In this episode, we talk to Adam Sud to walk us through the theory of evolutionary psychology that explains why people find it difficult to be happy and healthy despite knowing and being aware of the common sense approaches to achieving so. Here, Adam explains that it’s not the lack of willpower or discipline but the environment that has conditioned us to behave in the way that we do.
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Social Media Handle: @plantbasedaddict
Memorable Moments:
03:35 - Evolutionary Psychology refers to the ways in which people behave, why they choose to go one way versus another, in regards to the way in which our genes have explored the environment of our evolutionary story.
04:58 - All animal life is actually motivated by something called a tripartite motivational system, or a motivational triad, and those are pleasure-seeking, pain avoidance, and energy conservation.
13:03 - In the modern environment, when we get a dopamine stimulus, it is what we call a supernormal stimulus that raises our dopamine circuitry way outside the bounds of normal human experience. And our brains don't really like that. And so what they're going to do is they're going to defend themselves against this intense stimulus.
15:23 - When you're habituated to repetitive, consistent supernormal stimulus, the wrong decision feels incredibly right for your survival. And the right decision feels incredibly wrong.
16:01 - The reason why people find themselves in that situation isn't because they're broken. It's because that is their psychology responding exactly the way it's designed to respond to an environment that is too shifted away from our natural history and our natural behavior.
17:48 - It's not a fault of theirs, it's the fault of their environment. And if they are willing to cultivate an environment that looks more indicative of their natural history and their natural behavior—spend two to four weeks living in that environment, their dopamine receptors are going to regain sensitivity. They're going to recalibrate to an environment that makes sense.
25:02 - What you have to understand is that humans have a psychology of more. We're trying to get the most for the least every single time. But now for the first time in human history, that decision might not be the best thing to do for our long-term outcome.
25:48 - If you can organize your environment to look like what you want to do, you don't have to outcompete the environment in order to be successful.
29:10 - Everyone thinks that they've got to figure out how to be disciplined enough to do a thing. Instead of trying to become more disciplined, design a more disciplined environment. This is really valuable. Your self-control will always be a lot less necessary when your environment doesn't require you to depend on it.
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This podcast is hosted by Allison Walsh and Dr. Angela Phillips. It is produced by Allison Walsh, Savannah Eckstrom, and Nicole LaNeve. If you’re interested in being a guest on this podcast, please visit www.therecoveryvillage.com/dearmindyoumatter.
Note: We use AI transcription so there may be some inaccuracies
Allison: 00:02
Hello and welcome to the dear mind, do you matter podcast? My name is Allison Walsh. I'm a longtime mental health advocate and vice president at Advanced Recovery Systems. On each episode I will be joined by my colleague and clinical expert, Dr. Angela Phillips. This show along with our mental health and wellness app, Nobu are just some of the ways we're working to provide you with actionable tips and tools to take really good care of yourself each and every day. So sit back, relax and grab your favorite note taking device, it's time to fill your mind with things that matter.
Angela: 00:36
Welcome to this week's conversation with Adam said Adam is an insulin resistance disease reversal weight loss and food addiction expert with amazing personal experiences to share. He's worked with some of the most respected programs and companies in the health and wellness world. He served as an insulin resistance and food addiction coach for mastering diabetes using plant based nutrition and as a clinical health coach for Whole Foods Markets global Wellness Center at the company headquarters. Adam is an international speaker for the health and wellness movement and addiction recovery movement and has presented at some of the biggest health and wellness events, Adam has worked with mental health recovery centers using nutrition as a tool for strengthening recovery and relapse prevention. He's also the founder of a nonprofit plant based for positive change that is dedicated to advancing the research of diet and mental health addiction and has completed the very first research study to investigate the effects of a nutrient dense dietary intervention on early addiction recovery outcomes. Adam firmly believes that the simplest change on your fork makes the most profound change of your life. And that self love is the root of all recovery. Welcome, Adam. All right. Adam, thank you so much for joining us again today for another episode. Yeah. So listeners, if you haven't already, please go back and listen to Adams first episode, you're going to be able to learn so much more about Adam, his personal story, and all the things we dug into in that episode. But Adam, can you just reintroduce yourself to everyone to know who you are? Yeah. So
Adam Sud 02:06
my name is Adam side. And I am involved in nutrition research, I like to investigate how does nutrition impact our ability and our opportunities for mental health recovery, as well as how does in the environment that we find ourselves in influence behavior change and recovery as well. So I'm excited to be back here and have a conversation.
