Well, if that’s the case, then I’m just, I’m just screwed, like I’m addicted to food. It’s not, it’s not me, it’s not my behavior’s. Nothing I can do. It’s that I’m actually just addicted. And, hello my friends, and welcome back to not another mindset show. I’m your host, Dr. Kasey Jo. My goal with this podcast is to take the science of mindset and behavior change and distill it down into actionable takeaways for you.

Together we’re gonna unpack research around motivations, self-sabotage, willpower, and so much more. And we’re going to take all of that and translate it into. Strategies you can immediately apply to your health, fitness, relationships, business, marketing clients, all of the things. But just to be clear, it’s not all serious and sciencey around here.

We’re gonna have a ton of fun too, and I’m so excited to share all of this with you. All right, let’s go ahead and get into the episode. Hello my friends, and welcome back to not another mindset show today. I’m gonna break down a study with you all. I was actually just on my Instagram stories, talking about how sometimes it takes me 15 to 20 minutes to outline a podcast and then jump on and record for 20 to 30 minutes.

This one took me a lot longer, and a lot of these episodes take a lot longer, especially if I’m really getting into the weeds and sourcing different. Pieces of research because it’s not just me going onto Google Scholar and looking for a paper and then saying, oh, according to this paper, blah, blah, blah.

I’m actually sitting down and reading through every single study. Putting my PhD knowledge to use and actually working my way through it, assessing the methodology, making sure it’s something that I actually want to bring to you guys. I’ve mentioned this before, but there’s been times where I have found a study pinned it to go make content or a podcast episode up.

Go through it, read it. Make notes on it and then decide, you know what? I don’t really love how this study was done, or, I don’t really think the purpose of this study is exactly how I want to, something that I want to share with you guys that makes the most sense for you, that’s really tangible for you.

So sometimes I’m just spending a ton of time and doing nothing with any of it. So with that said, I found this study. Spend some time with it, read through it. Knew right away that it was at least coming from a reputable source reminder. Just because research is published or a study is published, doesn’t immediately mean that the scientific rigor is there.

It could be in a very, very low level journal. The methods could be not so fabulous. Um. So not to sit here and tell you that you should not trust any research studies. That’s not, not the point here. But this study was from Nature’s Scientific Reports Journal. So many of you have heard of the Journal Nature before.

It’s really big journal, and it’s a really, really big deal if you get your research published in there because they are very, very strict with what they allow in that journal. So. This study focuses on the somewhat controversial notion. I would say that obesity might be. An addictive disorder similar to like substance abuse.

So as you can imagine, when I saw a study about this, it very much caught my attention, especially because researchers used EEG imaging, like neuroimaging for this study to see brain activity. It wasn’t just based on behavior or self-report data. There is some. There’s a measurement scale that’s used in, in this study, which I will get into, but the thing that they were really looking at and comparing at the end was EEG data, which is literally, you know, put on the cap on your head and the electrodes are paying attention.

The electrodes are paying attention. The way that I’m even describing this right now, can you tell I’m not a neuroscientist? The electrodes on the, the scalps of these participants. Was measuring the brain activity and that’s what they were, um, that data is what they were using to compare, so. You’ve heard before this idea that sugar is just as addictive as cocaine, or, I think I’ve even heard before that sugar’s more addictive than cocaine, and although both substances do activate the brain’s rewards circuitry and leads to overall just like reinforcement of the behavior.

Because of that, there is a big. Big difference between the addictive potency, we’ll say, of cocaine compared to sugar. I can’t not laugh because to me I’m like, that’s ridiculous. In no way, shape, or form would tho would sugar be more addictive than cocaine? But I know you’ve heard it before. I don’t know if that.

A phrase, it’s not really a phrase, just belief is, is still circulating at this point, but definitely heard it before. Um, and you know, sugar can trigger cravings and compulsive eating, but it does not. Meet the clinical criteria when it comes to addiction, just to make that clear. But this is not an episode about sugar and cocaine, though that would be quite interesting.

