best day can't can't be. Every day there'd be regression to the mean there. Sometimes people can say, oh, I like I had this incredible day and then it wasn't quite so much look at a chart like this and realize, okay, don't be discouraged by that.
Look to that as to what is possible. And that is how we lift ourselves up to greater success. Here's how he continues. The session the challenge called for a response, but a lesson of algebra, of prediction, probably not entire, enthusiastically received. So instead, I use chalk to mark a target on the floor. I asked every officer in the room to turn his back to the target and throw two coins backwards, added in immediate succession without looking, and we measure the distance from the target and wrote the results of each contest on the chalkboard.
Then we rewrote the results in order from best to worst performance. On the first try, it was apparent that most, but not all of those who had done the best the first time deteriorated on the second try, and those who had done poorly on the first attempt generally improved. I pointed out to the instructors that what they saw on the board coincided with what we had heard about the performance of the cadets.
Poor performance was typically followed by improvement in good performance, by deterioration, without any help from either praise or punishment. That's our chart, right? The random fluctuation. The discovery I made on that day was that flight instructors were trapped in an unfortunate, unfortunate contingency because they punish cadets. When performance was poor, they were mostly rewarded by subsequent improvement, even though the punishment was actually ineffective.
Furthermore, the instructors were not alone in that predicament, had stumbled on to a significant fact of the human condition. The feedback to which life exposes us is perverse because we tend to be nice to other people when they please us, and nasty when they do not. And we and then we treat ourselves that way, also tend to be nice to ourselves when things are going good and nasty when they're not.
Therefore, we are statistically punished for being nice and rewarded for being nasty. Do you see that? Because when things are going bad and when nasty, as he says to ourselves, then things tend to get better because we flow in and out through cycles of, of what is in performance. Right? And then, like I was saying, we can kind of pull back from performance.
So we're not trying to perform for anyone if it is a performance or not trying to perform for anyone other than ourselves. But like I was saying, less about performance and more about being in though, the way that we are, the experience that we have in life is complex and we have good days and bad days, and so do you.
Do you see it now? When we're having a bad day, that's when we want to show grace to ourselves, to recognize, like, hey, I'm having an especially hard time here and to realize that that is okay, and that's normal and it's not a problem. It's an opportunity to show grace, kindness, and compassion to ourselves. Because when you're having those red bars, you know the green bar is coming.
This is what I want you to see. You're having a red bar. It's okay. Do the best that we can. This is what this is saying. Our best looks different every day. We have unique challenges and obstacles in each day, and we aren't going to be, you know, hitting every super mark every day. That's a normal part of the experience.
That's why I say the path looks like this, right? The path is, is not a straight line. Show grace for yourself means don't punish yourself. Have been nasty like the book is saying. Write to yourself right at that point. That's the worst point. And do you see that when you do that, you run the risk of creating a cycle?
Because like every time you have a red bar, you say, oh man, two weeks ago, remember how I was so bad? And then I was so awful to myself, and I kicked myself back in shape, you know, because the red bar is going to come again right here. We just got a week, right? We flow in and out of things like this days where things are in a flow and days where, where things are, are more stuck.
Right? Showing grace to ourselves in a time like that. Actually the process to help us get unstuck, as far as I can see, we want to minimize. I'll tell you, we want to minimize the red bars. It's not like we're not trying to say, oh, we expect the red bars to come like we're looking for them now we're trying to get as many green bars as possible.
This is what I'm meaning by the title lifting ourselves up to greater success. We tend to move in the direction of like where we set our vision as where we're talking yesterday, look to the light and and like the author says, focusing on the positive much more effective for long term success than dwelling in the negative. That's like we're saying yesterday, looking in the shadows, looking behind us, dwelling in the past.
So like now we want to look forward, look to the light, see the green bars. Right. Collect the green bars in our mind of say, hey, that is what is possible. That's where we're going. If we're not hitting it today, that's where we practice love and grace and kindness for ourselves. And then we really charge ourselves up in those green, bars where where it's really the flow.
And then we celebrate that, and maybe we take another step forward. Maybe we recognize when we're in one of these green days. Hey, the capacity here has improved the ability to step forward stronger. And then I think just recognizing that and the gratitude in that sort of space that brings, of course, increased enjoyment, satisfaction in that moment, increase the good feelings, the positive energy.
