Why You Know What to Do, But Still Don’t Do It

Mark Hyman, MD

Dr. Mark Hyman is leading a health revolution—one focused on using food as medicine to support longevity, energy, mental clarity, happiness, and so much more. Mark Hyman, MD is a practicing family physician and an internationally recognized leader, speaker, educator, and advocate in the field of Functional Medicine. He is the founder and director of The UltraWellness Center, Founder and Senior Advisor for the Cleveland Clinic Center for Functional Medicine, a fifteen-time New York Times best-selling author, and Board President for Clinical Affairs for The Institute for Functional Medicine. He is the founder and chairman of the Food Fix Campaign, dedicated to transforming our food and agriculture system through policy.

He is a co-founder and the Chief Medical Officer of Function Health. He is the host of one of the leading health podcasts, The Dr. Hyman Show with 150+ million downloads. Dr. Hyman is a regular medical contributor to several television shows and networks, including CBS This Morning, Today, Good Morning America, The View, Fox, and CNN.

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Full Transcript

Automatically generated. Please forgive any typos or errors in the following transcript. It was generated by a third party and has not been subsequently reviewed by our team.

Dr. Mark Hyman
Coming up on this episode of The Doctor Hyman Show.

Tom Bilyeu
Thing I always lead with is humans are the ultimate adaptation machine and if you focus on the amount that's malleable, the amount that you can change your life is so extraordinary.

Dr. Mark Hyman
Now before we jump into today's episode, I'd like to note that while I wish I could help everyone by my personal practice, there's simply not enough time for me to do this at scale. And that's why I've been busy building several passion projects to help you better understand, well, you. If you're looking for data about your biology, check out Function Health for real time lab insights. And if you're in need of deepening your knowledge around your health journey, check out my membership community, The Hyman Hive. And if you're looking for curated and trusted supplements and health products for your health journey, visit my website at DrHyman.com for my website store for a summary of my favorite and thoroughly tested products.

Dr. Mark Hyman
Teaching people, how do you get people to shift their mindset? Because it's a hard thing, you know.

Tom Bilyeu
It is. I I think the the big thing is you have to get certain core beliefs. So there's one one, people come to me because there's they're in an emotional painful point. They know they can do more, be more, but they don't know how to get there. Oftentimes stuck

Dr. Mark Hyman
in this negative inner dialogue and loop of negative thinking and it's habitual and they they're almost inside of it like a bubble they can't see. It's like a fish swimming in water doesn't know it's in water.

Tom Bilyeu
Dude, do you know the talk that oh god. I'm blanking on his name. It's called This Is Water by something Wallace. Oh god. I'm gonna punch myself in the mouth.

Dr. Mark Hyman
Don't do that. I'm a doctor. I don't wanna have to use my techniques.

Tom Bilyeu
David Foster Wallace. There we go. That was really gonna bother me. He gave a speech called this is water. And to your point about, like, the fish is the last one to realize that they're swimming around in water, which is an amazing way to explain your mindset.

So your mindset is the water. It is the thing in which you exist. It is the matrix. And to finally get your head around the fact that you've constructed it, that it's a belief system, it's your identity, it's your values, it's the very reason that who you hang out with is good going to determine your health level. I heard you give a stat of something like, you're if your friends are obese, then you're more likely to be obese than if your family is obese.

Dr. Mark Hyman
You're a

Dr. Mark Hyman
hundred and seventy one percent more likely to be overweight than if your siblings overweight you're about forty percent more likely

Dr. Mark Hyman
to be overweight.

Tom Bilyeu
That's so crazy, man.

Dr. Mark Hyman
Yeah. Because our friends influence our behavior, peer pressure works for good or bad.

Tom Bilyeu
And I will hypothesize that the reason is our friends help establish our values and our belief system. And so I'm writing a book now which is like the tentative title, this will never be the real type, it's called build yourself. Like how do you construct a mindset that actually lets you go forward? So I'm a freak for looking at the human animal as a biological entity And so understanding how thoughts wire your brain, your brain has certain things that it's going to do like good luck ever not ever thinking. It's just one of the things your brain is is heartwired Right.

Exactly. Like your brain is gonna cough up thoughts that that just is its nature. Humans are an active species. Humans also balance out that active nature of wanting to explore and, control their environment with a deep laziness designed to conserve calories. So it's like you have this weird push pull.

So just if you really accept that the human is this biological creature that thoughts become literal physical wiring in your brain and that your brain wants to think the thoughts that are easiest, whatever you repeat then becomes the easiest that goes into what's called the default network in the brain and that's just where you always default. So you talk about these people being stuck in these loops, they get stuck in these loops.

Dr. Mark Hyman
Last thing, you we we talk about the default mode network which is this part of the brain where the sort of the ego lives and it's it's this sort of more rigid sense of little self that separates you from the world and things like meditation, like you look at these monks who've been meditating for forty thousand hours in a cave, these default mode networks are shut down and they just are connected and one with everything.

Tom Bilyeu
And that becomes their default. Right? They can

Dr. Mark Hyman
slide easily into that. Do same thing. Right. And

Tom Bilyeu
psychedelics. Have you done psychedelics?

Dr. Mark Hyman
I have.

Tom Bilyeu
Oh, Mark Hyman, we've got to talk about that. I am I am intrigued and completely What

Dr. Mark Hyman
can I say?

Tom Bilyeu
I'm interested in psychedelics. Really interested. I have micro dose psilocybin. Mhmm. I didn't find it very interesting.

So it felt like a low grade buzz, but without the fatigue. Yeah. So if I were going to drink, it actually probably would be slightly more pleasurable maybe to be to have that a micro dose of psilocybin because there are no sort of after effects that I find unpleasant. But I didn't find I was more creative, I certainly didn't find that I could focus. I found myself sort of drifting in and out of like attentive focus.

So I was like, this isn't for the people who say that it really helps them be creative or more productive, not not me. But I've never I've never done

Dr. Mark Hyman
like a

BJ Fogg
full on.

Dr. Mark Hyman
Phyndalics are generally designed to in full doses be a place for more creativity. It's more insight and connection and understanding I think.

Tom Bilyeu
Yeah. I haven't done that yet. I'm I'm keenly interested. The one that I would do literally this afternoon if I had access to it legally would be MDMA. To sit down with my wife and do MDMA together I think would really be extraordinary.

Dr. Mark Hyman
Well they're using it for post traumatic stress and it's just people's hard wired patterns that come from trauma and it's having extraordinary results.

Tom Bilyeu
It's crazy how fast people talk about it having that kind of impact. So this is one of those things that like I I can't come out and vouch for it because I haven't done it but I will say that if I had some sort of trauma that I was trying to get over, I would do that as a protocol very fast. I would fix my diet first admittedly to get my microbiome in line to deal with depression, anxiety, whatever. But if I had something that was intractable whether PTSD, depression, anxiety, I would really give it a shot. The studies are just too crazy.

