Willpower Won’t Work

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Hey, it's JJ Virgin and welcome to the JJ Virgin Lifestyle show where I talk nutrition, exercise, mindset and lifestyle with some of the coolest people in the world. Plus, I give you tips that you can put into fast action to uplevel your health so that you can go out there and live the big life you're meant to live. So one of the things that I've been looking at for years is stress. And what I like to say is stress can make you age faster, lose your sex drive and gain weight like the trifecta of bad. I think it's something we don't talk enough about. Maybe we don't, you know, we're too stressed out to hear. So. So I brought in an amazing expert to talk about the role of adrenals. The adrenal glands are how you handle stress in your body, the role of adrenals and survival mode and fat, sugar, carb and salt cravings, and how you can never have to rely on willpower again because if you've tried to do that, if you tried to white knuckle your way through stress and avoid the cookies, you know how difficult, if not impossible, that can be. So let me tell you a little bit about today's guest, Dr. Aviva Raum. So Prevention magazine calls her the face of natural medicine in the 21st century because she's bridged the gap of traditional medicine with good science for over three decades. She's a midwife, an herbalist, and a Yale trained medical doctor, board certified in family medicine with obstructics, as well as a graduate of Dr. Weil's Integrative Medicine residency through the University of Arizona and worked with Dr. Mark Hyman, our our pal, Dr. Mark Hyman at the Ultra Wellness center where she practiced functional medicine with him for two years. So her big focus is on women's and children's health. She does some amazing stuff with getting kids healthy, too, but today we're talking stress. And again, her emphasis is on the impact of stress on health, willpower, food cravings, weight, chronic disease and hormone imbalance. She's an avid environmental health advocate focusing on the impact of toxins on fertility, pregnancy, women's hormones, chronic illness and children's health, and one of the nation's leaders in the field of botanical medicine, and the author of seven books on natural medicine for women and children, including the textbook Botanical Medicine for Women's Health. And she's the integrative medicine curriculum author for the Yale Internal Medicine and Pediatric Residencies. She lives on the east coast in Massachusetts and New York City, and she is a speaker, author and consultant. And she has such a great way of sharing information with you. And again, I'm really excited to have you listen to this interview, especially, especially with her take on willpower and why you need to stop and never beat yourself up again if you're craving the cookie, but more importantly, what you can do about it. So let's do it. Dr. Aviva Ram, welcome to the show. I am so glad you're here with me today.

I'm so glad to have this time with you. J.J. thank you for inviting me.

Such a big topic, and I'm going to dive right in with one that is always my mantra is this whole thing about willpower. Why doesn't willpower alone work when you're trying to overcome an addiction to fat, sugar or salt?

Great question. And close to my heart, because so many women come into me, into my practice and say, Dr. Ram, I try. I try, and no matter what I do, I can't stick with my diet. And I just don't have willpower. And I think people assume willpower is just something you either have like this talent or you don't have. And it's not that way at all. So a big thing for me is really reassuring women that this is something that we can take responsibility for and shift. But to some extent, it's a bit out of our control. And here's why. We are all hardwired with this primitive programming system that starts in our brain and goes to these two little organs that sit on top of our kidneys called the adrenal glands. And that system, called the hpa, or hypothalamic pituitary adrenal axis, is our primitive survival system. And it will keep us alive pretty much at any expense. And here's the amazing thing. Guess what? The three primary foods are for the adrenal stress system that keep us in survival. Fat, sugar and carbohydrates. We need fat to fuel us in the event that we have to run away from a saber toothed tiger or a bear. We need carbs to replenish the energy that's been used up in, in the muscles when we hypothetically run away from that bear or tiger. And we need salt because that's what keeps our blood pressure up should we get gored or attacked or clawed by those horrible dangerous animals.

Again, there's so many of those dangerous animals around nowadays. Right, right.

