It Starts With Attraction
Revealing secrets on how to become the most attractive you can be Physically, Intellectually, Emotionally and Spiritually (or as us insiders call it...the PIES). Listen to weekly episodes. Join a course or get more info at kimberlybeamholmes.com
It Starts With Attraction
6 Ways To Become More Attractive - Ask Me Anything!
Have a question you want answered? Submit it here!
Ever wondered how to measure the elusive power of emotional attraction? Struggling to balance the PIES and keep those sweet cravings in check?
Join us for an intriguing and empowering Ask Me Anything episode where we spill the tea on everything from dopamine and serotonin to overcoming those pesky ideological differences with your spouse.
Ready to ignite your attraction potential? Join us on an exciting journey where we'll unlock the science of attraction and empower you to create a more fulfilling, vibrant you!
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Your Host: Kimberly Beam Holmes, Expert in Self-Improvement and Relationships
Kimberly Beam Holmes has applied her master's degree in psychology for over ten years, acting as the CEO of Marriage Helper & CEO and Creator of PIES University, being a wife and mother herself, and researching how attraction affects relationships. Her videos, podcasts, and following reach over 500,000 people a month who are making changes and becoming the best they can be.
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Welcome to today's episode of. It Starts With Attraction, which is going to be an ask me anything, and I have no clue what I'm going to be asked. So, jason, maybe you can fill us in on what's to come. Just a little teaser.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so today we're going to be talking about shocker the pies. Who would have thought? Who would have thought? There's a lot of questions about the pies in this episode. So if you're ready, we will just jump right in.
Speaker 1:Let's jump in. I'm ready, all right.
Speaker 2:Question number one how do you measure emotional attractiveness?
Speaker 1:Ooh, by the way that the people around you respond to you, I believe is the best measurement. So I don't know that you're going to be able to, you know, just dwindle this down into something akin to a Fitbit or a Whoop which can be used for tracking exercise or sleep. I don't think you can measure emotional attraction in that way, I believe, because emotional attraction at its core is evoking positive emotions within others. I mean, ultimately, that's what it is, and there's a part of that where you do need to work on your own emotional stability, because the more out of sorts a person is inside emotionally, if they are dealing with past trauma or resentment or unforgiveness towards others, that's likely going to come up in how they respond to the people around them, maybe because they're angrier or they and they take that out on the people around them, or they isolate more because of feelings of shame and things like that or a myriad of other reasons.
Speaker 1:And so I believe the best way to really look at how well you're doing in your area of emotional attraction is simply asking the question when other people are around me, do they seem to want to be around me? Am I turning toward them when they need me and are they turning toward me? Are they interested in my day? Are they acting like they want to be around me? And maybe you can even ask the people that you care about most in your life. Hey, do you think that I am evoking emotions within you? You enjoy feeling. Is there anything I'm doing, that when I do it, it just doesn't feel right to you or you don't like it. It makes you feel like I don't love you. Those are some great qualitative questions that you can use to assess how well you're doing emotionally. What do you think?
Speaker 2:It sounds good, perfect answer.
Speaker 1:What would you say, even if you didn't agree?
Speaker 2:Perfect answer.
Speaker 1:It was a perfect answer, yeah.
Speaker 2:You're the expert here, so well.
Speaker 2:I just don't think there's a quantitative way quite yet, yeah, I mean that makes sense, cause I mean you are talking about something that you can't really see like emotions, or you know it's really hard to like. You said it's hard to measure with like a wearable tracker or whatever, right, so yeah, I really do agree with what you said. So second question is it possible to have too much focus on one aspect of the pies, so much so that it causes a detriment to some of the other areas of the pies?
Speaker 1:Yes, I absolutely believe that to an extent. I think it's true with any of them. Believe that To an extent. I think it's true with any of them. I believe that any area of the pies has a detrimental effect or a healthy effect. So let's take physical, for example.