This is the whole thing that we're trying to do. We're trying to get ourselves moving forward in the most positive, enthusiastic, optimistic way possible, with the biggest vision for our life that we can like what is the very healthiest version of ourselves that we can be that's expansive and bigger. And so moving toward that is going to be easiest in this and the green days to see where you can actually see it and feel it and say it like, this is really going well, like bring use that energy to bring yourself up to the next level.
A lot of things in life like this. But look, it's now we're up here. We started down here. If we just look in the short term, we say, oh, it's very oh, up and down, up and down. But even with that, red bars, green bars, red bars, green bars where we're heading, you know, upward on a journey. Have you experienced that, in the past cycles of negative thinking where it's like, oh, is it working for a while?
Have you been trapped in a cycle like that? Let's not do it again. Okay. Now that we've seen it, that's the actual practice of, bringing kindness, thoughtfulness. Then we're finding joy on the journey, right? Think of how many people I don't. I don't know what it's like to be, you know, an Air Force cadet. I mean, there's people getting screamed at quite a lot, I'm sure.
And, you know, there's, there's a multi faceted process of, of training a military officer. I'm sure this is something that, I don't know, an incredibly brutal, experience. I would say. And perhaps people have to, experience some sort of trauma in order to be able to, you know, handle these things, okay. And maybe they could have a broader discussion, but.
Whoa. Are we not trained to do that? We are not trying to do that. I spent, this whole last weekend, I talked with dozens of, military veterans who have been through incredible, trauma and are, you know, doing everything they can now to heal from it. And what, what an incredible, and terrible experience they have had.
And, we can create terrible experiences for ourselves in life, and we can have terrible experiences and traumatic events and things that have happened to us. And and these things don't, unfortunately, just disappear with time. We can had develop cycles that actually reinforce them. I think this is part of it is, traumatic experiences, are like dropping a big rock in the, you know, lake of our, our cognition, which has ripples through everything.
Right? And then they hit the wall and they ripple back. And that's where I, I talk in our, our mental health style is to really be very thoughtful and open and, especially open at the deepest levels that I talk a lot about the interface between food and our physical body and food and our mental health and attempting, seeking, reaching out to find a space of peace and contentment, both physically and mentally.
Fasting space you really have to do both. Body has to be strong enough and trained to be able to handle that. That's like the training physically in the body, difficult to do right away. We're not used to it. Somebody never had an idea of fasting. They weren't intentional. They got themselves into an experience where they prevented from eating when they were hungry.
That is an intense physical and emotional space. We can and it can be negative. I say, well, we interpret that as negative, can be negative. I never want anybody to be in that, sort of space. I think fasting and opportunity to increase our awareness and compassion of people who are less fortunate, who actually in a space where they're prevented from eating.
It's an incredible luxury. I will say this is an incredible luxury to be able to voluntarily practice fasting, to be in a position of such power, and an abundance that you can say, I don't even need this. I have access to all the food that I want, but I don't even need it. I'm going to be better off without it.
And in that space, I want to open up, you know, an emotional space of of gratitude, you know, just to realize, you know, all around us, you know, I hear I talk about, you know, how thankful I am, you know, for the food system. I mean, we have incredible abundance with food. And it is a miracle. But even within our own communities, you know, here in Madison, Wisconsin, the the rate of food insecure families is, is upwards of 20%, which is we can all we can get in our bubbles and we can realize or we can think, oh, like, it's just only abundance, but there's so much struggle right here in the midst
of it. And, I did the video last fall heading into the holiday season, for the food pantry that I had been volunteering with, you know, to say just as an idea, hey, can we. Because we can save money by fasting. And if you're in a difficult financial situation, I tell you, you look at fasting, the most efficient way to organize food intake to be eating little bits all the time.
This creates a a system of struggle where you increase hunger if you have a very limited food budget. Okay, you want to optimize those dollars to buy a healthy food in discrete meals where the body knows how to use it and can really handle it efficiently, and then open up fasting space so the body is able to shut down all these other, metabolic processes and then run off the storage.