Dr. Mark Hyman
It's pretty cool. So when you help people shift their mindset other than taking psychedelics, what do you do to help them transform their thinking and shift out of it? Because I just see people stuck in loops and they have a story that they tell, they have a narrative for their life. And they live into that narrative in a way that often is dysfunctional and impedes their ability to be happy, to have happy relationships, to be successful in life. And for whatever reason I sort of was also in that state when I was younger but I worked really hard to learn how my mind operated and change the narrative to be one of I could do anything.

Why not?

Tom Bilyeu
Here is the my deepest trauma in life is that you can't want it for people. No. So I was wired and I will say that this is we're not blank slate. So all of us have sort of preset things that we're more into or whatever that we're a bigger responder to. So just like some people respond to one food and some another, some respond to certain emotional states or ways of connecting with people.

And for me, I love seeing other people win. And so like I pretended not to see Easter eggs in an Easter egg hunt because I knew my sister was four years older than me so I was like five or six and my sister was 10 and I knew it meant more to her to win than it did to me. So I would pretend not to see them so she could find them. Like that's my natural state. I've been like that since I was a little kid and

Dr. Mark Hyman
Well explains why you're doing what you're doing right now.

Tom Bilyeu
Truly does. And and that's a huge driver for me and meeting people that I've impacted their life is always amazing. But my my big trauma is that I can't want it for people. So people that I love can't make the change. And it's crazy because they've watched me.

Like there are people who've watched me my whole life. They know how lazy I was. They know that they didn't expect me to do anything. And yet seeing what I've been able to do and change in my mind, how much I've been able to learn, how I've been able to just take a new frame of reference which put me on a new path of behavior which is actually how you get people to change. Right.

The things you do must be different. So

Dr. Mark Hyman
you do the behaviors that then change your mind?

Tom Bilyeu
Definitely. It it is it is a loop that you can change either first. So one, I'll I'll I'll finish the loop on the like the fact that it is very difficult to get people to change and then I'll tell you the people that do change what they all have in Yeah.

Dr. Mark Hyman
What is that?

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee
The the

Tom Bilyeu
reason that it's hard to get people to change is is if you don't want it, you're not gonna have the energy to see it through and you can give people all the tools and tactics in the world. If they don't want it, then they won't have the energy to make the changes. Okay. So now set that aside. The thing that people have in common that all end up making the change.

So first of all, they want to make change. Second of all, they understand that at the end of the day, the name of the game is to change your behaviors. And whether they start with the mindset shift or they start with the behavior shift almost doesn't matter. When you understand humans as a biological entity and you know that things like the following are true, if you fake a smile, like they would have people, they did a study, they had people put a pencil between their teeth and bite down on it. It sort of forced your face into a smile just like you're doing now.

And then rate their levels of happiness. They rated them higher than when they had them making Just because it activated those muscles. Now, I I have felt this very keenly. So I will use like crest whitening strips on my teeth. And so I keep my mouth closed which forces me into this sort of non smiling thing.

And I find myself while I'm whitening my teeth with this sense of like just kinda mopey a bit. And I'm like, woah, this is so crazy. And so I wrote a letter to myself. So when my wife and I were first married, first couple years of our marriage, we would argue and like dumb stuff. And I just thought we end up often losing like an entire Saturday to some stupid argument.

And at the end of the argument when my neurochemistry has changed and I'm no longer upset, I think, wow, why did I waste all that time? Like I know she loves me. This is really stupid. And so I wrote myself a letter and I said, hey, It's me. You know you have no ulterior motives.

And I gave it to my wife to read to me. I said the next time I get annoyed about something and I'm not letting it go, read this to me. And And did she do it? Yeah. She only had to do it once because it was so profound that I realized, woah, you can shift your

Dr. Mark Hyman
And so what was the letter? What did you say to me?

Tom Bilyeu
So the reason that I addressed me is when you're in an argument with somebody, lot of times you think they're trying to calm you down because they have an ulterior motive, they don't wanna feel bad or whatever. When someone upsets you, unless you're unreasonable, they probably actually did something wrong. Like they really did do something that hurt your feelings and you really do feel justified in being upset. I will assume you're not flying off the handle. I'll assume they really did misstep.

And so they have misstepped and now you're annoyed about it and you think that them trying to talk you out of it is because they they just don't wanna feel badly. And so I was like, that never ends up feeling true. What's that?

Dr. Mark Hyman
They don't wanna feel guilty.

Tom Bilyeu
Right. But that never ends up feeling true once you've calmed down. And you always then can have the compassion and see from their perspective. So I thought, let me just remove that. Because I know two hours from now or whatever, I'm not gonna feel like it was a good use of time to be pissed.

So hey, me, it's me. You know you don't have any ulterior motive other than you know that like there's energy behind neurochemistry and once you get in a flow, it gets hard to get out of that. But there are physiological hooks into breaking that. So right now, no matter how you feel, I want you to laugh out loud. And I want you to laugh out loud until you feel better.

And you will find, you know, you've read the studies that if you do that, you won't be able to maintain the sense of frustration. And I did it. I laughed out loud. I was so annoyed. She read it to me, which was courageous.

And I said to myself, you told her to read you this letter. So even though it's really annoying that she's reading this letter when you're annoyed It's your own medicine. Do it. Yeah. And so I laughed out loud and I was like, oh my god.

Literally in like seven seconds. It's absurd how rapidly.

Dr. Mark Hyman
It's true. When you when you change your physical state, you change your mental state. So whether it's going for a run, whether it's taking a steam, or whether it's jumping up and down, or whether it's dancing, whatever you can do to change your physical state, it'll change your mental state. And I've learned how to

Dr. Mark Hyman
do this because you know if I

Dr. Mark Hyman
have a really tough day and you know got stressed, like I had a really challenging you know, few situations at work recently And I, you know, it was really upsetting me so I just went to a hot yoga class and I came out completely transformed. And I didn't change my thinking, I just changed my body which then changed my thinking. Dude. Right?

Tom Bilyeu
Like if people really hear what you just said, because then you know that it can go either way. So if you can't get yourself there with like reason and logic, jump in an ice bath, laugh out loud, watch a comedy, go for a run, lift weights, like there is this feedback loop that you get into with your thoughts and your body, and your body and your thoughts. So the vagal nerve, of course you're gonna know this, but the vagal nerve is something like 80% telling the body telling the brain what's going on versus the brain just instructing the body what to do. Like as a kid, you think, oh, the brain tells the body breathe, digest, blah blah blah. But in reality, it's like the brain is getting more input from the body.

