Tired of struggling to figure out your meal plan and how to lose weight effectively? Do you think there's a better, simpler way to go through your weight loss journey? Do you want some expert advice on how to get the most out of your nutrition? Do you want to find out the secret to a balanced and successful nutrition plan?
I'm excited to share with you this week's bite. As a treat for you, I have interviewed Kim Shapira. She is a celebrity dietitian, nutritional therapist, author, and excellent resource on nutrition and weight loss. This is going to be a great episode. So let's dig in.
What you’ll learn from this episode:
“...Let's make these rules part of your automatic day-to-day value system. Honor your body, and when you do that, you listen to what your body is telling you.”
-Kim Shapira
The Six Ground Rules in Getting the Best Nutrition and Achieve Weight Loss
Connect with Kim Shapira
Connect with Dr. Adrienne Youdim
3 Ways to Get More From Adrienne
1. Subscribe to our Newsletter. Subscribe Now and get the 5 Bites to Fasttrack your Health and Wellbeing https://dradrienneyoudim.com/newsletter/
2. Buy the Book. The current weightloss strategies have failed you. Its time to address your true hunger. Purchase 'Hungry for More' https://www.amazon.com/Hungry-More-Stories-Science-Inspire/dp/0578875632
3. Leave us a Rating and Review via Apple Podcast. https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/health-bite/id1504295718
Tired of struggling to figure out your meal plan and how to lose weight effectively? Do you think there's a better, simpler way to go through your weight loss journey? Do you want some expert advice on how to get the most out of your nutrition? Do you want to find out the secret to a balanced and successful nutrition plan?
I'm excited to share with you this week's bite. As a treat for you, I have interviewed Kim Shapira. She is a celebrity dietitian, nutritional therapist, author, and excellent resource on nutrition and weight loss. This is going to be a great episode. So let's dig in.
What you’ll learn from this episode:
“...Let's make these rules part of your automatic day-to-day value system. Honor your body, and when you do that, you listen to what your body is telling you.”
-Kim Shapira
The Six Ground Rules in Getting the Best Nutrition and Achieve Weight Loss
Connect with Kim Shapira
Connect with Dr. Adrienne Youdim
3 Ways to Get More From Adrienne
1. Subscribe to our Newsletter. Subscribe Now and get the 5 Bites to Fasttrack your Health and Wellbeing https://dradrienneyoudim.com/newsletter/
2. Buy the Book. The current weightloss strategies have failed you. Its time to address your true hunger. Purchase 'Hungry for More' https://www.amazon.com/Hungry-More-Stories-Science-Inspire/dp/0578875632
3. Leave us a Rating and Review via Apple Podcast. https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/health-bite/id1504295718
I have a treat for you this week. I'm interviewing Kim Shapira. She is a celebrity dietitian, nutritional therapist, author, and excellent resource on nutrition and weight loss. In this episode, we have a great conversation. We are so aligned and I can't wait to share with you her tips, including her philosophy on food is fuel. She also talks about how to be in the same time zone as your body. and her six rules to nutrition and weight loss. This is gonna be a great episode, so let's dig in.
Welcome back to Health Bite. My name is Dr. Adrienne Youdim. I'm a triple board certified internist, obesity medicine, and physician nutrition specialist that has worked with thousands of patients to help them not only eat well, but to live well. I'm excited to share with you this week's bite, so let's dig in.
01:06 - 01:10 Dr. Adrienne Youdim Welcome, Kim. I'm really excited to have you here and so looking forward to our conversation.
01:11 - 01:14 Kim Shapira Me too. I'm so happy to be here. Thank you.
01:15 - 01:36 Dr. Adrienne Youdim So I'm always curious when I meet people in the “weight loss" space, you have a background in clinical nutrition, metabolism, you have specified education in that area, and you could have taken it any which way. I'm curious what led you down the path of weight loss.
01:36 - 02:39 Kim Shapira That's a really good question, actually. And definitely I'm going to be honest with you, actually. Yeah. Like when I was in college, my best friend was going to grad school. And so I'm like, okay, I'll go to grad school too. I really had studied biology and chemistry and all the things, but I didn't really know what I was going to do with it. I thought maybe physical therapy.
