Transcript
00:00:00Today, I want to talk about something that could be kind of a lighthearted topic, but
00:00:03actually it's pretty deadly serious, and that's eating.
00:00:06How can we eat in such a way that we get happier?
00:00:09There are many things that we do.
00:00:10We sleep every day.
00:00:11We talk every day.
00:00:13But one of the things that's most important, obviously, to our health and well-being, to
00:00:16our flourishing, is what we put into our bodies.
00:00:19And it turns out it matters a lot.
00:00:22The longer you live with greater health, the more you're able to appreciate a lot of happiness
00:00:26and a lot of love in your life.
00:00:27But the truth of the matter is that when you're living in such a way that you have more love
00:00:31and happiness, you want to live longer.
00:00:33Emotions are related to eating, and it's sort of paradoxical because people will eat a lot
00:00:40and eat in an unhealthy way, both because of negative and positive emotions.
00:00:45So now the main point, which patterns of eating and diets lead to the highest levels of happiness?
00:00:57Hey, friends.
00:01:00Welcome to Office Hours.
00:01:01I'm Arthur Brooks.
00:01:02This is a show about love and happiness, about enjoyment, satisfaction, and meaning, how you
00:01:07can have more of all these things in your life, and just as importantly, perhaps more importantly,
00:01:12how you can bring these things to other people.
00:01:14I talk about the latest in research and science so that you have this information in a form that
00:01:19you can actually use and you can talk about.
00:01:21And the reason I do this is because to become a happier person, to have higher well-being,
00:01:26it requires that you understand what we're talking about.
00:01:29This is not just a feeling that you'll hope you have.
00:01:31It's really based on knowledge.
00:01:33And then to change your habits, to live in a different way, but just as importantly, to
00:01:36explain it to other people.
00:01:38One of the greatest findings in my field is that if you want to be responsible for something,
00:01:42if you want something to affect your life, go teach it to others.
00:01:46The secret to becoming a happier person is becoming a happiness teacher.
00:01:49So this is a happiness teacher school.
00:01:51I hope you're enjoying it.
00:01:53I hope you continue with the show.
00:01:55If this is your first time, welcome.
00:01:56If this is your 40th episode, welcome back.
00:02:00So delighted to have you with me, and I appreciate it very much.
00:02:02Please do continue to recommend this to your friends, to share it with other people.
00:02:07This information, the more that we share it, the better off the world gets, and the better
00:02:10off we all get as well.
00:02:11I'm always interested in what you have to say, so please do feedback by sending an email
00:02:15to officehours at authorworks.com, the email address that's noted here.
00:02:20Don't forget to leave a review on Spotify or Apple, and do hit the like and subscribe button.
00:02:26That helps us an awful lot.
00:02:27For more information about what's going on here and information not just on the show, but
00:02:32about what I'm writing and thinking about, you can subscribe to my column on happiness
00:02:36at the free press.
00:02:38Please do go to my website and get the newsletter, completely free, new information every week.
00:02:43Sometimes it relates to the show, and sometimes it doesn't, but I promise you that it'll
00:02:46start off your day on Friday, heading into the weekend in a way that you will like.
00:02:50That's arthurworks.com slash newsletter.
00:02:53You'll start getting that for free this week.
00:02:55You can also send it to friends.
00:02:57If you would like to see me in person, I'm actually taking signups now for the Modern Elder
00:03:01Academy in Santa Fe, New Mexico.
00:03:03We're doing a retreat, a series of retreats, as a matter of fact, based on the work that
00:03:07I do, and some of them will actually feature me.
00:03:10And one coming up that's going to be talking to couples will be me and my wife, Esther.
00:03:16We'll be together in Santa Fe and maybe with you, which would be great.
00:03:19In the meantime, please do pick up a copy of the book here, The Meaning of Your Life,
00:03:23Finding Purpose in an Age of Emptiness.
00:03:24Thanks to you.
00:03:25It's been a New York Times bestseller for a number of weeks.
00:03:29It opened at number one, which is really gratifying, meaning that we're hitting a lot of people
00:03:33in a way that they're finding beneficial.
00:03:35So please do continue to share that book if it's been useful to you and if it's bringing
00:03:40a little bit of meaning or the way to find me in your life, you.
00:03:43That's why I wrote it.
00:03:45Hey friends, a lot of you know that I keep a very high protein diet.
00:03:48That's important for me in my 60s because I want to maintain a good level of muscle protein
00:03:52synthesis and I don't always have time to eat as much protein as I want from whole foods.
00:03:57That's the ideal, but it's just not manageable all the time.
00:04:00For that reason, I'm always looking for supplements that can actually get me where I need to go
00:04:04with respect to my macronutrient profile.
00:04:06A bunch of my friends were telling me that David Protein is a really good source.
00:04:11The reason is because protein bars in general, they're handy, they're convenient,
00:04:15but they can be very high in calories and they can actually be really high in carbohydrate,
00:04:19especially in the form of sugar.
00:04:21David Protein, I heard was better, sure enough, it's got a great profile.
00:04:25It has 40% more protein, 57% fewer calories than most of the protein bars you find out there.
00:04:3228 grams of protein, 150 calories, 0 grams of sugar.
00:04:36That's actually quite a feat to put that together.
00:04:38And by the way, they taste great.
00:04:40David Protein has a new bronze line with 20 grams of protein, 150 calories and 0 grams of sugar.
00:04:46That comes to 53% calories from protein, another industry-leading protein-to-calorie ratio,
00:04:52as most leading protein bars on the market average 40% or lower.
00:04:57Each bronze bar features a smooth, decadent marshmallow base with a flavor-filled layering,
00:05:02airy crisp, and a chocolate-flavored coating, providing a different taste and texture profile
00:05:07compared to our Hero Gold line.
00:05:09I started buying David Protein bars, and now I'm pleased that they're sponsoring this show as well.
00:05:14So whether you're on the go or hitting the gym, if you're trying to meet your protein targets,
00:05:18David Protein is a good way for you to do it.
00:05:21That's why I'm doing it, and it's what I'm carrying when I'm on the road.