But here's the thing. Your primitive survival system doesn't differentiate between the threat of those animals from tens of thousands of years ago, to the stress of bills that you can barely pay, or a stressful job or difficult relationship with your parents or your children, or any number of the modern day stressors that most of us are facing day to day. And then you add to it, on top of that the stresses of the horrible things that we're reading about in the news. And our primitive survival systems go haywire. On top of that, a lot of us are living on shore sugar. And when we have chronic sugar crashes throughout the day, the organ that is most primed to be in this kind of survival mode and trigger fat, sugar and salt cravings is our brain. And when we're in this chronic survival mode, our body starts to pump out a hormone called cortisol. And guess what cortisol does? It goes to part of the brain, the frontal cortex, that is actually where our willpower comes from. And it short circuits it, it short circuits us from actually being able to make intelligent decisions about our food. So even when we want to stop binging on the fat, you know, the corn chips with the fat and the salt or the sugar, we actually can't because our brain thinks, wow, something's wrong. I've got to eat a lot of these molecules, I've got to eat a.

Lot of that fat.

I've got to eat a lot of that sugar and salt to store it in case something really bad happens. So we can't override that primitive survival system even when we want to.

You know, this is such a big thing for people to hear because no matter, you know, what you do there, the end result is you feel so guilty. And so when you rely on willpower, which is you just shown we don't have, if we had willpower, we wouldn't be as here on this earth. This is a natural, normal thing, this primitive brain. And you can't overrule it. And yet people beat themselves up for getting stressed out and reaching for a cookie when that's really, it's just like, you know, it's, it's how we got here. It's, it's our whole survival mechanism. So I hope that what you're, when you're hearing this out there, you're going, okay, it's not my fault. Now that doesn't mean you have, you know, a wild card.

Exactly. Cookies either. So, you know, no, it's not your fault. And here's the thing, is that when you, let's say you're on a diet, you're trying to cut sugar, you're just trying to eat a better way of eating. And you go ahead and you dive into that Snickers bar or even, you know, the sort of quote unquote healthy alternative, the gluten free cupcakes or something, then you start beating yourself up emotionally. And what's really interesting is that triggers the primitive survival system and so you end up going to soothe that system by going for more of what you were trying to avoid. We're actually practicing self focusing forgiveness, as kind of woo woo as that sounds, is the antidote if you do kind of fall off the wagon because that quiets the system down. It says, hey, okay, something happened, but everything's okay here and you can actually reset instead of following falling further off the wagon.

Yeah, it's so important that mindset and self talk just changes everything. Let's back it up a second because I talked, you know, in my intro, I discuss what we're going to talk about today, which is the role of adrenals and their survival mode and fat, sugar, carb and salt cravings. But I want to back it up just because I think it's one of those questions people don't want to ask is what exactly are the adrenals and what exactly do they do? Aviva?

Great, Great. So the adrenals are these two tiny little glands. And I have to tell you, the first time I was ever in a surgery, I was in a kidney surgery the first time I ever saw the adrenals. They do so much to protect us and keep us alive. They support our blood sugar, they support our immune system, they support our ability to produce and control inflammation. So sometimes we need a little inflammation to fight off an infection, for example, but they also control inflammation from getting out of control. They do so many things that literally keep us alive. They trigger the release of insulin to help mop up some of that sugar that gets released when this survival mode gets triggered. And the first time I saw these organs and the surgeon pointed them out to me, I said, oh, that's it. Because they're so small, but they sit on top of the kidneys. And when the brain perceives that there's either danger, and that danger could be something external, like stress from somebody getting angry at us. That triggers us to feel like maybe we're in some kind of threat. Or it could be you're walking down the street and you see somebody, and it's a dark night and you're walking up the street and you hear somebody behind, or you see somebody behind you and you think they're following you. That feeling where your heart starts to race, you start to quicken a little bit. That's the adrenals kicking in. And they pump out a number of different chemicals. Some of them are hormones, and some of them are called catecholamines. The catecholamine that we're most familiar with is called adrenaline. And that's what lets us fight or flight. It also makes our heart race faster. It makes our breathing go a little bit deeper and faster. It does a lot of things that enable us to get out of dangerous situations. It also makes us more aware of our environment. So it can make us vigilant or even hyper vigilant when it's triggered too often. And then cortisol, as I mentioned before, is a hormone. And that hormone is specific for things like controlling inflammation. So if you're under a lot of exposure to infection, for example, your body will pump out more cortisol. If you're under a lot of stress, your body will pump out more cortisol. The problem with pumping out too much cortisol is that over not even that long a period of time, it makes us retain weight, especially around the middle. It can cause us to not have as much mental clarity. As I mentioned earlier, it can impact our willpower. And then the problem with pumping out adrenaline too much is over time, it can make your heart rate become irregular. It can make your blood vessels contract to lead to chronic high blood pressure and a number of other potentially dangerous downstream effects.

