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7 podcasts over 7 days with the ParrotPal 7 day free trial. An app that specialises in fat loss, and you can track food by just typing it out or voice noting into the app! Short daily podcasts to start your day.
Hello welcome to day four of your PowerPal seven day trial. So I hope you are enjoying this, sincerely hope you are enjoying this because if you can find enjoyment in doing this you are literally 90% of the way there because imagine enjoying just being able to track your nutrition and like look into your health. You say the people say like if you can love what you do you don't feel like you're doing work. That quote is true like if you hate your job it's really a massive craft and you hate it. If you love your job, kind of you don't see it as a job.
Speaker 1:Now can we see looking after our nutrition in the same way? When I say to you, do you brush your teeth every morning? Like, you're like, yeah, well, obviously, yeah. But like, sometimes you don't brush your teeth. Can't bother.
Speaker 1:You're like, I'm so tired, but we still do it because we know the benefits there for us. Like, so can we see it at least? Is there a benefit in us at least even if we cannot be bothered? Can we just at least voice note into the app to say well we've had to eat that day even if it's not perfect, can we just do it? That's just something for you to think about, can we make it like that, can we make it fun, can we enjoy the process.
Speaker 1:But today's podcast really I wanna cover stoicism. It's the ancient philosophy of starting ancient Athens really got into the Roman elite. There's a famous philosopher king called Marcus Aurelius and there's a famous teacher called Epictetus and there's a few and there's a few key people in Stoicism, world. It kind of flourished for five hundred years and it's making a comeback now. But stoicism main thing is this.
Speaker 1:It's not things that disturb us, it's our opinion about things. So it's not events that disturb us, it's our opinion about an event that does disturb us. And when it comes to craving, what happens when we come to craving is the stoics would say that we get hit by something called initial impressions. So if you get impressed by someone, they've left a kind of a feeling on you. Do know what mean?
Speaker 1:So like you feel it so how they explain that is an impression is anything in your near kind of circle of energy, okay, or of your circle of kind of interaction where you can see something, you can hear something, you can smell something, you can touch something or you can taste something. So you got your senses which can be impressed on them for a better word. So you could be walking down the street and you hears a big bang and then immediately your body goes into like a little shock, what was that? And then your brain comes in and goes, oh, just that bin fell and it calmed back down. So that initial impression is kind of like outside your control in a sense.
Speaker 1:It was so fast that when that big noise came off you were ready like, that could be danger. Or you smell something and it hits you so quick it's like a memory pops into your brain, we know that. Smell of food pops in and boom, oh that's nice. And then your brain creates an image of you eating that delicious bread. And that as soon as that image is created of you eating that bread that's when you chase the pleasure, that's when desire is born.
Speaker 1:And that's when you go ah but I shouldn't want to eat that bread because I think it's gonna make me gain weight. And this duality that we're going against this like ah I really want it but actually no I don't really want it, want it, no oh my god I don't know what to do. You weigh yourself out in this internal conflict and then nine or 10 times we kind of break to that and we just end up eating it anyway which then reinforces another loop. And the other loop is, I'm an idiot treating, I shouldn't have done it, why am I so fat, why am I so pathetic, I can't do this, why am I doing this, what's the point? I'm just gonna go home, just gonna eat my way, what's the point doing it?
Speaker 1:You know what you think? But it's not about this never happening, it will happen. You will smell some bread and you will eat it. Like me, I'll do it. I'll walk past bakery, cinnamon roll, happy days.
Speaker 1:Bring it on. But we love is happening but why it's not so much about us but can we understand what's going on? The understanding is very important. So when you crave something and when you're hungry, there are different things. Craving is another word for desire, right?
Speaker 1:It's a form of desire. Hunger is a genuine body requirement, it's a physiological requirement, your body's like, oh I'm rumbling, I'm hungry, need a The body needs energy, the systems are going, well hello, hello, we need something, bring me the energy. And then hunger cues go off and you will eat. Now we eat beyond hunger cues, we eat beyond fullness where we do this because foods are so tasty and highly calorific that we can easily do this now. But have you ever wonder what the difference is between craving and hunger?
Speaker 1:One test to do is if you're really hungry or you think you're really hungry and you're just craving is to say well, I might crave in a specific food right now which is one kind of tick box that way, if I'm craving a specific food, I'm more likely to be craving. However, would you say to yourself, I'm really craving chocolate right now. And you say yourself, well, am I just hungry or am I craving? You go, well, would you eat a bowl of broccoli right now? And you would say, no.