00:05:24So head over to davidprotein.com slash arthur.
00:05:27They've got a special offer for you.
00:05:28If you buy four cartons, they'll give you the fifth carton for free.
00:05:31You're going to love that.
00:05:32And you can also find David Protein in stores by looking for the store locator.
00:05:37So enjoy.
00:05:39You're not broken.
00:05:41You're meaning-starved.
00:05:43I talk to people all the time who are, by any external measure, successful.
00:05:48They've built careers.
00:05:49They have families.
00:05:50They've checked the boxes.
00:05:52And yet, something feels off.
00:05:54Life feels thin.
00:05:56Like you're going through the motions.
00:05:58Like you're watching yourself from the outside.
00:06:01And here's what I want you to know.
00:06:03That feeling is not a personal failing.
00:06:05It's not ingratitude.
00:06:07It's not something wrong with you.
00:06:09It's a meaning problem.
00:06:11And it's an epidemic.
00:06:13The modern world is extraordinary at giving us comfort, achievement, and distraction.
00:06:18It's terrible at giving us meaning.
00:06:21And no amount of success will fix that.
00:06:23I've seen it in my research.
00:06:25And I've seen it in my own life.
00:06:27That's exactly what we work on at MEA, the Modern Elder Academy,
00:06:32in a program I've developed called The Meaning of Your Life.
00:06:35It's not a lecture.
00:06:37It's not a quick fix.
00:06:38It's several days of real work in a small group on the questions that actually matter.
00:06:44If what I'm describing sounds familiar, I hope you'll come take a look.
00:06:51Today I want to talk about something that could be kind of a lighthearted topic,
00:06:55but actually it's pretty deadly serious.
00:06:56And that's eating.
00:06:58How can we eat in such a way that we get happier?
00:07:01A lot of people think they just, they know, which is just give me all the stuff that I like
00:07:05and I'll gobble it up and then I'll be happier.
00:07:07Obviously, it's not that simple.
00:07:09I want to talk to you about what the latest research suggests about different ways of eating,
00:07:13different times of eating, different kinds of diets and how they'll affect your well-being.
00:07:18And the reason is because I know that you're dedicated, if you're watching this show,
00:07:21to the scientific basis of all the things that we do that affect our well-being.
00:07:25This is not just, I hope I feel better.
00:07:28It's, I want to design my life in a different way.
00:07:30One of the things that we all do every day, there are many things that we do.
00:07:33We sleep every day, we talk every day.
00:07:35But one of the things that's most important, obviously, to our health and well-being,
00:07:39to our flourishing, is what we put into our bodies.
00:07:42And it turns out it matters a lot, what you eat, to getting happier, not just healthier.
00:07:50Most of the treatments of this topic deal with longevity and health.
00:07:55This is a different angle than all that.
00:07:56Now, they're related, of course, because the longer you live with greater health,
00:08:00the more you're able to appreciate a lot of happiness and a lot of love in your life.
00:08:04But the truth of the matter is that when you're living in such a way that you have more love
00:08:08and happiness, you want to live longer and you care about your health a little bit more.
00:08:12It all kind of rebounds together.
00:08:14And this is actually how we can live the best life, is by thinking about these things at the same time.
00:08:18So, this may be the first time that you've ever thought seriously about eating and happiness.
00:08:24And if it is, I hope you get a lot out of it.
00:08:26This has really helped me in the way that I live my life.
00:08:28Now, a lot of debates out there, they rage about the virtues and drawbacks of certain very restrictive
00:08:33and regional diets.
00:08:35How to increase longevity and improve health.
00:08:37You know, you can go old school omnivore.
00:08:40Or you can be a lacto-oval flexitarian.
00:08:44Google it.
00:08:45You can have the Mediterranean diet.
00:08:46You can have the Okinawan diet.
00:08:47There's a million different diets out there, a million different ways of eating.
00:08:50Which ways of eating actually lead to the greatest levels of life satisfaction?
00:08:55That's a lot more subjective than individually figuring out which idea is best for your blood cholesterol levels.
00:09:01On the contrary, there's a lot that talks about psychology and behavioral science and how things affect our brains uniquely in a way that will help us feel better about our lives.
00:09:12This goes way beyond just what we like and not like.
00:09:15I mean, what you like matters.
00:09:17I mean, you could talk to me until you're blue in the face about how it's really, really good for, you know, my life if I eat a lot of organ meats.
00:09:24I'm not going to eat organ meats.
00:09:25Sorry, they're gross.
00:09:27I don't want it, right?
00:09:28But it goes beyond just what I like and what I don't like.
00:09:32On the contrary, it isn't all subjective at all.
00:09:35What I really want to focus on today is not what you like, but to the objective social science and behavioral science.
00:09:41And what I want to talk about is the objective behavioral science and neuroscience that we can bring to bear on how to improve our well-being based on our food and eating habits.
00:09:52Now, let's start with a basic fact.
00:09:55Eating is a pleasurable activity.
00:09:58People like to eat.
00:09:59Not everybody.
00:10:00There are some odd people out there who they find it objectionable or problematic.
00:10:07And one of the things that we actually find is when people are sick or gravely ill, one of the characteristics, you know, the things that doctors will often look for when people are suffering from chronic disease is they don't just lose their appetite.
00:10:19They lose their pleasure that they get from how things taste.
00:10:23That's actually a giveaway, a dead giveaway that something's really, really wrong, as a matter of fact, because it's so unnatural.
00:10:28The truth is that our brains are evolved to find feeding ourselves to be really rewarding, a whole bunch of different parts of our brain.
00:10:37It's interesting.
00:10:38I'll put in a reference article on this.
00:10:42There's one that's interesting I found from 2015 that I liked when I read, called The Pleasure of Food, Underlying Brain Mechanisms of Eating and Other Pleasures.
00:10:49It's from a journal called Flavor.
00:10:52There's a journal called Flavor.
00:10:53I like that.
00:10:54So the big parts of the brain, there's five parts of the brain that are fundamentally involved in the pleasure that comes from eating.
00:10:59The cingulate cortex, which connects rewards with action.