Angela: 02:26
Awesome. So today, I really wanted to dive into a theory that we sort of talked about, I never have enough time with everyone and particularly with you, we didn't really get a chance to dive into this whole concept or theory around if you knew what to do to be happy and healthy, which we hear a lot about all these kind of common sense approaches or patterns and what we can do, why is it so hard for us to do these things? Yeah,
Adam Sud 02:51
yeah, it's a phenomenal question and an extraordinary circumstance that we find people in that they're struggling with on a regular basis. And we think that it is a result of a lack of determination, or it's a lack of willpower, or a lack of some sense of moral compass that we're just not equipped with. There's something that the individual is that person who seems to be happy and healthy, that they seem to have something that you just haven't figured out. What we know is that this is fundamentally untrue. What actually happening for the majority of people has nothing to do with willpower has nothing to do with determination. It has nothing to do with race or discipline, that really what we have to understand is something called evolutionary psychology. Evolutionary Psychology is the ways in which people behave, why would they choose to go one way versus another in regards to the way in which our genes have explored the environment of our evolutionary story? I know this sounds complex, but it's actually quite exciting when you understand what evolutionary psychology is and how it relates to this question. And so first, we have to talk about what do we mean when we say that if I knew how to be happy and healthy, why is it so difficult to do it? What we're going to talk about right now is a topic that is really well explored by an individual named Doug Lyall, Doug Lyall is, in my opinion, the world's leading authority on evolutionary psychology and he created a concept called the pleasure trap. And what most people find themselves in is an extraordinary situation called the pleasure trap. And what the pleasure trap is, when the environmental circumstances change so dramatically, and so quickly, that we now have options for behavior that are not appropriately matched for our natural history and the natural psychology that is human nature. We're going to look at that right now. And you and I are we're going to have a conversation, and by the end of that conversation, everyone's gonna go, oh, my gosh, of course, that makes complete sense. I know exactly what you're talking about. So we have to understand what are the main reasons that motivate behavior, and when you look at all animal life on this planet, all animal life is actually motivated by something called a tripartite motivational system, or a motivational triad and that is pleasure seeking pain avoidance and energy conservation. How do I get the most pleasure for the least amount of energy, and the least amount of pain is fundamentally driving the base behaviors of all animal life on the planet. It's the universal psychological and motivational architecture of all animal life. And we're gonna see it in apes, you're going to see it in dogs and cats, you're going to see in human beings, you're going to even see it in animals like insects and the smaller creatures. And this is the architecture of how nature has built brain so that it will guide behavior through a very complex adaptive landscape. So the creatures will live to survive and reproduce. And the main factor that motivates this system, or that drives the system is dopamine. Now, if we were to go out to drink one right now, and people walk by go, have you heard of dopamine, they go, yeah, it's that chemical that makes you addicted to things, that's likely what you'll hear. Unfortunately, that's because it's become a buzzword in the psychology and wellness conversation amongst the majority of the common people out there who don't really study psychology or don't really study behavior change, but they just hear the conversation Oh, that triggers dopamine, don't do it. Or oh, that spikes your dopamine don't do it. But what we have to understand is what is dopamine? And why is it a nominally valuable for us? So we're going to explain why we knew what to do to be happy and healthy. Why is it so difficult to do it, in order to do that, we're going to step into a time machine right now, the three of us are going to travel back in time, about 30,000 years, or maybe even 50,000 years, what we're going to do is we're going to find ourselves in a village. And in that village, the three of us are going to be tasked with a job by the village elders, they're going to come to us and say, Hey, listen, Angela, Alison, Adam, your job is three days of the tribe, you have a job today, and your job is to go out into that unexplored area of wilderness, and you're going to gather food for the rest of the tribe, this is incredibly valuable, that we depend on it. And we say, Fine, fantastic. Let's think about what we're actually doing here, we are going to leave the safety of the tribe, we're going to go out into an unexplored area of wilderness. And we're going to try to gather calories. So what that means is we are now finding ourselves in an environment of scarcity. And that is where the majority of the human evolutionary story took place. In environments of extreme scarcity. What I mean by that is, there's not a lot of calories out there, not only are there not a lot of calories out there, we don't know where they are. So