And so this would be especially true, if you have both a limited financial, budget and you would like to lose weight, the the most difficult situation is to say I'm struggling to lose weight and a limited budget. And then we're told in our, culture, like, well, you need to be eating, all the time.
And then this is putting both physical strain on people for with a limited budget and then also emotional strain, because it's a very, very difficult way to lose weight. And so we get a lot of synergy. In that scenario, if we're trying to save money, we get a lot of synergy in that space of fasting space. To save money through a fasting process, but put it in the most metabolically advantageous way.
This is how we use our dollars in the most effective way to be the best for the body and our physical and emotional health. Now, if you are fortunate enough then to say, hey, my my budget is fine, and then we say, then it really is a luxury. Like luxury fasting. Say I could eat all I want. I have no budgetary pressure in that sort of space.
This, I would say, be another way, kind of lifting us up. Say, where are you at in the world? Like look into the community where you are. So many people, even in America, right? That is so wealthy, a lot of people struggling with food insecurity. To me, when I'm in a fasting space, it really opens my mind to think about people who are struggling to eat.
Because in that thing, you know, I experienced some hunger and then, you know, but I think from that position I say, okay, I'm okay with hunger. Like I've just come to see, like hunger is a pretty neutral experience when it is done voluntarily and you're just accepting of it. And as you train yourself and you're feeling it, you say like, oh, I can feel what this is.
I can feel hunger, this hunger experience voluntarily accepted. It's like the barrier to entry into the autophagy space. And it's I see right, there's it. Me talking to myself. Okay. There's a message telling the body that, hey, we're not doing this right now. We were getting ready to eat. Body was priming up all the digestive system, and it was ready to do it.
And then so you feel that that's what you feel, the stomach rumbling around. You can, like, feel everything. It's like an engine ready to process and drive. But then get in the thoughts. You say, actually, you know what I really want right now in my life? This autophagy effect, I want to be accessing stored energy. I want to give the body this gift that we can see space to burn through the excess, calm everything down, bring the inflammation level down.
It did that talk a few weeks ago on inflammation and how we end up in this chronic inflammatory state, and that fasting at one of a number of processes that we can all combine together, meditation and breathing practice, fasting space. All of this help bring that chronic inflammation down in the body. Say, I want that. When we're in that sort of mindset, then we can also say, okay, what is it like?
Then you realize, okay, if you are not just voluntarily doing that, someone who is in a very difficult situation have a very limited budget, food insecure, okay, hunger like that is nowhere near the same mental space. If someone is hungry and is distressed, that is, that is the, difference between openness and suffering. And I think and people do, of course, suffer greatly of hunger.
And so I get into that space, in a fasting space personally, where I find gratitude for it and realize, okay, the immense abundance that I have can eat whenever I want. But think of people in my community right right here who do not, who are experiencing hunger from a place of profound difficulty. This is the type of mindset where you're saying lifting ourselves up like lifting others up.
To me, I find meaning, value and purpose from working in that sort of space to help people in that way. It doesn't take that much money. So if you are fortunate enough to have enough money to do it, you might find, okay, if I'm fasting, you can save money. Can you use that money to help someone who is food insecure?
I think is like a very, very beautiful and empowering, mental space. I did, some videos on the channel last fall. About that fasting to and hunger is a really awesome process. And so kind of two perspectives using fasting. If you're in a scenario, try to save money personally help the budget. Like really positive, using fasting for maybe a greater, a greater purpose, can bring increased meaning to it.
You know, sometimes I was saying in that video last fall, sometimes people say to me, you know, doctor Z, how, I get that fasting is good, but I really struggle with motivation, you know, to do it. And, you know, struggling with we've talked in other sessions complacency, apathy, you know, are really real. We got into it, in the book, about, complacency, the other day and how complacency is kind of the default, mental pathway, that we really have to work against.
And so taking our, attention, our focus to some degree away from ourselves and toward, a broader community, to me, is a way that can bring increase motivation. You know, I think in the West, you know, in America these days, you know, it's, there's a lot of disillusionment. There's a lot of division between people. There's there's hatred and animosity.