And I am so grateful that there's this reciprocal feedback loop. So I know when I'm in a like a negative place that I all I need to do is smile, like literally, I can even think smile without actually smiling and it makes me feel different. It so weird.

Dr. Mark Hyman
Yeah.

Tom Bilyeu
So that's super useful. Music can shift your state, channeling aggression which is something I do to like do hard things. Like there are all these feedback loops. So I try to get people to understand that. But the most important thing, the thing I always lead with is humans are the ultimate adaptation machine.

So we are the ultimate apex predator for one simple reason. We adapt to change better than any other animal. And I'll say that at a physiological level, like the ability to turn white adipose tissue into brown fat where it's more thermogenic. There was a woman who swam the Bering Strait. Aye aye aye, really.

So think about that. The Bering Strait is the space between Russia and Alaska. Alaska. That shit is cold, man. Yeah.

So the fact that somebody can swim that, it's bananas. So she slept with the window open in Alaska for a year, which you can imagine how cold that would be. She took only cold showers. So basically, all of her fat cells became more thermogenic and she could insulate herself. We're adaptable in that She had a wet suit.

Yeah. She or sorry. The so you have that level of adaptation which is like sort of purely biological, but then you also have the ability to learn. So there's a reason, like a horse is born, it's walking that day, it is not that way for humans. So the prefrontal cortex, is like all your executive functions, doesn't finish developing until you're 25.

Dr. Mark Hyman
Yeah. Not cars to kids who are under 25

Dr. Mark Hyman
years old.

Tom Bilyeu
And it's it's not like it's more complicated biological material. It it's the same. But it allows you to soak up your environment and learn and figure out, okay, in this environment, these are the values, the norms, the beliefs, the way that you act here because it could be different based on time, based on circumstance, whatever. So humans are designed to be malleable. Now again, we're not blank slates.

This is not like you can become anything you want. Like, it is you have a certain amount that's hardwired and then you have a certain amount that's malleable. And if you focus on the amount that's malleable, the amount that you can change your life is so extraordinary. So whether you an example like

Dr. Mark Hyman
how would that play out?

Tom Bilyeu
Well, the the example of how it's played out in my own life is I don't have any entrepreneurial instincts whatsoever. So I am not a born entrepreneur and the whole like, are entrepreneurs born or made as a debate is hysterical.

Dr. Mark Hyman
You created a billion dollar company.

Tom Bilyeu
Exactly. So it's like, I don't know what else has to be true in my life for people to realize I was so bad at being an entrepreneur that so as a kid, I had a newspaper route Mhmm. And I didn't collect half the money because I was too afraid to knock on people's doors. So you get stories of people who like rip the flowers out of somebody's front yard and sell them back. Dude, I was not that kid.

And yet, I realized, oh, there are principles of entrepreneurship, I can learn them and a lot of this stuff teachable. Look, maybe it was harder for me to learn than most people, maybe this is some people really would have an easier time, I I don't doubt that. And I'll say that verbal ability comes easier to me. So every ounce of energy I put into getting better verbally has paid dividends. So Yeah.

The way I've always thought of it is, I get let's say a 1.3 x return on my verbal. And so for me, I've been practicing speech and debate and all of that since I was 12. Wow. So I am the result of not ten thousand hours, not even twenty thousand hours, at this point it's gotta be thirty, forty thousand hours. I used to stand in front of the mirror with a hairbrush, wanted to be a stand up comic, like I've I've put in the time and the energy.

I did speech and debate all through middle school and high school. So it's like

Dr. Mark Hyman
That's great.

Tom Bilyeu
What I want people to see in that is that you can put deliberate practice into any area. Now if you can find areas where you get a disproportionate return, amazing. But if not, don't worry about it. If it's something that your goals demand, then you're gonna have to learn that thing.

Dr. Mark Hyman
Why do we all have this poverty mindset? Why why is it so bad?

Tom Bilyeu
Well, it it really to me

Dr. Mark Hyman
comes down mean the food I get,

Dr. Mark Hyman
you know, because if we're all obese and it's the food environment. But what about the mindset? How does that become such a poverty mindset for so many millions of people?

Tom Bilyeu
There one, I think it is to keep you alive, the brain is going to make sure that you don't get yourself ostracized from the group. So you don't the brain isn't designed to maximize your status in the group, it is designed to keep you alive. So doing things like pushing yourself, holding yourself to a high standard, taking risks, learning from the failures, for a long time that was a high risk endeavor. Because if you didn't understand how you fit into the group, you alienated yourself, let's say you were on a ship and they're like, yep, forget this guy, we're leaving him on this desert island, it could quite literally mean death. Or if you were in the tribe and they kicked you out, you were getting eaten by a lion.

Dr. Mark Hyman
You're

Tom Bilyeu
dead. So there's a reason We are social beings. Yeah for sure. There's a reason from an evolutionary standpoint to have that be high stakes but in a modern context it becomes a fixed mindset versus a growth mindset. So Carol Dweck has a brilliant book on the subject called mindset.

And she said with all the good intentions in the world, when you do something well, people are going to reinforce the behavior as if it were something based on an innate trait. So if you get good grades, your parents are like, you're so smart. Look how clever you are. And the worst part is that feels amazing but it builds in this fragility of what happens when I encounter something that I don't understand. So then you try to hide from it, you try to always do things that are easier for you.

So she said better to praise the process. So instead of saying, hey, you're so smart, you say, wow, you must have worked really hard to get grades this good. So it's a a fundamental belief pattern around whether you're born with intelligence and talents and they are fixed or whether no. No. No.

We all have some talent and intelligence but they're actually malleable and you can improve them all.

Dr. Mark Hyman
Problem is most of the way we grow up, we're getting the wrong messages from our teachers, from our parents, from our environment.

Tom Bilyeu
Correct. And then your brain kicks in and you've got what you hear different numbers but I don't think anybody thinks that there's less than a one in five ratio. So for every one negative thing I say to you, I'm gonna have to say five positive things to balance it out. I heard a study that said one in seventeen. So it's like, we all get it.

Like one painful, you're not good enough comment is is really hard to overcome with a lot of you're good enough. So the the mind goes to these survival mechanisms to keep you alive which I'll say oftentimes means keeping you small. If you don't take it seriously that people think that you're doing something wrong and if you don't back off, there were times where that would have been deadly. Now you just get in these negative loops. Yeah.

You get in a negative loop and people have taught you that, hey, it's all it's just what you're born with And you get this like death spiral of this is who I am and I'm never gonna be any better and so you don't have what I call the only belief that matters. Yeah. Only belief that matters is that you can improve. That's it. So it's like if somebody goes

Dr. Mark Hyman
It's pretty simple.