Speaker 1:Actually, even before I get into that, I think there's an overarching premise here, which actually came from a Devo that one of our team members did a couple of weeks ago, talking about how we get results, that we get you reap what you sow. And with that premise in mind, if I'm reaping or if I'm sowing a lot into my physical part of myself where I'm working out two, maybe three times a day, I'm really focused on my caloric intake, I'm just super focused on myself, then that could absolutely lead to vanity, pride, ego, things that are not overall healthy internally for any person and ultimately even for emotional attraction. You can be so self-absorbed in yourself physically that it is to the detriment of your yourself in terms of how healthy you actually are, or to the detriment of the relationships in your life. Intellectually this can be true too. You can be so focused on trying to be the smartest person in the room that you become self-conceited, egotistical, thinking of yourself as better than everyone else, trying to just always one up other people around you, having a superiority complex to those around you. A lot of people may call this narcissism and how it could represent in how it relates to other people.
Speaker 1:And so then, yes, if you focus too much on becoming a fascinating person and learning and growing and doing those things mentally, then absolutely it could be to the detriment of your physical health, it could be to the detriment of your emotional health, absolutely to the detriment of your spiritual health if you believe that you know more than even God himself. And then, emotionally, I absolutely believe that people can get too self-absorbed in their own emotions, where they become melancholic, where they become too introspective, to where everything is about emotions and feelings, and you can begin just following your feelings instead of actually working through the difficult feelings, working through getting to a healthier, more stable part. You can let your emotions rule you in any way. I mean people can easily justify anger and resentment that they have towards another person. That can lead them to do things that are hurtful to that person, but justify them because they feel like, emotionally, it's what would make them feel better in the moment and of course, that's going to be to the detriment of their relationships and possibly the detriment of their physical health, because when you're holding on to a lot of negative emotions, it physically affects your body, it can mentally affect you and it can spiritually affect you. And then spiritually, I believe that people can.
Speaker 1:I'm thinking of when my husband and I were in Jordan and Israel a couple of years ago, and I believe at this point we were in Israel and we walked out into this place in the desert and we saw this monastery that's like built into the desert cliffs in Israel and it's beautiful to look at. But the people who are there have no contact with anyone in the outside world, and I believe that you can even get so ingrained spiritually that it's to the detriment of why we're here on earth, which is to love other people, be in connection and relationship with them and to do our part in understanding the part of the kingdom of God that's already here on earth and spreading that to other people. So if we become too focused spiritually, it can be to the detriment of our relationships, of maybe sometimes our physical health or our intellectual health, but probably mostly our emotional health, our relationships with other people. So then, what does it look like to be in a healthy space? Physically, it means that we aren't vain or conceited. We're not doing anything for selfish ambition Actually, that would be true of all of these areas that we're not doing them out of selfish ambition or because we believe we're better or we're trying to be better, or for ego, or for pride, or for selfishness. We find a balance. We're realizing physically that our bodies are a temple. We're realizing physically that our bodies are a temple and it's important to take care of them so that we can fulfill the purpose that we're called here for and so that we can have healthy relationships.
Speaker 1:Intellectually, it's not about being the know-it-all.
Speaker 1:It's about truly understanding and being sensitive to what it is that each of our purposes are, and being sensitive to what it is that each of our purposes are what are the things that we have a desire to learn, a desire to give back in into the world, and letting that balance how we learn and how we share with others.
Speaker 1:And then there's also this part of intellectual attraction that has to do with our mental capability isn't really the word I'm looking for but our mental stability in terms of not letting our fears or our emotions control us, but casting our anxieties, especially as a Christian, that's where you cast your anxieties onto God and you allow yourself to be transformed by the renewing of your mind, not just falling into what society thinks you should do, but really doing what is best for culture, for your relationships and for yourself.