You know, the the morass of the politics, has, has even split, you know, families like, I've, I've seen it so much. And just people that I'm consulting with, people come in and then, you know, we're talking, you know, in, a weight or diabetes, consult. And, you know, we're just talking and, you know, I've had people who have, whose spouse has left them and their, their friend, won't talk to them, you know, about this division.
And to me, in the big picture, a vision that I would really love to see is, you know, health is not Partizan. You know what I mean? We're all human beings, for goodness sake. And, like, the same basic things, help a person to be healthy, nutritious food, clean air and water, the ability to move our bodies in healthy ways.
And if you need it, if, you're in a spot where your metabolism is stuck, your blood sugar is too high. You have insulin resistance. You want to lose weight. Okay? A fasting space can help unwind that. These are core, experiences and things that everybody needs to be healthy, regardless of any characteristic of a human being, just to the very nature of being a human being.
So when you think about, okay, lifting ourselves up to greater success, like, you know, I like that phrase, A rising tide raises all boats, right? And we're here on our sailboat. We're trying to float across, a space as as kindly and thoughtfully as possible toward better health. Can we all do it together? Because to me, this process that we're discussing on this channel, powerful health practices, very simple and free.
This is the thing. Simple, free, basic means completely accessible. You know, fasting have become my favorite health practice for many reasons, but one of which is just that it's free. And in in this type of space that we're in, you know, if the, if the most powerful path to health was, was eating only grass fed beef, you know, for, I mean, I couldn't believe it at the store the other day over like $24 a pound.
Right. And if you had to do that to be healthy, well, then only people who super well off can do it. Fasting completely free. And it's like what? It's like more than free, right? Because it like saves money. So if you're in a difficult spot, this is like a double bonus. Say lose weight while saving money. Can can people rally around these simple, basic things and and realize the great irony to me in the modern health care system is like health care itself is one of the most divisive a political the things there is, I try not and this is my great recommendation to anybody who is feeling overwhelmed, having difficulty with stress, like overwhelmed
by political things. Just try to shut off the news, try to isolate yourself from it as much as possible. Like we've been conditioned, I think, to think that you're not a good person or a good citizen, or at least some people. Or maybe it's just me, but I know a lot of people do. Like you're basically irresponsible if you're an adult and you are not, like, dialed in and paying attention to what is going on.
I very much want people to understand what is going on. But I think a lot of this thinking is actually built in by the media in order to get people to continue watching their programing and watch their commercials. So they can make money. And, we've seen, in some of our psychology thinking how, like, you know, people using the environment and the context to shape our thinking.
And when you start to realize how gigantic media operations have a vested interest in keeping us consuming their content, this is like a broader thing that I'm trying to show everybody is like fasting shows us a different model, a constant consumption. Consumption culture is very broad. Yes, it's physical in the body. Yes, it is also emotional. And fasting can be a mirror for the rest of our life.
And so just like it's okay to protect our physical body, our food environment, so that we have some open space in our body to run metabolic processes that bring health and vitality to the body. Okay. Like I've shown, it's a mirror for our mental and emotional space and taking a break, protecting our mental space. I did that session the other week preserving our mental capital.
Right? We have a limited number, ostensibly of cognitive, informational slots available to us. And I think for a lot of us, we have loaded in so much space for politics and ideologies and all these different things that we put a lot of our emotional capital into what is happening and into how we feel about it, and assessing how other people feel about it, and comparing ourselves to other people and judging, okay, these are all things that we shouldn't do.
We should not compare ourselves to other people. We should not be judgmental. And as you think about social media, the news, the are all these things flowing. This is not taking both our personal selves and our society to a healthier place. So if we are trying to clear out a space to really get healthy, we say we got 51 days till 2026.
We're trying to be the most healthy, version of ourselves possible by the new year. And then that's going to be a springboard. Most people going to be just trying to start over at that point. And we say, oh, man, I've had two solid months where I just been crushing it. Well, how are you going to do that?
How are we going to lift ourselves up? To do that, have to create a powerful space. If we got only a few slats, in here, we want to load those slats. We did those the other week. We're talking about shaping our environment and experience. We need to load those slats in our mind very, very thoughtfully. We don't want to be loading them with divisiveness and judgment and comparison.