Tom Bilyeu
It is deadly simple. And it's why it's the only belief that matters. Because if you don't think you can improve, why would you put in the effort to get better? Because if you believe that you will get nothing out of that, there really is no point to putting in the time and the energy to improve. Whereas if you believe, woah, the time and energy that I put into getting better, I'll actually be rewarded with skills.

And the as a doctor, you're gonna understand this immediately but this is one thing that I think people really struggle to understand. They think that skills are about checking a box or pleasing your parents. Skills are about in the case of a doctor being able to save somebody's life. Going from C. And thinking, woah, I'm actually going to die from this to, no, no.

I understand this well enough. I have a skill set that allows me to figure this out and now I can reverse all of that. So skills are insanely powerful. But people think about reading a book as being able to say, oh, I read the book. It's not about that.

It's about being able to say, can now employ this skill in my life in a way that shapes the world around me.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee
I believe that every single human being can and wants to make change. And I have seen people in the darkest of places in my practice over the years make transformative change.

Dr. Mark Hyman
No, I agree.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee
So I want society to change and maybe it is starting to change. At the same time, I wanna help the individuals be able to go, yeah, whilst I'm waiting these things I can do, and that's what Make Change at Last is about. It's about my twenty three years of experience as a medical doctor, having seen tens of thousands of patients. One of the key things I wanted to crack Mark, which I don't feel we talk enough about in this health and wellness space in which we both operate. A lot of the advice is about what you need to be doing And that, of course, is useful.

Many people need to know what kind of what should I be eating? How much should I be moving? And you've read some wonderful books over the years helping people with that. But I was thinking over the last couple of years, why is it? And I know there's structural components to this, but I was thinking, why is it that despite all the increased knowledge or the health books or the health podcasts or the blogs online?

BJ Fogg
Why are

Dr. Mark Hyman
we getting sicker and sicker?

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee
Why are we getting sicker? There's more knowledge, but we're getting sick. I'm like, what's the gap here now? Yes, there's external issues like the structure of the food environment and the farming system. I accept that.

But it isn't just that for me. It's also because I feel, I mean, you know, chapter one in this book is called trust yourself. Mhmm. I feel that we've outsourced our inner expertise Yeah. Yeah.

To external experts. And I say that as so called expert myself. 100%,

Dr. Mark Hyman
I would say the smartest doctor in the room is your own body. Exactly.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee
And so this book, think is gonna really empower people to know, look, I don't know if you get this or not, but I get this on my podcast. I've had it several times where one week I'll talk to a medical doctor with all the credentials, maybe they went to Harvard Medical School and they'll let's say come on and talk about a particular diet. Let's say a ketogenic diet for specific mental health problems. And they will quote four or five research studies to support their perspective and will tell us about lots of patients that, you know, they've used that approach on and they've got better. And then you might get two months later a different expert, a nutrition expert or a medical doctor well credentialed talking about the Mediterranean diet or a whole food plant based diet and quoting research to support their perspective and patients who improved when they followed their advice.

And then I would often get people contacting me online saying, hey, doctor Chathi, I'm I'm a little bit confused. Like, that expert Mhmm. Sounded great. They had research and patient studies. But this this other expert also sounded great.

And they said the opposite, and they have research and case patient studies. I don't know which expert to trust. And, Mark, I believe I'm not saying don't listen to experts. I'm not saying that. What I'm saying is instead of asking which expert should I trust, I think the more useful question is why do I no longer trust myself?

Yeah. So I say,

Dr. Mark Hyman
how do I listen to my body?

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee
Yeah.

Dr. Mark Hyman
How I listen to the signals it's saying and actually see what's working and what's not working. Some people say dairy is bad for you, but some people do fine on dairy. Other people say, you know, you know, it's good for you and, you know, it may not be good.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee
We want the black or white. Is dairy good? Is it bad? It's like, well, it depends for who and in what context is fasting. Good.

Is it bad?

BJ Fogg
Well,

Dr. Mark Hyman
your body will tell you.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee
It kind of depends. If if if, for example, you've got type two diabetes and you're carrying a lot of excess weight on your body, fasting, if done in the right way, might be helpful for you.

Dr. Mark Hyman
Right.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee
Right? If on the other hand, you're an undernourished teenage girl with anorexia idea. It may not be, but we wanna know is fasting good or bad? It depends. Right?

And so with that example on my podcast that I shared, I would say, well, listen. If you resonate with both of those people's messages, why don't you do this for four weeks? Try this expert's diet and pay attention. Those are the two key words. Pay attention.

How do you feel? What's your energy like? Your vitality? Your sleep? How much focus do you have?

What is your gut like? Mhmm. You know, how are your bowels? Right? Pay attention.

Mhmm. And then for the next four weeks, try the other one and at the same time pay attention. Now I'm not saying that will work a % of the time. Yes. We need advice from experts like yourself or me to help guide us, but ultimately neither one of us know for sure which is the perfect diet for that individual.

We can provide frameworks like you have your vegan diet. Right? It's a framework.

Dr. Mark Hyman
Yeah. Basic foundational principles, but it's highly flexible. Exactly. It's personalized.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee
And I feel the problem, Mark, when it comes to making change that lasts is if you have outsourced your inner expertise to external experts, what ends up happening is that we start to feel like failures. Oh, I followed that person's diet. It didn't work for me. It can't be the diet. It must be me.

There's something wrong with me. Like, I'm a failure. And then guilt, shame, all these things start coming in, which mean that actually we don't make any changes or we actually feel worse about ourselves than when we started before. So this book is really my attempt to go listen. I submit to you, Mark, and let's see what your perspective is on this.

I imagine that people who follow you and people who listen to your podcast each week, I reckon 95% of them already know that excess sugar is not helping them.

Dr. Mark Hyman
%.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee
They already know that. So if they still got an issue with excess sugar, it's not more external knowledge they needs. It's like, oh, why is it despite the knowledge do I keep going to sugar? And so can I just share a really simple exercise that I've used many years with patients? It sounds really simple, but it's very, very powerful.

I call it the three F's. The first f is feel, the second f is feed, and the third f is find. Right. I'll go through it. So Yeah.

I imagine that a lot of your listeners, Mark, are trying to reset their relationship with sugar. Right? So what people often say is, Doctor. Chatty, I was fine in the day, but at 9PM, I was on the sofa, I was watching TV and I really wanted ice cream. Okay?

Have you ever felt like that before, Mark?

Dr. Mark Hyman
Me? Never.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee
Okay.

Dr. Mark Hyman
What?

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee
Right. It's really common. Now they wanna make changes. They know

Dr. Mark Hyman
My wife is terrible, by the way. She she buys she loves me and she thinks it's love, and she buys me my Achilles heel, which is Sicilian Van Lewin's pistachio ice cream. Well, it sounds delicious. It's amazing. Yeah.