Well, so how do you know like that? You've. Because we talk a lot about crashing your adrenals or your adrenals are fatigued. And you know, what I've seen over the years is when people are in the midst of having their adrenals on alert and they're overworking, you don't get to talk to people then. Cause they actually feel kind of good. It's like they're running on overdrive, but then you see them when they've crashed. So we want to avoid someone getting to that place. What are symptoms that you may be in overdrive or in fatigue in terms of your adrenals.

So the first thing that usually happens is we spend a good bit of time in overdrive. And actually I would say most Americans are living in a chronic state of overdrive. And some of the symptoms are that are you feel like you kind of have a motor running inside you. That feeling like you always have to get something done, you've never finished your job. It's that sort of amped up feeling is actually being chronically stimulated by adrenaline and cortisol. Some other common, common symptoms are that you're having trouble falling asleep at night, even when you're tired. It's commonly called tired and wired. And then even when you do sleep, you're not really rested when you do wake up in the morning because you're overstimulated all the time, you can be gaining weight around your middle. Perhaps you notice a little bit of a spare tire. You typically feel anxious or irritable. You might be getting more angry at people than the situation warrants. So you're pretty quick to get irritated, angry or inflamed by something. Chronic inflammation, literal inflammation, like pain or swelling in your joints could be a sign that you're in this chronic cortisol stage, slipping into maybe a little bit of fatigue. But you're right, it's like similar when people take a steroid, they actually feel great because it's the same hormone. So any of that little bit of rage is really indicative. You can also be having digestive symptom problems. You can be having problems focusing, like you're hypervigilant and you're alert, but you're finding that you're jumping from one thing to another and you can't really focus on any one thing. You might be having bad dreams, particularly nightmares. And that's really the symptoms of the overdrive. What then happens is you can only sustain that for so long. And so, for example, you might notice that when you're in that overdrive state, you never really get sick. But when you take a vacation, you crash the first day. A lot of people are familiar with, they don't get sick all year long until their first day of their holiday and then boom, they're down with the cold or the flu. But when you shift into that place where you're in adrenal fatigue, the symptoms Start to shift a little bit. You may get angry or irritable, but you may actually feel more just burnt out. You don't even have the energy to get that angry. Instead of feeling anxious, you might feel anxious and. Or depressed, so you might switch between both, or you might actually just feel more blue. You still have those same troubles falling asleep and feeling really tired in the morning. But instead of being more amped up and irritable, you're just kind of sluggish and tired a lot of the time. You might start to have cravings, cravings for sugar and carbs, or sugar, carbs, fat, and salt. And you're especially tired around 3 or 4 in the afternoon. And you're really craving something sweet or maybe some extra caffeine at that time. And at that time, you're starting to get sick more often than you used to. Your hormones might be all over the place. If you're trying to get pregnant, you might be having fertility problems. If you're in the menopausal years, you might be having more menopausal symptoms than you might otherwise have if things were or humming along more smoothly. And most women are gonna be experiencing things like irregular periods or breast tenderness and breast swelling and inflammation, pms, things like that. And then when your adrenals really start to get pretty far down the road, you can start having actual diseases like autoimmune problems, insulin resistance, diabetes, high blood pressure, and even chronic cognitive problems that can lead toward dementia. So it can be pretty serious if we don't treat this upfront.

Now, you just. You talked about inflammation. You kind of, like, threw that one out there. And I want to go back to inflammation.

Yeah.

So let's talk about some of the consequences of inflammation when it just goes out of control.