We want to be loading them with love, peace, contentment, joy, openness, positivity and health. And that's enough, right? You can say we got this one day we're going to focus on right now. Let's just focus on those things. Pat says, if something in the news is that important, it will be presented to me without me having to look for it all the time.
This is 100% my philosophy, I will tell you that. And, this is I got this piece of advice from a friend. They said, look, 99% of the things that are happening have no bearing on your life. It doesn't matter if you know them. And part of the problem that we get trapped in, in that cycle is because you know, all this stuff, like, you know, what is happening, you know, all over the world, this is a burden that human beings never have to deal with.
Every problem in the world being brought to us. Oh my gosh, you know, somebody said something in Germany and someone else said something in, you know, China. And it's like, whoa, if we think we're trying to think of it, think about what this means for our environment of chronic stress and how chronic stress it, leading into the inflammation in the process that makes all these things difficult.
This is the process to do it. Certain things we do need to know. We do need to know broadly what is happening and that things are going to come to us. Your friend is going to tell you, oh, did you hear? And then you'll know. And if something really is important, right, some big thing happens. Take that thing that came to you.
Oh, this was important enough that my friend mentioned it. And, you know, it does seem like a thing. Okay. And then go conscientiously read an article about it. Don't scroll through social media about it. Don't, you know, do whatever you want. But I'm suggesting, you know, don't go watch a network news that is going to break and then show you commercials for food and things that you don't want.
Really protect the space. Maybe you cut out so much stress out of your life. The social media minimized the news very thoughtfully. Gone. If if a piece of news comes to you and then you go conscientiously get some information about it, you know, maybe that whole process, you say, well, I took 20 minutes and you learned something.
You might be more educated on the topic, just doing that in a short amount of time. Then just floating around in the mindless drivel of so much of what is modern news. And then you've protected all that time, all that emotional space to focus on this priority. So I was reading a book somewhere the other month about multiple priorities and how that's like a what do you call it?
You can't really have it. A priority means there's just like a tap thing, right? And so, you know, you can use these words differently. And, and we can, I guess, to, to violate the, the meaning of the word. You can have multiple priorities. I mean, your priority can be your family, right? Is like ever. It's like it's not like you can pursue something and then just disregard your family, for example.
But also like if something is or is really a priority and like to be healthy in this modern society, it really has to be a priority, right? It has to be. I don't want to use the word aggressive because, you know, I'm trying to give you the most calm and gentle approach that is more like a sailboat floating in the breeze than like a sledge hammer or something.
Thoughtful. That's the word. Very thoughtful, is the way you have to be very thoughtful about it. Culture is like this giant stream that is flowing in a direction, and the direction where it is flowing across many domains is not one of greater health and wellness and compassion. They say, well, we want to get ourselves in that mindset to be more thoughtful.
Use that rudder on the sailboat to push us out of the current. Go in a little different direction. Take a deep breath, calm down, realize, hey, if I'm not exposed to all this sort of stuff all the time, the fire hose of it just the most important, let everybody else is like the filter, right? Everybody else just arguing about this and that information comes to you and you say, that's okay.
I can be informed on that. And then we're right back. Like, look, I've got a precious few hours left in this day. Here are the things that are important to me. I'm going to make sure that I have my mental capital preserved so that when my meal comes, I'm eating the things that are bringing nutrition to me and keeping me on my path.
And I am proactively making sure I'm keeping the things out of my environment that are getting the damage. Me people don't, you know, think it in these terms to think, oh, I'm being damaged by bad food. But like because it's small that the damage of one little thing and we talked you have one little thing. If it brings joy, of course it's fine.
You have a Halloween candy with the kids and it's just joy and you celebrate it. You know, like we're saying in this thing, don't guilt trip yourself. Perfection not required. Okay. But in the big picture, the exception that proves the rule. We always have our exception. We have a grace with ourself. But if the exception is the thing that's happening all the time, we say, well, then it's not just going to work, okay?
And so that's taking us back to our priority. What do we really want and how do we do it. And so when we're getting to January 1st is if we're lifting ourselves up, this is the process setting the priority. You have to say no to things, saying no to news at least most of the time, is is a lot easier to say no to because we don't really need it.