And I don't do it very often, but I know exactly that moment where like

BJ Fogg
Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee
And and I'm not saying you should or shouldn't have it. It's up to you. Right? But if you're trying to reduce your sugar intake, yet you still find yourself with half a tub of ice cream every evening, perhaps this exercise will help you. So I would say to my patients, okay, next time you're on the sofa and you have a craving for the ice cream, take a pause just for a few seconds and ask yourself the first air feel.

What am I feeling? Is it physical hunger or is it emotional hunger? Oh, because many people don't even know that they they haven't taken a pause. They feel, oh, I need sugar. The ice cream's in my mouth.

Right. So it's just just let's create a gap between stimulus and response just for a moment. Then you go, oh, well, maybe I'm a bit stressed. Oh, I've just had a row with my partner and this is just a way of making me feel better. Okay, go ahead and have it.

You're just now starting to build up that awareness. Next time it happens, do the first step and go to the second F, which is feed. Okay. Next time it happens, you take a pause. What am I feeling?

Oh, I'm feeling really stressed. You know, I've been on Zoom calls all day and I didn't go out for a lunchtime walk. Okay. Then the second f is feed. How does food feed that feeling?

Oh, ice cream helps me feel less stressed. You're starting to build up this awareness, this inner self awareness. Oh, that's why I'm going to the ice cream. And then the next time you go to the third f. So now that you know the feeling, now that you know how food feeds the feeling, the third f is find.

Can I find an alternative behavior to feed the feeling? So it could be I'm stressed.

Dr. Mark Hyman
Right.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee
Instead of going to sugar. Right. Oh, I love yoga. Maybe I'll go on YouTube and do a ten minute yoga sequence. Or if you feel lonely because many people go to sugars, they feel lonely.

How can you nourish yourself in another way? Maybe you run yourself a bath for fifteen minutes or you phone one of your friends or your parents. Right? So it's a simple exercise.

Dr. Mark Hyman
It's so true.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee
But you can apply to anything, alcohol, social media, online pornography, online shopping. It's very, very simple, but very, very powerful.

Dr. Mark Hyman
I love it. I've been doing this forever like you and came up with a very similar framework for my patients, which is one, it's not what you're eating, it's what's eating you. Exactly. You have to figure that out. And two, always ask yourself, what do I need?

What am I feeling and what do I need? There you go. Am I hungry? Do I need food? Am I lonely?

Do I need ice cream or do I need to call a friend? You know? Am I tired? Do I need a nap? Or do I need sugar?

Like and so there's a very simple set of nonjudgmental questions you can ask about, what am I actually feeling right now and what do I need? And we often don't stop to make that distinction. That is what you are asking people to do, is inviting them to go, Gee, I have this Ursula ice cream. What is really going on with me right now? Am I depressed?

Am I sad? Am I tired? I need energy. Have I been, you know, eating too much carbs and I am craving carbs? Like, what is going on?

And I think it's a very powerful tool to sort of create self awareness around the choices you're making. And then, yeah, then figure out what you what you really need in that moment and and then go reach out for that. If it's calling a friend, if it's, you know, taking a nap, if it's whatever it is, it's going to sort of deal with what you need rather than the food, which becomes our default. And we've, you know, we've created a culture where that sort of happens when your kid shut up here, eat this candy. If you're screaming, eat this ice cream here, you know, have have some treat as a way of kind of mollifying kids.

And it becomes this sense of of our reliance on things that are really bad for us to make us feel better rather than understanding how to actually feel better.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee
Yeah. This stuff is game changing for people because I imagine, Mark, that there's many people out there who know what they should be doing now for health, particularly people who listen to health shows like yours or mine, right? These are people who are really interested. Yes, for sure, the general public, we need to help keep help educating them on what are the healthy choices to make, but that external knowledge is not enough. I opened my new book with a very powerful story of a GP colleague of mine, a medical colleague, an expert in type two diabetes.

You know, she'd always send me the latest papers with her own informed commentary on them and emails. And then one day she actually sent me a text message saying, Hey Ronga, you ran this weekend, I really need to chat. So I arranged to meet her. What happened is that she basically said that there was a patient that week in her clinic with a diagnosis of type two diabetes. And she was trying educate the patient and said, listen, look, excess sugar, too many ultra processed foods is going to cause your body to be inflamed, it's going to affect your gut microbiome.

And she was trying to educate this patient and the patient just stopped her and said, why should I listen to you? You're fatter than I am.

Dr. Mark Hyman
That's what

Dr. Mark Hyman
the diabetes doctor.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee
Yeah, the patient said it

Dr. Mark Hyman
to the doctor. That's crazy.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee
Yeah, but what's really interesting, right, is because we can debate whether it was the right thing for that patient to say or not. But the point of me opening this new book with that story is to demonstrate a really important point. I met my friend for a coffee that weekend and she said, you know what, Rangan, the truth is the patient was right. The patient was absolutely right. What the patient doesn't know is that in my drawer, I have big bags of Cadbury's giant buttons.

Wow. Right. So the point is she had all the knowledge. Many of us have the knowledge. Right.

We have the external knowledge, but that's not inner awareness. That's not wisdom. No. Right. And I think this is the missing piece.

Dr. Mark Hyman
They're disconnected from themselves.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee
We're disconnected from ourselves. You know, you've talked about how we're disconnected from our food environment, and we are, but we're also disconnected from ourselves. And again, in that chapter called Trust Yourself, I I write I I really I really enjoyed reading this account of this American scientist who went to see this aboriginal tribe and was explaining to this tribe how Americans think with their heads. And the tribe were really confused. I said, oh.

Dr. Mark Hyman
Yeah. Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee
Oh, we think with our guts.

Dr. Mark Hyman
Yeah. And again Gut feeling. And it was even the word the word for mind in Chinese is heart. Exactly. It's Shin Shin.

It's your heart mind. So it's really

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee
it's interesting how language is. Exactly. But it's not about who's right or wrong. It's it's all we need all of these things in balance. You want the head, but you also want the heart.

You want your gut feeling. And I feel that society has changed a little bit too much where we're being bombarded with more and more information, which is good up to a point, but we need to become our own experts. And that's really why I'm so proud of this book. I think it's gonna be incredibly helpful for people because I think it's gonna give them a self awareness that they may not already have.

Dr. Mark Hyman
That's all right. Mean, I think you and I are on the same track. People need to be empowered with the knowledge and the tools to both know what to do, know how to do it, and with the information that allows them to be informed about their own biology. And I think most of medicine has been paternalistic and patronizing and has created a firewall between you and your own biology and the doctor and the insurance companies and the health care system are standing in that firewall. And and and your work is is breaking that down.