So inflammation is pretty much acknowledged even by the medical establishment, which tends to be conservative about these things, as kind of the root of all illness. So there isn't really any illness that I can think of that doesn't have inflammation as an underlying component. And what we're discussing discovering now is that inflammation isn't just you get a cut and it swells up, or you have an autoimmune disease and you have chronic inflammation in your joints. But we now know that inflammation can affect the gut and cause gut health problems. And even when you have some inflammation in the lining of your gut, it can affect the microbiome. It can cause leaky gut syndrome, where we have more proteins than are supposed to go from our gut into our circulatory system, getting through These barriers in our gut, causing allergies, asthma, eczema, all kinds of autoimmune conditions, from psoriasis to rheumatoid arthritis to lupus. But we also know that inflammation on a chronic daily basis can affect our food choices because it can make us crave certain foods and it can cause anxiety, depression, and problems like dementia. So cognitive problems, it can also lead to more severe problems than the day to day things, although dementia is a pretty severe problem, like diabetes. And it's an underlying core problem in diabetes, insulin resistance, and all of these ultimately lead to inflammation in our vascular system, which can lead to heart attack and stroke.

So now you brought up, you brought up food cravings when you were talking about inflammation. And I just want to throw out, there it is. You know, these things all tie together with the virgin diet. The big thing I see with people with food intolerance is that they get stressed, their adrenals get taxed, and they get leaky gut. And then of course, stress makes you crave more sweets and have more food cravings. So does food intolerance. So what's something someone can do if they have these food cravings? Especially, as we know, you don't normally have food cravings. I've yet to come across the person who has the food cravings for broccoli. So maybe you have, but I certainly had. So generally there for a couple women.

Crave, you know, maybe in pregnancy, a couple of women have craved a few healthy things, but pretty much everyone craves these foods that are what keep this survival mode system from crashing. Essentially, it's what keeps that survival mode system making us survive. But unfortunately, when it gets stuck in what I call the on position, we get the backlash. It's supposed to turn on when we need it and then turn off when we don't. But because so many of us are living in this chronic stress mode, we end up with it stuck on and we have these cravings. So the hard reality is the first thing that we really have to do to cut the cravings is to try to resist, if we can, eating those things that create the vicious cycle, particularly the sugar. The sugar really creates a vicious cycle for us wanting to eat more sugar. And as I mentioned, when we're stuck in the on position because we're stressed out, the antidote, antidote for that is to get into what is a more parasympathetic system. So all the systems that I talked about, that adrenaline, that cortisol, that's part of something called the sympathetic system, that's when we're in overdrive, the parasympathetic system is the opposite. It's instead of the fight or flight, it's the rest and digest. So these are really connected because, you know, whenever I've watched a movie, for example, where it's like a romantic comedy where the woman is just in the bad breakup, it's not like she goes into her freezer, tears into the freezer and pulls out the pine and Ben and Jerry's and digs in and goes crazy over it. What happens is she opens the freezer, she stands there for 10 seconds and she's like, should I eat it? Shouldn't I eat it? Should I eat it? Shouldn't I eat it?

Right?

And if we can give ourselves what I call permission to pause, it's like this golden 10 seconds where we say, is eating that going to get me to feel how I really want to feel and what can I do instead? Often we can kind of snap out of it and make a different choice because we've quickly put ourselves out of that sympathetic, that overdrive into a more relaxed contemplation, contemplative state. Now, ideally, not having the Ben and Jerry's in the freezer would help a whole lot too.

Yes.

So that's. So you want to clean out the things that are the temptations that you're going to fall back on.

I just have to point out you just said something so key that people, I hope people are hearing is just don't be mean to yourself. Don't stick something that's a trigger food for you in the freezer. And expect that when you're tired, overstressed or craving that you're going to be able to handle it. Just, just don't do that to yourself. It's, it's some, it's. You're just setting yourself up. So, you know, I love the permission.

Yeah, there's no those things. Thank you.

Get it out of there.

Yeah.

I mean, it's a setup. It's like, you know, four. It's five o' clock in the afternoon. You've just left your job, you're about to pick up your kids from aftercare, you have to go pick up some groceries. You've had a stressful day at work, you got to home, take care of your kids and then pay the bills. It's pretty hard to resist that Snickers bar at the checkout counter at the grocery store. I mean, there's a reason these things are placed and it's because we're hardwired to want them. And so part of what we have to do is change the mindset so that we're becoming aware of that hardwiring, not beating ourselves up for it, but realizing that we actually can make a different choice. And it's hard at first. You know, I will say it's hard, but every time you make that choice and sort of succeed at it, it makes it easier to make it the next time. So reminding ourselves what our goals are, how do we really want to feel? And is e finding that going to get us there is such an important place to be that mindset, and then, as we said, not having the triggers available and having healthy choices as an alternative. Right. So if what your brain and what your survival system is craving are fats and salts, then what can we have instead? Okay, maybe some dry roasted almonds with a little bit of sea salt on them. Keep that as a survival toolkit in your handbag, in your backpack, or in your pocket. So have something on hand that you can't overlap, override that survival drive. So you have to feed it with something. So what can you feed it with? And having some healthy alternatives that are readily available that you can go to will cut that craving. And over time, and it really doesn't take that long. I mean, I've seen people completely lose their craving for the sugar, the fat, and the salt in just a matter of days just by shifting these little things.

Absolutely. And you did another one that I preach and I love is always carry emergency food with you. Never get trapped, trapped somewhere without it, and you're stressed out, and then there's the cookie lady or something there, and you're stuck. So, so much great information. And we could, we could keep going on and on. So clearly, I'm gonna have to have you back because I want to have you back to talk about healthy kids, too. So I want to thank you so much for joining me today. I want to remind everybody that you can get so much more good stuff from Dr. Aviva if you go to www.avivarom.com. now, you're probably wondering how the heck to spell that. V I V A R o M M. Avivarom.com I love that it rhymes. That's so cool, Aviva. And after the break, I'm going to be answering a listener's question, so stay with me.

The true cause of weight gain is not calories. It's food intolerance, a negative reaction to certain foods, even foods you thought were healthy can lead to a variety of symptoms, including weight gain. Acne, bloating, and lack of energy. The solution is simple. Avoid the foods your body doesn't tolerate. But which foods? That's the secret JJ reveals in her book. The Virgin Diet drops seven foods, lose seven pounds just seven days. Discover the sneaky seven foods by visiting JJVirgin.com books and be on your way to losing seven pounds in just seven days.

This is the time where I answer a listener's question. And today's question is actually five questions and I'm going to get to all of them. Listen on in.

Hi. I have five questions actually. First question is, does the no snacking advice apply to diabetics as well? Question number two, how does one become a fat burner and not a glucose burner if they're eating sweet potatoes and so many beans and lentils? And next one is, is it true that some people are not able to switch to fat burning and so their body burns glucose from muscles instead? And another one is, I'm wondering if you can give advice on how to prevent muscle loss. My husband did the three weeks JJ Virgin diet, and after three weeks we could totally tell that he had lost some muscles. And last question is, you talk a lot about digestive enzymes and I'm allergic to pineapple. It seems like a lot of digestive enzymes are from pineapple or bromelain. And so I was wondering if you have an alternative for that or any advice on that. Thank you.