00:11:03The ventral tegmental area, which is really one of the big pleasure centers of the brain.
00:11:07You tap the ventral tegmental area and go, right?
00:11:10And this is one of the things that when people eat tasty food that they actually get.
00:11:14The hypothalamus, which is where episodic memories are largely stored, this links reward to bodily drives like hunger.
00:11:22So you remember.
00:11:23The nucleus accumbens, which converts dopamine into motivation and anticipation.
00:11:26And last but not least, the ventral palatum, which is responsible for just liking.
00:11:30You know, it's the things that I like.
00:11:32That information is largely governed by the ventral palatum.
00:11:36And all these parts of the brain are implicated in eating and the pleasure that we actually get from eating, especially eating the stuff that we like the most.
00:11:43But that actually is not linked to happiness per se.
00:11:47And the reason is because if you've followed my work for a while, you know that happiness doesn't come from pleasure.
00:11:52It comes from enjoyment.
00:11:54And if you don't believe me, think about all the people in your lives who say, my goal is pleasure.
00:12:00It's like, if it feels good, do it, said every hippie who ruined her or his life.
00:12:06Pleasure is not the road to happiness.
00:12:08Pleasure, per se, is the road to detox, man.
00:12:12But that doesn't mean that pleasure is bad.
00:12:13It just means that it's incomplete.
00:12:15So I'm going to talk about how to complete it to create happiness in the way that you eat.
00:12:19What we want to get happier is not pleasure, per se, but enjoyment.
00:12:24Pleasure is related to enjoyment by adding two things to pleasure.
00:12:28You know, pleasure can come from almost anything that we really, really like.
00:12:30If it comes from, you know, wine or gambling or what we eat or, you know, how we spend our time.
00:12:36Something that gives you a lot of pleasure will become a source of happiness if you add people and memory.
00:12:42Thus, moving the experience from the limbic system of your brain into the prefrontal cortex,
00:12:46where you can manage your pleasures and they don't manage you, and where it becomes permanent in your memory.
00:12:53So to think about it this way, there's no beer commercials of a guy pounding a 12-pack in his apartment alone.
00:12:58And the reason is because that's saying that our product gives you pleasure.
00:13:03But that's also sort of sad and pathetic and lonely looking.
00:13:07What they have is the same guy opening a beer and, you know, clinking the bottles with his brother or his friends.
00:13:13Because what they're saying is our beer plus your friends making memories together equals enjoyment,
00:13:20and that's part of happiness.
00:13:21That's how beer relates to happiness is through that circuitous route.
00:13:24The same thing is true with anything else.
00:13:26If you're doing something that gives you a lot of pleasure and it could be addictive, which most things can't, and food can be,
00:13:32if you're doing it alone, generally speaking, and mindlessly, you're probably doing it wrong for actually enhancing your happiness.
00:13:39And this is going to lead us to some of the conclusions that we come to later in this episode.
00:13:43But what we want is enjoyment from eating, not just pleasure from eating.
00:13:49Okay, and that's one of the reasons that there's two big practices that people get where their happiness rises
00:13:55with respect to the way that they eat.
00:13:57Number one is that they eat in group settings.
00:14:00So remember, people plus memory, plus the pleasure that we actually get from stimulating the ventral tegmental area
00:14:05and all the other parts of our brains, it rises a lot, especially when we eat in group settings.
00:14:10Now, evolutionary biology tells us that in our kin-based groups of 30 to 50 individuals
00:14:14from a quarter million years ago, when our brains were formed into the version that they largely exist in today,
00:14:21that we would understand ourselves and get a lot of enjoyment from our lives,
00:14:26a lot of meaning from our lives as well, by eating together, having eye contact.
00:14:31It's the oxytocin release of the satisfaction that comes from being with your kin.
00:14:37A lot of it is when we're sitting around a campfire putting yak meat into our mouths or something.
00:14:41We love to eat together.
00:14:43This is a highly communal activity in every culture is what we find.
00:14:48And sure enough, happiness rises when people eat together in group settings.
00:14:52This is the first big practice of taking the pleasure from food and turning it into the enjoyment of eating.
00:14:59The second big practice that people have who get a lot of enjoyment from their food,
00:15:04and so therefore they get happiness from eating, is that they savor, that they savor it.
00:15:12These are people who their enjoyment is really enhanced of memories of past meals.
00:15:17And so once again, so the first one was people and the second one is memories,
00:15:20just like as I talked about a second ago.
00:15:22But the whole idea of savoring what you eat is really important.
00:15:25So not gobbling it up.
00:15:26And you know kind of how this feels, where you eat something that you really like,
00:15:29but you don't have any time, and you just sort of regret it.
00:15:32Like, I'm going to eat a Hershey bar with almonds.
00:15:37I like that.
00:15:37You know, Hershey's milk chocolate.
00:15:39I realize that that's like the most American thing ever.
00:15:41And all you fancy Europeans who are watching, I was like, ah.
00:15:44By the way, do you want to know why Hershey's chocolate tastes different than Cadbury?
00:15:47It's because Hershey's chocolate was made with slightly sour milk.
00:15:50It gives it a more complex flavor, which is why some people really like that.
00:15:53Now, you may be figuring out right now that I have a huge sweet tooth.
00:15:58If I can only have one kind of food on a desert island, it's going to be sweets for sure.
00:16:03But the whole point is that if I eat that chocolate bar, which I do not that frequently
00:16:09because it's not very good for me, but I do and I really, really like it.
00:16:13I enjoy it as opposed to getting pleasure from it when I savor it, which means I'm making memory.
00:16:18Ideally, I should share it with my wife at the same time so you can have people and memory as well.
00:16:23And so, you know, what a lot of foodies will do, and I'm not a foodie at all.
00:16:26I mean, I'm an ignoramus when it actually comes to recipes and cooking.
00:16:30I cook a lot, but I make the same stuff over and over and over again.
00:16:33High protein, you know, content, moderate calories.
00:16:38I'm pretty austere in this way, but I have a lot of friends who are seriously into food and they keep a food journal.
00:16:44That's what foodies do.
00:16:45The reason is because they want to remember these experiences that they had.