And I, you know, I cofounded a company called Function Health that empowers people to get their own lab data and learn about their own health in a deep way that they never were able to before without having to go through the system, then be empowered with that knowledge and say, you know, I'm not crazy. You know, like, you know, I I have these things going on. My doctor didn't check for my vitamin D level. Check for my iron level. Didn't check for my inflammation levels.

Didn't check my metabolic health. Didn't check my insulin. And these are what's making me feel bad. And they're not things that are abnormal in normal tests. So we have this moment where we're we're shifting sort of agency back to individuals and and and realizing that 80% of health does not happen in the doctor's office.

I can't cure diabetes in my office. Right? It's cured in the kitchen. It's cured on the farm. Like, all the way from the field to the fork, Not not in the Exactly.

And so this this moment where we actually can you know, once it recognized that we live in a structural system that promotes disease, but two, that we have agency and now can use tools and products and books and things like yours. Make Change That Lasts is a fabulous book. Everybody definitely gotta get it. It's out. Nine simple ways to break free from habits that hold you back.

I mean, you know, I think I think there's so much pain that people suffer and shame, and we have such a culture of blame. And I think I think I think I something I'd like you to dig in and address because right now what's happening is as as the the threat to the food industry is coming from the current American administration, they're freaking out. And they're coming out with their talking points, And they are very clear. This is discriminatory to tell people not to eat ultra processed food. It prevents them from getting access to affordable food that is safe, that is shelf stable, that they can prepare easily, that's convenient, that it's really about taking away people's choice to not give them that.

It's all about personal agency and it's a bunch of propaganda to justify them continuing with what they're doing without actually the the public actually having the ability to understand that they're being manipulated by these messages. And the truth is, when you when you do the things that you write about in your book, I wanna go through more of them, you to have the agency and the sense that you can be the CEO of your health and that you have to really listen to your inner signals to guide you and not be kind of manipulated by the propaganda out there, both from the food industry and the medical system.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee
And the way to not get manipulated by it on an individual level is to learn to trust yourself.

BJ Fogg
Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee
Right? Because if it's always about what are you hearing outside this external noise, you're going to get confused. You're gonna get confused by maybe what the food industry is saying. You're gonna get confused by experts who have different opinions. So if you, for example, for ten days just eat whole foods, Let's say you're struggling with it and you know this full well mark and you've written books on this, if for ten days you cut out all those ultra processed foods and you just eat whole foods in whichever form you want to that, you know, minimally processed pretty close to how they found in their natural form, you are going to feel like a different person.

It is still one of the most impactful things that I could do with a patient is just for two weeks, you find it hard. Okay, let's find the right two weeks or ten days. Let's clear out the cupboards. Let's make sure you've got a plan. You don't have many social engagements, whatever it is, do it for two weeks and then come back and tell me how you feel.

If you, as most people do, feel more energy, more vitality, you're sleeping better, your skin is better, your relationships are often better. This is what people don't realize. It's not just about that weight. It's the whole being. Yeah.

When you're healthy and

Dr. Mark Hyman
luminous and light and free and happy.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee
Yeah. You're less reactive. All these things are different. Then you're better equipped to go into the world and you can hear what your friends have to say or the media have to say. But you have this inner knowing that, yeah, I know what.

Because the truth is some of us, some of people listening now will go, look, I can't really influence the governments right now. You may argue that you can through your choices, of course, right through where you spend your dollars, your pounds. Use voice, call

Dr. Mark Hyman
your cockpit, calling your senators. You care about these issues. You don't wanna be poisoned anymore.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee
But but I would also argue, Mark, that we're better able to change the world when we are able to look after ourselves.

BJ Fogg
If you focus on new habits that you want, there's a way to design them into your life and that's what Tiny Habits is all about. That's what the book's all about. And so the book is doing two things at once. Number one, it's presenting an absolutely new way of thinking about how behavior works, a new model and a new set of models. Which I think is really groundbreaking.

I think it's, behavior model is a big deal. And then it's also telling people how to apply this in a really easy way in their everyday lives. So I'm writing the book, I was trying to do both at once and I hope it's easy. You did, it's very

Dr. Mark Hyman
good, but you know, you you talk about what's different about it. And other behavior change models have been studied. And it's it's one of the banes of existence. You know, if you're if you're if you go to your doctor, and he gives you a prescription, there's only a fifty percent chance that you'll fill it. And if you fill it, there's probably a fifty percent chance that you'll take it.

And and so doctors do all these great things. Unless you're a surgeon, you have the patient lying unconscious on the table, you can do whatever you want to them. You know, to get patients to do what you think is right for their health or what you think will help them, whether it's take a pill. I mean, taking a pill is pretty easy, right? Forget eating better, exercising, meditating, getting eight hours of sleep, building your social network, relationships, you know, all those things are so challenging and it is why we're seeing this incredible global epidemic of chronic illness.

BJ Fogg
Yeah, well right now there are two medical doctors who are part of my boot camp this month and one of them is from Ireland and he after class three I think or after class two he emailed me and said Vijay I now see for the last twenty years I've been doing this exactly wrong and I felt kind of bad. But also, he is creating a behavior change program for his patients and other physicians. So now he can do it right. One of the systematic problems is focusing people or yourself on something abstract like, oh, I got to exercise. That's an abstract thing.

It's not a behavior. We'll often call those things behaviors, but they're abstraction. And then the next thing that goes wrong is people think, I just need to motivate myself. That combination of trying to motivate yourself towards something abstract does not work very well at all, other than thinking your own behavior as somebody else's. In fact, with this is kind of an oversimplification, but in my work in Tiny Habits, rather than motivating the abstraction, makes something very specific really easy.

So that So

Dr. Mark Hyman
I do three jumping jacks, right?

BJ Fogg
Yeah, and make it really easy to do. And so you're not worried about motivation and you know exactly what the behavior is. One of the differences between and I think this doctor, this would be one of the issues. An expert when you say, eat more leafy greens, an expert in his or her mind knows what that means. But an amateur might go, I don't know what that means.

Grass, egress. So experts that are prescribing like, hey, you need to change your diet, eat more leaky grains. They're not understanding that perhaps their patients are totally confused. So instead they need to be very, very specific. Here's what I want you to do.

Eat bok choy and broccoli and

Dr. Mark Hyman
Have 17 leaves of kale.

BJ Fogg
Yes, every evening and steam it or saute it

Dr. Mark Hyman
Put it this way, right.

BJ Fogg
So really it's what is exactly the behavior and here's how to do it. And that is a much more successful approach than

Dr. Mark Hyman
most Geez, well, no wonder we have such a problem, because all doctors say is eat less and exercise more and lose weight. There's lots of that. I'm working so well.