And so when I was in my, I guess my junior year of college at Tulane, I decided I was applying to graduate schools. in physical therapy because I knew that I wanted to be in the medical world, but I didn't want to give up my life for it. And so physical therapy felt great to me. I got to help people on their journey and I got to have relationships with people. And it was a really hot program back in the day. So I applied to seven PT schools and three nutrition programs. One for public health, the one at Boston, and another one, where was it? I can't even remember Right? now. Mississippi. And I got into all three. One at Tulane, one at Mississippi, and one at BU, and I got rejected from all seven PT programs.
02:39 - 02:50 Dr. Adrienne Youdim Oh, wow. That was really, we were talking about the universe earlier. That was really the universe saying, no girl, this is where you're going to be. Yeah.
02:50 - 03:32 Kim Shapira And so somebody had once told me in high school that food could make you sick or healthy. So I was interested, but I didn't really care about nutrition. I didn't know, I didn't understand it yet. And we just, in my family, we ate and we were hungry. We stopped and we were satisfied. We moved on, but I had been a sick kid. And so it had just always been something that I wanted to do, I just always was interested in taking care of myself and feeling well. I was so tired of not feeling well. So what was important to me was the relationships I was going to have with my clients. And so I went into private practice because I wanted to have long-term relationships, not just like, you know, meet somebody in their hospital room, give them some advice and move on.
03:32 - 03:43 Dr. Adrienne Youdim Right?. That was actually my thinking in terms of internal medicine versus Hospital medicine because hospital medicine is “exciting”, but it is a snapshot.
03:43 - 03:48 Kim Shapira Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So I did that. I'm so happy.
03:48 - 04:17 Dr. Adrienne Youdim And so how specifically, because again, with your background and even, you know, in your interest of health, I mean, of course, we can talk about how obesity and health are so very related. Yes. Love in our society to separate the two. But you could have dealt with autoimmune disease and nutrition or Right? kidney disease. I do, actually. Yeah. So tell me a little bit about that. And I want you to specifically tell me your feeling and your passion around the weight loss piece.
04:17 - 07:10 Kim Shapira Yeah. So again, it comes from a place of health, Right? So everything that's, you know, my book is called, this is what you're really hungry for. And the answer is peace around your health, Right? We're all hungry for peace and balance and health. If we don't have health, we don't really have anything. Right?. And so when I started my practice Right? out of graduate school, I noticed that I wasn't having success with people making sustainable changes. And so everything to me is related back to food.
What you eat can either really hurt your body or not be enough to help your body. And so coming from a place of moderation and seeing how people are so affected by food emotionally, physically and mentally, really was like what I was most passionate about because I didn't love nutrition science. I didn't love cooking. I still don't love cooking. You know, what I was passionate about is why are you eating? You know, do you even understand that you have a human body and that you live in this body and this body is giving you messages all day long?
And so really coming to understand that I think I have a problem myself with shopping and oh my God, my clients are eating exactly the way that I shop, for every emotion really kind of helped me figure out how to help them as soon as I started helping myself. I again believe that every disease comes back to what's happening inside of your body from the food you're eating and from this inflammatory place. And so if we look at weight loss or just weight management or weight, it comes down to blood sugars. It always has come down to blood sugars. And I use six simple rules to kind of guide my clients into this non-negotiable value system, Right? Kind of like you don't leave the house without brushing your teeth, Right? That's important to you.
So let's make these rules part of your automatic day-to-day value system, Right? Honor your body. And when we do that, and we listen to what our body is telling us, we can recognize, I didn't know that if I don't drink enough water, my body doesn't properly function. But every organ jumps in and tries to help it and that puts stress on my body and how that then triggers the hippocampus, pituitary and adrenal and all of the problems with those organs, Right? And what can I do about cortisol, my sleep and my wake and just relaxing the body to be able to exist so it can be healthy, Right? And so It's all, I'm all over the place, but as you can see, it is a very well-rounded practice because the most important thing we can do is take care of ourselves and everything comes back to it, taking care of ourselves.
07:11 - 07:51 Dr. Adrienne Youdim Yeah. And food is all encompassing. I mean, I think you're all over the place because food is all encompassing and nutrients. If we even broaden that conversation to nutrition, it's not even limited to just food, Right? There's so many ways you mentioned sleep. There's so many ways in which we can nourish ourselves. Yeah. And it does impact everything. Not only all the organ systems that you mentioned, But it also impacts our relationships. It impacts our focus and productivity at work, our cognition. So it really is all over the place because it really is all encompassing.
07:51 - 08:51 Kim Shapira Yeah. Yeah. Like if I were to just say to like, and maybe in my first appointment, I might say to my client, I'm going to ask you one question and I want you to answer the question from a rational mindset. I would say, okay, fill in the blank from your rational mindset. Food is. And it's interesting how many people say fuel and how many people say fun. And then I will remind them, no, from your rational mindset.
And then they will jog their, their mind for it and then say, okay, it's for fuel. And then for them to understand what it means when they're answering from their irrational mindset. And when they answer from the irrational mindset, you're hearing things like entertainment, friendship, joy, the enemy. You really get to understand exactly how people feel about food Right? from the beginning. And then if you can understand that, then you can start putting food, food is only one important place in their life, which is as fuel.
08:51 - 09:38 Dr. Adrienne Youdim You know, what that makes me think of is, you know, similar kind of speaking and engagement that I have, which is what are you hungry for? What are you really hungry for? That question is a great way of ascertaining that. Yeah. Whatever it is that you associate with food, perhaps can uncover what it is you're truly hungry for. That's such a direct way.
And I think it's an opportunity. Yeah. And I think for the people who are listening Right? now, that's a great question to ask themselves, because even what are you hungry for feels maybe a little bit daunting. Oh, I don't know. There could be so many things, but what are you associating or what does food mean to you? Maybe a really direct way to getting to that answer of how you're using food in a way that is not appropriate or not.
09:38 - 10:05 Kim Shapira Let's make it even easier. Let's say the time zone we're in is 8 p.m. what is food at 8 p.m. Right?. Yeah. Yes. The witching hour. And that's an opportunity to say, like, I'm not fulfilled enough in adventure or with friends or I'm worried about money or I'm a little tired and it's too early for me to go to bed. Right?. It's an opportunity. Absolutely.
10:05 - 12:16 Dr. Adrienne Youdim To cope better. You know, and you speak about so many of these ideas and concepts that are really much deeper than this superficial layer of, you know, the numbers on the scale and weight. But ultimately, when we don't use food in the Right? way, when we don't acknowledge that food is fuel, it does impact our weight. And then that does impact our health.
Yeah. I'm curious, you know, there's been a shift. So let me just say that I think in the last year, the whole hullabaloo about these weight loss medications, Ozempic and Wegovy and Mounjaro, et cetera. I think it's been a good thing in terms of the weight loss space because it has brought the conversation back to weight and health.
Understanding that, you know, when you use these medications, you know, the studies are showing that by losing weight, people are reducing their risk of heart attacks and strokes and heart failure. And so it's blood pressure and diabetes, all the cardiometabolic syndrome factors. Yes. And so even though we had a Kardashian moment, not to rag on the Kardashians, but we had a Kardashian moment in terms of these drugs.
I do think it has brought the conversation back to weight and health. Yeah. But prior to that, like a year ago, there's a linger of this too. We had this huge, what I'm going to call reverse shaming. So I wholeheartedly agree that fat shaming is wrong and that we grew up, you and I, Kim, we're probably, you know, the same age cohort.
We grew up in this toxic environment in which, Slim Fast and Seventeen Magazine, and there was all this messaging around over-identification with our bodies, Right? That was wrong. But then the pendulum swung all the way to the other side where there was this shaming of people who wanted to lose weight for their health.
And so I want to ask you a question that I'm often asked. How do you reconcile these things and how do you respond to those people who are shaming us for actually advocating or helping our patients and clients who are interested in losing weight?
12:16 - 13:53 Kim Shapira It's a really good point. To be honest, I feel untouched by it. Because, and I always have felt untouched by it. My degree is in human metabolism and clinical nutrition. There are too many studies that show everything in moderation is great. And there are too many studies that say when you lose weight, your body course corrects and your disease state goes down by like a hundred percent.
So again, it's blood sugar related, which has always been the most important focus for me. My entire career is eating every three and a half hours, being hungry when you eat. But what you're talking about specifically is this movement towards body positivity. Yes. And I think it's beautiful. I don't think that we were wrong or there was something wrong happening. I think that we just didn't know what we didn't know. And you know, we can have gratitude for that space and we can be grateful that we've changed, but body positivity has nothing to do with your health.
It has to do with, well, it has to do with your mental health, but it doesn't have to do with your physical health. And you and I are in a space of taking care of your physical body. So you can have a great quality of life and longevity. Right? So you can be body positive. I want you to feel great in your body. I also want your body to feel great. And it doesn't mean that you're not, but let's just say you're not. You need to have space to, to say, I'm going to lose weight or I'm going to make some changes that are going to help my inflammatory issues. Period.
13:53 - 14:54 Dr. Adrienne Youdim The two are actually so interdependent actually, because only when you can truly be body positive and accept yourself for who you are, can you make the difficult changes required to have a healthy body. So 100%. Yeah, they are dependent on each other. And you can be body positive by doing what's Right? for your body. I mean, that is a form of body positivity.
Yes. The two are so commingled. But I feel like the way that a lot of the messaging Right? now exists around it is really divisive and separating out the fact that we should have self compassion and self acceptance. and acknowledge that there are things that we can do for or against our bodies. Yeah. You can do that in a self-compassionate, non-judgmental way.
14:54 - 15:34 Kim Shapira Yeah. And also to hold space for someone else who also might be going through something that you cannot see what they're going through is also very important. But I have always been advocating for my clients to just be advocates for themselves. The rest is noise.
And that if somebody is having celery juice and they're finding that their skin is glowing, they're not talking about the diarrhea. They're not talking about any of the other things they're eating or doing. Maybe they are, but it's not enough. Like, as you said, a snapshot into this moment. And so to pay attention to does celery juice work for you? What's the purpose of celery juice ?
15:34 - 15:50 Dr. Adrienne Youdim It's funny that you bring up celery juice, because when I hear, when somebody asks me about celery juice, I want to excuse myself. walk out the room, bash my head against the wall and come back. Like I just want to kill myself when people talk about celery juice.
15:50 - 16:06 Kim Shapira Sorry. I mean, it's like, come on. And also how many stocks of celery are you going to eat and try eating celery stock and chewing the food? And what about taking care of your body? Be in your body. Be in your body.
16:06 - 16:39 Dr. Adrienne Youdim Well, I think at the end of the day, we all really know what's Right? for us. Yeah, we do. And when something sounds outrageous, it hits us in that moment when we hear it. When and if anyone heard celery juice for the first time, I'm sure a question mark went off in their head, you know, and so we have to honor that question mark and not just take Right?, Right?, like, but also your intuition, it doesn't feel Right?. Initially, if it doesn't sit in your gut, then yeah, that's probably telling you that this is nonsense, quite frankly.
16:39 - 17:52 Kim Shapira I mean, the nutrition world is, I think, over $33 billion business and you've got skincare and you've got all these different marketing ploys for all these different things. I mean, How many creams are we going to use before we're like, Oh, okay, we're aging. Like this is what's happening. Right?
And our human body needs food. If somebody stopped peeing, we would go to the doctor. If you're not getting hungry, you should go to the doctor, Right? Hunger means your body is working and metabolizing. We want to be hungry. We don't want to stay hungry, but we certainly want to make sure that our body is functioning. So it should all come back to what your body is feeling and taking care of it from that place.
Like shouldn't like intermittent fasting Right? now is having a moment. And that's one of those things where I do want to hit my head against the wall. Like, of course, it's better not to eat after dinner. Again, what is, you know, food at 8 PM to you representing. So don't eat after dinner. It's better for your sleep and your reparative process while you're sleeping. And then maybe eat breakfast at seven or eight. That sounds like a 10 to 14 hour fast Right? there. Right?, Right?, Right?, Right?.
17:52 - 18:20 Dr. Adrienne Youdim We're all doing it. I couldn't agree with you more. I like your approach of simplicity. If you would think that people would embrace that, but oftentimes it's frustrating, you know, like, they don't want simple, they want sexy. I do think that if we can remind people to go back to the basics, Right? And empower them with, with that knowledge that the basics really do matter. They won't happen instantaneously.