00:16:48They were social experiences.
00:16:49They were full human experiences around eating, which made it a source of happiness to them.
00:16:55So the point of all this is, if you want to get more happiness from your eating, as opposed to just pleasure from your food, turn the pleasure into enjoyment by, number one, eating together and savoring your food.
00:17:09That's what it comes down to.
00:17:11Okay.
00:17:11Now, emotions are related to eating, and it's sort of paradoxical because people will eat a lot and eat in an unhealthy way, both because of negative and positive emotions.
00:17:24So, for example, you'll find, and there's a lot of studies that show this.
00:17:26I'll throw one into the notes from 2011, that young people with depressive symptoms are 130% more likely than non-depressed people to binge eat.
00:17:37So binge eating is characteristic of clinical depression.
00:17:41It's what we see all the time.
00:17:42And especially binge eating, the kinds of foods that will give you an immediate neurochemical reward, long-term trouble, but immediate neurochemical reward, more on that in a second.
00:17:52But another study in the journal Appetite, which, once again, there's so many journals out there, Appetite, which actually shows that people who are emotional eaters, they tend to binge eat on unhealthy foods when they're especially happy, too.
00:18:07So it's like, these are people who really like going to birthday parties, mostly because of the cake.
00:18:12It's like, I think I'll have seconds.
00:18:14I think I'll have thirds.
00:18:15I love celebrating because then you're going to eat all this stuff is what, you know, what people say under those circumstances.
00:18:19So if you're depressed, you're more likely to binge eat bad food.
00:18:23Food is bad for you.
00:18:24And if you're an emotional eater, so your emotions are highly tied to the way that you eat and you probably struggle with, you know, health and weight, when you're especially happy, you'll eat as well, is what this comes down to.
00:18:35So that's one of the reasons that managing our emotions is one of the ways that we can manage our diets.
00:18:40So now the main point, main question that I get a lot on this topic, which patterns of eating and diets lead to the highest levels of happiness?
00:18:52So the first point that I want to make is that there are a number of studies that show that eating moderately often leads to the greatest amount of happiness.
00:19:01So this was a study from 2016 that showed that compared people who eat once a day, people who eat twice a day with people who eat moderately often, but not continuously and specifically who eat three real no food and meals and two snacks.
00:19:17These are the people who are happiest now still controlling calories, but it's spread out among those things.
00:19:22And, and, and, and by the way, this is, this is the Mediterranean diet is freak is really what we're talking about.
00:19:28And, and, and, you know, this was pretty revolutionary for me personally.
00:19:32I moved to Barcelona when I was 25 years old.
00:19:34I integrated immediately into my future wife's family.
00:19:38I was working completely immersed in an orchestra in Spain with Spaniards.
00:19:43I mean, I was, I went from American my whole life to overnight living like a Spaniard because there was no other way for me to live.
00:19:50There's no way for me to get peanut butter and jelly.
00:19:52There was no way for me to eat a sandwich at lunch.
00:19:54What I wound up doing was eating in this way that this 2016 study suggested leads to the most happiness.
00:20:00The way that the Spaniards eat, the Catalans in Barcelona, at least, is there's kind of generally two breakfasts.
00:20:07You eat something as soon as you wake up, you eat something in, in mid morning.
00:20:10That's sort of breakfast food as well.
00:20:12You know, some toast, et cetera, coffee.
00:20:15You have coffee a couple of times in the morning.
00:20:17You have your main meal at about 2.30 in the afternoon, which is the heavy meal.
00:20:22The meal of the day, that's a big meal.
00:20:24And then you have a merienda, which is the afternoon snack.
00:20:28And then you have a supper, usually around 9 o'clock at night is the way that that works.
00:20:32And so you have this meal structure.
00:20:33And again, for me, it was really hard because I'm an early riser.
00:20:38I'm kind of a morning lark.
00:20:40I'm really a morning lark now, a 4.30 a.m. guy.
00:20:43At the time, I was probably a 7 a.m. guy, which was a morning lark compared to the Spaniards.
00:20:49So the result of it is that eating at 9 or 10 at night was kind of tricky is the way that I worked out.
00:20:53But it was, it was great.
00:20:56And, and, and I was happy.
00:20:57And maybe it was, I was happy because I was newly in love and I was in a really interesting place.
00:21:01And I had a really fun job, but also, you know, I ate a lot of good food that I'd never experienced and, and, and I liked it.
00:21:08And the research suggests that that eating cadence, not necessarily those hours, but that level of frequency is associated with rare happiness.
00:21:18Now, that is not to say, okay, that's pretty frequent.
00:21:21I mean, breakfast, breakfast, midday meal, afternoon snack and supper.
00:21:25That's not to say that you should snack all day long.
00:21:27And this is one of the characteristics of the modern American diet that we typically see.
00:21:31It's just this all day grazing.
00:21:33I've seen some research that suggests that the average American gets 350 calories a day just from snacking.
00:21:39And, and there's, I've, I've seen some new work that, that shows that a lot of young adults, they, they never actually eat meals.
00:21:45They only eat snacks all day long.
00:21:48And so they're never actually hungry for meals.
00:21:50That's really bad for your health.
00:21:51And that's actually not good at all for your happiness.
00:21:54There's once again, the 2016 study shows that all day grazing is actually bad for your happiness.
00:21:59So you don't get happier because you don't actually have that much enjoyment.
00:22:02What you have is kind of mindless pursuit of moment to moment pleasure in your eating.
00:22:08And so you, you leave out this opportunity to enjoy something, um, and thus turn it into happiness.
00:22:13The happiest diets, they tend to be quite varied.
00:22:16Root Wienhoven, who's one of the great happiness researchers, um, Dutch happiness researchers.
00:22:22Um, he has published pretty much studies on every aspect of happiness, but one that he did was a meta-analysis in 2021 of menus that offer the highest life satisfaction.
00:22:34So a varied diet, a diet, a diet, moderate in fats and oils, a diet, low in salt and sugar.
00:22:40And, and, you know, for example, just varied in all sorts of different ways to find out, um, what leads to the highest level of happiness.