We don't want to say no, you know, say no to the news, say no to social media scrolling before you say no to hanging out with your friend or your family. And so it's like, I would I would hate to say somebody I'm trying to clear out space, fasting about space. You have to say no to things in order to open up space, for something else.
And you have to say no to good things in order to say yes, to have the space and capacity to say yes for better things. So if we're thinking lifting ourselves up, have to clear things out of the way. I think the easiest way to open up space is like, write it out, you know, in your journal, what are the what are the big occupiers of both physical time and mental space?
Say we all have work of some kind to do, whether it's our actual job or it's caring for people or it's just taking care of our self and all of the things like we got stuff we got to do, and we want to invest in community and relationships. So yes, where is news and social media? I just put oh, and then so where I was going is, is an ironic then in this sort of environment that that we are that the health care is self then is one of the most divisive things.
And so as I've, reflected on this, you know, pretty much share your perspective, I'd be happy to hear, people's perspective. I think that's that's pretty much economics, right? People argue about how we pay for health care and some somehow, you know, it's left and right maps on to, health care. Some people, you know, want to shut down all the, nasty insurance companies, which, you know, of course, I can relate to and, and have the government take over and other people want to shut down all government programs and privatize everything.
And so, like, holy cow. And then all these things come into, like, this giant storm and it just blows up. And to many people, this debate, health care economics, health care policy has become like a surrogate for actual health care. Like when people ask about health and health care, like invariably it what they're talking about is just like politics and economics.
I wish, that the case was that the health care system itself was somehow outside of that whole discussion about how it's paid for, because even like, I'll tell you, as a doctor within the system, it's just everywhere in, in the system and meetings and relationships. And so much of the discussions between doctors and especially as, you know, business meetings and things that are happening is less about, hey, how do we radically transform the health care experience so that people are actually healthier?
We've talked in our in our interesting psychology, right, about how we can come to a difficult situation, and then our mental structure will just have us answering easier questions. This is the big trap. And I think this is what has happened a lot to doctors and to the health care system in general, is the really difficult question perhaps is like, how do we actually promote human health and flourishing and well-being in like the greatest extent possible?
Shouldn't this be the vision of doctors? Shouldn't their health care system being a place that is just totally, totally, radically focused on improving health and well-being of our population? That's difficult to do. And so I think the easier question is just like, how do we pay for it? There's a whole pathway about this left, right. And then we argue these things, and then it doesn't actually require any change right in the health care system.
And so I think this is the mirroring between patients society doctors, patients, you know, is that is it. We're trapped in these cycles. This is where we're going today. Right. In negative cycles of negative thinking and being trapped in these, cycles and in this whole psychology is that we think that we are being thoughtful and, and we get trapped in these cycles of thinking is not taking us anywhere.
Like, does anyone feel like that? I mean, I know I feel like that my entire life in medicine with politically, economically, we never gone anywhere despite I mean, I don't know what it was like for you in 2008. And, you know, you think of like whether, like him or dislike him. I'm not trying to give up any.
I don't want anything political on this. Like, but the political, even because of the animosity and the division, it's feeding into the health. So to me, I'm not trying to make this political in any way. I'm trying to show you I want openness, I want health care to become a vehicle of health and wellness. That that then comes out as a political transformation.
Because I'll tell you, whatever you believe left or righter, center or anything, health care is going to work better when it costs less, no matter who's paying for it, whether we're paying for it through taxes from the government into a thing, or we're directly paying for it, like whatever the process is like, if people are healthier and they don't need very much health care, it's going to be easier.
It's going to work better. No matter how we organize some socio political economic structure that says health care stop serving patients. Long ago, great discussion. Yeah. Thank you. It's just it's on my heart right now. I just been thinking so much about it. I really think that's true. And of course, certain aspects of the health care system are very positive.
It's not that there's zero function in the health care system. There is innovation in health care. There are new drugs, for example, new biologic agents that are helping people. There are new, structures and advancements in technology that offer, tremendous promise of alleviating disease and disability. So I'm very much for that. I'm not opposed to technology. I say a lot.
You don't find an MRI scanner in the woods. Okay. I love an MRI. You know, the amount of technology and development of of of medical imaging, just as one tiny slice is so incredible, you know, across domains of physics and, and all this stuff, to be able to look into the body is a total miracle. And, and I love that.