Instead, I do wanna get into the study that talks about obesity being similar potentially to other forms of addiction. So, okay, I have my notes here so I can walk through this study and not, and not tell you the incorrect information. And unfortunately I do not have the type of brain where I can just like read something once and then tell you 20 healthy, normal weight adults and 46 obese participants were included in the study.

Like these are things that I cannot store in my brain. I’m sorry. So, okay. Yeah. We had 20 healthy, normal weight adults and 46 obese participants overall in this study. And researchers did recruit both obese and lean individuals as well as those with alcohol addiction to compare brain activity using the EEG technology.

And we also have, I mentioned this before, that there are some like measures that were used, the Yale Food Addiction Scale. Was completed by all of the participants in this study to identify if they have any food addiction traits. And this measure, the Yale Food Addiction Scale, they abbreviated as YAS, I dunno, we’re gonna call it the Food Addiction Scale.

Um, it was originally created by adapting criteria for the DSM five, which was traditionally used to. Diagnose substance dependence. So they’re pulling from an addiction scale for substances and applying it to the food addiction space. And the questions that were included, ’cause I thought I wanted to pull these for you guys specifically.

’cause I thought you might be interested, especially if you are a coach and you might be concerned that you have a client who is addicted to food. Like it’s, this is going beyond. Issues of self-control or willpower or motivation and there like might be something else going on. So some of those questions to assess the behaviors and whether or not someone is food addicted, are looking at consuming food in large amounts over a long period of time.

More than intended persistent desire or unsuccessful efforts to cut down on eating. I thought that that was interesting ’cause I’m like, isn’t that a lot of people? But here, but we’ll get into why this still works. Uh, spending a lot of time obtaining, using, or recovering from the effects of food, giving up important social, occupational or recreational activities due to eating.

And I do. Touchpoint on that one. Quickly underline highlight. This is something I talk to my students a lot about in the health mindset coaching certification because we are talking about psychology and mindset and behavior change in all of these aspects, and every single cohort with my students and all of the time, I even, I have a, a podcast episode on this as well.

We talk about where do we draw the line as coaches before we need to refer out to a mental health professional. And a rule of thumb I often give to my students. Obviously there’s other variables around other things to consider here, but if you’re noticing, for example, you have a client who is really, really attached to what the scale.

Tells them every single morning, so much so that it impacts the rest of their day. They can’t stop thinking about it. It makes them want to eat less. They have a shorter fuse with their family members. It’s really, really impacting their day-to-day life. To me, rule of thumb, sort of like a red flag. This is likely out of your scope of practice.

So this. Piece of giving up social, occupational, or recreational activities due to eating. That’s kind of parallel to the example that I was just giving that in that eating is causing someone to give up these important other events in their life because of it. So it’s impacting their day-to-day life.

And the last one on here that I have as an example is continuing to eat despite knowing the physical or psychological harm it causes. So if you’re a coach and noticing any of these traits in a client, there’s a good chance you need to refer out to a professional in this area. But this is not an episode.

This is not an episode. To encourage coaches, to help people who are struggling with an addiction to food. Okay? Instead, maybe some warning signs, some things to pay attention to. And ultimately, I just wanted to share this interesting research with you. Okay? So, okay, I, I know I was gonna talk about the scoring of this.

Assessment Because if someone just had, for instance, what was the one that I, that I mentioned? Um, a persistent desire, unsuccessful efforts to cut down on eating. Like, like I said, that’s a lot of people. It’s not enough to just have that. Remember, this is a measure with many, many points that people are going through, and then there’s a scoring system at the end.

So participants in the study were then categorized based on their scoring in this measure. So those with higher scores, meeting criteria for three or more symptoms of addiction along with. Significant impairment or distress were identified as having food addiction. So that’s how they use that measurement skill and other information to determine whether or not this person might be suffering from addiction level food issues, we’ll call it, for lack of a better phrase.

This allowed the researchers to differentiate between those in the study who were considered food addicted and those who were not food addicted. So one thing to note here is that researchers in this study were primarily focused on understanding food addiction within the context of obesity. And actually, I kind of went a little, little side tangent very quickly.