00:22:47And what he found was that, that varying your diet a lot, eating a lot of different things without going berserk on anything or being overly restricted, this tends to lead to the greatest happiness.
00:22:59And again, I mean, it's like, I know a lot of you are saying, yeah, but I, because of my health, I can't eat dairy or I'm allergic to something or, uh, but for ethical reasons, I'm a vegetarian or whatever it happens to be good.
00:23:11I mean, that's fine.
00:23:12I'm just talking about what he found is that without, when you don't have health restrictions on your eating, a more varied diet tends to lead to greater wellbeing.
00:23:20Um, and it's pretty significant what he finds in his work.
00:23:23Um, more recent research than that, actually, which came out in 2023, found that proteins and fats tend to be associated with lower anxiety and depression.
00:23:33And so, you know, people who have ample proteins and fats in their diet, not too much, but, but, uh, within normal boundaries, they tend to have lower anxiety and depression, whereas really high carbohydrate consumption is associated with, with stress and mood problems.
00:23:47And you can kind of imagine why that would be the case when you're spiking your carbohydrate, your, your, your blood glucose levels, you're going to, you're going to see that reflected in your pulse and your blood pressure and, and, and, and your adrenal system.
00:23:59So there's no big shock on that.
00:24:01So keeping a varied diet, eating moderately often and keeping a varied diet is just now again, shocker, right?
00:24:08But, uh, but, uh, but for a lot of people, um, that are really influenced by a lot of the more modern ideas coming across from influencers on the internet, this actually might be news that you can use.
00:24:17Right now, you're like Neo in the Matrix, you can keep scrolling, experiencing a simulation of life, or you can wake up to how your attention is being harvested for profit.
00:24:29It's happening to people all over the world right now, you don't want to be productized like this anymore, but it's hard.
00:24:36Tech addiction is so potent because it's been designed to tap into your dopamine system, just like heroin, porn, gambling, you've got the cravings, you're addicted, you don't like it, and I don't either.
00:24:47But I can't just tell you to stop doing it, that's hard.
00:24:49If you want to break free from the system, you need an incentive.
00:24:53Here's one: why don't you join a phone company that pays you not to use your phone?
00:24:58If you want to reduce brain rot, get Noble Mobile.
00:25:01It pays you to use less data.
00:25:03It gives you an incentive to unplug.
00:25:06Noble Mobile is the phone plan that finally aligns incentives with what's good for you.
00:25:10Use less data, earn money back, and when you do, you'll be living once again in real life.
00:25:16And you're going to like how it feels.
00:25:18Alcohol.
00:25:19What about alcohol?
00:25:20Alcohol consumption.
00:25:21A lot of the modern research on this is a little bit less supportive about alcohol consumption than work was in decades past.
00:25:31There was a lot of work in the past that suggested that a couple of drinks a day is actually good for you.
00:25:39That, for many people, might be too much is what the new research suggests.
00:25:44I know that Andrew Huberman in his show, his great show, suggests two drinks a week is a good level of moderate consumption.
00:25:51There is research that suggests that for some people that it can be higher than that, but the idea of drinking every day and drinking a lot every day, not good for your happiness.
00:26:00And again, that's the most obvious thing I've ever actually put on the show.
00:26:03But there are interesting studies talking about very, very moderate alcohol use and how it actually can lead to enjoyment and kind of unique pathways.
00:26:13There's a 2012 study in psychological science that brings people into the laboratory – I'll put it in the show notes – and then it asks people to have just a very moderate level of alcohol.
00:26:25They'll give them approximately one and a half drinks over like a 36-minute period, a little bit more for males, a little bit less for females based on body weight.
00:26:33And they're strangers to each other, and then they'll have a conversation with each other, and what they were doing, the researchers were doing in the study, is to look at their smiles.
00:26:41And the reason is because there's a certain kind of smile called the Duchenne smile that's uniquely associated with authentic happiness.
00:26:50It doesn't involve the mouth at all.
00:26:51It involves the orbicularis oculi muscles around the eyes and the zygomaticus major muscles in the tops of the cheek, and so you can tell in the eyes.
00:27:00And if you're looking at it, these micromuscle movements will betray your happiness.
00:27:05It's very hard to simulate.
00:27:08You can, by the way, by putting a pencil in your teeth, like that, and when you do that, that'll make you simulate a Duchenne smile.
00:27:16And believe it or not, it'll run the causality in the wrong way, and you'll actually feel a little bit happier when you do that because you fool your brain.
00:27:21That's a trick you can use.
00:27:23But what they find is that when people have this really moderate level of alcohol consumption and they have a conversation with a complete stranger,
00:27:30that the Duchenne smiles are a lot more pronounced, they are feeling more enjoyment, happiness or enjoyment,
00:27:37than people who are actually getting just, you know, they're getting just lemonade or something in the experiment.
00:27:44Which, by the way, when you're going into an alcohol experiment, they sit you down and you're the one who gets lemonade.
00:27:48Maybe that's why you're mad.
00:27:49You know, maybe that's the confound, but, but you get my point.
00:27:52So, so, so you have to decide.
00:27:53But the bottom line is there's no research that says that anything above low to moderate alcohol use is good for your happiness.
00:28:00I'm very supportive of the idea of people who can drink moderately.
00:28:03Good for you.
00:28:04That's great.
00:28:04I don't drink alcohol because I have a lot of trouble with it in my family, but for people who can, that's great.
00:28:09And, and that can be a good blessing for you in your life.
00:28:12But moderately, only moderately.
00:28:15Junk food.
00:28:16Junk food and desserts.
00:28:17Why do people eat junk food and desserts?
00:28:19And the answer is because they like it.
00:28:20It feels good because it gives them pleasure and that pleasure is a little stimulus of a feeling that they like, but you're already know that it rarely can translate itself into enjoyment.
00:28:31And so therefore, at the end of the day, it's not a source of happiness is eating unhealthy stuff.
00:28:37As a matter of fact, in excess food that's high in sugar and processed ingredients, it tends to lead to mood disturbances.
00:28:45And what you find, the, the mood benefits that we get, they last a few minutes, but the downside is that you're doing something that typically is addictive, highly processed ingredients and especially processed sugar.