Speaker 1:But not in a selfish way, in a loving way, emotionally when we are healthy emotionally, then we are attuned to the people around us. We're sensitive to the needs of others, we want to do what is best for other people, we're putting their needs before ours, and it doesn't mean that we're being walked over or that we should be walked over like a doormat, but that we are truly loving other people and wanting to do what's best for them. And there's a sacrificial part to that. And then, spiritually, that we're following our faith, following Jesus, following God, following our religion, and allowing that to be kind of the stabilizer of all of the pies at once. So can you work any of the pies to the detriment of another? Yes, you can do it for each and every one of them. It will just look differently for each of them.
Speaker 2:And I think a good way to look at it too, to make sure that you're not overworking, is to at the time of recording this. We're just a couple of weeks removed from when we recorded the episode with Holly Baxter and she gave a really good example of how she likes to think about working on the pies. She gave the example of a pie chart and how, like in a perfect world, each pie chart would be the exact same size, so it would be 25%, 25%, 25% and 25%, and I think that's a good way to look at it is. Obviously it's not going to be perfect. There's going to be areas that you work on more especially week to week or day to day, but thinking of of working everything in a balanced way to make sure that you kind of have that safeguard that you're not working on your physical, you know, like more than any other area, to where all of your other areas, you know, just fall off or something like that. So think of it as a balance.
Speaker 1:Yeah, maybe like a pie chart, love that.
Speaker 2:Next question Can focusing on my spiritual attraction help overcome major ideological differences between me and my spouse?
Speaker 1:Hmm, they didn't give an example of ideological differences Generalized. Can focusing on my spiritual attraction help overcome major ideological differences between me and my spouse? No and yes. So can it actually help overcome the differences? No, I don't believe so. It kind of sounds like if that were the case.
Speaker 1:If focusing on our spiritual attraction, focusing on our relationship with God, is how I'm going to interpret it for this question, does that mean like that never is going to mean that God is going to change the mind of your spouse? And that isn't the way that it should be. People have free will. I have free will, you have free will, your spouse has free will, everyone has free will and, at the end of the day, these major ideological differences not knowing you know, not knowing exactly what they are. If it was sin, that's a little bit of a different story, like if there's a spouse who's just super ingrained in sin and trying to justify why they're doing it. That's not really what we're talking about here. But I'm thinking here like the first thing that comes to mind is probably political differences. One person's a conservative, one person's a progressive. Is leaning into your spiritual self, leaning into God and your religion going to overcome that? No, I don't think that you should have any assumption or expectation that that is what's going to happen, but yes, I do believe that if you lean into your relationship with God, you can better learn how to accept, accept, better learn how to accept and respect people, even when they see things differently than you, because that's exactly what the life of Jesus shows us how to do.
Speaker 1:There's a reason that when Jesus was here on earth, he was known not to the liking of the people around him, but he was known to eat with sinners and tax collectors and the outcasts, the people who believed differently than he did.
Speaker 1:And in fact, it was the super spiritual hypocrites who had a ton of rules and a ton of laws and tried to get everyone to see things the way that they thought God saw them, which was not the way God saw them. Those were the people that he had the most to say to, and they weren't always nice and happy things, calling them things like a brood of vipers, a den of robbers, whitewashed tombs, basically saying you look really pretty on the outside, but inside everything is dead. And I believe that's where the true transformation can happen. Here there's going to be things that my husband and I fundamentally may never agree about, but that's not really the goal of a healthy relationship. The goal of a healthy relationship is can I still love him and trust him, and support him even when, and respect him, even when there are things that we may fundamentally never agree about, because, at the end of the day, most of those things, if not probably all of them, really don't matter in the grand scheme of life this is uh kind of getting out of the pies.
Speaker 2:This is dealing with brain chemicals.
Speaker 1:Ooh.
Speaker 2:Yeah, what is the difference between dopamine and serotonin? I feel like I hear these terms a lot and I don't really know the difference between the two.