Very brief. I’ll come back. Is that so much of the research on health behaviors is going to be focused on obesity or weight loss that you find, and I actually like heard this from someone else recently talking about how research when it comes to mindset and behavior change for health and fitness is very weight centric and.

That, that is like problematic. And there’s other things that we need to focus on for when it comes to health behaviors and looking at mindset and all of this stuff beyond just weight loss. And this is like something we talk about all the time, like weight loss is fabulous if you, if you need to lose weight to be healthier, like, yeah, let’s, let’s work on that.

But there’s so many other things that are important too, obviously when it comes to health and fitness goals. But here’s the thing. In research land, you need money in order to do research and in order to get money, you have to apply for grants. So those grants are going to give money to researchers who are trying to answer a question, solve a greater, bigger problem in the world.

And if you’re just out there saying, Hey, I would like some money because I’m curious about. Strength training and mindset because strength training is really good for you and more people need to strength train, blah, blah, blah. Maybe you’d be successful somewhere, but it’s, it’s hard. And like I’m saying this from experience, that you usually have to tie your hypotheses, your research questions to a larger issue that you are then going to be contributing to.

With this research in order to get funding to actually do it. So lots and lots of research that is related to health behaviors is going to tie back to obesity D and weight loss, because that is a larger global issue that continues to need to be addressed. So that’s my little side tangent. If you, maybe you’re.

This person who goes and looks for research in this area and you’re like, God, why is everything about obesity and weight loss? Like I’m just trying to find some more research and understand better what I can do for my like normal weight clients to help them get even healthier. My he clients to help them continue to improve themselves.

It’s, it’s harder to find because it’s harder to get funding for. Okay. Massive side tangent. Coming back this study. Is one of those studies that focused on understanding food addiction within the obesity context. And they compared obese participants with high food addiction scores to those with low food addiction scores.

So after they went through this measurement and got their scoring, all the participants went, underwent the EEG assessments. This is where we’re looking at the brain activity and. Really we’re focusing on the brain regions that are associated with addiction. So in order to do that, they went through this Food Q reactivity task where essentially while wearing the EEG cap.

Remember the electrodes on their scalp? They were shown a series of images that included palatable foods like sweets and savory snacks, and then also more neutral food, not food images, just neutral IMA images in general, like flowers, for instance, and they were instructed to press a button. When a target image appeared, so they were just looking for a certain image and they had to press it when they saw it, it was just to make sure that they were paying attention to every single image that was showing up.

And then the data was collected while the participants engaged in the chat and the tasks, and that provided insights into what their brain activity really looked like. So that was, that’s kind of like the study setup and what they were doing, what they were looking for. Let’s get into the results. Drum roll please.

Comparing obese, non-food addicted and food addicted participants. Those who were obese with food addiction showed more brain activity in areas related to reward and impulse control. Especially when they were exposed to food cues specifically, and that is compared to those without food addiction. And remember, we classified whether or not they were food addicted based on going through that measurement criteria at the beginning.

And then we look at how there were similarities in brain areas activated in both food and alcohol addiction. So remember we had some participants in the study that are addicted to alcohol and now researchers were like, okay, well what’s the difference between these people who are addicted to alcohol and now these people that we have found that are food addicted?

And there was a clear indication that there’s shared pathways and how the brain processes these addictions. However, ’cause I don’t want you to just like. Stop the podcast here and take that home with you. There were also some distinct patterns that are unique to each type of addiction, so it’s not enough for us to just say, okay, clearly we’re seeing some similarities in brain activity between those who are addicted to food and those who are addicted to alcohol, because there are distinct patterns still that are unique to either of those as well.

So this highlights that there are overlaps, but the neural processes are not identical. Okay? So there’s nuance here. Big surprise, just like with everything. So this study really just showcases the importance of viewing obesity as not just a physical condition. But as a really complex interplay between the brain and behaviors, and of course I can’t, I can’t have any episode where I don’t mention mindset.

Right. So something that came up for me when I was reading through this and preparing for the podcast episode is. If we start to describe obesity as food addiction, this feels very similar to when the American Medical Association in 2013, the fact that I know these things just living in the back of my brain.

