Eat well to live well with Dr Libby Weaver

0:02 A listener production. Hey guys, you're listening to Crappy to Happy. I'm cas Dan. I'm a clinical and coaching psychologist, mindfulness meditation teacher, and author of the Crappy. To Happy books. In this series, we. Look at all the factors that might be making you feel crappy and the tools and the techniques that will help you overcome them. In each episode, I introduce you to interesting, inspiring, intelligent people who are experts in their field, and my hope is that they will help you go from crappy to happy. Today, I'm talking to doctor Libby Weaver, who is an internationally acclaimed nutritional biochemist, an author and speaker.

0:46 Libby has written twelve books and has made it her life's work to empower women, especially to take charge of their health and their happiness. Libby was warm, engaging. She's a wealth of information, and we talked about the real reason you gain weight as you age, how weight loss is as much about psychology as it is about nutrition, and why you need to stop counting calories once and for all. I hope that you learn as much as I did from this inspiring conversation with doctor Libby. Doctor Libby weaver you have developed, I'm aware, your own unique three pillared approach to achieving optimal health. I would love it if you would just start.

1:27 By explaining for our listeners what those three pillars are. With absolute pleasure. They are the three pillars of the biochemical, the nutritional, and the emotional. So I look at absolutely everything, all health conditions, what people are experiencing through those three lenses. So the biochemical is where I look at the inner workings of the body. So, for example, what signals to the adrenal glands to release stress hormones like adrenaline and cortisol, What then regulates those hormones, what allows us to get rid of them, what are the consequences? So that's the biochemistry, the inner workings of what I do. Rational component is where we look at the foods and the nutrients that are essential for the optimum functioning of all of the biochemical pathways inside of us. And that I'd probably become people's least favorite human when I talk about the foods, but especially the drinks that can take away from the optimum functioning, yes of some of those body systems. And then the third pillar is the emotional one, which is where I get people to ask the question, why do I do what I do even though I have the knowledge that I have.

2:26 I'm really obviously as a psychologist, I'm really interested in that, and I want to come back to the biochemistry as well. So many questions. But so when we talk about emotional eating, like the emotional things that drive people to eat, things that they know are bad for them, that they know ultimately don't serve them. As a psychologist, I can address that, as you know, in terms of the emotional drivers and triggers and things. As a nutritionist, how do you help people with that? So it's hilarious almost to me, because you knew we were taught that to change someone's food behaviors really just needed to sit with them and guide them on how to eat, and that people would then go away and do that once they had that good education. And of course, once you're out and working with people, which I've done for twenty years now, you learn very quickly that that's not the case, and they might do.

3:13 It only it were that easy exactly. So you know, some people will do it for three days, three weeks, maybe three months, and then revert back to what they've always done. So as a nutritionist, I had to come up with ways to help these really intelligent people who were wanting to make significant dietary and lifestyle choices. Had to come up with ways to explain to them what was driving their behavior. So the simplest way I came to do that was to help them understand that. Let's say they'd come to me for weight loss, they'd say, olibya, I will do anything to lose weight. I'm sick of myself. I'm so uncomfortable. Just tell me what to do and I'll do it. Humans will do more to avoid pain than they're ever going to do to have pleasure, And so I think they the weight loss in this situation is their pleasure, but the way that they live is by avoiding emotional pain. It's just that we're not usually taught at school how to identify how we feel in each moment, and in my experience, it's our beliefs that drive our behavior, and they're slippery. We're usually very good at knowing what we believe about things external to us, about that person or that situation, or that political party, but we're not so good at identifying what we believe about ourselves and who we have to be to be loved, for example, So I dig into all of that in my work as well, music to.

4:21 My ears music because that is I mean, we have had a previous episode all about emotional eating, and we've also had an episode about self sabotage and those unconscious blocks that come up and getting people's way. So to me, that's fantastic that as a nutritionist you include all of that because that's essential, isn't it It is? It doesn't long The only long, long term, lasting change I've ever witnessed occurred has come from doing that deeper work, and it's where because you've got to get humans back in touch with the fact that they are worth taking care of, that they are worth loving. And until that work is done and they truly know in their own hearts, you fight an uphill battle.

