Episode: 77

How to Hack Hunger and Cravings Using Science With a Doctor Trained at Harvard, Columbia, and Cornell

with Dr. Amy Shah, MD

Understand the science of cravings.

Why you have them
How to tell the difference between a craving and actual hunger
How to eat your way to better health and a happier life

Dr. Amy Shah is a double-board certified medical doctor with training from Cornell, Harvard, and Columbia Universities and an expert on intermittent fasting, hormones, and food cravings.

Let Dr. Amy empower you to live a more vibrant, fulfilled, and energized life.

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We can save ourselves, we can change our mood, we can change our lifespan. We can change how we come into this world every day. We have the power and it takes three days.

Dr. Amy Shah, MD

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Transcript

Mel Robbins (00:00:03):

These are the bane of my existence. Oh my God. Today you and I are going to get real about cravings, appetite, hunger, how tore in the emotional eating, you're finished with dinner, you promise yourself you're not going to eat something and all of a sudden, boom, you got to have ice cream. What is that about? Well, today we're going to dig deep into the science you have been asking for Dr. Amy Shah to come on the show. Hey, it's your friend Mel, and welcome to the Mel Robbins Podcast. Okay. Today, you and I are going to get real about cravings, appetite, hunger, how to reign in the emotional eating. For me personally, I've got a bag here. These potato chips, these are black truffle potato chips that I'm holding right now. These are the bane of my existence. Oh my God, my kids have introduced me to these things. I have to tell you, I have this insane craving for black truffle potato chips every single day around two o'clock in the afternoon.

(00:01:17):

I can plow through an entire bag of these things. I don't even know if I'm hungry or not. I just, all of a sudden, boom, two o'clock hits, I have to have a potato chip. And I don't know if you've ever been stuck in that cycle of yo-yo dieting or you're finished with dinner. You promise yourself you're not going to eat something and all of a sudden, boom, you got to have ice cream. What is that about? Well, today we're going to dig deep into the science. Dr. Amy Shah is a double board certified doctor. She received her training from Cornell. She did a residency at Harvard and a fellowship at Columbia. She's an expert on intermittent fasting, food allergies, hormones, and you guessed it, hunger, cravings, appetite. In fact, you have been asking for Dr. Amy Shah to come on the show, her latest book, I'm so effing Hungry, why We Crave What We Crave and What to do about it. Dr. Amy Shah's here to tell us what to do about it. Dr. Amy, it is such a pleasure to meet you.

Dr. Amy Shah (00:02:19):

Such a pleasure to be here and to meet you.

Mel Robbins (00:02:21):

One of the reasons why I wanted to talk to you, Dr. Amy, because there's a lot of noise on TikTok, there's a lot of noise on social media. There are a lot of wellness experts that got themselves in shape and they have a lot of important things to say. But you are a licensed and trained nutritionist with Ivy League degrees, and you're also a medical doctor, and you understand not just nutrition as a lifestyle, but you understand nutrition and the science of nutrition. And so when I'm listening to somebody who's a wellness expert who has figured this out in their life, I listen to them differently than I listened to a medical doctor who is figuring this out in her own life, who is also a nutritionist and understands it from the inside out. And so I'm thrilled that you're here and I want to start with. So thank you. Thank you. You're welcome. I want to start with the difference between hunger and having an appetite and cravings. So we're all on the same page.

Dr. Amy Shah (00:03:32):

Great question. The simplest way to think about it, it's when you're sitting at dinner and you had this amazing dinner, appetizer, drinks, entree, and you are full, you're ready, you're ready to go. And the waiter comes out and says, actually, you know what? We have these special desserts that we just made tonight, and they are out of this world. And everyone looks at each other and they're like, well, we're full, but we really want that dessert. That's cravings. That's not hunger. You're no longer hungry.

(00:04:06):

You're actually pretty full, extra full, but you are working on that cravings pathway and that cravings pathway is super strong. It's the same cravings pathway that alcohol uses, drugs, sugar, so desserts. So cravings is a dopamine pathway, whereas hunger is your natural need to get nutrients, hunger. Actually, you can go for many days, even a month without food.

Mel Robbins (00:04:40):

A month.

Dr. Amy Shah (00:04:41):

Yes, people fast for a month. From my background, my family is Jane, and they fast for long periods of time, and there is a fasting month where you actually eat nothing and just drink water. So our hunger signals are reminders to eat because your body does not want you to go a full month without remembering to eat. So ghrelin, you might've heard of this hunger hormone. It's released to remind us to eat. So that same time, every day you get hungry, you get reminded to eat, and your ghrelin comes and goes. So some people just aren't hungry in the morning. Some people get very hungry at night no matter what they've eaten all day because of that ghrelin cycling. So if you understand that it's a cycle, it's a reminder. You don't always have to take that reminder, but it's a reminder. So if you need food, you should get it. So what is appetite? Appetite is the overall interest in food. Have you ever seen a dog when they're sick, they're just not interested. Their appetite is dampened. It will dampen your cravings and your hunger pathways

Mel Robbins (00:05:57):

To let

Dr. Amy Shah (00:05:57):

You heal.

Mel Robbins (00:05:58):

So hunger is like this need to eat that is tied to the biological imperative to stay alive. Appetite is the desire for food. And we've all had those periods in our life where we've felt sick. I mean, my allergies are crazy right now, and I'm not that hungry.

Dr. Amy Shah (00:06:15):

Yes,

Mel Robbins (00:06:15):

Normally I would be ravenous right

Dr. Amy Shah (00:06:17):

Now.

Mel Robbins (00:06:18):

So my appetite is the correct word. I don't have much of an appetite. And then cravings, this is one of the reasons why I love your book. I'm so effing hungry so much because I've learned so much that I didn't know that you talk so much about our cravings and the eating patterns that we have that aren't healthy for us based on the brain, not based on emotion, not based on what's going on with what you just ate, but that actually there is a whole hormone cycle to this thing.

Dr. Amy Shah (00:06:52):

Oh, it's so complicated. So there was a French philosopher in 1825, John Claude Srin, and he said, show me what you eat and I'll show you who you are. And even today, that stands true. Right? Show me what you eat and I'll tell you who you are. Because our lives are dictated through food. We have now food addictions. Some of it is not our fault. A lot of it is not our fault.

Mel Robbins (00:07:23):

Yeah. You actually say that in this book that you say that you get into these sort of habits of eating unhealthy things, the pulling up at the drive-through and ordering the extra large fries and the burger on the way home from work, and then you feel like crap, and then you have a craving and then you eat something else. And that it's not your fault. How is it not your fault if you're the one putting the food in your mouth?

Dr. Amy Shah (00:07:47):

Think about it. Have you ever been to Miami? I always talk about Miami phenomenon. Okay? When you go to Miami, and the first time I went, I was in med school and I saw all the flashing lights and the people and the music and the craziness, and I was like, oh my God, my dopamine receptors were firing.

(00:08:05):

That's what happens the first time you eat a sugary food, like an ice cream or a McDonald's burger, you get a huge burst of dopamine. Then on day three of being in Miami, all of a sudden it doesn't seem loud. It doesn't seem as entertaining. You need to turn the volume up. You need to go to the club now because you are kind of used to it. You don't even feel excited or happy just from being out in the street. You actually need to turn up the volume. And so that's what's happening to us. We're having this Miami South Beach effect in our brains when we're eating all of this sweet food, these processed foods that they don't occur in nature, that dopamine explosion happening day after day after day, it lowers your you not even as happy anymore. And so the problem is you need more and more and more to get that same dopamine release. And guess what happens, Mel, on the other end,

Mel Robbins (00:09:07):

I dunno.

Dr. Amy Shah (00:09:08):

Dopamine has this weird after effect where it makes you irritable, it makes you uncomfortable, and it makes you crave that food so badly that you just want to almost make yourself not feel the pain anymore. And so dopamine has this effect on us that we'll eat it, we'll get the pleasure, but then there's that pain aspect to it

Mel Robbins (00:09:33):

Because you want it again. You want it again. There was something that you just said that really caught my attention. I've never heard anybody say this before. It's that you get the dopamine rush from eating things that are not available in nature.

Dr. Amy Shah (00:09:48):

Yeah. Can you explain that? When you eat an apple, you get the sugar, but you get water, electrolytes, antioxidants, and fiber. Most importantly, that is how sugar is made in nature. So you see a fruit tree, your dopamine pathway, we think was made to help us survive and want to find that tree with the right fruit to keep us going, to keep us agitated enough to try to look for more food just to keep us surviving. Now, take it thousands of years later, we have ultra processed foods, which I'll define for you later, that don't have any fiber, that don't have any vitamins to tell the body that you've eaten something and they pack the sugar in such a small amount of food that the explosion of dopamine you get is similar to a drug

Mel Robbins (00:10:50):

Like cocaine or being in South beach.

Dr. Amy Shah (00:10:52):

Yeah.

Mel Robbins (00:10:52):

Yes. It's like boom, boom, and then you have a drop, and then you crave the candy bar or the whatever it was that you just had. That was ultra process. So what does ultra process mean?

Dr. Amy Shah (00:11:04):

Ultrapro is really simple. If you could not make it in your kitchen or any kitchen because the ingredients are not ingredients of food, then it's ultra process. Ultra process means you cannot recreate that food in your kitchen, even if you had access to any ingredient in the world. Wow. So that's a lot of things. Doritos, kit Kats sundaes, if you think about it, we have often the option of getting the minimally processed or non-processed version, but it's often easier. It's easier. The shelf life is easier when they're in packaged foods, but the ingredients in there, we don't even know exactly what each one of them does. We just know that when you consume them at the highest quantities, you have 80% more mental health days than someone who's consuming the lowest quantities.

Mel Robbins (00:12:01):

So I want to make sure that everybody just heard that. So one of the reasons why this is so important, we're going to keep digging into the connection between your cravings and your appetite and your hunger, and how this is attached to dopamine, the rush of dopamine, the drop of dopamine, the craving cycle that you're now trapped in. But you just said that if you eat more whole naturally occurring foods, that you will be 80% better when it comes to the number of days that you are feeling good mentally. Is that true?

Dr. Amy Shah (00:12:43):

Yes.

Mel Robbins (00:12:43):

Why?

Dr. Amy Shah (00:12:44):

We are starting to understand that ultra processed foods not only make us more inflamed, which we can talk about why inflammation is bad, but it ages you. It gives you cancer, diabetes, heart disease. That's the root of all of it. It makes you sad, anxious, and it lowers your length of life. So if you look at all cause mortality, ultra processed foods will shorten your life. And yet, Mel, we live in a world where kids are eating over 70% of their diet is ultra processed.

Mel Robbins (00:13:23):

Wow. I think I got to back up a minute. And just because there's so much to learn, this book has so much research in it, and it also has so many what you call hunger hacks, which I love. And I want to start with some basic questions. You said this thing earlier, and I didn't want to interrupt you. I'm almost like embarrassed to ask this question. How do you know when you're full? It's such a

Dr. Amy Shah (00:13:47):

Good question. We've forgotten what it feels like to be hungry or be full. We're almost always just relying on external cues to tell us that. So there's various ways to feel full. So we have a couple of hormones that make us feel full. Leptin is one of them. C, CK is another one. And there's various signals that they give our brain mostly just to stop eating. And so if you feel full, you won't want to eat food, however, the cravings pathway kicks in. So you may want to eat desserts, but you won't want to eat real food. So a quick way to test this is would you eat a bowl of vegetables right now?

Mel Robbins (00:14:35):

Right now? No.

Dr. Amy Shah (00:14:37):

Then you're not hungry.

Mel Robbins (00:14:39):

Oh. So can you explain to us what is going on in our bodies as it relates to feeling hungry?

Dr. Amy Shah (00:14:48):

We now know, Mel, that our brain is not just in charge of our cravings and our mood and the way we show up in the world. We always think, oh, if you feel sad, you should just think, do therapy or start to think good thoughts. But we now know that there's this connection between the brain and the gut. And when you eat food, there's an impact in your gut that's sent directly to your brain. And your brain then sends signals back down to your gut. And the way you show up in the world is a result of this communication.

Mel Robbins (00:15:26):

And what is the chicken or the egg in the brain gut? Who goes first? Who's talking the loudest?

Dr. Amy Shah (00:15:33):

Okay, so when we are formed, when we are an embryo, they're connected, they're one, and then they stretch out and they move apart to the different ends of the body. So you could say that they kind of happen from one ball of cells, and we can definitely say with confidence that changing our gut environment has a bigger impact on our brain than we ever thought. A bigger impact so big that you can transplant the gut from one person to another and completely change their mental health.

Mel Robbins (00:16:14):

Oh, I read about that study.

Dr. Amy Shah (00:16:16):

Yeah,

Mel Robbins (00:16:16):

Where they switched guts in, was it mice?

Dr. Amy Shah (00:16:20):

Yes.

Mel Robbins (00:16:21):

Where mice that were schizophrenic? Yes. Well, you should say the study, because I'm not the medical doctor. You are doctor

Dr. Amy Shah (00:16:27):

Me. We now know that the gut microbiome has so many signaling pathways to the brain, and sometimes the bacteria are louder actually than the brain, which is your question like which one's louder?

(00:16:39):

But the gut bacteria want to send a signal to the brain. They produce large amounts of dopamine and large amounts of serotonin to send a signal. So what they found is if you took animals and you gave them the microbiome from a schizophrenic human, a person who was diagnosed, and then a microbiome from someone who was not diagnosed with schizophrenia, put that in mice into their gut, and you mix them up, the researchers were able to tell which mice got which gut bacteria just based on the behavior of the mice,

Mel Robbins (00:17:18):

Based on the microbiome bacteria that they fed them.

Dr. Amy Shah (00:17:22):

Exactly.

Mel Robbins (00:17:23):

So I want to get a visual here because I can't stop thinking about the fact that everybody's obsessed with chat GBT right now and ai, and how you just insert this thing and it spits out that thing, this whole cover letter, this whole resume, this whole this. Wow, it's so unbelievable. I'm thinking in my mind, what I'm visualizing is I'll take what I ate for lunch. So I had a salad, I had a handful of walnuts. I had a couple scoops of a chocolate mousse keto thing. Delicious. I had a coconut macaroon. I had a keto chocolate peanut butter little cup thing. And I'm thinking that all of that represents input into the chat,

Dr. Amy Shah (00:18:11):

GBT,

Mel Robbins (00:18:12):

And then something else gets spit out. And what gets spit out from that is a message to my brain. Am I tracking right?

Dr. Amy Shah (00:18:21):

That's exactly what's happening. In fact, it's two ways. You have to remember that our body's really smart, so they usually use two different pathways for each thing. So when you eat sugar, for example, it stimulates your brain straight from your mouth. And then you have these other receptors, these neuro pods in the gut that sense the sugar also, and they are making their own assessment and sending it to the gut. So the gut's like, oh yeah, it's sugar because I knew it was coming because I felt it from the mouth, and now you guys are telling me the same thing. So everything matches and that you get the response. So they work together in understanding what's happening in your body. Wow.

Mel Robbins (00:19:05):

It's amazing how sophisticated our bodies are. It's amazing. As I'm mindlessly chucking walnuts into my mouth, I'm not thinking about the fact that there are these neurotransmitters, there are these hormones, there's all this signaling going on. And so you, in your book, Dr. Amy, you write that if you're in a cycle of emotional eating or if you're in a cycle where you have all of these cravings and you're always hungry and you're eating the wrong things, that it's not your fault.

Dr. Amy Shah (00:19:31):

It's not your fault,

Mel Robbins (00:19:33):

And it's not your fault because your brain and your hormones are getting triggered by all this ultra processed food. And the ultra processed food, it sounds like, is food that also keeps you craving it because it's not occurring in the natural world. And so your brain is like, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding. Holy smokes. This Snickers bar is incredible. Oh my gosh, this baked, whatever it is that I pulled out of a box and ripped out of a package and stuck into the air fryer. This is tantalizing because it's got all these chemicals in it.

Dr. Amy Shah (00:20:11):

Yes, the Miami Beach phenomenon. You get to South Beach and you're like, whoa, I want your brain is like, I feel good right now, and I want that again, and then I want more of that again. And the problem with our world is we're not educated about that.

(00:20:31):

As a physician, I said to myself, how many times was I rewarding myself with Starbucks and Peppermint Mochas? And I would say to myself, oh, I did a good job today, so I'm going to get this sweet thing. And then it was every day, and then it was twice a day. And by the end of it, I had to recognize myself that this was happening to me. We need to talk about it more because if we can make ourselves happier, less irritable, less chasing things, we're going to be happier people. We're going to live longer. And so for me, this was like, okay, all these companies know about it and they're creating foods to trigger that pathway. Why don't we know about it? So we actually can be in control?

Mel Robbins (00:21:19):

Well, when we hear food, you think calories, you think how many grams of fat, how many grams of sugar? I've never talked to anybody about the fact that there is this dopamine, serotonin. All of these hormones are impacted by it. And it's also being driven by this kind of craving cycle in your brain. And so what do we do if we're not responsible for this situation? How the hell do we fix it? Where do we all begin?

Dr. Amy Shah (00:21:48):

Yeah. The thing is first, understand that food creates mood.

Mel Robbins (00:21:55):

Food creates

Dr. Amy Shah (00:21:56):

Mood. So we are always trying to find out ways to make ourselves happier, think more clearly, be more satisfied. And so that's why I got so interested in this work because with my background in nutrition and being a doctor, I thought, well, if we can control our mood through food and the actions that we take on a daily basis, why aren't we talking about this? Why isn't this first line therapy? There's really good research, a new study from South Australia that the combination of diet and exercise was 1.5 times more effective for depression than the leading medications.

Mel Robbins (00:22:42):

Now explain why, because that's a big research result that just through food and exercise,

Dr. Amy Shah (00:22:49):

Mel Robbins (00:22:50):

Was found to be one and a half times more effective than medication alone.

Dr. Amy Shah (00:22:54):

And if you think about it, they actually even put therapy and medications kind of the traditional treatment into one category. And they compared that with changing your diet, with changing your sleep, your exercise, lifestyle habits.

(00:23:13):

And they said, we should be prescribing this as first line therapy for depression. There's anxiety, multiple anxiety studies, A DHD, I mean, we are missing the boat. Obviously, we're not doing something right because depression is skyrocketing. So is anxiety, so is obesity, so is diabetes, so is cardiovascular disease. So the status quo is not working, so why not employ these techniques and put them at the forefront? So things like we talked about already and that are in the book are teaching you that we have control that yes, do all the things, but also change the way you eat, change the way you exercise, get more sunlight.

Mel Robbins (00:23:58):

Well, you might be depressed and anxious and struggling with a lot of stuff because of what you're eating

(00:24:06):

And because of your lifestyle right now, I think it's really great news to hear that you can feel better if you start to eat better. And that this whole cycle that you are trapped in in terms of the cravings that never end, and the cycle of emotional eating and feeling lethargic and feeling anxious, that you can based on the research and based on the work that you do with patients around the world, that when you take your food intake seriously, you can profoundly change your mood. You can change your body, you can change your lifestyle, all of it. But it begins with the food. So let's talk about, because you say in the beginning of the book that there are certain types of food that you can eat to balance dopamine naturally. What are those foods?

Dr. Amy Shah (00:25:01):

Yeah, so you want to be eating foods that are high in the amino acid tyrosine. Tyrosine is the precursor for L-dopa in the brain, and then L-dopa gets converted to dopamine. So that's how we have dopamine. So in the past it was thought, well, you can't really do anything to boost the dopamine levels in your brain. Food has no connection. It's down here, the brain is up here. So everyone used to say, well, it doesn't really matter, it's just about calories. But now we know that eating more foods, doing more things like getting sunlight, exercise, and certain foods that are high in tyrosine can help boost your dopamine. Wow.

Mel Robbins (00:25:46):

What are some of those foods?

Dr. Amy Shah (00:25:47):

So one of them is dairy foods. So tyrosine is amino acids. So high protein foods, so dairy, soy, nuts, cherries are all things I have a huge list of because you might not like cherries, you might not tolerate dairy, but you could do soy and you could do, and so you can eat these things. So what I would suggest is say you're having a breakfast in the morning, you want to boost dopamine. Dopamine is very closely related to epinephrine, norepinephrine, and epinephrine, which is adrenaline. So in the morning you want to feel awake, alert and motivated. You want to eat things with higher dopamine that are going to boost your dopamine.

Mel Robbins (00:26:31):

So give me an example of what would be a great

Dr. Amy Shah (00:26:33):

Thing to eat for breakfast. So I love cottage cheese.

Mel Robbins (00:26:37):

Okay.

Dr. Amy Shah (00:26:37):

I know cottage cheese is controversial. You could do yogurt instead. Who's mad at

Mel Robbins (00:26:41):

Cottage cheese?

Dr. Amy Shah (00:26:42):

Some people, I mean, cottage cheese is having a moment on social media. It's like as in it's bad. No, people either love it or hate it. It's a divisive food because of the texture of it. And so I love it, but some people

Mel Robbins (00:26:54):

Don't. People need better hobbies. If they're arguing about cottage cheese online,

Dr. Amy Shah (00:26:58):

It is it, but it's having a moment, thankfully. And there's the cottage cheese, ice cream, there's all these cottage cheese. Cottage cheese, ice cream. Yes. It's all the rage. It's

Mel Robbins (00:27:08):

Viral. What

Dr. Amy Shah (00:27:10):

You blend the cottage cheese with a little bit of sweetener and fruit and then put it and freeze it, and then you scoop it out like ice cream.

Mel Robbins (00:27:19):

Wow.

Dr. Amy Shah (00:27:19):

Yeah.

Mel Robbins (00:27:19):

Is it any good? It's delicious. Okay. Who knew cottage cheese? It's the new cauliflower.

Dr. Amy Shah (00:27:25):

It's the new cauliflower.

Mel Robbins (00:27:26):

It could be a pizza if it wanted.

Dr. Amy Shah (00:27:28):

It can turn into anything. So cottage cheese in the morning with fruit and nuts,

Mel Robbins (00:27:34):

And

Dr. Amy Shah (00:27:35):

You have got yourself a high dopamine breakfast.

Mel Robbins (00:27:39):

Wow. Okay. You also say there's six ways that you can boost serotonin naturally.

Dr. Amy Shah (00:27:43):

So serotonin is kind of the calm, chill, happiness hormone. And so that's a nice one to do maybe in the evening because you want to say, Hey, I want to boost. So trytophan is the amino acid, as you might've heard of tryptophan because of Turkey,

(00:28:00):

But it's also ever present in eggs. It's in also dairy food, lean meats, fish. And the way you can actually really get your zen feeling from that is pair it with a complex carbohydrate, so sweet potato or squash or quinoa, and have the protein and the carbohydrate, and it gets you this nice burst of dopamine, especially, I mean, serotonin. So serotonin is really good for people for obviously mood, but also for sleep because serotonin is very close to melatonin. And those people who struggle with nighttime awakenings should try the serotonin boosting foods in the evening.

Mel Robbins (00:28:43):

Wow. Let's keep going. You've got so many hunger hacks. Let's talk about, there was one thing that you said that was very interesting, that sometimes when you feel hungry, you're actually thirsty. How do you know the difference?

Dr. Amy Shah (00:28:58):

Yes. Hunger and thirst are very closely related in the brain, and it's often mistaken. And as you know, often when you go on a health plan trainers, they intuitively know this, they'll say, first thing you do is drink 80 ounces of water. And I said, I always used to say there's no science behind 80 ounces of water there.

Mel Robbins (00:29:20):

I thought you were supposed to drink like your weight and water and ounces or something.

Dr. Amy Shah (00:29:26):

No, our kidneys are very smart, very good at kind of titrating how much water electrolyte balance we have. And so you want to drink about eight ounces for every hour that you're eight hours a day. So maybe more like 64. But that's even not science-based. It's just kind of an estimate guesstimate. You can't really overdo it, so it's nicer to have more. But the big thing that it does is that it helps us calm the hunger, because

Dr. Amy Shah (00:29:58):

When you're dehydrated, your body sends you thirst, but it also feels like hunger. And so when you're adequately hydrating, you're able to kind of feel fuller because you're not getting confused. And so I think it's an easy, super easy thing anyone can do is increase their water intake and just watch. You're not going to be as hungry as you were before.

Mel Robbins (00:30:22):

So if anytime I feel hungry, should I drink a cup of water?

Dr. Amy Shah (00:30:26):

Yes.

Mel Robbins (00:30:27):

Or do I ask myself if I want vegetables? What's the trick?

Dr. Amy Shah (00:30:30):

Mel Robbins (00:30:30):

Both.

Dr. Amy Shah (00:30:31):

So when you're trying to navigate this and you have, first of all, take out as many ultra processed foods as you can,

Mel Robbins (00:30:39):

Okay, that's step one.

Dr. Amy Shah (00:30:40):

Step one. Did you hear Dr. Amy?

Mel Robbins (00:30:42):

No. Ultra processed food, it's

Dr. Amy Shah (00:30:43):

Going to be hard to do. No, but we'll say instead of 60% for adults or 70% for kids, we would want to go to 40 or 30%. So it's the occasional ultra processed food. That way you can actually hear the signals and you're not getting drowned out by all these altered signaling that's happening. And then you start to take note. You say, wow, every day around one o'clock is when, that's for me. I'm giving my own example. After lunch is when I start to crave sweets, even though I'm not hungry. And so I'll ask myself, and I'm in the office usually, and I'll ask myself, am I hungry or am I just wanting something sweet?

(00:31:31):

And that's the first question. And then I'll ask myself, that's vegetable test. Should I eat? Would I want a bowl of vegetables right now? No. So then I say, lemme just drink a glass of water, see how I feel in 15 minutes. So I get up, I drink a glass of water, I might have a sparkling water. I try to make it fun, add some lemon or lime, and then ask yourself, are you still hungry or craving, or are you fine? And that's a way to kind of get back with yourself, right? We're always trying to be the most authentic version of ourselves. And that goes with, what does my body want right now? What does it really want versus what is the world telling me I want? And if you're on a sugar and processed food cycle, you can't hear your own signals.

Mel Robbins (00:32:21):

Can you explain the cycle? I think a lot of us are on the cycle, but we don't realize it. So right around two o'clock, we have a colleague who I adore who always has dark chocolate, and I've worked with her for long enough that now two o'clock rolls around and I am looking for the candy, looking for the chocolate, explain the craving cycle so that we can spot it when we're in it, because I'm assuming that is a craving cycle

Dr. Amy Shah (00:32:54):

I'm in. Yes. Okay. This is the best way to think about the craving cycle.

(00:33:00):

When you eat something that you badly crave, it's pleasure mixed with pain, so discomfort. So you're eating it, but you're almost like, oh, should I be eating this? When can I get this again? Am I having too much? It's like it isn't a pure pleasure feeling. It's a pleasure. And then when I'm going to get it again, I need to stop eating it right now, most people can identify based on this description, some foods that trigger that in them. And it could be a warm chocolate chip cookie. It could be you just eat it and you're like, oh, I can't wait to have this again, or I'm eating too much. And that's the craving cycle right there. And alcohol is very typical for people because I have women clients who say to me all the time, I crave that glass of wine or two glasses of wine at the end of the day. And it's almost like if I don't get it, I'm irritable and I don't feel right. And that's the cravings pathway right there.

Mel Robbins (00:34:07):

So it's interesting to hear you describe it like that, because I'm sitting here trying to think, have I ever felt that with an apple?

Dr. Amy Shah (00:34:14):

No.

Mel Robbins (00:34:15):

I'm like, no. Have I ever felt that with broccoli? No. But I do feel that in both the case of chocolate, I feel it sometimes in french fries or if we go to a great bakery, as I am starting to shove a croissant the size of my man hand here, I've got pretty large hands that I feel that conflict. The first bite is heaven. And then I start this conflicted inner dialogue around it. What is actually going on inside of us that creates that inner conflict?

Dr. Amy Shah (00:34:50):

It's the dopamine. Dopamine release also activates neural pathways that make us feel uncomfortable, agitated, almost like that's why it's so, if you understand that dopamine pathway that we're describing now, you think about it and you see why people get irritable. They have poor mood, make bad decisions when they are consistently releasing dopamine from foods or video games. Instagram, we live in a world where you could actually deplete your dopamine and you'll feel exhausted and it'll feel like a DHD. You can't concentrate. It will feel like you're not really interested in anything anymore life. You don't want to go work out.

Mel Robbins (00:35:43):

It sounds like burnout.

Dr. Amy Shah (00:35:45):

Yeah. Your dopamine pathways can get burned out in this world that we live in, because there's so many excessive releases that if you play the video games, you eat the sugary food. And so many of us do so many of these things, like I said, I was that person. And at the end of the month or day week, you're like, I feel irritable. Unless you have all those things, you feel uncomfortable and irritable.

Mel Robbins (00:36:14):

Can you explain the biology of hunger and cravings?

Dr. Amy Shah (00:36:17):

Yeah. It's extremely important to know the difference and to know the difference what's happening in your brain and your body.

Mel Robbins (00:36:24):

Okay.

Dr. Amy Shah (00:36:24):

When you're hungry, you have hunger hormones like ghrelin that are released to tell you to get nutrients from food. It's the way we survive in this world. And cravings on the other hand, also have to do with survival, but it's telling us to go for the high impact foods.

(00:36:49):

So cravings is the pleasure hormone cycle. It's a whole different pathway. Does not use ghrelin. It is going through the dopamine pathway, completely different area of your brain. Hunger and cravings are completely separate now. They obviously pair together in many ways when women diet all the time. If you have lived in this world and you have ever been on some crash diets, like I have your dopamine levels, meaning your cravings go up, but so does the volume of your ghrelin.

Mel Robbins (00:37:29):

Why?

Dr. Amy Shah (00:37:30):

Because your body is sensing that you're not eating enough, that you skip meals, that you might be going into a deep caloric deficit. And so it is turning up the volume. So on the hunger side, it's turning up the volume on ghrelin, on the craving side, it's turning up the volume on dopamine. So the two separate pathways become one. And people will say, when you're dieting after you are just starving both for food and for desserts, and just your hunger is just out of control and so are your cravings.

Mel Robbins (00:38:08):

Wow. So that's fascinating to know that it's two different pathways that a craving is very different and it's signal and part of the dopamine cycle. And that gremlin, is that what it's called

Dr. Amy Shah (00:38:20):

It? It's sounds like gremlin, but it's ghrelin,

Mel Robbins (00:38:23):

Ghrelin,

Dr. Amy Shah (00:38:23):

Ghrelin, leptin, neuropeptide, yy, C, c, K. We have all these hormones that are supposed to remind us to eat, to tell us we're full. That's all part of hunger. The craving pathway is the one we struggle with all the time. It's the dopamine pathway.

Mel Robbins (00:38:46):

I really get this. I think I get this because what I'm realizing is you have a biological need to feed yourself or you will die.

Dr. Amy Shah (00:38:54):

Yes.

Mel Robbins (00:38:55):

But most of us are not struggling with our biological need to eat. We are struggling with the dopamine cycling and crashing and drive that comes with cravings.

Dr. Amy Shah (00:39:09):

Yes.

Mel Robbins (00:39:10):

Holy smokes.

Dr. Amy Shah (00:39:12):

Dopamine is the most powerful motivator. And food companies, video game companies, gambling porn, they all know that dopamine is so strong, Mel, that dopamine is the only nerve neurotransmitter in our body that can get us out of a seat, whatever we're doing, stop whatever we're doing, get in a car and go get that thing that dopamine's telling us to do.

Mel Robbins (00:39:44):

Yeah. It's like drive, go do,

Dr. Amy Shah (00:39:47):

Can't think about anything else.

Mel Robbins (00:39:49):

So you just mentioned leptin or leptin. What is it and how do you use it to hack hunger?

Dr. Amy Shah (00:39:57):

Leptin is our fullness signal. So the opposite of ghrelin.

Mel Robbins (00:40:02):

Okay.

Dr. Amy Shah (00:40:02):

And it's great because it tells us, Hey, you're full. You don't need to eat anymore. And so leptin, when it gets released makes us just say, I'm good. And we want more leptin to understand our, so here, our hunger cues, our leptin, often we can't hear it because everything else is so loud, right? So one of the ways, best ways to sensitize your leptin is to sleep more. Really, that's one of the best ways. If you've ever noticed after a bad night's sleep, I want to eat. You want to eat why? And you just don't feel full, your leptin is 33% less.

Mel Robbins (00:40:51):

You're right, you do wake up after a bad night's sleep feeling like you're starving. But if you have a really good night's sleep, you wake up feeling calm and relaxed.

Dr. Amy Shah (00:41:01):

Yes.

Mel Robbins (00:41:02):

And I don't have the hunger pain, and unless I'm addicted to something in the morning, I don't really have the craving dopamine cycle either.

Dr. Amy Shah (00:41:11):

So if you think about it, we want to start to use our inner signaling pathways

(00:41:17):

To hear what our body's telling us because our body's really smart. And so leptin, one of the best ways is to get more sleep. Another really great way is to eat more omega fatty acids.

Dr. Amy Shah (00:41:31):

So omega 3 fatty acids are one of the things in salmon for people who don't eat fish, it's an algae oil. So you can take the algae oil nuts have Omega-3. It's a great way to start to get your leptin back up so that a lot of people will start eating more omega fatty acids and all of a sudden they're not as hungry anymore. And part of the signaling is through both leptin and CCK, which are both kind of the satiation satisfaction, we all want to just be more satisfied. Yes. Now, can you take leptin in a pill? There's no leptin in a pill as of yet, but that would be the million dollar drug, right? Oh, that's true. That's not what that wilkov or whatever the heck it's called is doing. So GLP one,

Mel Robbins (00:42:21):

I don't know what that is

Dr. Amy Shah (00:42:22):

Is a hormone that matches, that works in conjunction with leptin

(00:42:28):

To make you feel full. The medications, ozempic, wegovy, all of those medications in that class are GLP one agonists, which means it raises our level, our natural level of the satiation hormones. And so GLP one is kind of like leptin in the sense that it makes us feel full and it's naturally released by our gut when we're full. We can eat things like nuts and certain foods that actually release more GLP one naturally, so you can get the same effect naturally. So getting more sleep, exercise, these are all ways to actually get more of that natural hormone to make you feel more full.

Mel Robbins (00:43:13):

Wow. Do you have a simple way to stop yourself from overeating if you're just a chronic overeater?

Dr. Amy Shah (00:43:24):

There's a few simple ways. If you want to stop overeating, one of the things you can do is you pair the good activity, a good activity right after the bad activity.

Mel Robbins (00:43:41):

So give me an example.

Dr. Amy Shah (00:43:42):

It's like a positive replacement behavior. Okay? So you did something that you didn't want to do. Maybe you ate an ultra processed food that you are trying to cut down immediately after go for a sunny walk, okay? The positive replacement behavior will slowly get longer and teach your neural pathways that you don't want to be doing the negative. The other way is to retrain your brain. So say you crave this candy bar like a Snickers, okay? What you do instead is you take a dark chocolate, also another pleasure creating food, and you replace the Snickers with the healthier chocolate.

(00:44:36):

And the way you do it is intermittent surprise reward. So let me explain that to you.

Mel Robbins (00:44:44):

Okay? So let's just say it's two o'clock in the afternoon.

Dr. Amy Shah (00:44:48):

It's two o'clock in the afternoon,

Mel Robbins (00:44:49):

And Mel has for many months been reaching for an ultra processed candy bar, and it is now the new day. I have heard this podcast with Dr. Amy, and I'm going to try this approach.

Dr. Amy Shah (00:45:03):

What am I doing? You are going to intermittently reward yourself with a healthier version of that dark chocolate. So either pick it out of a fishbowl with little papers in it, or ask someone that's working with you to say randomly, three days a week, I get a reward.

(00:45:25):

But It has to be random because dopamine works the best when you get a random reward

Mel Robbins (00:45:30):

And

Dr. Amy Shah (00:45:31):

You are trying to rewire your system

Mel Robbins (00:45:34):

To not want that ultra processed candy bar

Dr. Amy Shah (00:45:36):

And instead crave the healthier version. So it's Wednesday. Oh, today's my reward day.

Dr. Amy Shah (00:45:45):

So then you sit with the new dark chocolate, you go through it and you basically, I call it my three two one method. So three random days a week, two minutes telling yourself how much you love this chocolate. It's such a better choice, CBT, but just cognitive behavioral therapy saying, I'm so happy I chose this. One minute, savoring it, and you do this for two weeks and you have replaced that bad habit with a good one.

Mel Robbins (00:46:13):

Okay, so let me just make sure I got this. So if it's 3, 2, 1 method, and I'm picking three days this week, if I don't have somebody to do this with me, could I just set an alarm in my phone randomly alarm goes off, boom. That's the random intermittent replacement.

Dr. Amy Shah (00:46:28):

Yes.

Mel Robbins (00:46:29):

Second thing I do is I tell myself the reasons why this is a better choice, the reasons why I'm proud of myself. And then the final thing that I do is I pop that sucker in my mouth and I enjoy,

Dr. Amy Shah (00:46:42):

Sit down and enjoy

Mel Robbins (00:46:43):

It and slow down the process of enjoying it. How the heck, after a couple weeks of doing this, would this make my brain no longer want the ultra process candy bar?

Dr. Amy Shah (00:46:53):

Because I'll tell you why. If you look at the other way around in the negative sense, this happens all the time.

Mel Robbins (00:47:01):

That's true.

Dr. Amy Shah (00:47:01):

We get addicted all the time to things that intermittently reward us with dopamine gambling. Oh, you don't win. You don't win, you don't win, you don't win, you win. Big dopamine explosion. Now you won it again. You do that a few times, and guess what? Now you are craving that. And so the way it works in real life is the most addicting, the biggest dopamine releases is when you get an intermittent reward. Think about relationships, toxic relationships. Okay,

Mel Robbins (00:47:40):

Let's talk toxic relationships. It's a lot like craving a processed candy bar.

Dr. Amy Shah (00:47:45):

It is. And that guy or gal gives you the intermittent rewards. They give you what you need just enough to keep you craving and going back for more. You know how this works? This happens all the time, especially in this new dating world where you won't hear from someone and then you will, and it kind of keeps you hooked on that person. And the people who do it often know that intermittently kind of giving them love, attention and affection will be enough to keep them coming back for more.

Mel Robbins (00:48:26):

It's so true. If you think about either the times in your life when you've been stuck in that pattern, or if you have a friend or a family member who's super annoying and is stuck in a very toxic relationship dynamic, what do they do? They spend a lot of time arguing and explaining those intermittent inconsistent moments where the person actually was a good person, but he actually did do this. They followed through. Yeah, they followed through. And so if I go back to the candy bar idea, this is so fascinating. Do you still eat the ultra processed candy bar during the two weeks that I'm trying this intermittent reward thing?

Dr. Amy Shah (00:49:11):

So you could, but the ideal version would be to take that and give yourself a new kind of addiction or a new craving that is a healthier craving.

Dr. Amy Shah (00:49:22):

So you can do that with anything but candy bar to dark chocolate is a great example. We can do that with so many different things in our life. But food, you can create new memories, new craving pathways, because we have a lot of memories. Dopamine has neural pathways from when you're a kid. So reversing those are tough. You have to do this a few. That's what I'm saying. You got to do it for a few weeks to really feel like now you've replaced that behavior.

Mel Robbins (00:49:52):

Wow. I think I'm going to try that with drinking.

Dr. Amy Shah (00:49:54):

Yeah.

Mel Robbins (00:49:54):

Tell me about psychobiotics. What the heck are those and how do they help you stop this cycle of craving?

Dr. Amy Shah (00:50:01):

They found that there are certain gut bacteria, and they call them psychobiotics because those gut bacteria that's present in people who have depression are the same. And there's gut bacteria that are people that are always happy, or they have a positive outlook on life. They have a specific set of gut bacteria. They noticed that there are even studies where you can take Prevotella, you can take

Mel Robbins (00:50:36):

What's, prevotella

Dr. Amy Shah (00:50:37):

It's a type of bacteria you can take lactobacillus, a type of bacteria you can add.

Mel Robbins (00:50:42):

Should I take this? Now? I'm starting like, where's my pen? I don't know what to do. I want to be happy or not depressed, and I don't want to be eating that chocolate at two o'clock. Dr. Amy, help me.

Dr. Amy Shah (00:50:52):

So the world of psychobiotics is the next foray for mental health

Mel Robbins (00:50:57):

Because it sounds sexy.

Dr. Amy Shah (00:50:59):

Yeah, it is. That you can actually change your brain through the bacteria in your gut.

Mel Robbins (00:51:08):

So this is very similar to what you said about food and mood.

Dr. Amy Shah (00:51:11):

Yes.

Mel Robbins (00:51:11):

So if you start to take what Dr. Amy's saying very seriously, she's making the case for why ultra processed foods are fucking your mood up and keeping you trapped in these cycles of craving and dopamine that make you feel miserable, that make you feel out of control. And now if I'm tracking correctly, we're going to layer deeper because if we get specific about the bacteria that you put into your gut,

Mel Robbins (00:51:40):

The stuff that's going to break all that crap down, and that's going to create some sort of magical elixir in your gut that will then chat GP, send the message up to your brain that this has implications for depression, for anxiety, for all kinds of mental health stuff. Is that what you're saying?

Dr. Amy Shah (00:51:56):

That's what I'm saying. And it's not just anxiety and depression anymore. It is autism, Parkinson's. It is a DHD. It is every single mental health condition that we are struggling with in our modern world seems to be stemming from that bidirectional. Like I said, they talk to each other both ways,

Mel Robbins (00:52:19):

The brain and the gut.

Dr. Amy Shah (00:52:20):

The brain talks to the gut, the gut talks to the brain. And now we're learning that we left this whole half on the table

Mel Robbins (00:52:29):

In terms of the gut. You're absolutely right, because if you think about it, everybody, we have been addressing mental health from the neck up, and we've been addressing it typically with talk therapy or some sort of pharmaceutical drug that presumably acts on your brain and your neurotransmitters, but aren't the majority of your neurotransmitters in your gut.

Dr. Amy Shah (00:52:51):

Yes. People will say to me, well, those neurotransmitters in the gut are so far from the ones in the brain. But what's fascinating is that we're seeing a very tight correlation. Like I said, they talk to each other. And when your gut is producing lots of dopamine, serotonin, these gut bacteria are signaling to the brain in at least four different ways that we know to also release dopamine and serotonin. And so what they're doing is they're sending signals through the nerves. They're sending hormones, they're sending these things called short chain fatty acids, which the gut bacteria make these things called short chain fatty acids. And they go to the brain and they make it feel happy or sad. So we are now aware of at least four different ways that what's in your gut is affecting what's going on in your brain.

Mel Robbins (00:53:49):

So Dr. Amy, give me the list. What are the bacteria need to be taking and what is a bacteria anyway? How is bacteria different than food? I know that's a bizarro question, but if I'm eating an apple, the second that you described an apple, you're like, okay, you got sugar, you got water, you got fiber fiber's. Really important. You got certain vitamins that signals to your brain that you're actually eating something and that's going to help you make you be fuller. And I didn't even think about the fact that an apple has all that stuff in it.

Dr. Amy Shah (00:54:16):

Yeah.

Mel Robbins (00:54:17):

How is it? Where does bacteria

Dr. Amy Shah (00:54:19):

Come in? Yeah. Okay. This is such a great question. It goes back to the fact that we're actually not just ourselves, we're equally bacterial cells. Our body is equally bacterial cells.

Mel Robbins (00:54:35):

I don't even know what the hell that means.

Dr. Amy Shah (00:54:37):

So in when you go through the mouth, you go into your throat, you go into your stomach, and then there's these intestines, and then there's the anus, and you poop it out. In that GI tract, there is a world that lives there and it's full of bacteria, viruses, and even protozoan. So people think of these organisms, it's almost, there's a world that is living inside of your body that doesn't belong to you.

Mel Robbins (00:55:13):

Whoa. I've never thought about the fact that if you really think about your mouth and how your mouth leads to a series of internal tubes that lead to the poop shoot to get it all out of there, that that's like an internal

Dr. Amy Shah (00:55:34):

Sewer.

Mel Robbins (00:55:35):

It is a superhighway for outside access through your body. And when you put food in your mouth, your entire GI tract is trying to squeeze nutrients from it and get the waste out.

Dr. Amy Shah (00:55:51):

And guess what? They can't do it without the thick lining of gut bacteria that go all the way through to the anal opening. So what I'm saying to you is that there's more bacteria, there's a thick bacterial lining. There's just one layer of our own cells that do the work that we need to be done.

Mel Robbins (00:56:14):

Wow. If we didn't have the bacteria in there, what would happen?

Dr. Amy Shah (00:56:19):

We would damage our body all the time.

Mel Robbins (00:56:23):

How so

Dr. Amy Shah (00:56:23):

What we are learning now is that as we are modernizing, our thick layer is becoming thinner layer. And then there's areas that aren't even thin. It's almost like blank. And it's just our one layer of gut cells. So what's happening is they get damaged.

(00:56:41):

And they get damaged from the toxins that we eat, the foods, the alcohol, the antibiotics, the ibuprofen, whatever, all that shit that we all eat and take in. And what happens is those cell walls get damaged and you start to have problems because when that cell wall gets damaged, I'll give you a visual. There's something traveling through your gut. It damages that cell wall. All of a sudden your whole immune system comes there like a cut, something hurt you.

(00:57:14):

Your whole immune system comes there as if you had a cut and says, Hey, there's an inflammatory response here. And this keeps happening all over the place. You have all these fires that are now happening, and that's inflammation of the gut. So when your stomach hurts, after you eat it, after you eat gluten, people say, oh, now I can't stand gluten. I can't eat this food. I can't eat that food. I'm having an allergy, or I'm

Mel Robbins (00:57:43):

Having right, or intolerance or whatever.

Dr. Amy Shah (00:57:45):

That's what's happening. When you hear the word leaky gut, that's what they're referring

Mel Robbins (00:57:49):

To. Got it. Okay. So what bacteria should we all do? We take bacteria? Is this what probiotics are? What is going? I don't even know where to start.

Dr. Amy Shah (00:58:00):

I love that question because I get this every single day. People are always like, so which bacteria do I take?

Mel Robbins (00:58:06):

Yes.

Dr. Amy Shah (00:58:07):

Is that what a probiotic is? Yes.

Mel Robbins (00:58:09):

A probiotic

Dr. Amy Shah (00:58:10):

Is a bacteria,

Mel Robbins (00:58:12):

A pro bacteria, meaning we are for the bacteria going in. Okay, got it.

Dr. Amy Shah (00:58:17):

A probiotic is an actual bacteria. So we're trying to add more bacteria to that thick lining that can help us. Right. Got it. Okay. But the problem is, is that studies are inconsistent. Sometimes we're seeing lactobacillus and Ella are boosting depression, mood. Other times it's not doing anything. Other times it's helping the antidepressant. So we still say, I say, Hey, I already know Mel, how to improve your gut bacteria and you don't need pills or a probiotic. What do I need to do that?

Dr. Amy Shah (00:58:55):

You need to eat the food that feeds it, meaning fiber, real food, not ultra processed food. So fiber, you need to eat food that have natural bacteria in it. Yogurt, kimchi, kombucha,

Mel Robbins (00:59:11):

Sauerkraut.

Dr. Amy Shah (00:59:11):

Sauerkraut is vinegar. Good apple cider vinegar, the raw, okay, you need to eat more of that. In fact, they found that four servings, four to six servings a day of probiotic food was actually the best at increasing the amount of happy bacteria in

Mel Robbins (00:59:30):

Your gut. Wow. And what about, so yogurt is okay if it's are the labels. It seems like everybody's adding probiotics to things.

Dr. Amy Shah (00:59:44):

Our bodies are so smart. Our body knows that when you're carrying bacteria in your gut, they're going to first try to kill it. They think it's foreign. So when you're taking a probiotic pill, a supplement, a lot of it gets killed because your body's like, oh, this is bacteria. We got to kill it. It could be bad bacteria when it's in the mesh, think about it in the net of the food in a sauerkraut and a kimchi, even in apple cider vinegar, a naturally occurring, they let it pass through and so gets to the lower part of the gut where it needs to be. And so we are now realizing that, oh wait, we should be doing more things that increase the happy bacteria. You know what the number one probiotic is?

Mel Robbins (01:00:29):

I have no idea.

Dr. Amy Shah (01:00:30):

Exercise.

Mel Robbins (01:00:31):

How the hell is exercise a probiotic?

Dr. Amy Shah (01:00:34):

Gut bacteria love when you move, and they produce this thing called short chain fatty acids. And I mentioned short chain fatty acids before when I was talking about the brain gut connection. When you exercise those short chain fatty acids, go to the brain, go all over the body and calm the inflammation, they calm your brain. You feel good, you feel, and they grow the bacteria in the gut. It's a signal. That's

Mel Robbins (01:01:05):

So cool. Alright, so the instructions are actually very clear. The science that explains why this is so important is profound. It's very clear based on the case that you're making, that if you were to focus on whole foods or mostly whole foods, and you were to really become diligent about removing as many unprocessed or unhealthy in terms of fried and processed foods from your diet, you would see a significant change in your mood. You would see a significant change in your energy and a significant change in your overall health if you add in exercise, not only because it helps boost the natural production of bacteria, but we also now know based on this new research study that a change in your diet and consistent exercise can be more effective than taking an antidepressant and going to therapy for depression because your body is designed to heal itself and to run properly. And even if you have spent a lifetime jamming Big Macs down your face and you feel stuck in this craving cycle that you can reverse this, I think that's so hopeful. How do you say that you can get rid of, let's say like a sweet tooth in 30 days? How do you do that?

Mel Robbins (01:02:39):

For those of us that sugar in a coffee, you know who I'm talking to. For those of us that love dessert, we crave it, baby. How do we get rid of it?

Dr. Amy Shah (01:02:52):

I'm going to tell you something so profound. Okay. When they did a study, they planned it to be 30 days actually to change someone's diet very drastically.

Mel Robbins (01:03:05):

Okay. So give me the drastic.

Dr. Amy Shah (01:03:08):

So what they did is of heavy processed meat, sugar, soda,

(01:03:14):

So all the worst foods. So if I had to rank the worst food, give it to me. It'd be like high fructose corn syrup, soda. So sodas, but drinks also. So juices, orange juice from the grocery store is in the soda category, by the way. Wait, orange juice from the grocery store? Yes. Is in the soda category. It's heat pasteurized. Okay. It's hot. So all those vitamins that we were hoping for are nuked. The fiber is filtered out, and all you're left with is the water and the sugar. So is the fiber the pulp? Yeah. So if you are drinking an orange juice that's been pasteurized. Been pasteurized,

Mel Robbins (01:03:57):

Does that mean they've boiled it and then put it through a filter and they've basically boiled out all the nutrients and then strained it

Dr. Amy Shah (01:04:03):

All that's left.

Mel Robbins (01:04:04):

You're

Dr. Amy Shah (01:04:04):

Kidding. So it's like people drink juice as if it's the health food, right? Oh, it's juice. I switch from soda to juice. Soda has a bad connotation, but juice is just as bad. If you get a juice from the shelf and you read the back and you see the sugar content, it's rivals a soda.

Mel Robbins (01:04:33):

Wow. Okay. So top high fructose corn syrup and soda. What's another one?

Dr. Amy Shah (01:04:37):

So high fructose corn syrup. Soda is probably the top. Okay. Processed meats.

Mel Robbins (01:04:45):

What is a processed

Dr. Amy Shah (01:04:46):

Meat? So processed meats means not your grass fed burger, but the one from the drive-through with the cheese and processed meat and dairy is like the cheese and the meat that has been, there's additives in it. It's not just the meat. There's also things like bacon often have nitrates and they have flavoring and sugar. There's all these flavors in it. So processed meat, hot dogs is a great example.

Mel Robbins (01:05:16):

Okay. Meat

Dr. Amy Shah (01:05:18):

Because they're just basically putting a bunch of meat together, but they're adding all these other non-food items. Ultra process. So you take high fructose corn syrup. You take processed meat, processed dairy, and now they said, let's just switch their diet so drastically and actually do it in a clinical center where they're only allowed to eat with us, and they change it to a high vegetable fruit, no juices or sodas, no processed meat. They started to look at their stool to see what the gut bacteria we're doing so we can find out, okay, how long does this really

Mel Robbins (01:05:57):

Take? How long does it take?

Dr. Amy Shah (01:05:59):

So in two weeks, they saw a drastic change, but guess how long it took to even to see a market difference? I have no idea. Three days. Three days. In three days of this rapidly shift in diet, you had a whole new gut bacterial colonies happening. That's all it took. That's all it took. They didn't take any special probiotics. They just ate food, yogurt, and they ate the fresh fruits and vegetables and it took three days.

Mel Robbins (01:06:34):

Wow. Now, was it vegetarian or did they have

Dr. Amy Shah (01:06:36):

That one? So this is a study in nature. It's the highest level journal in the world. It's like the Harvard of journals. It was a processed meat, sugar heavy diet to a primarily plant-based whole foods diet. And so of course there's arguments about, it's not the meat, it's that it's processed. It wasn't that. This is that. So you can argue about the semantics, but the big picture here is you have the power. You always say, and I always say this too, we can save ourselves. We can change our mood, we can change our lifespan. We can change how we come into this world every day. We have the power and it takes three days.

Mel Robbins (01:07:24):

Wow. Talk to me about drinking warm water. Why warm water? That sounds horrendous.

Dr. Amy Shah (01:07:31):

It's not meant to say that water, I would say is so good for you, whether you eat it, drink it cold, whether you drink it warm. But there are some theories that if you drink water warm or room temperature, I guess I would say it's more easily absorbed for you by what it can give you.

Mel Robbins (01:07:54):

Like your body.

Dr. Amy Shah (01:07:55):

Your body. So there's no warming that needs to happen because internally, we're 98 degrees or

Mel Robbins (01:08:02):

Oh, that's true.

Dr. Amy Shah (01:08:04):

When you're drinking water, most other countries around the world, as you know, don't drink ice cold drinks and definitely not ice cold water. You can, I've studied Ayurveda, which is an ancient Indian medical system that believes that you should match the temperature of your food to your internal temperature. Meaning that if you tend to be someone who's hot and who's angry, who tends to err on the side of redness in their skin, and that's called a Pitta, pittas should drink cooler temperature water. Whereas a lot of us are vatas, which means that we thrive on warm foods and warm water because we tend to be anxious, flighty, and cooler internal temperatures. So you want to compliment that with a warmer and food base. So you want soups instead of salads. You want warm water instead of cold water. It's ancient. In China and in India, the ancient medicine tells you that the temperature of the food, especially when it's warmer, tends to be better, especially if you're dealing with anxiety.

Mel Robbins (01:09:27):

Wow, anxious people eat warmer food.

Dr. Amy Shah (01:09:30):

Yeah,

Mel Robbins (01:09:31):

It does have a calming

Dr. Amy Shah (01:09:32):

Effect. If I think about it, it is, if you think about the ancient, when I think about Ayurveda and all the things that they talk about, some things are really out there, but so many things make sense to me. For example, if you are more of a va, which is an air, that means that you have very airy, your thoughts are all over the place. You tend to be anxious when things don't go well, you tend to speak very fast and move very fast. You need more calming earthing energy. So that's warm energy and earth energy. So fire and earth. So that's how that

Mel Robbins (01:10:10):

Works. Love that. How do you know if you're getting enough sleep based on the things that you study?

Dr. Amy Shah (01:10:17):

Yes.

Mel Robbins (01:10:18):

Because you hear eight hours.

Dr. Amy Shah (01:10:19):

Yeah. How many hours do you sleep, by the way?

Mel Robbins (01:10:23):

The older I get, the more boring I am. So I would say nine or 10.

Dr. Amy Shah (01:10:28):

Yeah, I love that. People who sleep less than six hours have a higher mortality. They have lower mood, and they are hungrier, as we said with the leptin. What you want to do is really to realize how much sleep you need is when you sleep without an alarm,

Dr. Amy Shah (01:10:53):

How many hours do you sleep and not when you're sleep deprived?

Mel Robbins (01:10:57):

Oh, I bet I sleep 10 hours.

Dr. Amy Shah (01:10:59):

Yeah.

Mel Robbins (01:10:59):

If I don't have an alarm on, I sleep way longer than I think I'm going to.

Dr. Amy Shah (01:11:07):

When you look at the last couple of weeks of your life, the best days when you felt the most refreshed, the best mood were the days I got the highest amount of sleep. By far. That's how much sleep you need. And every American that's listening to this is going to be like, I can't sleep that much. But you think about your best days of your life happened when you slept adequately. It changes your hunger hormones, it changes your hormones in general for women, especially as we get older, this is important. It changes your mood, it changes your ability to make decisions and your interactions with other people. So why would you want to skimp on that? Why would you say that? You'll be like everybody else. Sleep when you're dead. When you look at the data, the data says opposite. It says, if you don't sleep, you'll be dead much earlier. That's true. If you don't sleep, you will be more depressed, more anxious, have more hunger and craving signals. You are going to be a version of yourself that is a shell of what you want to be.

Mel Robbins (01:12:26):

So one final thing that I think would be extremely helpful to people. Let's assume that we went to bed early and we wake up and we get a good night's sleep. Can you walk us through what you would recommend the eating routine or what is on our plate and when are we actually eating? Okay, for complete hormone

Dr. Amy Shah (01:12:52):

Balance? Yes. Okay. So as you know, it's different and their life circumstances are different. Every time I do this, people say, oh, but I work night shift or I have little kids. I get it. Life is, I had many years where I didn't get enough sleep, where I didn't get enough sunlight, where I couldn't make the best decisions because I was just so pulled in all the different directions. So I get it, but we didn't even talk about circadian rhythms, but melt, sunlight and darkness run our bodies. We have internal clocks in every one of our cells. So routines are excessively important

(01:13:35):

In terms of our mood and our body, our nutrition. So when you wake up in the morning, you want to get sunlight. I have a rule that I learned from someone online. Basically, I did this for a few days and I felt the best I've ever felt. And I'll tell you what, it's when you wake up, instead of scrolling your phone, checking your messages and your emails, go get sunlight first, sky before screens. Oh, I love that. So sky before is how you should start your day. Your body is wired to see sunlight in the morning, even if it's a cloudy day, it just has to be bright light. You can just walk out outside. For me, it's my back door. Just walk out for a few minutes. It could be two to 10 minutes you could do for me. I'm usually just in my pajama, so I'm coming back in and getting ready for the day.

Dr. Amy Shah (01:14:32):

So you don't want to have food or caffeine in the first 45 minutes of your day.

Mel Robbins (01:14:40):

Why?

Dr. Amy Shah (01:14:41):

I'll tell you why. When you wake up, you feel groggy, right?

Mel Robbins (01:14:44):

Yep.

Dr. Amy Shah (01:14:45):

That grogginess is partially, mostly from adenosine in your brain,

Mel Robbins (01:14:50):

Adenosine,

Dr. Amy Shah (01:14:51):

Adenosine, and it clears out as you know, within 30, 40 minutes, it clears out. Then you have your coffee, then you eat your food. And the reason why it coffee, the way it works, it blocks our adenosine receptor. So that means that it doesn't help get rid of adenosine, it just blocks it from actually binding.

Mel Robbins (01:15:16):

Okay?

Dr. Amy Shah (01:15:17):

So if you don't let adenosine clear out and you just drink your coffee, when the coffee wears off in a couple of hours, that adenosine is still there and it just binds those receptors and you feel excessively tired, and that's why you think you need another cup of coffee. And then you're fully dependent. The people that wake up and they need the coffee right then, and then they need it again at 10 o'clock, and then they need it again at one o'clock because you're not letting that adenine, whoa, go.

Mel Robbins (01:15:47):

Okay?

Dr. Amy Shah (01:15:47):

You need to let that clear out.

Mel Robbins (01:15:48):

I'm guilty of this. So I am going to try this tomorrow. I am going to absolutely have my coffee, and then, oh, no, I'm not. I'm going to wake up. I'm going to wait 45 minutes. Then I'm going to have my coffee. I'm going to see if I have a craving for a second cup.

Dr. Amy Shah (01:16:03):

Yes.

Mel Robbins (01:16:04):

That is fascinating.

Dr. Amy Shah (01:16:05):

Okay, so you want to let it clear out naturally because it's not going to clear out naturally if you start the caffeine cycle right away.

Mel Robbins (01:16:11):

Got So clear it out for 45 minutes. Get our sun in. What's next?

Dr. Amy Shah (01:16:15):

Eat.

Mel Robbins (01:16:15):

Okay.

Dr. Amy Shah (01:16:16):

Mel Robbins (01:16:16):

Intermittent fasting.

Dr. Amy Shah (01:16:17):

So everybody, I love intermittent fasting. Then why are we eating? Because I do it the opposite way. Talk to me. There's very good evidence that for thousands of years we ate in one scheduled way, which is daylight hours. There was no microwaves. Uber eats there. They had a fire, and you'd maybe eat an hour or two after sundown. That's it, right?

Mel Robbins (01:16:46):

Yep.

Dr. Amy Shah (01:16:46):

You are not snacking at midnight. There's nowhere to store the food. Thousands of years ago, our internal clocks are set so that when melatonin hits two to three hours before bed, your organs shut down. You cannot process sugar as well as you did. You can't take it into your muscles. You are not releasing digestive enzymes. So basically, when you're eating late at night, you are waking your body up in the middle of the night and asking it to do a math problem. Your body's going to be like, I don't want to do this. I'm going to make mistakes. You wake up and you're tired and you're pissed that someone woke you up in the middle of the night. That's what happens when you eat late at night.

Mel Robbins (01:17:34):

Holy smokes. You put your body in conflict with itself.

Dr. Amy Shah (01:17:39):

And so intermittent fasting, everyone's doing it the wrong way. They're eating way late into the night, and then they don't eat all day. When the sun is out, that's the time that you want your body's ready for food. So ideally, you wait an hour. Nobody needs to be eating every minute of every day. Americans just, we just eat 14, 16 hours a day. It's just too much.

Dr. Amy Shah (01:18:03):

So you wake up, maybe you get some movement in, you get your sunlight, you eat about an hour or two, even after you wake up, you don't need to push it to 2, 3, 4 o'clock. People are doing this thing. There's good evidence that skipping meals is actually bad for you, and that people who do it habitually actually have worse health outcomes. Okay?

Mel Robbins (01:18:24):

Got it.

Dr. Amy Shah (01:18:24):

So eat your breakfast. You want to have a high dopamine breakfast. Let's have cottage cheese, eggs, tofu, scramble, veggies, nuts, berries.

Mel Robbins (01:18:33):

Great. When do I eat next? I'm already hungry. Well, no. Am I hungry right now? Yeah. When I eat vegetables, I would eat vegetables right now. So that must mean I'm hungry, but I got to have a glass of water first, and then I'm going to ask myself that

Dr. Amy Shah (01:18:46):

Again. See, I'm learning. Then you tune in with the inner Mel, the brain gut, Mel.

Mel Robbins (01:18:52):

Yep. Okay.

Dr. Amy Shah (01:18:53):

So then you can eat when you're hungry again, you can use your inner cues. It could be 12, could be one. Whenever your inner cues, you'll notice your ghrelin is set on a timer every day. You'll get hungry at the same time.

Mel Robbins (01:19:06):

So hello ghrelin. Yeah, it just, I think, dumped on

Dr. Amy Shah (01:19:10):

Me. Yeah. So what do you eat for lunch? So basically lunch is a chance for you to get the more, the healthier you eat earlier in the day, the better your chance of sticking to it. So with, they always say exercise and eating healthier foods, breakfast and lunch is your best chance. So for me, I automated and I had already talked to you when we had talked before that I try to eat the same things every

Mel Robbins (01:19:34):

Day. So what do you eat for lunch?

Dr. Amy Shah (01:19:35):

So I eat a salad for lunch. I usually put a protein source on it. It could be different beans, nuts, it get tofu. It could do eggs, you could do salmon, whatever you want. Protein and veggies, a salad with protein on it. And I always have a fermented probiotic food with my lunch because that's the best time for you to get in at least one to two servings of the kimchi of the sauerkraut. It could be kombucha for a drink, apple cider vinegar in your dressing. So that's when you have the best chance. Really simple. It can be very simple. And then your dinner is when you want to eat. If you are someone, Sarah, baby, yes, you're learning. I'm paying attention. So if I know it's not sexy to say eat carbs, but carbs actually can be very healthy for you, especially in vegetable form, sweet potato, quinoa, whatever it is, you can eat that later in the day if you want to have that big boost of serotonin.

Mel Robbins (01:20:37):

And what about snacks? If I'm legit hungry, but I'm not really craving anything,

Dr. Amy Shah (01:20:41):

Yes,

Mel Robbins (01:20:41):

But I'm legit hungry. Midday, what's your go-to snack?

Dr. Amy Shah (01:20:45):

So remember that protein has this effect on your body that it tells your hunger to hunger hormones to stop. So if you want more leptin, eat more protein. So your snack can be yogurt, your snack can be a protein shake, your snack can be a piece of cheese. It can something with protein because that will keep your dopamine levels up and it will keep your hunger hormones stable. So protein snack, I think women, especially, we're eating just too little protein. There is a theory that the reason we get fat from eating ultra processed food is because it's so low in protein that your brain never gets the signal that you're full. Your protein threshold is never met.

Mel Robbins (01:21:38):

Wow. One final thing I want to ask you. We didn't really cover it Gluten. Everybody I know is gluten-free.

Dr. Amy Shah (01:21:44):

Yeah, it's not the gluten. There's very few people who are actually allergic to gluten. It is very common to have GI issues with processed gluten. So when you eat a lot of bread, pizza, carbs, but that's not the gluten itself. It's the fact that you're eating processed food. So gluten gets mislabeled all the time. What I say to people is go gluten free for a few weeks, three to four weeks.

Mel Robbins (01:22:14):

Okay.

Dr. Amy Shah (01:22:15):

See how you feel when you add the gluten back. Don't add back the bread, the cookies, the cakes and the processed gluten. Add back a small wheat bulgar like in a salad, add back a healthy sourdough bread, add back wheat in small unprocessed amounts, and then see how you feel. And what I realized is that people villainize gluten all the time, and in America, gluten-free has become such a tagline that those foods are more unhealthy.

Mel Robbins (01:22:56):

Oh, because of all the processing. Look at you, doctor Amy. Is there anything else on this topic that we did not get?

Dr. Amy Shah (01:23:05):

I think we covered so much. I think, like you said, and I have taken this to heart, is that there's no pill that's going to save you. There's no person that's going to save you. When you learn about all this, when you actually listen to your own self, you are going to be the one who saves yourself.

Mel Robbins (01:23:26):

Well, Dr. Amy Shah, let me just say thank you because without this information, we can't save ourselves. And you've explained the internal, extremely elegant, but complicated systems inside of us so that it makes sense so that we understand why these choices, these substitutions, why it actually matters. That's my huge takeaway. I have never actually understood any of this at the level that you just explained, and that's an enormous gift. So thank you, thank you, thank you.

Dr. Amy Shah (01:24:05):

I appreciate you. You give so much amazing information to everyone that it's just a gift to be here and to speak to you.

Mel Robbins (01:24:13):

Well, the feeling's mutual, wasn't she? