- Hey, this is Marisa Peer,
creator of RTT, Rapid Transformational Therapy,
and also creator of PWF, Perfect Weight Forever,
two programs that are really changing people
in the most amazing way and they've won incredible awards.
But I want to talk to you today about eating disorders.
There is an epidemic of eating disorders.
There's an epidemic of bulimia, anorexia,
body dysmorphia, exercise compulsion,
orthorexia, where you only eat foods that are clean
and green and organic and fair trade.
And many people don't understand what eating disorders
really are and believe that you can punish your body
into being the size you want to be,
you can starve it, make it go to the gym, work hard.
(uplifting music)
And if you want to help somebody with an eating disorder
you need to tell them the truth, and here is the truth.
Nature has given you some very interesting ideas
about food in order to make you survive on the planet.
I'm going to tell you about five or six of them
and you're going to be fascinated.
So here's the first one.
Nature wants you to binge on sugar.
Nature wants you to know where the sugar is
and to run back and eat more.
And you think, 'well why would that be?'
Well let me tell you.
Take your mind back and imagine you live in a tribe.
Every day you dig up the same stuff.
You go out and you have to hunt and gather,
and you might find some vegetables.
You may find some nuts or berries.
And if you're lucky you can spear a fish,
trap a chicken, find some eggs,
maybe get a bigger animal, but that's not every day.
Mostly it's the same old, same old.
Root vegetables, seeds, and sometimes,
maybe twice a year you would find honey.
And if you found honey, oh my God,
that was a huge event.
You know, bees aren't stupid.
They don't put the hive where you can see it.
They hide hives.
In tribes, the honey finders
are very valued members of society.
They climb really high and they get the hive
and they scoop out all the honey,
and you eat the honey and you go home
and you wake up and you go, honey,
and you run back to that hive to have more honey,
because you know that soon it will be gone.
If you came across some ripe mangoes you wouldn't go,
'do you know these mangoes are very high in fructose,
I'll just eat a quarter'.
You know the truth, in a week these mangoes will be spoilt.
'When will I get mangoes again?
Who knows.
I'm gonna binge on mangoes'.
Our primitive mind is hardwired and hard coded
to remember exactly where sugar is,
and then to run back and eat more sugar til it's all gone.
And nature thinks, 'what a great idea that is.
You know what?
I've laid down fat reserves.
There aren't ripe mangoes in the middle of winter.
So I binge in the summer,
and then it's okay, I can get through the winter'.
You know I recently gave a lecture
to the Royal College of Medicine
and they were saying, "how do you manage to have
these outstanding successes with obese people?
What is it you do that can get them to lose
half their body weight?"
I said, well first of all,
I never make them feel bad about themselves.
I never go, what's wrong with you?
Why don't you stop eating so much?
Can't you see you're killing yourself?
No, I tell them the truth.
Nature wants you to remember where sugar is
and to go back.
In 30 years I have never met a client who says,
'you know, when I wake up I remember where the celery is
and I go back for more.
Or, sometimes I'm watching TV and those peas in the fridge,
that lettuce is calling my name.
I keep going back'.
But they do say, 'that ice cream,
that cake is calling my name'.
So it is a fact that you are wired
to remember where sugar is and to go back for more.
And you know how to help yourself?
Don't have it in your house.
People who stop drinking don't keep alcohol in the fridge.
People who stop smoking don't have cigarettes
on the coffee table.
Yeah I get it, you might have children or a partner
that likes that stuff,
but if you have to have it in the house,
don't put it in the fridge or the cupboard where you see it.
Hide it, put it out of sight,
because there's a second fact.
When you see food, you want to eat it.
Why is that?
Well imagine you lived in a tribe
and the hunters came back
and they'd speared a lot of fish that day
and you went, 'I don't like fish, I'm not into fish.
I think I'll just pass'.
Or 'oh yeah, they brought back goat, I don't like goat.
I'm not in the mood for antelope'.