5:03 So when we talk about biochemistry, is that referring to, for example, my DNA and the genes in my body or is that how I the environmental factors that have impacted how my body works. Can you talk to me about that because I love too. Yeah. I did a PhD in biochemistry after I did my first nutrition and dietetics degree, So it's biochemistry is deep at the heart of my work. It's where a biochemical pathway happens when one substance is being converted into something else. So substance A becomes substance B through a reaction, and then substance B will get converted into substance C. C becomes D and on and on the cascade of changes continue to go. So, for example, cholesterol is the first step in the synthesis of all of our steroid hormones, estrogen, progesterone, and testosterone, So I'll use that as the example. Cholesterol gets converted through a biochemical reaction into pregnenolone, and then pregnenolone becomes progesterone, and progesterone plays a role in fertility, but it's also a very very powerful anti anxiety agent.

6:02 It's an antidepressant and a diuretic, so it has a lot of biological effects on us. And then in that biochemical pathway, there's a fork in the road where progesterone either gets converted into estrogen, testosterone, or cortisol, one of our stress hormones, and that all occurs in both men and women. Obviously, the testosterone pathways are pregulated in men. The estrogen pathways typically are regulated in women, particularly across the menstruation years. But to understand the biochemistry of that, for one substance to turn into something else, so for cholesterol to become pregnenolone, nutrients are needed. So for that conversion, you actually need zinc and the essential fatty acids. Now, if you're deficient in either or both of those substances, you will accumulate cholesterol and then you will become too low in all of those beautiful hormones that help contribute to our energy and vitality. So nutrition plays an essential role in every biochemical reaction inside of us.

6:54 That is stuff that most of us just don't it's not even on our radar. I'm just thinking now about the issues that our listeners talk about, such as hormonal cravings that they have weight gain. We can modify all of this with how we eat. Yes, it simply. Puts, very simply put one hundred percent. So because we can't fight our biological requirement for nutrients. So when we become nutritionally deficient in fruit, will in this case say zinc. And that's very common these days because zinc used to be in our soil, so it was widely spread throughout our fruits and veggies, breads, and cereals, whereas now our soil is deficient pretty much from zinc and it's only really found in oysters, red meat, and then there's a little bit in eggs and a little bit in seed sunflower seeds and pumpkin seeds. So it's very easy for people these days to become deficient in zinc.

7:47 And we don't ever then puse to think about how our food choices or poor soil quality is then impacting the interior workings of our body in this one little example, interfering with our body's ability to convert it cholesterol into substances that are linked to us feeling energized and vital and alive and waking up with energy, let alone helping to prevent anxious feelings, low mood, stopping to prevent fluid retention, because if you think at the flip side of all of that, when we are retaining fluid and we feel puffy and swollen, have a lot of anxious feelings and our moods really low, the ripple effect of that is major. When we feel so uncomfortable in our in our physical body and inside our own minds, and that that's very confusing for us because we don't understand why you think it's going to impact what we make ourselves for dinner, will impact whether we get off the couch and go for a walk or not, our self talk and the way we speak to everyone we love in the world.

8:39 So that's just to put it really simply. Nutrition. For me, it's my training, so I'm biased, but for me it's the absolute foundation of everything because I call the body of the earth suit. The earth suit has biological requirements and we just we have to meet them. And I'm very concerned that too many people these days don't meet those And a good question to consider is are we living to short and dying too long? Because a lot of people their quality of life is enormously affected from lousy energy or real challenges with mindset that they don't understand and sadly just don't have the tools to deal with what happens for them. But nutrition plays a big role. And it's feeling better, it sounds like. It, and picking up on what you were just saying and about you know, we feel crappy and then we you know, we're down on ourselves when we speak badly, and then oftentimes the go to for people is glass of wine, sugary food, all of the things that just continue perpetuating that unhealthy cycle.