Speaker 1:Okay, this is my non neuroscientist. I'm not a neuroscientist. Let me be sure that I explained that. So this is my lay person, from the research that I've done and from what I understand about dopamine and about serotonin. So dopamine is a neurotransmitter. Both of these are both of the neurotransmitters. Both dopamine and serotonin are neurotransmitters that occur in our body.
Speaker 1:Dopamine is the seeking of pleasure, it is the anticipation of pleasure and according to the episode that I did with Dr Daniel Z Lieberman, who is an expert, the number one expert in dopamine, he said that because I asked him at one point in that episode is it that our motivation, our drive, is what sets off dopamine, or is it that dopamine comes, or dopamine is what leads to that, that motivation or that drive? And honestly, I can't fully remember his exact answer. You'll have to go back and listen to the episode, but I believe what he said was it's the dopamine that drives us. It's this chemical that, just like as it's released into in our brains and into our bodies and into our bloodstream, it is what motivates us to keep moving towards something, because it is the anticipation of a better future. So it's not just the pleasure chemical, like a lot of people call it. It is this anticipation to move forward. That's what dopamine does. It's kind of the get up and go.
Speaker 1:Serotonin is a calming neurotransmitter. It is not exactly the opposite of dopamine, but the higher that serotonin is in a person, the calmer they can become, the more focused they can be on the here and now. So in something like an addiction or in something like limerence, which is the feeling of falling madly in love or the state of falling madly in love with someone, we know that dopamine is super high. Because they are just super focused, laser focused, on this feeling of anticipation. They're anticipating being with the other person, how good it's going to feel to be with them, and at this time, serotonin drops a lot and they're not, so they're not calm at all. They're very hyper-focused on this, and because serotonin is so low, they can end up making impulsive decisions and doing things that are kind of out of character for them. Serotonin, though. So when you think of SSRIs selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors that are used for depression a lot of times those are used because it reuptakes serotonin, so it takes serotonin that's maybe not crossing the blood-brain barrier or that's not being used in the appropriate way in the body, and it re-uptakes it so that the body actually gets more serotonin. This is one of the reasons why SSRIs can be an effective treatment for different addictions, something like limerence, because it raises the serotonin levels in the body and allows a person to calm down.
Speaker 1:Both of these have biological necessities or both of them are biological necessities in our bodies for different reasons, and there are different things you can do to manipulate in a healthy way dopamine levels and serotonin levels. So serotonin eating carb, heavy foods can help to have higher serotonin levels. Doing things that are more relaxing, really doing things specifically strong intimate relationships, being connected with other people, is something that can help to raise serotonin levels. Probably, even to an extent, exercise over time can help your serotonin levels. Those are some different things, whereas dopamine if you're wanting to raise dopamine then there's doing things like, again, exercise can help with this. There's doing things like drinking coffee, the cold showers that's what I was trying to think of. Cold showers can help do it, but it's really doing things that are constantly putting you in a state of future thinking If you want to increase dopamine. There's a lot about dopamine right now.
Speaker 1:We talked about we talked a lot about dopamine in that podcast with Dr Lieberman, really the. I don't even remember the question we were talking about with the AMA, but I'll say this before I see if I've even answered it Dopamine is great and it's helpful to get us future thinking, but we also need the here and now. We also need the calming, the relaxation, and constantly just trying to drive and drive and hustle and grind is going to get us burnt out. It is the here and now, the relaxation and the rest that gives us the ability to be refreshed so that we can, in a healthy way, come back and drive towards the appropriate things that we need to drive towards and then finding that balance with also focusing on the here and now. Did I even answer that question?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think so. The question was what is the difference between dopamine and serotonin? So yeah, you did at the beginning.
Speaker 1:One is calming, one is exciting. Yeah, there you go. I should have just said that, yeah.
Speaker 2:Well, but it was a really good, in-depth answer. You don't want to just say yeah, that's the difference. You gave a really good, a really good response and description of both. So next question how do I develop the motivation?