Five days later you'd think, 'what kind of idiot am I?
Why did I say no to that meat, that protein?
I need it now'.
And so we survived as a species
by eating food when we saw it,
and that's why when you go to a shop,
they put all the tempting food at the checkout.
It's why you go on an aeroplane,
they show you pictures of the food.
It's why in a restaurant they show you the desserts,
because they know if you see food, you eat it.
That is another evolutionary trick
that made us more certain to survive.
If you open your cupboard, you see all of this food
that you're trying to resist, move it.
Move it out of your eye line.
Put the stuff in the salad drawer.
Don't let the waiter bring the bread basket to you.
Don't go to all you can eat buffets,
because if you see food, you want to eat it.
And the third trick is that variety makes you want more.
If you sat at home with a packet of digestive biscuits
or a plate of buttered toast, you would eat so much
and then you'd go, 'I'm really bored now'.
But if you had a box of all different biscuits,
a box of chocolates, you will eat every single one.
'Cause every time you have a new taste, a new texture,
and a new flavour, it actually re-stimulates your appetite.
If I said I've got a fruit salad and it's apples
and blueberries, you'll eat a lot.
But if I've got a salad with apples, blueberries,
mangoes, pineapple, kiwi, strawberries
raspberries, blackberries, passion fruit, papaya,
you'll eat so much more because every new taste,
every new texture stimulates your taste buds.
It goes, I need a varied diet.
You do, but not at every meal.
If you put less variety in your lunch you will eat less.
So when you have something like granola or muesli,
the very fact that that has 10 ingredients,
oats, raisins, currants, all kinds of stuff,
you will, but if you have a coffee
that's a mocha peppermint coffee with whipped cream
it's too many ingredients.
Go back to having just three or four.
When you have less ingredients, you're sated.
So you could eat kale and go,
well this kale is really boring now.
But if you had kale chips
and you were dipping those kale chips into salsa
and guacamole and spreading cream cheese on them
and mozzarella, you will eat so much more.
So we have a natural satiety.
When we've had enough, we stop,
unless we have too much variety.
Now food companies know that
and they add more and more ingredients to food
to make you eat more and buy more.
But there is nothing that is a combo of fat and sugar
except for breast milk.
And again, when you're a baby,
if you got hooked on milk, you wouldn't make it.
No baby goes, I don't like milk.
They get hooked on mother's milk, or formula milk.
It makes them survive.
And when you're stressed and you've had a bad day you go,
'oh, macaroni and cheese.
Toast and butter.
Cereal and milk.
Ice cream, cookies and cream.
Hot chocolate with marshmallows in it'.
You know what you're doing?
You're recreating that feeling you got
having milky, fatty, sugary food
that made everything right with the world.
And pizza, by the way, macaroni and cheese
are milky, fatty, sugary foods.
They may not taste sweet, but they are.
Eating is an act of regression.
We're going back.
'Oh, this reminds me of being in school.
Apple crumble and custard and ice cream.
This reminds me of going to my grandmother's.
She always gave me cinnamon toast
or hot chocolate or chocolate fudge'.
And so you're telling yourself you want to be a baby.
And if you like that stuff decide,
'you know when I'm 95 I'll knock myself out
with cookies and cream.
Right now I want to have a better body'.
So understand that your mind thinks it's a jolly good idea
to do what you did when you were a primitive person.
It kept you alive.
Do you know what you died of
more than anything 500 years ago?
Take a guess.
It wasn't illness and it wasn't war.
It was hunger.
Hunger was the number one killer of people.
And to this day we go, 'oh I'm so hungry.
Oh, I'm starving.
Oh, I'm dying of hunger'.
And even though we know we've got salad
and some cooked chicken at home in the fridge,
and we've got maybe a 45 minute commute
and the train is late, we start eating jelly babies
out of the vending machine, jelly beans
and taco chips and KitKats because we're like, 'oh my God,
I've just gotta eat, I'm so hungry'.
That again is a primitive need to be scared of hunger.
To sate yourself with food
and then you can't die of hunger.
It's a wiring, but you know what?
You can work with that wiring and you can say to your mind,
'okay mind, I understand completely here.
You think I'm gonna die of hunger because it's 6 o'clock.
I haven't eaten since one o'clock.
I do need to eat, I'm feeling hungry.
And you're gonna drive me to that vending machine
to eat two KitKats, but no,
I have in my fridge at home delicious salad,
wonderful chicken, whatever it is you have,
and I am choosing to wait 45 minutes'.
And your mind will go, 'oh okay,
I thought you were really hungry
but now you're telling me you want to wait'.
You're choosing to wait.
And then you will wait.
This happens to me.
I know it happens.
You'll go to a restaurant and go,
'I'm not actually really that hungry'.
And then I look at the menu
and then I start to feel really hungry
because I'm mentally seeing the food.
I read the menu, I'm like, where's the food?
I'm so hungry.
Then I start to eat the bread basket,
which I wasn't even hungry for when I set foot in there.
How many of you go to the store to food shops,
and go, 'oh I'm so hungry now',
and you start eating granola bars
as you wander around the store?
You have to talk to your mind and go, 'hey mind,
I know that you think as I'm seeing this food
I should eat it.
I am choosing to wait for my food to arrive.
I am choosing to wait til I get home.
I'm choosing to make better choices'.
When you say that, your mind hears the truth.
You have a choice.
You're making the right choice, and you love that choice.
And you go, 'oh, I've got to eat rabbit food.
Coffee isn't the same without sugar.
My life isn't worth living without McDonald's and cake'.
Your mind believes whatever you tell it.
Tell your mind better things.
Help anyone struggling with food
by pointing out these hacks.
Nature wants you to live on the planet,
but you can live on the planet now without having to binge.
You can leave food.
You can throw food away.
You can wait to eat.
And you will help yourself more than you can even imagine
by saying the magic sentence,
'I am choosing to say no to pizza,
and I'm choosing to feel so good about it.
I want to fit into my jeans, to look good in my clothes,
maybe to look good out of my clothes.
To get what I want requires also what I don't want'.
So if I want to look good in my jeans
and good on the beach,
that requires you to say no to pizza and burgers
and fast food and fries, and you know what?
Not only am I choosing that,
I'm choosing to love it, to be excited about it.
And that is how I have phenomenal success
and get people to lose half their body weight,
because I get them to understand it's not you,
it's your wiring.
And you can understand that wiring and work with it.
You can make your mind work with you, not against you,
because I don't know what hunger is.
That's because if you say to yourself, 'I'm starving.
Oh, I'm starving'.
Your mind goes, 'well,
I have something called an Apaset,
and usually when you eat a certain amount,
I'll tell you you're full,
but you just told me you're starving.
People die of being starving, so I'm gonna shut that Apaset off.
Instead, you look at the food and go, 'okay,
my stomach's the size of my fist.
Two bowls full of food is just right for me'.
And also recognise that hunger
doesn't mean you have an empty stomach.
It can mean you're dehydrated,
it can mean you're bored,
it can mean you've eaten food that's so worthless,
like a big bucket of popcorn,
but you still haven't got any nutrients.
There are all kinds of hungers.
Thirst hunger, emotional hunger,
hunger because you haven't eaten the right food.
When your stomach is empty you will know,
but even then you can wait another hour,
another two hours to eat the right food.
I hope this helps you,
and I really want you to share it with other people
who need this help.
Please like, please subscribe, please share.
There are so many people who would benefit
from understanding it's not their fault.
They don't have to beat themselves up.
It's fixable.
Like, share, subscribe, and send me some messages
about the content you would really like to hear,
and go to marisapeer.com.
We have a lot of free material to help you
with eating issues and dieting issues and weight issues.
Tell me how I can help you more and serve you more.
Thanks so much for tuning in.
Have a great day.
See you soon.