9:34 Yeah, a lot of people make fantastic choices for breakfast and lunch, I find these days, and then in the middle of the afternoon or after dinner, they feel like someone else. Has taken over their body. Their desire for sweet or poor quality food is major so helping. It's not a lack of intelligence. It's not a lack of education that leads anyone to polish off a packet of chocolate biscuits after dinner. No one does that these days, thinking oh, I'm going to feel so fabulous after I smash these. They don't necessarily understand that there can be biochemical factors that are leading, that are internally setting them up to want that food, that poor equality food, and of course what we touched on earlier. Of course, it can be emotional reasons that lead them there. It sounds to me that the take home message here is that there cannot be a one size fits all approach to food and nutrition, not at all well being.

10:23 So what do you recommend to people come and see a nutritionist. Do they have their blood tests done to see where they might be deficient? Where do people start? I see, the body doesn't have a voice, but it will give you symptoms to let you know whether it's happy or not with your choices. So when it's giving you grief, suffering, frustration, sadness, it's trying to be your best friend. I think so many women in particular feel like their body betrays them. And the really key thing to understand is that the body is just responding to. The information you give it. So I'll come back to the testing and where to start most point in a moment. But if we pause to think that science suggests that humans have been on the planet for about one hundred and fifty thousand years.

11:06 It's probably longer, but that's what we currently understand, and virtually all of that enormous amount of time, the only reason we made stress hormones like adrenaline was to because our life was literally in danger, whereas in modern times it's predominantly psychological stress or caffeine that leads us to make adrenaline. So but the body hasn't yet learned to decipher between the adrenaline we produce from what we consume, or because of our perceptions of pressure and urgency or worrying about what other people think of us versus our life truly being threatened. So when we pull it all back to that and see that when we're constantly producing all of those stress hormones, we get stuck in a place that I call sympathetic nervous system dominance, where blood pressure starts to get messed up. Digestion is enormously compromised.

11:48 Now one in five women in Australia and New Zealand have irritable bowel syndrome, and food is playing a role in that, but so is this stress response without question, and then it also changes the fuel that you're body perceives is safe and appropriate for you to use. So we're always using a combination of glucose or fat. But whether it's mostly glucose i e. Sugar or mostly fat, your nervous system plays an enormous role in that, because when you're in that fight or flight response that get out of danger because of all the adrenaline, your body wants to give you a fast burning fuel to help you do that. So you're mostly going to use glucose and you'll become a really poor fat burner. In that situation, your clothes get tighter, your energy starts to suffer, mood suffers, sleep suffers, everything suffers when we're not good at utilizing body fat effectively as a fuel. So when you say where to start, for so many people these days, that's where they need to start because they're constantly communicating to their body because they're making this constant, relentless amount of stress hormones. We've got to look at what that really is.

12:47 Because you can go on absolutely on all four testing iron levels. Testing. You can measure cortisols, for example, first thing in the morning, in your blood. You can measure it also in saliva. There's a lot of There's so many parameters we can measure. If I was going to help people break it down to be as simple as possible, because it can get really complex, feel and tell and feel really overwhelming. In my experience, the first thing to do is to identify what stress truly is for an individual and start there, because that too is different because when we're stressed, it compromises nutrient absorption, It compromises the choices that we make people eat more poorly. When they're stressed right when you need to be eating better and to give yourself more antioxidants to prevent the damage that can happen through oxidative stress, which which is what occurs when we make too many stress hormones. So in my experience, that's always where we want to start is for you as an individual. I'll say to someone you explain your perceptions of pressure and urgency to me, where does that come from? Explain to me how what are the words or the traits, the personality traits that are so important for you to be seen as. So think of the people you love in the world, your family, your friends, your colleagues. What are the traits where it's so critical that you're seen in that way? Because I think so much of our stress comes from when we perceive that there's a risk that we may not be seen in this way. So sticky people think, what will people think?