Speaker 1:Okay. Would you eat a bowl of bland chicken and broccoli right now? And you go, no. Then you kinda know maybe this is craving. Maybe this is a desire for a food that I'm trying to escape my current situation.
Speaker 1:So we use food as a way to escape our current situation. If I'm feeling stressed, if I eat food, I'll replace my stress feeling with a feeling of pleasure and that's nice and I momentarily escape the stress. Perhaps I don't think about the stress for a while and I go off to someone else. So it's an escape mechanism. The food gives us pleasure.
Speaker 1:We're either going towards pleasure or we are avoiding pain. And the Stoics spoke about this. There's two handles here, there's the towards pleasure and avoiding pain. We wanna avoid the pain of the stress of the situation, avoid the confrontation, we wanna avoid the shitty workday we just had. And we wanna go towards pleasure because we know it feels good for us.
Speaker 1:And we often mistaken pleasure for happiness. It's one of the key things that we mistake. We think the pleasurable things will make us happy. But actually the pleasurable things we take them too far and they actually become a source of pain. So we're in this loop forever and when it comes to food and craving it's important to understand this because what we think will help us actually makes us feel worse.
Speaker 1:So you'll crave chocolate and you can eat there, just track it, no problem. Like I've said, there's no problem in eating chocolate. There's no problem in having McDonald's or a burger or whatever. But say you you've just eaten a half an hour ago. Someone texts you, it's been stressful.
Speaker 1:You're thinking oh my god, I'm so stressed. And you go, just wanna eat something. Just wanna eat chocolate. You think it'll make you feel better. If you could zoom out the bin and say, right, if I ate that, would I feel better?
Speaker 1:And you go, yeah, I swear I don't just need it. Or there's a reality you'll eat then you feel worse and you'll eat more, think F it and you just kind of consume 1,000 calories in one go and then you'll hit it again and then you just don't bother waking up tomorrow and following some health routine you think what's the point now? That's what happens. Can we limit that? Can we just have the chocolate bar and leave it there?
Speaker 1:Or can we understand that eating any of our food pleasures to excess we actually get disgusted by them, right? So there's one recent study about this and it made people overeat on the foods they love and they made them live commentary how it felt. I think Tony Robbins does this as well. So say now you want a chocolate, you crave it all the time, you think you're uncontrollable with What you'll do is one night you will eat as much chocolate as you can but you will record yourself and you will live commentary it to the point where you are like oh my god I'm so full and my stomach's in pain, oh my god I'm not even comfortable, I'm sweating, oh my I feel horrendous, can't even go out right now. Oh my god, chocolate's now disgusting.
Speaker 1:My teeth feel horrific. You can even journal it. So when the next time comes around and you try and kid yourself that it's this one chocolate bar, you can think actually that last evidence is really fresh in my mind and you don't actually wanna go down that path. When we think of these things we only think of the benefits. We never think of like how many times we've sat on a couch where we thought it was one chocolate bar, one piece of cake but we've eaten way more than that and we've sat on a couch being miserable, we can't move, we're bloated, right?
Speaker 1:And we really had a good day and you wake up the next day and you feel a bit bad about yourself, kind of wipe those memories out because we just chase the pleasures, like the immediate pleasure, like people, this is an extreme example and it's not the same, but someone wants cocaine. They know they can have a cum down and feel horrendous but they wanna know, wanna know. But in a less extreme example we've got to have a pleasure, buy everything, not just food but a lot of stuff. So how do we handle this? So you will see a brownie and you'll go, this is what happens.
Speaker 1:If you if you slowed it down, this is what happens in the head. I see that brownie. It looks great. I can smell it. It's fresh, nice set of brownies.
Speaker 1:That fresh smell and me seeing it, two impressions, hit me like a ton of bricks. Boom. I then envision the last time I had a brownie and I felt amazing. I loved it. Because we'll ignore the stuff we didn't like.
Speaker 1:I loved the last brownie. It's the best. This could be the best brownie ever. Then the image of me eating the brownies in my head, which now triggers desire. Desire is now born for me to eat that brownie.
Speaker 1:I know this is where conflict starts. This is where the internal battle starts. I don't need that brownie, why not, it's so nice. Yeah but someone, I shouldn't eat it though I'm trying to be healthy. Yeah but you can have it within your calories.