BJ Fogg
I don't know if you wanna go that I'm gonna go here and you can change it if you want but just everyday people don't even have the right guidance. I mean, most people if I were to walk on the street and say, oh, how do you lose weight? I would wager 90% plus would say, oh I just have to exercise more. And that's the youngest, you know that's what

Dr. Mark Hyman
people Which is actually a false idea, right?

BJ Fogg
Right and so people, so they're like, oh, if I only could get myself to exercise more, could lose weight. Well, they're headed in the wrong direction. They haven't been given the right behavior, which is mostly nutrition behaviors as you know, and the right way to make those into habits. So there is and why that idea that exercise is a key to weight loss, why that keeps living on and on? I have no idea.

Dr. Mark Hyman
I'll tell you why. Why

BJ Fogg
is that so persistent?

Dr. Mark Hyman
Well, it's, the mantra of the government and the food industry is calories in calories out is a secret to weight loss. And it has nothing to do with nutritional quality. And so it doesn't matter whether you have a soda or broccoli, as long as they're the same calories, it's the same amount of energy. And if you can exert more exercise to expend that energy, as long as you're in calorie balance, you'll stay the same weight. If you're exercising more than the calories you're taking in, you'll lose weight.

But scientifically, that's just not true, because all calories are not the same. And some calories like sugar and starch actually cause you to spike insulin, which makes you store fat. So I've written about 16 books on this. But it's it's really extraordinary. One of the things I read in your book that I really liked, and I use all the time, which is, you know, people internalize this message of it's it's your fault.

It's your fault you don't exercise. It's your fault that you're overweight. Shame on you. But you're you said I'm here to say it isn't your fault. And changing your behavior isn't as hard as you think.

And I think that's really an essential message because people are stuck in this idea of self loathing, self hate, and discouragement because they're not having the willpower, the motivation, and they beat themselves up about it. How do you address that with people?

BJ Fogg
I didn't understand that's where everyday people are until about coaching. It was probably 2,000 or 3,000 people. This would be 2011.

Dr. Mark Hyman
You're a slow learner.

BJ Fogg
I was in my little bubble of Stanford and high achievers and CrossFit type people. I'm in this very selected, selective kind of world, and I'm coaching you know 300 people a week about in Tiny Habits through email, but there's email exchanges, and about two three thousand people in, somebody wrote me and she said oh my gosh BJ thanks to you I now see that I've enjoyed a lifetime of self trash talk and in tiny habits what we do is we teach people say good for me and feel successful embrace it and so she wrote to thank me She says this, boom has changed my life. And I paused. This was a huge moment for me Mark. It's like that is where people are really at.

And then I started reading all the emails and my interactions with them were different. And I was like, people they have so many ways to say I did a bad job. I'm insufficient. I lack willpower which is, and that's why in the book when I say that that was in some ways a little bit risky because it's just inviting a lot of criticism but it's true and it's accurate. And so to say, look, if you haven't changed it's not your fault.

You just didn't have the right way to do it yet.

Dr. Mark Hyman
That's right.

BJ Fogg
Now you do. Welcome to tiny habits. Now you do and now you can do it. And it's not about willpower or discipline. It's about design.

You design new habits into your life. You don't force them or you don't use discipline, motivation or willpower. It's a design challenge, not a test of somebody's character.

Dr. Mark Hyman
I think that's so important to say that because I see this all the time as a doctor, people beat themselves up, they trash talk, they have self loathing, they get discouraged. And I just love this part of your book, 100 ways to celebrate and feel shine. You have like, hundred ways to celebrate yourself, and to celebrate the little successes, and the tiny habits, and builds and builds on a positive feedback loop. I think that's a really key part of behavior change is these positive feedback loops. So it's like, oh, by the time I could do 10 pushups and I wasn't in pain for a week, and my chest muscles, I was like, this is fun.

And then I wanna do more. And it's like, and it's just I felt good and I want to do more. So I think there's these little tiny strategies you have throughout the book that really help people to break free from some of these really discouraging and debilitating beliefs about themselves that limit themselves in their lives, that limit themselves from actually doing the things they want to do. And it's so important. And you talk about this idea of behavior design.

So it's not just random. You're actually thinking about this sort of, you know, if you want to do certain things, like if you wanna, I don't know, build a house, you have to put the foundation in, you have to put the framing in, you have to put the like there's a design feature of how to get things to work. And we've been going about it all wrong when it comes to behavior change, which is why we're not changing our behaviors at a scale that we need to. Because many of the problems we're facing in our society are behavior change problems. And you're pointing this out so well.

So So what are the other strategies that aren't working that people do that Aren't working. Yeah, because I think it's helpful if you understand, you've talked about this model, it seems pretty obvious. You have a motivation to do something, you have the ability to do it and you have a trigger or a prompt. And that seems like a very simple model and it is, it works. I've used it.

But on the other hand, is pushing against people that is limiting them? Well,

BJ Fogg
we talked about the idea of people even focusing on the wrong thing. Like if your aspiration is weight loss and you think it's about walking on the treadmill at the gym, focus on the wrong behavior. So that's one of the systematic problems. Another one of the problems is the idea that you set this really lofty goal, and then you just have to keep yourself motivated toward that lofty goal. Now in my work, I don't use the word goal.

In fact, in the book, I talk about why I think it's a bad idea to use that word.

Dr. Mark Hyman
Are you gonna put a whole bunch of goal setting people out of business? I know, well Make their lives out of helping people set goals.

BJ Fogg
Not totally opposed to the goal thing, but it's not a winning strategy. The fact that I've even written down a goal and I was like, now I'm gonna just keep myself motivated toward this goal. Like it's hard to do. You're not facing the reality that your motivation is gonna shift over time. The idea, and we can come back to that if you want.

So the goal setting people don't get super upset with me. I break it into aspirations and outcomes. So there's a type of goal that's an aspiration, there's a type of goal that's an outcome. So rather than using an ambiguous word because I'm really big on precision. Let's use when it's an aspiration like earlier Mark you said you wanted to get stronger.

That's an aspiration. And then you find behaviors, specific behaviors that will take you there. An outcome might be somebody might say, wow, I wanna lose 20 pounds. That's an outcome. Then you find specific behaviors that will take you there.

So in either case you start with what you want to achieve. This is part of the system in the book and then you figure out what behaviors are the right ones for you to take you there. So you don't guess at the behaviors. There's a way to figure out when the best behaviors for you. You either did that aspiration or the outcome.

And you, I'll go to a slightly different but another one of the misleading ideas is that repetition creates the habit. So if you can just keep yourself doing the behavior it'll become a habit. And that's not true at all when you look at what the research. So the people that are advocating this and there are very popular books and there's a lot of the culture that's saying repetition creates habits and that's not true. You're being misled by those books and that thing when you look at the research that most people cite it shows that repetition correlates the strength of habit.