14:10 It's one of the biggest questions, isn't it. Yeah yeah, yeah, oh you sound like So you start with the psychology. Really nothing changes till you go there. Yeah. So I go into the food. I have to because it's very difficult for I think our body to produce substances inside of us that actually allow us to experience calm, to feel like we're coping. So there are literally biochemical substances that the body makes that allows us to experience those things. And if you're nutritionally deficient, you're not going to make those things in good enough numbers for you to get the lovely feelings of them, the uplift from them. You know, melotonin is supposed to be high at night that allows us to sleep, and then your serotonin's supposed to surge in the morning, giving us a calm and content type feeling. So nutrients are needed for the creation of all of those substances and if that's happening, So I do start with nutrition, absolutely, but at the same time have to work with their perceptions, their beliefs, and what's actually happening in someone's life. And that is another reason why it's so highly individual. Because you'll say to someone, tell me about your emails, and they'll say, oh, they're the bane of my life. I can never keep up. I feel like I let everybody down.

15:19 Someone else will say, there's an opportunity in every email, bring it on. So how can the same thing lead to such different exceptions. Yeah, I mean I teach mindfulness as well, obviously a psychologist who also teach mindfulness meditation. I have an online mindfulness of course. I'm such a passionate believer in this this you know, the fact that we all need to slow down and manage our stress. And I'm interested in it for the emotional wellbeing obviously, and your physical wellbeing. But the interaction there with diet and nutrition and holistic health is massive. By the sounds of. It, it is cas and a huge part of why I went into it was when my training was that the only thing that made a difference to someone's body shape and size was the calorie equation. And still too many people falsely believe.

16:06 That that's on my list of questions, our calories. Why are we still canning calories? It's crazy if we track it back and look at the history of it. The calorie equation, the idea that there was a certain amount of caloric intake required to sustain human life. That was extraordinary, groundbreaking science when it was published in nineteen eighteen. I'm so glad you. Laughed now, because you think World War One was just ending. A lot of people didn't have enough food so it was truly insightful to now know that there was a base level of intake required to maintain human life. Our heart beating, our brain, thinking, our lungs breathe, all of the interior processes needed to sustain life calories ie energy was needed for that, and it's been manipulated into a weight loss mechanism. It was never designed to be that, but it got it got used like that. So there's a whole whole, I guess, generation of people out there who falsely believe that that's the only thing that impacts body shape and size. And that was what I was taught.

17:12 And you get to work with people and you see they're doing it perfectly and their clothes are still getting tighter. So if it truly held true, it would hold if it was the only thing, it would hold true for everyone, and it doesn't hold true for everyone. So that was. Actually very early on in my working life. That was what actually led me to go back to my geeky biochemistry textbooks with the question in my mind, what leads the human body to get the message that it needs to burn fat and what leads the human body to get the message that it needs to store fat? And I've put those answers into my books, have written twelve books and some of my online courses because stress hormones, for example, we started to we touched on those they're going to they're all about survival. You can have the most. Perfect calorie equation, but if your body thinks your life's in danger, one of the stress hormones you'll make is cortisol.

17:58 Cortisolely for one hundred and fifty thousand years we've been on the planet, was made during chronic stress, floods, famine's wars, food is scarce, so the body still thinks that that's what's occurring. When you've got elevated cortisol from your chronic stress, which might be worrying about your relationships, or your bank balance, or your health or the health concerns of a loved one. It's all the same to the body. So to slow your metabolism down, which is what cortizole does, it does that because it's got your best interest at heart. And that's what I mean that the body responds to the information you give it. So when you're making all of. That quartersole, it's because your body thinks that there's long term stress that means there's no food left in the world, and if it slows your metabolism, you're a lot more likely to still be here if you've got some more flesh on your bones, then if you're a stick monster.