we're not sure if we're gonna find them. Not only are there not a lot, we're not the only ones looking for them. Okay, so it's now scarce and competitive. Not only are we not the only ones looking for it, but the other ones who might be looking for it might be dangerous for us. So now the environment is not only competitive, it's also dangerous. Not only that, but we have to use a huge amount of energy in order to complete this job. So it's now not only scarce, competitive and dangerous, expensive, biologically expensive for us to do this. So we have to be efficient, we have to be able to figure this thing out and figure out how to make the smartest decisions, when they're out there, we have to have a mechanism inside of us, that helps us figure that out. And that's what dopamine is. So the three of us wander out for about an hour, we spent a huge amount of calories doing this, that's an expensive thing to do. And we come into a clearing. And what we're going to do is this for a hypothetical here, you wouldn't likely not see these two next to each other. But we're going to see a blueberry bush, and we're going to see a plantain tree next to each other. Now they're brightly colored colors, a really good indication we're very sensitive to this we have to be, we vote sensitivities to things that are important for survival. So when when we see brightly colored fruit, we're very sensitive to that it's an indication of ripeness, and an indication of calorie density is very high. Oh, wow, look at that. There's a bush there that has some blue, delicious looking food on it. And there's a tree over there that has some bright yellow delicious looking food on it. Let's go see what this thing is. Now, in the order of pleasure seeking energy conservation and pain avoidance, the first thing we're going to do is go for the one that's easiest to get to and that's the blueberries. So we're gonna go we're gonna grab a few of them, we're going to try them and there's going to be a lift in our dopamine circuitry. Our dopamine circuitry rises in relation to calories per byte in relation to food or in other behaviors like sex or accomplishing a task. And what this lift in the dopamine circuitry indicates is that we've just done something that our body is perceiving as statistically increasing our likelihood of survival. Meaning that it believes that what we've just done is a very successful thing to do. And the greater the dopamine rise, the greater that sense that we get, and we go this seems like a good idea. It seems like a somewhat decent amount of calories, not amazing amount of calories, but we might want Spend more time gathering this. And then Angela, who sees a plantain that has fallen, she's got a curious mind, she goes, hang on a second, let me try this thing. She bites into the plantain. And what she does is she gets a lift in her dopamine circuitry. That's nearly seven times. There's about seven times as many calories per bite and a plantain. And she immediately turns to us and to stop what you're doing. She has gotten a very clear signal that this is a much better decision to make that we should spend our time and energy gathering the plantains because there's far more calories for bite, this is an incredibly successful thing to do. Without hesitation, we've figured it out. We have a mechanism in our body that has allowed us to do that really efficiently, use as little time and energy as necessary to figure out this problem, gather these plantains, bring it back to the tribe and successfully feed people more calories per bite. Fantastic. What a wonderful thing, what an amazing evolutionary adaptation that we have to help us figure out environments of scarcity. And then what's going to happen is that time machine is going to travel us forward in time, another 50,000 years, close to modern day, it's going to be about 50 years ago. And what we're going to see happen is we're going to see a phenomenal shift in our caloric environment, we're going to see the production of foods that have far more calories, providing them ever existed in human history. And we're going to see the ease of access to those foods being greater than has ever existed in human history. And what's going to happen is our evolutionary system, that motivational triad that I talked about, that has no understanding that this shift has occurred 50 years is an extraordinarily quick amount of time for such a change to happen. And what's going to happen is, let's just say the middle of Times Square, and we're going to be asked to say hey, go find the best source of calories, you can find almost every single food that we bite into is not only about 10, to 20, to 30 to 40 times more calorie dense than anything we've ever eaten. But it's now triggering three dopamine pathways that have never been triggered in the same time in human history. There is not a single food in nature, that has high salt, high fat and high sugar, all at the same time. Every single food in the modern environment is high salt, high fat and high sugar, or is paired with something to make each bite, high salt, high fat and high sugar, our dopamine system is being triggered in a way that has never been triggered in human history. And the immediate response that we get from our bodies is what a phenomenal thing you have just discovered. Holy shit is this incredibly successful thing to do. The response that you get from your body literally shout to you. This is right. This make sense, this is typically increasing your likelihood of