00:28:56They tend to be very addictive in the way that it affect our brains.
00:29:00There's a lot of stuff on that.
00:29:01I'll throw something into the show notes so you can see that if you're interested in it.
00:29:04But it also leads to psychological distress, especially in the case of children and adolescents.
00:29:09Furthermore, since it's addictive, junk food is, can, can, can lead to real withdrawal symptoms and actual clinical anxiety as people are withdrawing from it.
00:29:18I'm not going to talk about it as if it were heroin because it's not, you know, having an occasional piece of chocolate, which I do, is not what we're talking about.
00:29:25Again, this is moderation that we're talking about here.
00:29:28I mean, I go to a birthday party, you offer me a piece of cake, I'm probably going to eat it or at least part of it.
00:29:32There's a lot of stuff that I really, really like, but the point is that if I'm left to my devices with this ferocious sweet tooth, I'll eat and eat and eat and eat and eat.
00:29:40It's going to be a problem is the way that it works out.
00:29:42So don't do that.
00:29:44Be moderate with the way that you use junk food and the way that you use desserts, because these are things that have a deleterious impact when you go past moderate levels with respect to your happiness.
00:29:53The same thing is true with diets high and saturated fat.
00:29:57They tend to, believe it or not, be associated with memory impairment.
00:30:01So if you eat something that's like really sweet and full of fat, you might not remember eating it.
00:30:06All right.
00:30:06Here's one that a lot of you are interested in, which is vegetarianism.
00:30:10I have an on-again, off-again history with keeping vegetarian.
00:30:14I don't now because I try to get between 150 and 200 grams of protein a day.
00:30:21Muscle protein synthesis after 60 is very inefficient, which means you need to eat a lot of protein to maintain muscle mass and stay strong, especially if you're lifting weights.
00:30:30Which everybody over 60 should be lifting weights.
00:30:33And so for me, it's really hard, but it's possible still to get that kind of protein content with being a vegetarian.
00:30:39Just have to work really, really hard.
00:30:41And maybe I'm just a little bit lazy.
00:30:42But off and on in my life, I have lived this way.
00:30:45When I was a kid, we had a very, very healthy lifestyle.
00:30:47My mom grew a lot of our vegetables.
00:30:49She canned our vegetables.
00:30:51We kept a vegetarian diet six days a week.
00:30:54One day a week, we actually ate meat.
00:30:56She had us on brewer's yeast capsules, you know, the whole thing.
00:30:59I grew up in Seattle, you got to understand.
00:31:01And it was great.
00:31:01I was super healthy as a kid, as a matter of fact.
00:31:04And so the idea that if you're, you know, it's child abuse, if you don't give your kid meat, that's not true.
00:31:10That's not what we're talking about here.
00:31:11You just need to be careful and serious about the way that you eat.
00:31:15And if you're keeping a restricted diet, you have to be more serious about both micro and macronutrient levels.
00:31:21Here, the subject is how vegetarianism, for example, relates to happiness.
00:31:26And what the research finds, interesting article in the Journal of Happiness Studies, article called Conceptualizations of Happiness and Vegetarianism,
00:31:33Empirical Evidence from University Students in Spain, my beloved Spain, they found that vegetarianism tends to raise a sense of tranquility but lowers enjoyment.
00:31:43Okay, so people enjoy their eating less, which is bad for happiness, but it raises tranquility more, which is good for happiness.
00:31:50So you've got to decide.
00:31:52Everything's got a trade-off to it.
00:31:54However, you find that a very low-fat, fully vegan diet can be very helpful for people who have mood disorders, most notably depression and anxiety.
00:32:03Very interesting stuff from the American Journal of Health Promotion work that, you know, randomized controlled trials shows that people are suffering from depression and anxiety.
00:32:13When they go on a fully vegan diet, they can get a significant level of alleviation of symptoms.
00:32:19Okay, what about diets, weight loss diets?
00:32:22The overconsumption of foods that lead to obesity, that's associated with lower levels of well-being because of obesity and because of the health problems that are attendant upon obesity.
00:32:30Obviously, those are the second and third order effects, and everybody knows that for sure.
00:32:34I want to talk about what actually happens when people are doing different kinds of diets.
00:32:40Crash diets, where you're trying to lose a ton of weight, horrible for your happiness.
00:32:44And as soon as you've done that, you find that most diets work, low-fat, low-carb, whatever they happen to be, most work, but most are ultimately unsuccessful.
00:32:54And there's a happiness reason for that.
00:32:56You get a lot of satisfaction that comes from the progress of seeing the scale go down.
00:33:00Yeah, and so you're willing to absolutely forgo what you like, and to a certain extent, you're willing to feel hunger because you're getting that reward every day.
00:33:09But when you hit your target weight, your reward is never getting to eat what you like ever again for the rest of your life.
00:33:14So congratulations to you on that, which is why diets have somewhere between an 80% and 95% failure rate.
00:33:20That's why.
00:33:21Because of the arrival fallacy that I've talked about ad nauseum on this show.
00:33:27The progress is great.
00:33:28The arrival is terrible, is what it comes down to.
00:33:30But also, it's incredibly uncomfortable, and you don't have enough willpower in the world to get past what some people call protein hunger.
00:33:40So you can be hungry, and you're not getting, you know, you can feel a little bit hungry and then not eat potato chips or something.
00:33:46Most people have the willpower to do that.
00:33:48But when you're low on protein and you're hungry, that's all you're thinking about is food.
00:33:53And that hurts, and you're going to lose.
00:33:55You're basically going to lose that battle, is how that comes about.
00:33:58Yeah, and you'll go a little insane, too.
00:34:00There's a very interesting study from the 40s, as a matter of fact.
00:34:04Many of you have heard about the Minnesota Starvation Experiment, where a bunch of guys that came back from World War II got paid for spending about three, something like three to six months living on 1,600 calories a day.
00:34:16And these are people that were, you know, living a normal, active lifestyle, about 1,600 calories a day.
00:34:20On average, over the period of the study, they lost 25% of their body weight.