18:42 So it leads to a really clear fat deposition pattern. We get fat around the middle, bingo wings on the back of our arms, and we grow back Foraranda. So it's not and people get really frustrated, and rightly so, because they think they're still making great choices. For many of us, we grew up with that calorie counting message and calories in, calories out. I see it still everywhere, and I think it. Worked for us. You know, when I was in my twenties, I could go on a low calorie I could drop calories for a week and drop a dress size and that was everywhere in the magazines as well, drop a dress size in a week. And I think that's the problem, is that it did work for us. And then later when you start to put on some weight, you get a bit older, and you've had kids or whatever, then we go that's our go to And then that's where the frustration comes in, is that those old strategies they don't work anymore. And in fact, I've seen some people who start to eat they say, okay, I'm not going to count calories, and so they start eating what is a well balanced, you know, nutritionally sound and you know, calorie sort of controlled food plant, and they think that they're doing the right thing, and they start putting on weight, and so they then they just ditch it.

19:47 This is obviously not working. I've got to go back to my you know, a thousand calories a day or whatever it is. So what do you have an answer? You know, do you have advice for those people? Yeah, don't. I don't actually think it's age related. I think it's environmental, and I think it's also based on our own life experience. So the older we get, the less muscle mass we're going to have. So from the age of thirty onwards, if we don't do anything to maintain muscle mass, we start to lose it. And it is so metabolically active. So muscle is one of the only tissue that the cells of the muscles can have more what are called mitochondria, which are the energy producing units inside the cells that drive metabolic rate. So the less muscle mass we have the fel mitochondria. We have, the less our energy, the lower our metabolism, and that's going to happen from the age of thirty onwards unless we do something to maintain or preferably build that muscle mass.

20:37 The other thing that massively changes is our liver starts to accumulate fat because of lousy choices. So not that long ago, the only time we ever saw the accumulation of fat in the liver was in chronic alcoholics. There's a disease called chronic alcoholic fatty liver disease. But there's a relatively new disease now called non alcoholic fatty liver disease that's being seen in people as young as teenagers who've never had any alcohol, and it's just from the amount of. Process food and drink that they've consumed. And once if you. Can imagine that your liver is this highly active organ designed to do play so many roles inside you. Nutrient dissemination as well as detoxification, which is just a change process. It's a transformation process. The liver takes things that if they were going to accumulate inside you, they'd be harmful to you. The liver changes them into something less harmful, so you can incorporate that into your urine and your fecal matter and get rid of it. The liver plays a massive role in that inside of us. So if you have cells inside your liver that were once able to do that critical detoxification work, and now a globul of fat has taken over where once there was an active liver cell, your ability to get rid of problematic substances out of your body starts to be compromised. And those things, those problematic substances can't stain in your blood because your blood's going to travel through your heart, your lungs, or your vital organs and that's going to damage them.

21:51 So and the body knows that, so it shoves. It inside your body fat and moves it to your bottom and your hips and your thighs away from all your vital organs to keep it safe in inverted commas. So that actually makes perfect sense. And you know what I see happening too amongst my friends, amongst the people that you know we work with online in health and fitness communities, is that they are obsessed about counting calories and even if they have cottoned on that calories aren't where it's at. Then they become obsessed with counting macros and they entering everything into an app am I getting the right protein carb fat ratio. What's your thoughts about that. It's a bit obsessive to me. What do you think? Yeah, it's almost like there's two human We're funny, aren't we as humans?

22:34 We're so black and white. Where there are people in the world who when it comes to what they allow to go inside their extraordinary and precious earth suit, they need to probably raise their standards. And then there are other people I think that need to be less rigid, because so much rigidity is fear based and it's a drive for perfection, which is I think just another mask that fear wears. So I think we need to I'm always quite careful in my response to I guess to when people talk about extreme sorts of things, because without question, there are people that really need to look after themselves far better and recognize how precious they are to take and take care of themselves. But the people who are really rigid and frightened of food that's not healthy either.

23:20 So to bring it back to a middle ground, I think it's incredibly important. If we're struggling to make sense of food or we feel the need to count everything, a much better question to ask is will this nourish me? So, when you've got a whole root, so track it back even a little step further. For me, there's no such thing as junk food. There's just junk and there's food. But at the moment in the Western world, we call food whole, real food. But it's what we've evolved eating, and up until the very very very recent past, it was the food was the only thing available to us. But now there's a huge amount of junk out there. And if we get the junk out of our world, instead of our taste buds running our lives body, your chemistry starts to run your life. And I don't want to call it intuitive eating because it makes it sound to hippi laala, although I don't mind a bit of that, but it's I feel that that sort of makes some people check out what I want is for It's like there's a voice inside each of us that has our back.