survival. Here's the thing. In nature, we're never going to get a dopamine hit that big. But in the modern environment, we get dopamine stimulus is what we call a super normal stimulus that raises our dopamine circuitry way outside the bounds of normal human experience. And our brains don't really like that. And so what they're going to do is they're going to defend themselves against this intense stimulus. And they're going to double those receptors. It's a process called neuro adaptation or habituation. And every single person has experienced it without knowing it. If you go to a friend's house during Christmas time, you smell the intense Christmas tree kind of overwhelming for about 15 minutes, and you don't notice it anymore. That process taking place. And you habituate yourself to these intense stimulus. And when these receptors get dulled. And so now, to experience the pleasure receptors response to food that indicates success. at a normal level, you have to eat super normal foods, you have to eat incredibly super calorie rich foods, in order to get a feeling that you're doing the right thing on a normal level.
Allison: 13:58
If you or someone you know is struggling with addiction or mental health issues, we encourage you to reach out to us today. Advanced Recovery Systems is a leading behavioral health care company with locations across this country. Don't hesitate, call us today at 855-409-1753. That's 855-409-1753 help is just a phone call away.
Adam Sud 14:23
This person then goes a couple of decades eating this way. And all of a sudden they start to notice some things. Oh My blood pressure's high. Oh, my cholesterol is a little high or put on some weight. This doesn't seem right. It feels right. But this doesn't seem like it's going in the right direction. I need to do something differently. And then they might stumble upon a book, the whole 30 or a book on high fiber diets, unprocessed whole diet and they go okay, I know what to do. I need to go that way instead of that way. I need to start eating unprocessed whole intact foods. So they go back to eating whole unprocessed intact foods and what happens they get what Shouldn't be a normal dopamine lift. But they'd been habituated foods to give you a dopamine lift about this high. And so now it feels incredibly low, it feels wrong, it feels like an unsuccessful choice to make. So now we see the problem that everyone is having is, if we knew the right direction to go, if we knew the behavior changes to make, why is it so difficult to do it? When you're habituated to repetitive, consistent supernormal stimulus, the wrong decision feels incredibly right for your survival. And the right decision feels incredibly wrong. That's very useful information for people to understand. What they think is happening is that they have this incredibly low levels of willpower. And they have these cravings for food because they're a broken individual. Because they just can't do it, they can't go long enough. They can't make it to where they don't have these cravings for these foods. And so they say, I'm just not strong enough. The reason why people find themselves in that situation isn't because they're broken. It's because that is their psychology responding exactly the way it's designed to respond to an environment that is to shifted away from our natural history and our natural behavior. And I'll give you an example, if you were to go outside at night, and turn on your porch light, what you would notice is you notice mop start flooding around Hayden lightning hitting light, after enough times, what they're going to do is they're going to die. And the reason they do this is because they're designed by nature to use celestial objects like stars and the moon to navigate. But when the brightest light in the sky is now your porch light, they are confused, their motivational system has been around 180 degrees. Now they think they're doing the right thing when in fact your self destructing because what's happened is by messing with the environment, by introducing a super normal stimulus, a stimulus that is not supposed to be there, that is not indicative of that species Natural History and natural behavior, that species now runs the threat of making decisions that seem like the right thing to do, when in fact, potentially fatal. And that is exactly what we're seeing happen with the modern food environment. And with the substance abuse environment, the ease and access to these incredibly successful feeling behaviors, is too great for our psychology to understand as a problem, because we spent 99%, of our story of species seeking the biggest dopamine response as a guidance towards success. And now our psychology is really unadapted to understanding the modern environment that we see today. And that's really what's happening. People think it's the lack of moral compass or willpower discipline. And if not, what people need to understand is that what they're experiencing makes sense. It's not a fault of theirs, it's the fault of their environment. And if they are willing to cultivate an environment that looks more indicative of their natural history and their natural behavior, spend two to four weeks living in that environment, their dopamine receptors are going to regain sensitivity, they're going to recalibrate to an environment that makes sense. And then the behaviors that happen within that are going to be guided in a way to make decisions that favor their outcome. And that actually lead them in the direction that they want to go.