00:34:24So it was very wasting.
00:34:25They lost muscle mass.
00:34:26Basically, all of the fat of their bodies was, you know, melted off.
00:34:30They were probably in, you know, 3%, 4% body fat, and they lost a lot of muscle mass as well.
00:34:35But the interesting thing about it was the psychological implications of doing that, which are very similar to what we see psychologically to people who are on crash diets and they're protein hungry.
00:34:44They found tons of depression, really substantial anxiety, anger, and obsessive behavior.
00:34:52They talk about one guy who started a spoon collection.
00:34:54It's like a spoon collection.
00:34:56Here's what I'm done with this experiment.
00:34:58Here's what I'm going to use to eat cereal.
00:35:00And here's what I'm going to use to eat soup because he was obsessed with food.
00:35:03Another guy who had no interest in cooking started collecting recipes.
00:35:07And so that's obsessive behavior.
00:35:09And you know, if you're going in that direction, by the way, if you're too hungry, if when you're eating one meal, you're already thinking about the next meal.
00:35:20That's characteristic.
00:35:21What we find is diagnostic, as a matter of fact.
00:35:23You're finishing breakfast going, oh, but for lunch, I'm going to have, you know, whatever.
00:35:29That probably isn't going to fill you up enough.
00:35:31And so that's one of the key points that you're on the wrong side, certainly of the happiness curve.
00:35:36And probably it's not good for you as well.
00:35:38So, you know, all kinds of diets that you can healthfully and, you know, and sustainably lose weight.
00:35:45That's great.
00:35:46That can be perfectly good for your happiness.
00:35:48But crash diets and ones where you actually experience the physiological sensation of starvation, really, really bad for your happiness, really bad for your mental health is what we find.
00:35:58Intermittent fasting is just a thing or time-restricted eating is what a lot of people are talking about.
00:36:02It has no evident impact on anxiety or mood because that's something that's completely sustainable.
00:36:07So it's not as if, you know, you decide you're going to go 16-8 or whatever it is for your eating.
00:36:12I like to go 12-12.
00:36:13I like to have a 12-hour period when I don't eat anything.
00:36:15No impact, no negative impact on depression or anxiety.
00:36:19So that's not what we're talking about.
00:36:21That's safe.
00:36:22Okay.
00:36:23Ozempic or GLP-1 drugs.
00:36:25What's the effect of GLP-1 drugs?
00:36:27And the answer is nobody's done in the studies.
00:36:29I want to know.
00:36:30I want to know.
00:36:31I want to, I want to randomize controlled trials where people are given GLP-1s or a, or a, or a placebo.
00:36:37And I want to look at their wellbeing scores going forward.
00:36:40However, the studies on GLP-1 drugs in their previous incarnation to treat diabetes shows
00:36:47that diabetic patients who use GLP-1 drugs tend to show a better scores on anxiety and depression.
00:36:52They're less anxious and they're less depressed is what we find.
00:36:55So at very least we should expect the people who are appropriately using GLP-1 drugs for weight loss
00:37:01are probably not going to see adverse effects on their happiness.
00:37:05They might just find good effects on their happiness.
00:37:08Okay, what are some rules that we can get from this, um, for how to eat?
00:37:12I'm going to give you my top eight.
00:37:13What are my top eight for, for eating rules that will lead you to greater happiness?
00:37:17Number one.
00:37:18And by the way, this is just Spanish eating.
00:37:21That's what it comes down to.
00:37:22So, um, but you can do it in any cuisine.
00:37:25I'm not talking about just eating a bunch of lentils and putti farra or something like that.
00:37:28You're going to, you're going to eat what you want to eat.
00:37:30But the bottom line is here, here are the rules that actually are based on the science
00:37:32that work pretty well.
00:37:34Number one, as much as you can, based on your sensitivities, your ethics and your, uh, your
00:37:40health balanced across a lot of food balanced across a variety of food.
00:37:45Right.
00:37:45Number two, emphasizing proteins and fats or carbohydrates.
00:37:49It's a good practice.
00:37:50Not ruling out all carbohydrates because restrictive diets are pro are generally problematic, but
00:37:55emphasizing protein and fat over carbohydrate three, avoiding junk food and, and, and very
00:38:02moderate use of refined sweets.
00:38:03So if you can cut out junk food almost entirely and, and you can have sweets just on special
00:38:09occasions, that's the way to go for alcohol consumption should be moderate.
00:38:13So if you're going to consume alcohol, and by the way, you don't have to consume alcohol
00:38:16to get happier, a lot of research on that.
00:38:18But if you do, you should be a moderate drinker.
00:38:20Number five, recreational drinking is a no, no.
00:38:23Okay.
00:38:23And so it's like, if it's, if it's, um, binge drinking to celebrate, um, that's really,
00:38:28really bad for your health.
00:38:29It's also bad for your happiness.
00:38:30Six, avoiding obesity is important for happiness, but not to the extent of crash weight loss programs
00:38:37or yo-yo diets that mimic stardation.
00:38:39Right.
00:38:40So be careful with the way that you try to lose weight or your happiness.
00:38:43It has to be sustainable.
00:38:44It has to be gradual.
00:38:45It has to be super, super healthy.
00:38:46Number seven is organized, regular, formal meal times without snacking.
00:38:51That's the best way to do it.
00:38:52Eat a lot.
00:38:53I mean, eat frequently, but don't snack.
00:38:55And last but not least, eat together with other people.
00:38:58They get part of who you are as a person and what you do socially with other people.
00:39:02One more thing to keep in mind.
00:39:03Um, and this one comes from my wife.
00:39:05So maybe it's not for the literature.
00:39:07From my literature.
00:39:08My wife thinks it's weird how obsessed Americans are, how obsessed so many Americans are with food.
00:39:14I mean, a lot of people in Spain like to cook and they like to eat, but they're not talking about it.
00:39:19It's not a hobby, really.
00:39:21Um, and she thinks that that obsession that we have actually, you know, I mean, the session with food is like an obsession with antique yo-yos or something.
00:39:29It's kind of, uh, it's, it's, it's, it's evidence of, of odd behavior.