24:16 There's a voice inside of us that knows when it's time to go to bed, knows when we need to eat more vegetables, knows when it's time for afternoon tea, but we often don't listen to that voice, and we forever hand over responsibility for our health and wellness to external voices. Now, I'm not saying that that's not valid, because sometimes we do need to educate ourselves and understand things in a different way, get a different perspective, speak to someone who's an expert in an area. Absolutely, But for so many people, when they're counting everything, their body knows way better. I can't tell you the number of people i've methoods who'll say I'm allowed to have a quarter of an avocado because that fits in with what I macro nutritionally, what I'm. Allowed to have each day. Well, what if one morning you want half an avocado, or heaven forbid a whole one. But then if you let yourself run with that, there'll be days when you don't want an avocado. You look at the avocado and go, oh, I don't even want to.

25:06 Eat that today. So when we get the rubbish out, and particularly things that contain a lot of refined sugar, your body starts to run the ship on the And when you allow that to occur, your macro nutrient intake falls into place when your body, not your taste buds. When your body is running your show, you will choose the right amount of fat, protein, and carbohydrate for you. But again let's go further. Those macro nutrients give us energy, which we measure as calories, or the modern version is killer jewels. I still use calories because that's when I was educated. But it's the micro nutrients. It's the vitamins and the minerals that allow us to extract the energy from that food. So the macros give us energy, but it's the micros that make it all usable and allow those biochemical pathways inside of us to run efficiently, so we get the best out of our bodies. So I understand though, that that's a journey for people to truly be able to trust themselves again and to trust their body's own desires.

26:04 I think, particularly for women, they've lost trust in themselves. They're frightened of their own desires. They're so used to living in a world of deprivation and almost punishment, which is not sustainable, and it hurts us in the long term. And I don't believe really there's a true level of health when we are living in that place of deprivation. But I understand it's a quantum leap to go from being a bit frightened or counting calories constantly and feeling that's your only way. That's a journey to the freedom and the trust again. But it's a road worth taking and incredibly rewarding. So in my experienced, mindfulness is a fantastic way for people to start to tune into what's happening in their body, you know, in their emotions, their physical body, and I think that can be a great way to start reconnecting with what it is that they really need. What suggestions do you have for people who are heavily reliant on you know, they're not trust seeing their bod they're relying on experts and apps and books and websites to start to just reconnect with what they really need. Firstly, I really understand why people go external, of course, to the apps and the websites. And it's not a simple it's not necessarily an easy journey or a comfortable journey to come back to trusting ourselves because and people will say to me, but Libby, when I try to tune in, I'm still going to my body. Still tells me, I want the chocolate biscuits.

27:24 Exactly, I said it all the time. So one of the little tips that I get people to do so that they can get some insight into what's really behind some of their food choices is you just keep a little notebook in the kitchen and you draw it up into four columns. The first column says what do I want? The second column says what do I really want? The third column says how will having that make me feel? And then the fourth column is how else can I feel that way? So, when let's say you've had your dinner and you know on a physical level you've had enough food, and you're sitting in the lounge room watching something and you suddenly think, oh, I'm hungry, but you know you actually physically can't be hungry, but you feel hungry, and so you're thinking, I want something. I don't know what it is that I want, but I want something. So you go to the fridge and you go looking for it, and you try something sweet and that doesn't work, and you have something savory and that still doesn't work. So and when you feel that, and then you'll go to bed feeling really uncomfortable and berating yourself and judging yourself and telling yourself you're hopeless, empathetic and got no willpower. And it's a really vicious cycle.