Speaker 1:to work out if I have literally zero motivation to do so? Great question. You're not always going to be motivated to do the best or the right things. Therefore, I don't know that I can answer the question on how to get motivated to begin working out. But what I can say is you can begin doing things to set yourself and your environment up to where it's easier for you to actually do it, even if you don't want to.
Speaker 1:In James Clear's book Atomic Habits, he states that for a person who's just trying to begin working out and they haven't before they have no drive or motivation to then maybe break it down into very small steps of exactly what needs to happen. So maybe it's that your first day you put your shoes by the door. Maybe by the second day it's that you put your shoes on, but that's all you do. Maybe by the third day you just go actually to the gym but you don't go in, and you kind of take these steps incrementally towards your future of what you're trying to accomplish. So if you're ultimately saying I want to work out three times a week, I want to work out five times a week, then the thought process behind it is how can you set yourself up for success, because the more wins that you experience when you're working towards a goal that you have set for yourself, the more motivation you have for continuing to get those wins for yourself. Now there's kind of a complete opposite side of this. So there's one hand where it's like make it easy so that you will do it, but then there's this other hand which says that if it's not challenging enough, you won't do it. And this is what the research talks about quite in depth, and it may be for many people that just putting their shoes by the door is so uninspiring that they don't even care to do that. So then maybe for these people it's okay. Then start by walking half a mile, or start by walking a mile. Start by actually, you know, putting more skin in the game, making it a bit more challenging but not impossible, and that's what can really motivate you to get started.
Speaker 1:And so I do believe there are two different types of people, and I don't know that I can exactly tell you how they're differentiated right now. There's more research that I personally need to do into that, in my own research as well as in the literature that's already out there. But I do believe that there's the people who feel so defeated that even the thought of going on a half mile walk as the beginning of their workout routine it's too much. And if that's you don't feel shame or I encourage you not to feel shame Bring it back down to what is manageable for you, but it is a step in the right direction. On the other hand, there's those other people who need more of a challenge, and I believe everyone ultimately needs to be challenged in the goals that they set for themselves. But in starting out, maybe you even need more of a challenge, so maybe for you it is that walking a mile to start with. Now here's what I would discourage for everyone, for every single person. If you are not motivated to work out and you want to start, I don't encourage you to look at anything on social media about other people who are working out, because you will see the things they do and these crazy complex movements like snatches or clean and jerks or different types of kettlebell work or pull-ups or people running five miles, and you're going to feel so discouraged and demotivated before you even start that you will get stuck in a shame cycle and not want to do it. So don't follow these people on social media. I would also encourage you to maybe be super mindful about what gym you go to, because if the people in that gym, if you don't feel like you fit or that you belong, you're not going to want to be there. So I would encourage you to start with something very beginner friendly, and there is absolutely no shame in that.
Speaker 1:When I started working out 15, 14 years ago, I started with just going to the Y, the local YMCA, because it was very beginner friendly. They had a ton of beginner friendly classes. I would get involved with those. I mean, I remember thinking the first time I ever worked out, this is the stupidest thing in the world. Why would anyone ever do this? But over time there were several things. At 18 years old I had thrown my back out several times. I had to be on like oxycodone. It was terrible. And then my doctor said maybe you should work on doing some core strengthening and that will help your back. And so I was highly motivated internally to not be in the amount of pain that I was in.
Speaker 1:And then, at the same time, my husband and I, who weren't married yet, we had just started dating. He was in the military and he would, he would, he would do PT every morning and so he would do pushups, sit ups and run. And I'm a pretty competitive person and I was like, oh, if he can do it, I can do it. And it became my goal that I wanted to pass an army PT test, even though I was not in the army. I just wanted to, like, show him up and this was kind of the beginning of my journey in working out.