00:39:33And that always made me laugh that she feels that way about us.
00:39:37But, but also it betrays a, a deeper truth that we often find in psychology, which is when you raise any ordinary part of life to something around which you're basing a whole lot of your attention, it's usually not a healthy thing.
00:39:50You know, people who are talking about sex all day long, it's like, you know, it's like, come on, man, that's not normal, right?
00:39:55That, that, and food is kind of the same thing.
00:39:58It should be, you, you shouldn't live to eat.
00:40:00You should eat to live is how that works out.
00:40:03If you want to have a good, balanced and healthy lifestyle.
00:40:06The point of food isn't food.
00:40:09The point of food is life and love.
00:40:12Well, there you are.
00:40:13I hope that's been helpful to you.
00:40:15Um, let me address a couple of questions now and then we'll be done.
00:40:19This first one is from Jonathan Harrell, officehours at arthurworks.com.
00:40:22I'm curious about the neuroscience of how books activate our left brain.
00:40:27Do they activate our brain in the same way that bones do?
00:40:31Is there a difference between reading educational versus fiction?
00:40:33I'd love to know if reading is a true alternative to boredom or just a better package distraction.
00:40:38Books don't hijack your brain, as a matter of fact.
00:40:41They actually require, um, you to use your brain more, much more fully than, than what electronics do, than what tech does.
00:40:48One of the things about television before we had small screens is that it captivated so much of our brains that it allowed us to imagine things less.
00:40:58When you're reading a book, for example, you will be using your visual cortex in a way that's imaginative.
00:41:04You know, you're seeing it's one of the things, one of the reasons that you'll, you might find that you're disappointed when you see the movie version of a book you loved.
00:41:11Because like, no, it was better in my head.
00:41:12The movie was better in my head than it was in Hollywood.
00:41:16Right. And, and furthermore, that you're unlikely to want to read a book after you've seen a movie because it's captured your brain.
00:41:21Well, the small screen and tech is designed to, to just grab your brain and hold onto it, just put hooks into it in a way that television can't even approach, which means that once again, you're using less and less and less and less of your imagination.
00:41:37Books are the best way to do that.
00:41:38They're taking you on a journey while helping you to, allowing you to have your own flight of fancy at the same time, which is why it's just a lot healthier.
00:41:45There's way less dopamine involved.
00:41:48Uh, there's a lot more of your default mode network at work.
00:41:53Can you read too much?
00:41:55And this is interesting, actually.
00:41:56Um, there's a, there's a famous quote that's often attributed to Einstein.
00:42:00I don't know who said it because it's like one of these things, who knows, should be Einstein, put it that way, that many people read too much.
00:42:08And, and I actually find this in my field, that there are people, scholars, who actually become unproductive.
00:42:15Because they over consume what they read and, and they don't use reading for investment in, in, in, in their own output.
00:42:24You know, it's like when a scholar, somebody in my profession says, you know, I read three books a week.
00:42:29I'm kind of suspicious that maybe they're not very productive in writing any books or, or, or doing any research because the reading becomes consumption versus investment.
00:42:38You have to decide what you want to do, but depending on what you do, you absolutely can read too much.
00:42:44You need more thinking, you need more idle time, you need less distraction at certain points of your life.
00:42:49I hope that helps, Jonathan.
00:42:50Lauren Prescott, once again, writing into the, um, to the website.
00:42:54Is there a difference between the concept of leisure, which I did a whole episode on, and the concept of Sabbath in the scripture?
00:43:02That's a good question.
00:43:03And, and it really depends on how you use it.
00:43:06You know, Sabbath has obvious religious implications where we are dedicating our rest to worship.
00:43:13We're dedicating our rest to exaltation of the divine.
00:43:17That's what Sabbath literally means in, in, in, you know, many religions and obviously in Judaism and Christianity and Islam, the Abrahamic religions, but others as well.
00:43:26They have prescribed days and times when, when you're not supposed to do your work for money, you're not supposed to earn your daily bread.
00:43:35You're supposed to eat your daily bread.
00:43:36You're supposed to be doing something else.
00:43:39So how do you use it?
00:43:40And the answer is, well, according to Joseph Pieper, the, the German philosopher, real leisure, that's really good is kind of Sabbath-like leisure, where you're doing one of three things.
00:43:51You're deepening your faith, you're deepening your relationships, and you're learning things that are completely unrelated to your work.
00:43:58So, which is really important, right?
00:43:59To be able to do that because these are deeply, deeply spiritually and emotionally, psychologically sustaining activities.
00:44:06So it's not just chilling on a beach, but it's also not like sneaking in a couple of hours of work, um, to get ahead on Monday.
00:44:12It requires that you be, you know, reading scripture and praying.
00:44:16Um, one of the things that my wife and I like to do on Sunday afternoons is we go over the, because we go to mass on Sunday morning, is that we look at the reading, the gospel reading for that day, and we study it.
00:44:25You know, she's, my wife has, her graduate training is in, is in theology, and so she knows a lot, and her library at home is vast.
00:44:32And so we'll go through what the early church father said, what Thomas Aquinas said, what St. Augustine said that, and, uh, and it's, it's great because we actually learn that way, which also deepens our relationship with each other because reading to each other, as you know, is a, is a sacred form of communication and, um, really, really important.
00:44:49I've had, I've actually done an episode on that.
00:44:51And then it's kind of, it's learning, which is really unrelated to my work.
00:44:54Nobody's going to say, nobody's going to pay me to understand what I learned about the gospel from the day before, because that's just not what I do for a living.
00:45:01So those are ways to actually think about that, is having leisure in this kind of, these profound Sabbath-like ways.
00:45:06We're done.
00:45:07If you want to write in, I would love to hear what you have to say about this episode or any other episode or any suggestions you've got, uh, officehours.arthurbrooks.com.
00:45:14Like, and subscribe on Spotify, Apple, YouTube, leave a comment.
00:45:17I can't wait to hear about it.
00:45:19Uh, follow us on socials and don't forget to order The Meaning of Your Life, my new book, get it for somebody that you love, and I'll see you next week.
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