Speaker 1:Yeah I know but it's a brownie, I don't actually need it, I eat it an hour ago, oh my gosh should I have it. You see what happens? That fighting is the problem, not the impression that the brownie smell looks great, it is the fighting about the brownie that is the problem. You've only got enough cognitive load each day. There's only a finite amount of willpower but we don't have to use willpower here.
Speaker 1:We just have to watch what the hell happened in the head and watch it with curiosity like that's funny. That really is funny how it works. I've just turned me looking at a brownie into a real internal battle. If that internal battle could be outside in front of our eyes and me fighting me, eat the brownie mate, me choking, go on I'm smacking myself, get to eat the brownie, no mate, I don't wanna, you know, it's so stupid. You just look at the brownie, observe this in the conflict and you say, well, I see the brownie, smells good, looks good, and you kind of have a the the action is non action.
Speaker 1:You just let it flower and die. If that's not where you can be, if you can't, just do this also as trial and error. When you see something that then you start craving or you desire just watch what is happening, just be very non action based, just look. Just look at the brain, stare it out and just look at the inner workings of the brain. This is the only time you can find out why the hell you're craving it otherwise you feel out of control.
Speaker 1:Now a lot of, suggestions that are more practical are if you have a craving, like think about this scenario, this is where craving is really linked to thought. Craving and thought, craving is thought, craving is thinking. The image you create is thinking, right? And this is the proof of it. You see that brownie and you think yeah, I want you baby.
Speaker 1:You know you wanna And then you really wanna know. You're like yo I've put this tap in, you're like don't know what time should I have it. Then you get a phone call and this phone call says, you gotta get here right now. Your best friend phones, gotta get here right now. I've broken my leg and I'm on a path and I need help and he's gonna come get me quick and the car knows, I'm ten minutes away and I feel like I'm freezing.
Speaker 1:If you're a good human being obviously. Your mind's not thinking of the craving anymore, you're literally out that door straight down there. Straight down to help your friend. You haven't thought about that craving's gone because all it was was you thinking about it all the time over and over, you thinking about that image of you eating, that's all the craving is. You can replace, you can go for a walk, you can do a workout, go for a run, can phone a friend, whatever it is.
Speaker 1:If you just take your thinking off it for a bit, the craving dies. Hunger is different. If you ignore hunger, it will pop back, pop back, pop back, your stomach will go and you'll grumble without you even saying anything. That's when you know a difference. And another thought experiment for you to leave on today and I want you to refocus right now which is kind of covered down a lot of stuff.
Speaker 1:It might make sense to you, might not. Energy, you might think you've got no energy, you might think you're low in energy. Now it might not be that, might just be the view you have of the day you've got in front of you, the massive obstacles you've got but say now you were laying in bed, you might have been working nine, it's twenty to nine, you're really slow, you're like oh my god I can't be able to wake up, I hate my job, don't wanna go. Then you had a phone call and said you've just won a million quid on the lottery, what happens to your energy levels? You've just gone from, oh my god, hate my life, I'm so tired, to, oh my days, let's go.
Speaker 1:Hello, yeah, Johan, we're going out mate, let's go. Hello, Mike, mate, you never guess what, get when are you, I'm gonna run to you my boxers, I don't care, I'm coming. Completely different. Where did that energy come from? You've kind of unblocked it, you've unblocked the energy because now you view with the day, you view with everything, it's completely different.
Speaker 1:You've just viewed it as like wow I'm now successful, this is amazing, I've got freedom and all that stuff. That's extreme again as an example but can we bring that to the today now? It's like I don't have to do loads of things in one that's all I've got do today is track my nutrition right and I've got fun doing it with a voice note or whatever, I can enjoy going for a walk, listen to a podcast, I can wake up, get my steps in and before I know it my physique will change, before I know it my mindset's changed, before I'm healthier. Oh but I just gotta do this now today these very simple tasks wow. Woah that's all I gotta do.
Speaker 1:If you're laying in bed thinking I gotta do a project that's got 10,000 pages by tomorrow obviously you're going to be, paralysis, very analysis. But if you bring it back to one day at a time and just following the principles of PARAPAL and those kind of protein calorie steps, happy days. Happy days. So off you go today, enjoy it, get your things going and be back tomorrow for day five. We're going to talk tomorrow about perfectionism.
Speaker 1:So hopefully that will resonate with you guys. Have a good day. Folks on the basics, put a smile on your face, and I'll see you back here tomorrow.