Angela: 18:15
I love those examples, the direction that you're headed with also being able to give people really concrete ways of detecting potentially when these challenges can become more easily targeted based on how we were raised, what are we exposed to in our environment, in regards to food, and just how we're exposed to food, how it's discussed how we sort of absorb the conversation about, you know, like you talked about in the prior podcast, or dietary patterns of those around us. I think it's such a great example. It also makes me think, though, to about some things I know that have become so much more popular to discuss, like mental health and wellness end of the spectrum, like how we tend to survive by self sabotaging, and sort of this whole idea behind evolutionary psychology, as you were talking through this, I'm like, you can easily translate that to so many issues, we put ourselves through it, right? So it's just this way that we're attaining either a reward or we're avoiding a threat. And our dopamine is really you can probably describe this better than I can, but it's really hit with that avoidance, right? And then we just start to really adapt to that. And people see us isolate ourselves, we start isolating ourselves from those that we care about. We start running away from things right and this is just an example Alex and I talked about this a lot but I know it's a lot of my clients really struggle with that piece. Surely an addiction and just addictive behaviors and patterns. It's just, I'm on this track. I know what I need to do, right yet I still circle back to this self sabotaging behavior. Why do I keep doing that? So Adam, if you can talk a little bit about is there something that folks can look for that might be like a predisposition like why is it more difficult for some versus others? What are some characteristics
Adam Sud 20:00
That's an interesting question. And it's a valuable question. So there are people who are a little bit more genetically predisposed to seeking dopamine pathway to the dopamine hit as a guidance. If you were to look at somebody and you were to observe their behavior, and you were to say, Alright, let's see, does this person's behavior typically engage in directions that are short term focused most of the time? How do I figure out right now, versus an individual who might be more long term focused, there's a phenomenal study that was done on children where they gave them an option, they put two marshmallows in front of them. And they said, you can have one right now. But if you wait two hours, you can have both. And then they observed. And what they discovered is that individuals that decided to wait to two hours, typically are long term thinkers, and those long term thinkers are likely to be more successful in business just naturally off the bat. And you're gonna see that those individuals are a lot less likely to engage in addictive behavior. And this isn't a flaw of one individual versus the other. It's just the way that their psychology is mapped. And so it's a really interesting thing to observe. What I think is really important to understand, though, is when we talk about substance abuse, whether it's food or drugs, or whatever it is, if you were to pause for a second, and be able to talk to this individual subconscious mind, and go, Hey, listen, I'm observing, that you're consistently abusing or using a substance that, you know, logically, has incredibly detrimental consequences over the course of time. Why are you doing this? What they're going to do is, I don't really know why. But it feels incredibly successful to do this thing. And the reason for that is that you have two success forces competing against each other that do not operate well, in the same space, you have a reproduction and you have survival. For example, if you were to say, Hey, why would an individual want to be happy and healthy? Well, happy and healthy individual has a greater likelihood, Gene survival have the potential of reproduction from a basic behavioral standpoint. And the other question is, why would you be so attracted to eating foods that are high in calories? Well, because they statistically increase my likelihood of survival. So literally, what you have going on is someone has their survival instinct, competing against a reproductive instinct. And the two of those do not like existing in the same space. That really what you have going on when you're talking about food, when you're talking about drugs, is that the need to feel biologically successful, is competing against what might be a consequence to the reproductive success. And those two do not like to be in the same mind space. It's very interesting, you can literally watch it in animal models. Doug law gives an example of the black widow spider, Black Widow is called the Black Widow, because when they mate, the female will then eat the male. And what's interesting is if you observe the mating behavior of these species, you'd have a female who's sitting on the web and a male that's approaching. And this is his one opportunity. Here we go. And every time he touches the web, the female spotter notices that there's movement, he kind of backed off, he moves a little bit closer, then he backs off, you're seeing him thing, I don't want to do this, and I need to do this. And eventually he's going to do it. And he's going to try to sneak away as quickly as possible. But eventually what's going to happen is she will do what she can to live up to her name, what you're witnessing, right there is survival competing against reproduction. Those are two incredibly powerful success forces that cannot exist in the same space. And when they do, it really confuses our system, we have such a desire as a biological species, to leave our genes on the planet, in such a desire your species to survive long enough to do that. But now in the modern environment, we have these two competing against each other more often than not, and that's really confusing.