28:22 So when you know you've had enough food but you still feel like you want to keep eating, if you write down what do I want? While I want chocolate biscuits, then answer the next column, what do I really want? You'll still write chocolate. Biscuits, But then push yourself and go, know, what is it that I really want? Well, I want a new bathroom, I want to have a baby, I want to go on a holiday. I want someone to say thank you for making my bed every day for the last eighteen years. So you note down what you actually really want. But then it's not even about that, it's about having that. How having that's going to make you feel. So you identify, I'll feel appreciated, I'll feel loved, I'll feel comforted, I'll feel like I fit in whatever. Identify how having that would make you feel, and then how else can you experience that? And so then you know you need to take the steps to bring more of Stand in the door.

29:07 If it's comfort or love that you want to experience, stand in the doorway for your children's bedroom and watch them sleep and don't notice the messy room. Just soak up their preciousness nothing or lift your heart higher. It might be that you've identified that you really feel like you want a holiday, and that's in because that will make you feel appreciated for all the hard. Work you've done. So you can see that there's something in you yearning for some kind of so you show some kind of appreciation. So you work out a meaningful way to show yourself that appreciation. So the more you incorporate. Activities or thought processes that create the feelings that you're looking to the food to create, the more you can start to break or in this situation, I guess an emotional relationship with food that may not be serving you.

29:50 So that's on that level. On the physical level, it's very, very difficult to allow your body to run the show when there's large amounts of refined sugars, other artificial sweetness, colors, flavors, preservatives in your food because some of those substances mess with the hormones that help to regulate satiety. Leptin is one of them, graal and is another one. They can get really messed up and disturbed when there's a lot of fake food ingredients and also even too much refined sugar and what we're eating. So we do need to take steps with what we're eating. It's almost like you make a commitment to yourself to get rid of the rubbish, to get rid of the junk.

30:32 Now that's a journey for a lot of people. Let's say right now, you eat thirty five times a week, three main meals, two snacks, seven days a week. Let's say seven out of thirty five meals is made from whole real food. If you just. Include one more real food meal or drink or snack per week, which I don't think is overwhelming for an individual or a family, So just one more per week. Within two months, you'll be at fifteen out of thirty five being made from whole real food, and you'll have doubled the amount of nutrients going in, and you'll have also gotten rid of a whole host of potentially problematic substances that had been going in. So it's not doesn't have to be black or white. You don't have to clean out your pantry, it's just taking steps consistently. I love that word consistently in a new direction to take even better care of yourself.

31:14 I love that. So going back to the what do I really want? That is it's pretty much exactly what I try to explain to people as well. Slightly different process, but same thing. What is it that you and we often say am I? We say to people, ask yourself? Am I hungry? Or am I hurting? But I think your ways even better? Like your way like what do I really really want? Is an even better question, and the small steps like this is what we say about this whole show is this is not a life overhaul. This is small steps that you can take to make better crappy or happy, to make things better and healthier and happier, and just one meal a week that's very manageable.

31:56 And it's game changing. Truly, it blows your mind when you start to experience. If you think health is made up of, let's say one hundred tiny little choices that we make each day. Is at wine or water? Well I have a piece of fruit or five biscuits? Will I take the elevator or take the stairs? So just tiny little decisions that we make each day. Let's say right now, eighty of them are in the direction of taking away from your health and energy and only twenty are deposits into your health and energy bank account. If you just get back to fifty to fifty, you're going to feel better, and once you have better energy and a clearer mind, you'll be at sixty forty in favor of taking care. Of yourself before you know it. So it's not an we go.

32:36 So I feel like it's really challenging for people when they think that they're either on the wagon or off the wagon. I hear that phrase all the time. I was going so well and then I fell off the wagon. Well, nothing, there is no wagon. There's only our life. It's the belief in the wagon that's the problem. If you catch up with your favorite girlfriend on a Friday night and she's had a heart broken and she pulls out lots of foods and drinks that aren't highly nourishing, the last thing you need to do is sit there and think this is not going to nourish me, or or create this idea in your head that you've got to absolutely annihilate yourself in the gym the next day, because that's not healthy. Either. You're not there for nourishment, you're there to nourish each other's souls and to help her get through a rough time that she's going through and listen to her and make her laugh. For example. But because it is what we do every day that impacts on our health, it's not what we do occasionally.