It gives no evidence whatsoever that repetition causes the habit to form. So the correction in my book what I try to make very clear is it's emotions that create the habits. So that's one of the myth busters in the book. Other things include like you have to set a goal.

Dr. Mark Hyman
Why doesn't repetition cause habit change?

BJ Fogg
Well, I have quite a long mean, so I'm training the tiny habits coaches we go through this thoroughly. And the reason, I mean, the question really is why do people think it creates habit change? Right? That's really the question. Why do people think that?

Well, because they've been told that for years. So when you look at the research, it does not say that.

Dr. Mark Hyman
So I'll give you an example, for me, just to be a little devil's advocate, I had back surgery recently and I really, you know, don't like swimming long distances. I never really done it. I love swimming, but I just like go out for

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee
a little bit. But I

Dr. Mark Hyman
had to like, you know, swim for half an hour. And you know, at first I was like, and oh, it's so far and I have to swim back and because I swim in the lake and it's like, it was it was a I was resistant to it, but I knew I had to do it because I couldn't do anything else. But but over time, the more I did it, now I look forward to it. And now I can do it and I don't have that mental resistance that I have.

BJ Fogg
Yeah. And the way to think about that, it wasn't a function of repetition. It was a function of your feeling successful. You're seeing progress. Right?

Okay. So notice it resulted like if you had to do the swimming and you never felt successful, would not have eventually once you healed, you would not have created a habit out of that.

Dr. Mark Hyman
Okay. All right.

BJ Fogg
So people are first they're misleading you in these books and blogs. But when people think that repetition is the key to creating habits, they think, oh, I've got a and one of the memes is that sixty six days. Not true, but that's what's out there. So they think, Okay, in order to create an exercise habit, I have to repeat it sixty six days. Oh, I don't have time for that.

I'm going to wait till I have time. They look at behavior changes, something to dread, something to endure, something that might be painful and none of those things is helpful. Instead, you can change behavior by feeling like happy and joyous. Now, when you look at what has worked, like your example is a great one, Mark, when it has worked, what will always be true is that there was an emotional component where you felt more successful or it relieved some negative emotion.

Dr. Mark Hyman
Yeah, or pain or Right,

Dr. Mark Hyman
that's great.

BJ Fogg
That's what it is. And so in tiny habits, we don't leave that to chance. I mean, I have a chapter that's like emotions, great habits. And then we give in the book specific techniques and the coaches that coach people in tiny habits help people find exactly what techniques do you use so you can feel that emotion at exactly the right time. You can wire in habits really really quickly and the better you are at feeling that emotion, that positive emotion on demand, the better you will be at wiring and habits.

Dr. Mark Hyman
So that's an interesting piece. It's the b, which is behavior equals motivation, ability, and prompt, but there's also the emotion in there.

BJ Fogg
Yeah, yeah, well, let me sketch it out. So when I say behavior, I mean all types of behavior. Habit is a subset. So within like if I were drawing a diagram within the big circle that is behavior. Motivation ability prompt applies to all behavior types.

It applies to habits. It applies to stopping behaviors. It applies to one time behaviors. It applies to temporary behaviors like taking an antibiotic. Then when you get down to the subset of habits, those are behaviors you do quite automatically.

Those are different than the other types of behaviors. What creates the automaticity is the emotion. So the positive feedback, the emotion, I have people focus on the emotion of success, the feeling of success. That's what makes that behavior automatic and puts it in the category of what we call habit.

Dr. Mark Hyman
Powerful. And you talk about how this starts to change people's identity, their way they think about themselves and see themselves.

Dr. Mark Hyman
I mean,

Dr. Mark Hyman
tell us more how that happens.

BJ Fogg
I can't say it's this is the magic because I'm a scientist, but this is awesome. What happens and we see this in our data week after week is when people do something small and feel successful about it like they're flossing one tooth or doing two pushups or steaming broccoli for dinner. That feeling of success also changes how they think about themselves. Oh, I'm the kind of person who can take care of my teeth. I'm the kind of person that eats steamed vegetables.

So don't change their identity by like going and listen to motivational talk, at least in Tiny Habits, they change because they see evidence that they are changing and they're seeing the effects of that. And that identity shift can happen really quickly. We see a lot of evidence that happens within five days and it seems to be a function of people seeing evidence and feeling successful in their quest to change. And it doesn't have to be like running a marathon.

Dr. Mark Hyman
So it's like a feedback loop. It's a positive feedback loop.

BJ Fogg
Yeah, and when people acknowledge that and see that and part of the program and part of the book is like, hey, look, recognize you are succeeding it might be tiny but you're still changing that then shifts people away from the self trash talk, the thinking that they don't have enough willpower to seeing themselves in a whole new light and the phrases that come back to us as like I now say I'm the kind of person who can change, I can follow through, I can achieve whatever goal I have and it goes on and on.

Dr. Mark Hyman
So it's a positive feedback loop.

BJ Fogg
Yeah, yeah. And I don't talk about it exactly in those words as positive feedback, but that's exactly what it is. I mean, talk about his emotions and but it is this positive feedback that affirms you're succeeding. So it's the feeling of success that wires in the habit and also motivates you to continue. So it has those two functions.

Dr. Mark Hyman
If you love this podcast, please share it with someone else you think would also enjoy it. You can find me on all social media channels at Doctor Mark Hyman. Please reach out. I'd love to hear your comments and questions. Don't forget to rate, review, and subscribe to the doctor Hyman show wherever you get your podcasts.

And don't forget to check out my YouTube channel at Doctor Mark Hyman for video versions of this podcast and more. Thank you so much again for tuning in. We'll see you next time on The Doctor Hyman show. This podcast is separate from my clinical practice at the Ultra Wellness Center, my work at Cleveland Clinic, and Function Health where I am chief medical officer. This podcast represents my opinions and my guests' opinions.

Neither myself nor the podcast endorses the views or statements of my guests. This podcast is for educational purposes only and is not a substitute for professional care by a doctor or other qualified medical professional. This podcast is provided with the understanding that it does not constitute medical or other professional advice or services. If you're looking for help in your journey, please seek out a qualified medical practitioner. And if you're looking for a functional medicine practitioner, visit my clinic, the Ultra Wellness Center at UltraWellnessCenter.com, and request to become a patient.

It's important to have someone in your corner who is a trained, licensed health care practitioner and can help you make changes, especially when it comes to your health. This podcast is free as part of my mission to bring practical ways of improving health to the public. So I'd like to express gratitude to sponsors that made today's podcast possible. Thanks so much again for listening.