Allison: 23:49
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Angela: 24:17
Folks would love to hear a little bit more about I'm sure at least I do. You know, if you kind of have this basic level of understanding and starting to gain a little bit of insight, like I am clearly struggling with X, Y, or Z, this makes so much sense. I'm thinking maybe about things that have happened to me in my past or things I've been exposed to, and oh, you know, here's probably why I do X or I avoid why you gave a really great example with the food component or dietary patterns, things like that. But how do we gain more of that equilibrium? Like what are some concrete changes that people can make? Or things that they can go into this kind of thinking about maybe as a way to assess what's going on for them and what they might be able to do to move forward and create more stability around these challenges. What would you say to them?
Adam Sud 24:59
That's such a valuable question to answer, because what you have to understand is that humans have a psychology of more, we're trying to get the most for the least every single time. But now for the first time in human history, that decision might not be the best thing to do for our long term outcome. And so what we want to do is we want to draw upon what we know to be true about supporting not only how we live our day to day, but what is best to support our health and our outcomes over the next 2030 4050 years, depending on how old you are. And so what we know to be true is that if you can, and most people do have an ability to cultivate an environment inside of their home that looks like their goals. This is really valuable. It's one thing to know what you want to do. It's another to organize your environment so that it looks like what you want to do. If you can organize your environment look like what you want to do, you don't have to outcompete the environment in order to be successful. That's incredibly useful information. So for example, if an individual wanted to start eating in a healthier, higher quality dietary pattern, what you want to do is you want to make your calorie environment look exactly like that. You want to reserve willpower and determination and discipline for those moments when you find yourself at an airport, or you're at a birthday party at a calorie dense restaurant. Those are the times you want to say you know what, I do want to have a little bit of this, but I'm only going to have so much because what I really want is to feel better over the course of time. But if you're doing that, if you're making those cost benefit analysis decisions in your home, your environment doesn't look like a lifestyle you want to live. So if you want to live with ease and repeatability, the environment needs to make it so your discipline shouldn't be the driving factor for that. Ease and repeatability. If you have it you want to live with cost you more time and energy than the habits you're trying to move away from, you're likely not to engage in your new habits. Remember, we want to conserve time and energy all the time, human beings are looking to figure that out in every single aspect of our life. So if the habits you want to adopt cost you more than the habits you currently have, you're likely not to be successful, and it won't be your fault. It will be because the environment hasn't been cultivated in a way that makes the new habit timely, and less costly. That's the number one thing you can do to favor your health and outcomes over time, the environment that you find yourself in is the biggest, most impactful, most profound influence on your behavior over time. That's what it is, we can talk about why it is that you feel a need to engage in certain behaviors. And that can take six months to investigate. But the environmental change has to happen anyways. And we can do that today. The first step is look at your environment. What does it look like? Does it look like the environment you're trying to move away from? Or does it look like the environment you're trying to move towards, but to make it look like the environment you're trying to move towards that makes it easier to live that lifestyle
Angela: 28:02
I love that as a big takeaway for everyone. Because I think it may still feel very abstract as we talk about it. But I think if you really think about this concept, whether you're struggling with addiction, or whether you're having really significant relationship challenges, and you're trying to figure out, what goal Am I trying to reach? What am I trying to change, and you really step back and you assess the environment that you're in. And that's the other relationships that you have. That's who's in your home, what are you exposed to every day. So all these things that Adams talking about? That is what it sounds like is going to be the biggest predictor as to whether or not you actually reach those goals that you have be it moving further away from Addictive Behaviors being in more healthy relationships. So all of these things, it really does come back to that environmental space that we're in all day, every day and whether or not we're going to be successful. It's so valuable to really step back and say it's not that you can't get there. It's just I think, like you're saying when we're looking at why aren't we reaching these habits? Or are we targeting the right habits? It's like, well, you really haven't even stepped back to look at your environment first, which it sounds like is where people are making a big mistake. Everyone thinks that
Adam Sud 29:11
they've got to figure out how to be disciplined enough to do the thing. Instead of trying to become more disciplined design a more disciplined environment. This is really valuable. Your self control will always be a lot less necessary when your environment doesn't require you to depend on it. That's incredibly useful information. If you can organize your life around the idea of how do I make it so simple and so obvious. To do what I would like to do that is nearly impossible not to do it. You're going to be successful, you just will. And you can uncover the psychological and emotional reasons why the behavior moving away from became so necessary to you while you're doing it. But if the environment doesn't shift first, it will always be hard. just will.