33:19 And it's the guilt that we feel when we make a poor quality choice that's way worse for us than any biscuit's ever going to be, because it's the guilt that makes you go back and do it again the next day. If we can just put full stops at the end of our sentences. So many people put commas or I ate too many biscuits, comma, and then they judge themselves. Therefore I am blah blah blah. That's the judge. The judgment is what makes you go back and do it again. If you just went I ate too many chocolate biscuits, put a full stop. If you want to understand it, it's I think it's good you can ask bring curiosity to the situation instead of judgment and think, okay, wonder what it was that led me there? Was my blood sugar low. I was genuinely really hungry. It was time for afternoon tea, that's why I ate the biscuits. So if that's your answer, you can see that maybe, honest, you need to dedicate half an hour to pre preparing some highly nourishing sweet food snacks, so you've got things there so you don't go for the biscuits. So maybe it's physical or maybe when you ask that question, I wonder what led me to eat the biscuits.

34:14 You can see you. Just come out of a meeting and you put on a brave face in the meeting, but actually your feelings were hurt. So it was, as you pointed out before, it was the hurt that led you to go and eat the biscuits. So then you bring an awareness to a lousy choice rather than judgment, and you can learn from it and start to change it with that insight. And a big thing that I teach is self compassion and that you know, how do you treat yourself when you're struggling? And I always say to people, if your go to when you're feeling badly is chocolate biscuits, then how do you think beating yourself up for the chocolate biscuits is going to Well, you know what choice you're going to make then, because you're only making yourself feel bad and the go to when you feel bad is chocolate biscuits, and around around you can happily.

34:57 And it's heartbreaking, isn't it, because you look back on your life and go well, three years of lousy eating and not taking care of myself occurred because I ate too many chocolate biscuits one afternoon. So Libby, the take home message is that the number on the scales is so not the defining factor or the benchmark that we should be aiming for, because there are many unhealthy things that we can do if all we're focused on is dropping numbers on scales and they are not supporting our health and well being. One hundred percent. Energy is the true currency of health. What's life like for you when you wake up in the morning? Do you press snooze fifty times thinking how can it be morning already? Or do you bound out of bed with energy? What's life like in the middle of the afternoon? Do you feel like you need a pile of sugar to help get you through? So reflect on energy. And I think so many people will tell you that you've got to lose weight to be healthy.

35:44 I'll tell you the opposite You've actually got to be healthy to lose weight, otherwise your body will never let go of it and you'll never be able to keep it off because you'll simply regain it. When we focus on our health, it's all about what we can have. It's about recognizing our worth and taking care of that for ourselves, but also because of the ripple effect that our great health and energy has on everyone we come into contact with. Doctor Livy Weaver. This has been such a joy. It's such a fascinating conversation. Thank you so much for your time and all of your valuable, valuable information. I know that this will be hugely beneficial for all of our listeners. I appreciate it so much. Well, it's an honor, cas, thank you so much for having me. After spending just an hour with doctor Libby, I was inspired to want to take better care of my health.

36:29 This woman exudes positive energy, health and vitality. And you can find all of her program's books and her tour schedule on her website Doctor Libby dot com. And if you want to dive deeper into some of the science behind why diets don't work, or hear some of my advice about how to overcome emotional eating. Be sure to check out some of the earlier episodes that we did covering those topics. We love hearing from you, so if you love this show, please give it a rating and a review on iTunes or wherever you get your podcasts, or get in touch with me personally hello at castdone dot com. Also, if you're interested in the Crappy to Happy book, which I've just released, It's available for order and the link is in the show notes, or you can come to my website cast done dot com. On the next episode, I'm talking to Jackie Manning, who is a psychologist and also an EFT practitioner, also known as tapping.

37:26 Crappy to Happy is presented by cast DOUN, produced by David Lelenski, Audio production by Darcy Thompson. Listener