Speaker 1:It did not start because I internally wanted to. It was not an intrinsic motivation, which I'll talk about in just a minute. It was very much external. I'm doing this because I feel like I'll get a reward or I feel like I'll win something if I do this. External motivation is not the best kind of motivation for someone to adhere to long-term, but it is enough that it can get someone moving or doing the thing that they want to do in the short term until their body begins to get those feel-good endorphins from doing it and then they ultimately end up wanting to do it on their own. And that's exactly what happened for me.
Speaker 1:I began to like how I felt working out and not even how I looked. I liked how I felt and I believe that's a key part here. If you're just waiting to like working out until you see the numbers on the scales change, then you I don't believe you have the right focus and you probably need to change your focus to how you feel. I mean, there are times that I recently broke my toe, a couple of months ago, and I couldn't run for a good six weeks, maybe even eight weeks, and I remember that first time that I went on a run after breaking my toe and just intentionally stopping like not actually stopping the run but like stopping the thoughts in my head as I was running and realizing how good I felt Just moving my body, the endorphins that were happening loving being outside, loving being in the sun, listening to my favorite music that it's the moments where we stop and we think intentionally about how we feel, about what we're doing that can help to set those reward pathways in our brain so that we want to do it again.
Speaker 1:You may be thinking, but when I end a workout I feel absolutely terrible. I want you to dig deeper, like, yes, you may be tired and you may be out of breath, but like actually kind of pay attention to, like the surge of energy that can come through your body and how proud you are of yourself that you just did what you did, and that can be a great motivator to ultimately help it turn into intrinsic motivation, which is you're doing this because you ultimately want to, and that's what we all want to get to with the healthy habits in our lives and that's what we all want to get to with the healthy habits in our lives.
Speaker 2:Speaking of reward pathways, what do you do if someone really enjoys eating sweets?
Speaker 1:Oh, I love eating sweets.
Speaker 2:What do you do if you just can't? This is the next question what do you do if you just can't stop eating sweets? How do I keep that bad behavior in check?
Speaker 1:Why is it a bad behavior? Why?
Speaker 2:I don't know. I mean it's unhealthy to a certain extent.
Speaker 1:To a certain extent, yeah, so repeat the question. So I make sure that I answered the question and not go off on a rabbit trail.
Speaker 2:Yeah, what do you do if you just can't stop eating sweets? How do I keep that behavior in check?
Speaker 1:you're in check, okay. Okay. So this is a multifaceted question. Sweets is, first of all, is a broad category, because this could mean the Texas sheet cake that I made for the office, which has a pound of butter and many, many cups of sugar, but it's very delicious. Or it could mean like a piece of dark chocolate at the end of each day, like there. So I think there's a balance here.
Speaker 1:To first kind of navigate, can we, can anyone make the claim that sweets, whether it's half of a Texas sheet cake or a piece of dark chocolate, are good for you and that you need them as part of a healthy diet? No, we can't make that claim. But here's the thing If you have villainized sweets or any food category in that respect, if you villainize them and say to yourself that this is a bad food, like I should not be doing this, then this is kind of the beginning of how this reward cycle starts, because once you've villainized or demonized any kind of food or food group and it becomes off limits to you, then intrinsically there's a part of you that's going to want it more, because that's how we're built. If you tell someone they can't do something or not to eat something or not to think something. Unless it's like a poison, right, like, unless we can see that it's a can of arsenic, most people are going to be like, oh, watch me, there's this rebellious streak within them. Unless you're in a super unhealthy mindset, which we talked about kind of in the eating disorders episode.