And we need more of that. I think we need more of it. But that even in of itself is not really health care, even in its broadest sense. And we have taken a focus, away from people and service to people. And it has become only a technology and money focused, operation in many ways. And so we need to find the harmonious balance between these things to realize that, like, we need to get the thinking of medicine and health care onto this deeper level, like we're saying, where the vast majority of the energy of the health care system itself, health care system should be doing what I'm saying that we should all be doing.
We should be like taking our focus off all these news and these things that don't matter, that are filling up all of our mental space, with things. This is how people end up feeling disillusioned and powerless is because you say, oh, there's all these things. It feels overwhelming and we can't really do anything about it. I think about, like in the health care landscape, how many people who are angry about health care are actually themselves unhealthy?
And this is the thing that I want a lot is to say, okay, like I did a little video, last winter, I walked out on a frozen lake with a little I did a little what? I was like a vlog. I just talked to the camera. Like fixing the health care system starts at home. We can't change other people.
Think about the whole situation we're in. How many people just trying to change other people? I think if I shout out enough, I'm going to change these things and it just doesn't work that way. And this whole mindset is what is driving the so much of the dis health and dysfunction, in society. So I say health care starts at home.
Health care starts with taking care of our own very selves. And that's why fasting to me, is actually one of the core pillars that is going to turn around health care in this country, person to person, people who are having positive experiences saying, hey, this is what I have done, right? If you're having an experience to say, you know, I dialed in a mental health space, I realized I was not showing kindness and compassion to myself.
And then and I realized as I did that I was able to, like, open up some mental space and make better food choices and then, like, I started feeling better. And as I did that, I was realizing, oh, like, I'm not so dependent on this food intake as I thought, and actually was able to open up some fasting space and like, like it's amazing.
Look at I lost some weight. My blood pressure came down. I didn't need, you know, the lisinopril I didn't need, you know, all this stuff because like, when you open up that space and the chronic stress and inflammation come down and there's space for the body to start burning through the excess, and the insulin resistance drops and the blood sugar normalizes.
See, is getting to the root level of the process. What I've been saying in my musings about health care, we aren't really focused on true health. We're focused on economics and policy. But but these discussions from any perspective, left or right, are not actually about true health. Like Pat is saying. Is that really patient focused? Like like the patient is they're the patient in the big sphere of the system is just a token that goes through a process, is generating revenue based off of this is how people see it, like people, you know, our meetings and our physician meetings when I was at the university, you know, the whole thing.
How many reviews, you know, everything gets turned into reviews, relative value units, everything in it gets turned into a game, basically. And I understand there's economic realities. I understand people need to make money and they have budgets and these things. But when the entire focus of these things, you know, has been turned into metrics and numbers and things like, we have really lost something, of great value when the whole system, is like that.
And so to me, a fasting space is getting at that root level. You know, some people have who say like, can fasting really do all these different things and why and how? And it's because it's getting at this root level of the body, root level of the metabolism and the metabolism at this core level controls all of health.
Basically are thinking a cardiac function like a health of the liver. You know, it's all one system. We break it all up into these discrete little points like they're actually different things. But the body is one thing. And health is experienced in a whole body and a whole being. So I say lifting us all up in a better way.
Yeah. Through a health system and any sort of process, focus on the core of health, tune out everything else, take care of ourselves first. When we are taking care of ourself first. Like you want to be a real health, you know, to go back at the space. You want to be a health, what would you say, activist saying, okay, you think in a health space you think of an activist activist?
Is somebody out on the streets, they're yelling like, I want, you know, they shoot their perspective. Somebodys got on a red hat, and somebody got on a blue hand or whatever, you know, and they're they're yelling about it. You know, the way that you move forward most effectively that I was starting to describe. Right. Just take care of yourself first.
This is how it spreads to me. Like under the ground, right? Roots, very strong. Process building roots underground, people getting healthier. Everybody wants to be healthy. You don't have to. You can't shout someone into health. You know what I mean? But you can set an example and you can show and support and help. And so maybe that can be our, reflection for the week, or the day, how do I start?