In 2013, the American Medical Association classified obesity as a disease and some of the. A research that was done at the Mindset Lab at N NC State. It’s where I went and did my PhD. This is what intrigued me to do my PhD there is that they were looking at, when we start telling people that obesity is a disease.

What does that mean for their mindset and then downstream effects for their actual behaviors? And I did a whole podcast episode on this. It is like episode 19. I’ll make sure that’s linked in the show notes so you guys can listen to me walk through that research more specifically. But sort of quick recap, spark notes.

I’m like, now I’m wondering like, people who are like in Gen Z, do you even know what SparkNotes are? Is that, are those still, is that still a thing? I don’t know. Um, the SparkNotes, the recap here is that when we label obesity as a disease, that can feel more fixed mindset coded for people because they hear, I have a disease and that doesn’t feel like something I can change.

It’s just something that I have, I just have to live with it type of thing. So. Because of that, if you feel like your obesity diagnosis is something that you can’t change, do you think you’re gonna really try hard to get to the gym multiple times a week and prep healthy meals and lose weight and do all of those things?

Probably not, because what’s the point? If you feel like it’s not changeable at the end of the day, and that is the danger of having a fixed mindset in these areas. So thinking about. Labeling. Obesity as an addiction kind of feels like the same thing. I guess it is. Like it’s very dependent on the person, right?

Like one person may hear, oh, this is just an addiction. Well, that means I can go to something like AA and figure out how to manage it, and I don’t have to be stuck with this forever. But other people might go, oh wow, this is, I’m addicted to food and that’s why I’m struggling with my weight and have been for so long.

Well, if that’s the case, then I’m just, I’m just screwed. Like I’m addicted to food. It’s not, it’s not me, it’s not my behavior. It’s nothing I can do. It’s that I’m actually just addicted. And that’s a more fixed mindset way of looking at it. ’cause again, it feels unchangeable and not like something that you have control over.

What we believe things to be impacts our behaviors. How we think about things will lead to us doing or not doing something, and that’s what I’m getting at here. So whether it’s disease or addiction, does that mean we’re leading a fixed mindset narrative that. This is unchangeable for you, and therefore, if you think it’s unchangeable, then you’re not going to actually participate in these healthy behaviors.

It could lead to feelings of helplessness or just like overall resignation, thinking that efforts to change the behavior or improve your health are just pointless. That’s a problem, right? That’s a problem. So, but regardless of how obesity is classified or how it’s discussed as an addiction, as disease, as anything, it’s important to just consider how that impacts people’s decisions to participate in health behaviors or not because of how they’re viewing what it is that they’re dealing with.

So, long story short. This very, very interesting research study shows us that there are some similarities to those who are addicted to alcohol and those who are addicted to food and neural pathways could be somewhat similar, but there are some distinct properties there still. So it’s not, cannot leave this episode and say that being addicted to alcohol is the same as being addicted to food.

And they look the same. And it’s the same in your brain and it’s, there are similarities, but it is not the exact same. And also let us. Be careful with how we are labeling things and describing things to our clients and to ourselves, and pay attention to how your beliefs are actually impacting your behaviors.

All right, my friends going to wrap it up there. I hope you enjoy this episode. Let me know if you want me to do some more research breakdowns. I have a lot of fun with it. It also, it forces me to get out there and take some time to sift through recent research in the last, even like five to 10 years or more recent than that, and spend some time there because I am so busy as we all are with so many other.

Aspects of my business that sometimes I can kind of get away from this stuff, which I really love to do. I actually, I have this dream. At some point, I will have one full workday every single week where nobody talks to me. Everyone leaves me alone. I’m not even gonna open my email inbox and just spend time with the research and create content and come up with ideas and stay up to date on what’s going on so I can bring it back to you guys.

So. Anyway, not that, not that you asked, but there you have it. There’s a, there’s a little dream of mine, but I’m gonna leave it there. I appreciate you guys so much, and thank you. Thank you, thank you. Thank you for taking some of your own precious time out of your day to tune in and. I look forward to seeing you next week, and that’s a wrap for today’s episode of Not Another Mindset show.

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I’ll see you next time.