Speaker 1:I've talked about in my personal journey, how there was eight years where I was very strict paleo and it was not healthy Like it. I was eating incredibly healthy, but the mindset was very unhealthy for me and ultimately what would end up happening is I would like, at the end of, towards the end of that eight years, I ended up binging a lot on the foods I was not allowed to have I say in quotations, on the foods I was not allowed to have, such as sugar, such as gluten, and therefore it set this like shame cycle inside my body and it does this for for many people, because the thing that you can't have as soon as you have even just a little of it, then there's this like thought that goes off in the on your mind which says, well, now I might as well. Now I might as well, since I've already broken my diet for today, I might as well eat all of this, I might as well go and eat the rest not only this, but donuts and other things that I'm craving, and then, after doing all of that, we feel ashamed, and so it starts this whole cycle again of well, tomorrow then I need to just do better, I need to work out more, I need to eat even cleaner, I need to like, restrict myself even more, but then there's always this idea on the outside of that restriction that's tempting us, like the thing we can't have, which is sweets in this particular scenario. So then, like, if one day you get too stressed or your willpower just gives out and you end up having a bite of that sweet, is it going to reset the whole shame cycle again? And for most people, the answer to that is yes. So in answering this question, how do I reset my reward pathways when I just want to eat a ton of sweets? Like I would push back and say I think we need a redefinition around what is good and what is bad, and maybe not even using those words, but instead asking questions like is this moving me towards how I want to feel, or do I not like the way I feel after I do this? And then it can become an opportunity for us to not see a food as good or bad but focus inwardly on how did that food, whatever it was, make me feel? And this goes back to that intentionality with being motivated to work out.
Speaker 1:When we stop and realize how something we've done makes us feel, that begins to reset our reward pathways in our mind, because our brain will continue working on the same reward pathways until it gets new information. So, as example, last week I was in Phoenix and I had salmon. I love salmon. I did love salmon. I had salmon one day and I like, by the time I got home from the airplane, like got on, got on a plane, came back home, by the time I got home I was like I really feel very sick and it wasn't like I could have pushed through that, but I I decided I need to like sit and think through what I've eaten today and realize like it was the salmon. The salmon has made me not feel good and so ever since then, when I think of it, even though salmon has been like there was some salmon in our house the other night, there was salmon like at a restaurant we went to the other night and I love eating salmon, but I intentionally thought no, the last time I ate that I didn't like how I felt and I don't want to feel that way again. That allowed to reset the way that I processed it, and so the same can happen with sweets.
Speaker 1:Now here's the thing about sweets that makes it a little bit more of an obstacle, and that is that they are designed to be very satiating. So the sugar in it and the fat like I love the description. I don't remember which podcast I heard this on. People talk about being addicted to sugar, but no one eats like a spoonful of sugar. No one just craves sugar so bad. They take a sugar packet and pour it in their mouth. I say no one. I think my daughter's done it, but most people do not do this. It's the combination of this super sweet taste with something super fattening, that that that is similar to the taste of breast milk from when we were kids. Like that is the majority of the composite of breast milk, and so there's this very rewarding, satiating part of our bodies that love that and that crave that. So, um, that's what makes it a little bit different with sweets, like you could sit there and think and listen.
Speaker 1:After I made the Texas sheet cake at the office, which I ate quite a bit of, I would think like I don't know that I love the way I feel. In fact, I felt like I could run a marathon. I was so hyped up on sugar and and butter, but um, and and chocolate mixed in with that. But at the end of the day, it was like I don't know that this is moving me towards the health, like the healthy habits that I want to have. And so, with that being said, it's not that it was bad that I ate the Texas sheet cake. I should not feel guilty for it, I should not feel shame for it. Instead, it's an opportunity to sit and realize like, yes, that was good, I enjoyed the amount that I have, but overall, is this moving me to where I want to go? And so, then, what you should do, or can do, is begin to change your food environment, because we're going to crave those things. But that doesn't mean we're bad people and it doesn't mean that those things are completely off the table and that we should never have them. It means thinking through how can I create my food environment in my home, in my office, in my car, to where I am surrounded by satiating, healthy foods that move me towards the direction that I want to go, and having a deeper why for this can be really helpful as well.