Okay, so let's take them down one at a time. Number one, diabetes and snacking. Well, your biggest thing that you want to do, whether you're insulin resistant diabetic, is you want to balance your blood sugar. And the goal of having good blood sugar balance is to be able to go longer in between meals. And what I teach people to do is if you've been eating every two to three hours, you don't go from two to three hours to six hours overnight. You go there over time. So biggest thing that you're doing as a diabetic is really balancing and managing your blood sugar. And ideally, you want that as stable as possible. So start with eating that good fat, fiber and protein trifecta. And that should help you start to get better blood sugar balance so that you aren't having to eat as often so you aren't having to inject as often. So ideally, yes, you are going to be able to move from two to three hours to three to four hours. Now, you may find that you get stuck at four hours and that's great. But let's look at having breakfast Lunch and dinner and maybe one snack and monitoring that blood sugar. And by the way, everyone should be thinking about monitoring their blood sugar because having good, good blood sugar control is one of the keys to having great health. Now next one goes right along with this. How do I become a sugar burner rather than a fat burner? And, and the question was, how do I do that by eating when I'm eating so many beans and sweet potatoes? I don't know. That's not my program. My program is not eat a load of beans. My program is focus on eating lots of good healthy fats, optimal levels of protein, loads of non starchy vegetables and a small amount of slow, low impact carbs of which if you are not paleo would include things like lentils and legumes which are such a slow release carbohydrates because they are high in fiber. Now this is where I tightly control your amount. It's one to two servings, generally one serving at lunch, breakfast and lunch, and one to two servings at dinner. So that is not a large amount. So I want to clarify that it is enough so that you keep blood sugar stable. And I'm eating using it with high fiber, also with some protein that helps with all of this. But that's the clear thing is amounts here are so critical. And what's interesting here is if you're eating too low of a carbohydrate diet over time you can actually crash your adrenals and raise your fasting blood sugar sugar. So you've got to really watch this balance. And it's all about the balance. And some people said, what about that person that cannot become a fat burner? You know what you can learn? You can teach your body to shift, to be a fat burner. There's so many different things that can come into play here. Fructose is of course a biggie. Improving insulin sensitivity at the muscles by doing resistance training and high intensity interval training or burst style training. Getting a good night's sleep is critical. Vitamin D optimization. So I have not worked with someone that I've not been able to turn into a fat burner. But it just may be a little bit more challenging depending on the amount of damage to your metabolism and your genetics. And there are things that you need to look at and that is something I talk about in both the Virgin diet program and the Sugar Solution online program. I talk about weight loss resistance and what you need to look at if you are insulin resistant, which would make you a sugar burner, not a fat burner. All right. And then you spoke about your husband losing muscle on the program and that you could tell that he did. So here's why it's so important to monitor body fat as well as your waist and hip measurement. Now, the, one of the things that happens when you're using a body fat scale is it's based on total body water. So I tell people, take your initial body fat, but then take it again a week later and use the new number because it will look like you've got higher body fat after the first week and you've lost some muscle, but in reality you've just lost some inflammation because if you're holding on to, if you're eating high food intolerance foods or eating more of a higher sugar impact diet, you'll have more fluid retention, it will look like more muscle, but in reality it's not. You're just bloated. So you start looking at your muscle the second week and then monitor it. If you're eating optimal amounts of protein, you will not be losing muscle unless you're just, if you're, if you are obese, morbidly obese, especially 50 pounds or more overweight weight, but 100 pounds or more morbidly obese, you just got, you're going to be losing everything because you've just got, you know, excess. So you will lose some lean mass along with the fat, but you always want to be losing a higher percentage of fat. And that's where getting optimal levels of protein come into play. Drinking lots of water. And then as soon as you've customized your diet and optimize it to you adding in resistance style training so that you can hold on or build muscle as you're dropping fat. So critical, and that's why it's so critical to make sure you're transitioning to be a fat burner, not a sugar burner. Because if you don't eat as a sugar burner, your body will eat itself and it won't access stored fat. It's going to break down muscle and that's the last thing you want to do. Now, final one was a question on digestive enzymes. You have a sensitivity to pineapple, so you can't do a lot of the enzymes that use the pineapple enzymes. Bromelain, my digestive enzyme, actually does not use that. So you would be safe to use that. There's also things like betaine out there that you can use that is not from pineapple. So there are other options for you, but I know mine in particular does not have bromelain in it. All right, got through those five. Thank you. Those were all awesome questions. Now if you'd like to submit a question just go to jjvirgin.com ask and you can leave a voicemail for me. I can't wait to hear from you. And one more way I'd to love love to hear from you. I would hugely appreciate it if you could jump on Stitcher or iTunes and leave a review for me. It helps me a bunch. And be sure to subscribe and share the show with your friends. This is JJ Virgin signing off and reminding you that you are worthy and you're worth it. Dare to live a life that matters.

Foreign.

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