Angela: 30:01
That's a huge takeaway. I think, if you're continuing to struggle, like so many of us are with just various things, whether it's large or small, the biggest piece of that is go back to the environment, take a look assess, work with you, if you have a therapist or someone that can kind of help you tease that apart, do that as well. Right?
Adam Sud 30:18
Yeah. Because the number one thing I want people to take away from this is if you think about the things you've wanted to do, and haven't been able to do it, it's not because you can't. And it's not because you're not strong enough or not good enough or not disciplined enough, it's because the environment didn't make it easy enough for you to do it enough times that it became a response for you. This is the number one reason why if you were to put me in a food court in the mall for a month, my diet would change dramatically. And it wouldn't, because I didn't want to eat the healthy diet that I eat today. Because the environment encouraged unhealthy behaviors too often and too easily. People are very disciplined creatures. We have huge amounts of willpower. We've done extraordinary things with their lives. The majority of the people that are listening have done extraordinary things with their lives. But what we haven't done is figured out how to make our personal environments look like the life we want to live. we've relied on our discipline and willpower to get through environments that don't support us. And that just feels hard and difficult and doesn't sustain long term. Absolutely.
Angela: 31:23
Oh, my goodness, Adam, we always love having you on and talking to you. But now we have no time left,
Adam Sud 31:30
I think was a great conversation.
Angela: 31:32
No, this is such a great topic also just gives so much more hope to myself, and many of us that are listening to that. It's not us, it's our environment, we can definitely look more closely. We can make changes, we can enlist people that can help support that environment, we can start looking at whether or not the things and the people around us are not supporting that environment, right, and maybe assess whether or not those are healthy or unhealthy relationships. This is just a great time for folks to take a step back and take stock in doing an inventory. So I encourage everyone to do that. But Adam, thanks again for joining us, can you share with our listeners how they can follow you on social media. And I know you've got a lot of that stuff going on.
Adam Sud 32:12
You can follow me on social media at plant based addict. So I have an Instagram account, plant based addict and I have a Tiktok that I just started. I also have a Facebook account called plant based addicts. And a website coming up there will be Adam set.com, where I'll be publishing a lot of the theories and value that I talked about on behavior change and nutrition. Don't focus on what you think is right or wrong, but what you think is valuable. It's not about doing the right thing, according to someone else or eating the healthy food, but rather, what do we know to be accurate? And how can we make it valuable to us? Rather than seeing some decisions as good or bad or right or wrong? It's not a useful way to view behavior. What's a valuable behavior? And how can we make it easy to do it?
Angela: 32:58
Love it. Thanks so much, Adam. We appreciate it. Thank you so much for listening to today's episode. If you're not already subscribed, we hope you join us regularly. And please leave us a five star review wherever you get your podcasts if you enjoyed the show. We hope that this podcast is beneficial to you and your wellness journey. Dear mind you matter is brought to you by Nobu, a new mental health and wellness app. You can download it today using the link in our show notes. We will talk to you next time and until then remember you and your mind matter