18:21 - 18:23 Kim Shapira Maybe. I mean, our body regenerates.
18:23 - 18:36 Dr. Adrienne Youdim Well, tell me first of all, tell me, tell me first of all, so you have these, the six rules, which I think are grounded in very simple, you know, back to the basics. So share what those ground rules are for you.
18:36 - 23:48 Kim Shapira So before people can even start paying attention to the rules, they have to know where their mind is. So we get triggered in so many different ways. So it's really important even before you consider eating or thinking about food, is to ask yourself what time zone your mind is in.
Make sure it's the same one as your body, Right? And like for me, it was all about shopping. And when I would go see my doctors at UCLA, my mind was definitely on Bullocks and Westwood. It was not. Oh my God, that's old school. It's 1986. Yeah, but that's where my mind was.
And so really making sure that you're not doing self-harm by having your mind be in a different time zone than your body, because you need to be where you are. And just by asking yourself what time zone your mind is in, it helps bring your mind back. And that's a muscle you need to practice building.
And so once you know where your mind is and you know that your mind is in your body, then you can scan your body and you can see if you're thinking about food because you're hungry and you know you're hungry because your stomach feels a little hollow. It might be even making some like growling noises, not churning, but growling noises. It just kind of feels hollow. It's not scary and it's not painful, but our mind wants you to believe that it is. And so sometimes our mind is a little bit of a liar. So if we eat when we're hungry, then the first rule is to:
Start eating when you're hungry, take your normal portion, not the portion on a box, not the portion the chef prepared for me, you and the basketball player and my 14 year old kid, the portion you would normally eat, cut it in half. That's fail safe. Right? there. And then to eat it slowly, to chew your food, to use the mechanical process of your teeth, to break down the fibers of the food. So that way we can absorb it. And it cuts down on digestive distress, gas, bloating, diarrhea, constipation, and a slew of other things.
So eat slowly, chew your food, and wait 15 minutes. That's when leptin, the hormone, kind of kicks in and says, you're satisfied for now. And then when we move to this place of like, I'm going to eat every two or three hours, like a normal, like a normal eater, we begin to know that we don't have to eat the other half of that food. We're satisfied. We could put it on hold. So that was kind of like a long winded thing, but again, it comes down to blood sugars. So the first rule in total is: Eat when you're hungry, take your normal portion, cut it in half, wait 15 minutes, see if you need more. The second rule is to:
Eat what you love, but also to make sure the food loves you back. So eat what you love is really like removing or editing your thoughts away from you should or shouldn't. It's bad, it's good, it's big, it's small, it's healthy, it's unhealthy. Because so many of those words are why we would rebel and overeat or how our body would sense that we're stressed, Right? Like if I said, you can only have this very small amount, you're not going to eat again for three days. You're suddenly feeling very contracted and restricted and your mind will go into overdrive and tell you to eat fast and eat more than you need.
So we're going to edit and just call food, food. You're going to eat what you love, which to be honest with you really opens you up to not feel restricted. So you don't need to, you can eat the kale if you like it. Right?. But if I tell you to eat the kale and you really want the milkshake, you're going to do both. But if you start with the milkshake, you're going to realize, actually, I don't know if I want the milkshake. Right?
It gives you permission to kind of move and change. So eating what you love only when you're hungry, starting with half waiting 15 minutes and only if the food doesn't make you sick. Right?. Cause we're trying to remove all inflammatory issues in our body. And so if you're somebody who has high cholesterol, something that might make you sick could be saturated fat. If you're having diarrhea, you have to kind of take a look at what foods. Through a sensitivity test that could be doing that, Right? Paying attention to that. The third rule is to:
Eat without distraction, which is really to understand where your mind is to be present with the food. People say they love food, but they don't like to be alone with it. And it's really important to see how boring food is, except when we're really hungry. Then we're happy that we're eating it. So food has to be our source of fuel, not our source of entertainment. Cravings are not hunger. So also paying attention to, am I having a craving? That's why I'm thinking about food. understanding that. So whatever you're craving, put it on hold and wait till you're physically hungry to eat it. You may or may not want it. Then the fourth rule is to:
Get 10,000 steps every single day. And this of course is to reduce your risk of other diseases, improve your endorphins, your sleep, your hormone balance, your digestion, all of the things. It's really important. Rule number five is to get eight cups of water, which again is our natural way that we cleanse and detox every one of our organs. And our last rule, my last rule is:
Seven hours of sleep. The average American gets six and a half and we really need seven to nine, at least seven or our body won't let us lose weight to name a few things. It's a lot.
23:48 - 24:13 Dr. Adrienne Youdim Yeah. They're all very important points. And, you know, even in the simplicity of it, like as you're, you're speaking like the water issue, people don't recognize that water or thirst and hunger signals kind of intertwine. And sometimes we get a hunger signal when we're really thirsty. And so, it's simple. Everybody knows it, but there's actually, you know, there's meat behind that information.
24:13 - 24:39 Kim Shapira And science. And what I would say is I would prefer people to be curious rather than to even know it. Right?. It's like saying we all know kale is healthy again, but people aren't doing it. So the reason people fail is because they think they already know what they need to do, but they're neglecting to do what they need to do. it's more important to be curious and act like you don't know, Right? Because that'll help you kind of stay the course. That makes sense.
24:39 - 25:06 Dr. Adrienne Youdim Yeah, I like that. And I actually just did a podcast a few weeks ago where I talked about “How do you move from knowing to doing?” Right? How do you transform yourself from knowing because knowing is not enough. So the answer. So speak a little bit more about that because it's true when we talk about these simple steps, then the response often is well, Why did I even listen to this podcast? I knew all of that already. Yeah. But to your point, we know it, but we're not doing it.
25:06 - 27:42 Kim Shapira Yeah. So better to not know. Better to like, if you're somebody who does say, I do know, then that's where you would edit yourself and say, I'm not sure I know actually. So if we just take the difference between what is a hunger signal versus a thirst signal? Well, let's just get curious.
What if I drink water? Does that help? And the truth is, is that hunger gets stronger, it doesn't go away. So imagine that you like it if you scan your body right now to see how badly you have to pee, I don't have to pee at all right now. So I'm in good shape. But what happens is when I just have the first inkling of my bladder alerting my mind, start looking for a toilet, Right? My bladder fills, it doesn't just stop filling. And it gets more and more uncomfortable until I finally use the toilet. Right? And then once I use the toilet, I don't even remember I had a full bladder.
I'm like, carrying on like it was no big deal. Hunger gets stronger. It doesn't go away. It gets stronger. And so if you aren't sure between the difference of hunger and thirst, get curious. What if I drink some water? What happens in a few minutes? Because the truth is food is everywhere. If I don't eat it right now, I can actually eat it in one minute and I can actually eat it in five minutes. And I'm going to be eating five times today. And I don't even need to know where that is.
That's like saying I woke up this morning, completely stressed of where I'm going to use the toilet stay. I don't ever leave my house wondering or worried. And for sure, I'm going to have to pee. I have like the world's smallest bladder ever. So I'm always going to need to use the toilet. Like if you offer it to me, the answer is yes. Right?. And so it's just, we trust that we'll find toilets. Why aren't we trusting that we're going to eat again, especially when food is everywhere. So the 15 minute rule of taking half and waiting, that's the most important place to get curious. What happens if I only eat half? What happens?
And the truth is, if you only eat half and you wait 15 minutes from the first bite, you most likely won't need more food. And that's why people lose weight. That's the fail safe. That's what allows you to be hungry in three hours. If you're hungry in three hours, you're metabolizing correctly. If you're not hungry in three hours, you overate your last meal or your body fat is still too high. So you still need to eat smaller portions. It all comes down to blood sugar regulation.
27:42 - 27:59 Dr. Adrienne Youdim Again, I have so many tangents I could go, but this one's popping into mine, which is not necessarily a tangent off of what you said. What do you find to be the biggest barrier or barriers for your patients? What are the pain points that you commonly come across with your clients?
27:59 - 28:44 Kim Shapira I mean, I would definitely, I would say a hundred percent of my clients have the story of yo-yo dieting of restriction and binging. Not so much where it was like a diagnosed binge eating disorder, but they restricted it a little bit and then they went, they overate because of it. And so I would say the two most common things for me is people already know what they need to know. And again, they don't do what they need to really do, which means that they're terrified of eating half, that they're totally freaked out, that they're going to starve to death. And the second is that when I say eat what you love, that I'm giving them permission to eat foods that are not good for their body.
28:44 - 28:56 Dr. Adrienne Youdim Speak about that a little bit more because that makes me think of the conversation around, listen to your body, Right? Give your body what it needs. And I always joke.
28:57 - 28:58 Kim Shapira Go ahead. Go ahead. Sorry.
28:58 - 29:02 Dr. Adrienne Youdim I mean, I always joke like my body wants to sit on the couch and eat bonbons all day.
29:02 - 30:34 Kim Shapira Yeah. So can you let's go with that. Let's go with I want to sit on the couch and eat bonbons. Okay. What I hear when somebody says I want to sit on the couch and eat bon bons is I'm tired. I'm bored. And food is fun. And it's entertainment. So that's the opposite of what I'm saying. I never said sit on the couch. I said eat without distractions. You're not allowed to sit on the couch. You're not even allowed to have your phone in your hand. You should sit at the kitchen table and eat your food because food is fuel, Right? And bonbons, you can absolutely have bonbons. But when you're hungry, do you actually want a bonbon? That's a really important question.
So when I do say eat what you love, and you hear bonbons, let's say, and you're really hungry. Now, just take a second and think about this. You're very hungry. You're ready for food. And I have bonbons, and I have a turkey burger. Or I have fish and a baked potato and broccoli, and you're hungry. And I'm offering you both. Which one do you really want? Yeah, absolutely. And if it's bonbons, I'm going to argue that you're having a sugar craving and that you're not really hungry. But you absolutely should eat the bonbons. Cause I said, eat what you love, but take it, cut it in half, eat it slowly. Enjoy it. Wait 15 minutes.
See if you need more and be honest, get curious. Do you actually need more? You probably won't, but guess what? The bond bonds are in the freezer and you can have more when you feel hungry.
30:34 - 31:18 Dr. Adrienne Youdim What I keep hearing you come back to is something that comes up a lot is this sentiment of fear around food. FOMO, it's the buffet phenomena, Right? Like when you're faced with a buffet, or there's these studies that talk about food in the workplace, that when there's food provision, people feel compelled to take advantage of it, or even the Costco phenomena, however you wanna describe it. So can you talk about that a little bit, how you see that come up and how people can recognize it? Because I don't think the average person thinks I'm afraid when they're having that anxiety response actually to the food that is in front of them.
31:18 - 34:21 Kim Shapira So the most important thing to know here is that every decision that we make comes from a place of fear or trust. That's it, fear or trust. So I'm either, either the bonbons are going to be bad for me, or there won't be bonbons tomorrow because I'm restricting myself. You know, bonbons are, I'm not sure what the fear is for bonbons, Right? But let's just say it's bonbons or let's just say it's buffet.
I think it was Dr. Barbara Fredrickson who studied narrow mindedness. First of all, we have to know that any single time we're thinking about food, it's an alarm that is going off. Remember that we live inside our bodies and our bodies are giving us messages all day long. We're tired, we need water, we need food, we need to rest, whatever it is, okay? We need to be really good communicators. If our mind is saying bonbons are a great idea or that buffet is scary, if we're thinking about food, it's an alarm that has gone off. And it's really important for us to go to the alarm box and turn it off.
Just like we would be at home, we would stop whatever we were doing. If you and I heard an alarm right now, we would go to the unit, we would turn it off and we would scan our surroundings and make sure that we were safe. And that's it. Our mind needs to know we're safe. We need to know that we can eat bonbons. We need to know there are more bonbons later. We need to know that bonbons are bad. We need to know that bonbons aren't bad for us. Right?. But we're not safe right now. The buffet just made us totally unsafe. We go to the alarm, we turn it off, we remind our mind, we're safe. My body's right here and I'm safe. Mind, we're okay, but thank you for the alarm.
And then we can kind of see, oh my God, my chest is tight. That's why I'm thinking about bonbons. That's why I'm so freaked out about the buffet. Okay. Let me just cope here and figure out what's the Right? thing to do when my chest is tight. Would I tell my child to eat if their chest was tight? Would I tell my partner to eat if my chest was tight? I probably would tell them to take a deep breath. and tell them that it's going to be okay. Remind their mind that they're safe. But let's just say I'm having this thought that, you know, the buffet is great or scary and I scan my body and I see that my stomach is hollow.
Oh, interesting. Okay. I'm hungry. Great. Buffet. Here I come. I'm going to take my normal portion. I'm cutting it in half and I'm going to wait 15 minutes to see if I need more food. That is non-negotiable when you are hungry. If you're, Thinking about food, it's because you've trained your mind for any part of your body to be, when it's in discomfort, it tells you food is a good idea. So the alarm is going off. So now it's an opportunity for you to retrain your mind to say, I'm safe. The food is right there in the freezer or the buffet is there anytime I want it. I'm going to just wait until I'm hungry in my stomach.
34:21 - 35:29 Dr. Adrienne Youdim In essence, what you're describing is something that I brought up in the TED Talk, which is creating a pause between the trigger and the reaction. So I think for people wondering how to really make this an actionable piece of guidance, I always tell people like zone into that moment, Right? When you see the buffet and Right? before you fill your plate or whatever the case may be, try and zoom in and kind of slow down the time in between. stretch out that time and get a sense for what exactly is going on. Because yes, when you see that food, it does set off an alarm. The thought and the feeling are so quick, you can't discern one from another. And then thought, feeling and action also become completely entangled with each other. So we have to dissociate all of that by, you know, really like stretching out the time.
35:29 - 37:19 Kim Shapira It's funny. I say put space between the thought to eat and the action to eat. I say the same kind of pause thought, but what I didn't explain to you before, which is what Dr. Barbara Fredrickson studied, was narrow mindedness. It's kind of like when we wake up in the morning, we think food is fuel. We're pretty rational. And then we go through our day and we get triggered by phone calls. by, you know, podcasts that get thrown into our day, whatever could trigger us, Right?
It happens. We can't predict the storm. And in some people's cases, it's the buffet. Now, what was studied with narrow-mindedness is that all I can see is the buffet. And so it's really important to kind of like, as you're saying, zone in, see the buffet, but now take your mind's eye, take your eye even, and look up and turn around and look around Who are you in the room with? Become mindful, practice understanding where the food come from? How did the food get here? Really start understanding positive psychology.
This is what she, Dr. Barbara Fredrickson discovered, really took narrow mindedness and helped us literally and figuratively expand our mind. So by infusing. Positive thoughts. We now can stop just only seeing the buffet. We now can see, oh, I'm with my partner and I love being with my partner and I'm with my daughter and I don't get this opportunity. The food is fuel. It's who you're with that is important. The room that you're in, the smells, all the sounds, Right? So we have to just take our mind from this narrow place and expand it. which is what you're saying with the zooming in, but except I want you just to kind of look up and look around.
37:19 - 37:49 Dr. Adrienne Youdim Well, it's like zoom in, Right? But also then zoom out. Yeah, exactly. Zoom out. Zoom out and see the whole picture, which points to another theme that I've been hearing you say over and over again in different ways, which is really being present. Yeah. You know, really being present because in that moment, if you really hone into that moment, you can discern what it is that you're hungry for or what time zone you're in, as you like to say.
37:49 - 37:55 Kim Shapira Yes. Yes. Yeah, you need to be where your body is and you need to know you can survive the hard moments.
37:55 - 38:16 Dr. Adrienne Youdim There's so much here that in the 30-40 minutes that we've spoken, it's just kind of a flavor that I feel like leads itself. It's a lot of food for thought. Let's put it that way. So if people want to learn more about you, about your approach, and dig a little bit deeper into all this, Kim, how can people find you?
38:16 - 38:36 Kim Shapira They can find me on Instagram and TikTok and Pinterest and my website, Kim Shapira Method. And I do groups. I have group therapy sessions every week and see clients privately. And I have a book called This Is What You're Really Hungry For and a masterclass actually that just came out. So I'm very excited about that.
38:36 - 38:53 Dr. Adrienne Youdim That's wonderful. Well, I'm definitely, as we spoke earlier, going to dive into your book and we'll put links to all of that in the show notes for people who want to see you and meet with you potentially and see what you have to offer. And again, thank you so much for your time.
38:53 - 38:56 Kim Shapira This was really lovely. So much fun. Thanks for having me.