And my little space, because this is what we can actually control. We can't control all these other things. And then and then we feel disillusioned by it, or we can powerless. We're very strong fasting and empowering process because it shows us part of our strength, the energy, the resources that we have. Can we lean into that? Use that to help health can flourish in that space.
And when health starts flourishing, you know, people want that, you know, can you have a way of being in the world where actually the health that is coming from within you is overflowing and extending out and, you know, can you do you end up having a talk with a friend? You know, I would love it if you had an experience.
Maybe this is the whole point of a simple fasting process. What I'm trying to do help you have an experience that is so good and positive and sustainable. You say, I've been at this for a year, and I feel like I'm only just starting because we want a lifetime process, a lifetime of health, not just a little fad, not an experience.
Right? Like it worked for a little while, and then you have to find the next thing. This is what so many diets and dietary processes are like. Okay, I read this book and then I did this for a while, and then it kind of didn't work anymore. And I went to something else and it's just a cycle when from my perspective, we we put all the core things together the mindset, the food, the movement, the fasting, all of this together.
We don't need anything else. Now, if I can learn any other good thing, share the other. You know, processes. That doesn't have to be anything else. Like these are the processes, the ground level that you can use to build a life of health and move forward in that. And people want that. I do think people want that. And so as we can help people to do that, then I think we really move this forward in, in like my most ideal, perfect vision of the future.
You know, this is like the level below medicine to me lifestyle. This is like culture. It's below medicine. We this is how you build out a healthy culture. Culture is just the culmination of how I don't know if average is the right word, but like the way most people flowing through the world and the decisions create the culture.
So so we don't like where the culture is going, kind of build a new culture. You're going to be part of the counter culture, you know, counter culture. In this way, though, a very thoughtful process of health, where we are helping our brothers, sisters, neighbors to sink in to the very simple, essentially free, basic practices that just bring life and health.
And when enough of us are doing this, we create a critical mass of people who are just moving toward health. I really feel like it's going to take the pressure off of the health care system. Talk about how fasting personally can take the pressure off last, cooking, cleaning, shopping, dishes less times to be eating more space for other sort of things, less financial pressure like just opening up all this space.
Just like we can have the discussion of how our bodies are mirroring the society and like we can bring the dysfunction of society into us right. And that's what so much I think of what we're experiencing. We can invert that, take health. Health springing out of the body and flourishing is and push that out. Actually, instead of our bodies mirroring the society, we start pushing out and having society mirror our health and that see, that is empowering.
Taking it from the when it's just the other direction. This is like mass media coming at us where we feel I can't control it and it's this overwhelming deluge of this stuff, and then you're feeling powerless against it. Now we invert it, we focus on ourselves, we allow health and life and vitality to spring forth from the body, and we are pushing actively that out that we are showing health, being healthy, experiencing health.
That is a positive force that we can build, and send that out. And in the short term, isn't it enough? The people we care about, our friends and family, helping our friends and family to be healthy and as thoughtful and gentle away as possible, recognizing we can't change anyone. But we can be an example to people and we can support and encourage people.
That is the, that is the way. Thanks for sharing these thoughts with me, lifting ourselves up in every way that we can, across every domain, every way, lift ourselves up emotionally, lift our physical selves up. I love, the way I described it the other day, keeping our eyes on the horizon. We're, like, coming in for a landing January 1st.
We're going to, like, land at the party to celebrate this. Dial us in on where we are today, focusing on the positive, not punishing the negative, lifting everything up, identifying the positive coming in. Right. So January 1st, we're going to have a little party. Think about all the good work that we've done, both physically, emotionally to lift ourselves up, bring ourselves forward and health just going to be, fantastic.
So think of that. That's kind of like a sailboat. Like the plane cruising in, right? Is like, we've done the work, we flew across the country and we're just like dialing it in. All right, everybody, this was great. Great discussion. I will be back with you tomorrow. More insights, another step, tomorrow toward better health. I hope you have a great day.
I hope this helps you get dialed in and some really great thinking. I be thinking about this discussion. Very interesting things. You know, health care system. How do we promote health? And wholeness in the greatest way possible? We'll start with ourselves, and we'll do it in this day. We'll take powerful steps, and then we'll come tomorrow and we'll keep taking another step.
I appreciate you all very much. Have a great day, everybody.