Speaker 1:So, personally, my family has a pretty crazy history of heart disease and I already can tell. Even though I'm an avid exerciser I eat relatively healthy I can already tell in my blood work that I have elevated, I'm starting to have elevated levels of certain cardiovascular disease components, things to look for in my blood, and so it's important for me to like to really be mindful for my health, for my kids' future, for me being a part of it, for just those reasons not just because of how I look, but because of deeper reasons in my life to really focus on what I'm eating and is it moving me in a healthier direction. So getting rid of things in the food environment and your food environment that just aren't going to serve you towards the purposes that you're wanting to move towards, throwing them away. Amanda Nybert is a registered dietitian. I've had her on my podcast before. We'll link to that in the show notes, but one of her phrases she says that I love is it's either going to be trash in your stomach or trash in the trash, which would you rather have it be.
Speaker 1:I am not scared to throw away things that we've paid for because it's not serving me or my family well to move towards our health goals, and that can be a very difficult thing to think through or to do. But even just not buying it, not going to the grocery or going to the grocery store, either not going down those aisles or going when you've eaten a good, healthy meal, so that you're not as tempted and it will help you to not reach for those unhealthy snacks in your home because they won't be there. Case in point, last night. I tend, when I have a headache, to want sweets because I think that the sweet is going to take care of my headache and get rid of it. And I tend to get headaches if I do a lot of overhead work, like especially in workout classes, if we do a bunch of push presses or different things like that, I just get a lot of tension in my neck and I get a headache. But instead of taking ibuprofen, I'll just like go through and eat all the chocolate in the house and ultimately, of course, it doesn't work and I still have to end up taking ibuprofen or just going to bed. So last night I had a headache and there was no chocolate anywhere in the house, but there were strawberries. So I took the strawberries and I ate maybe the entire pint, but it was a healthier choice and I was glad we didn't have the chocolate in the house, because I don't want it there. It's not moving me towards my goals, but it was at least something that was sweet, nature's sweetness, and it allowed me to kind of in some ways, satiate that.
Speaker 1:All of that being said, so what can you do? What can you do? My long-winded answer to what can you do Realize how you feel after you eat certain things and what is moving you towards the health goals that you have for yourself, not just because of how you want to look and not because you're trying to be stuck in some kind of shame cycle, but ultimately like what is it you want your future to look like, and how can what you eat help you get there? That doesn't mean you should never eat sweets. You should, at times, eat sweets in moderation, because they aren't inherently bad and eating them doesn't make you bad. But how can you create your food environment in the places where you're at the most to where those things aren't options and instead it will allow you to choose healthier options that can help break some of that reward habit. Another long-winded answer, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:But that's uh. I would say also that that's kind of one of the benefits of mindfulness. Practicing mindfulness is you're able to become actively hyper aware of what your body is telling you and so when you eat things like sweets, you're able to listen to your body and understand how that exactly makes you feel. Obviously, in the moment you're like, oh, this chocolate tastes so good, but does it really make you feel good afterwards? And that's one of the benefits of practicing mindfulness.
Speaker 1:But sometimes you may even realize it doesn't taste good in the moment.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:If you're actually mindful. Yeah, I did that with a piece of chocolate the last piece of chocolate in our house two nights ago and I bit into it and I was like this isn't even that good.
Speaker 2:And that's why you didn't go get more.
Speaker 1:That's what actually. It was Reese's, and I threw away the second one.
Speaker 2:There you go, crazy, yeah, and then look what it led you to last night.
Speaker 1:Strawberries.
Speaker 2:Strawberries. Okay, and that is all of the questions that we have today. Thank you, kimberly, for sitting down and answering all of these questions that were submitted. If you want to submit more questions for any future AMAs, you can do that in the link in the show notes down below, whether you're watching on YouTube or listening on podcasts, and be sure to subscribe if you're on YouTube or follow the podcast so that you don't miss new episodes when they come out. Until next week, stay strong.
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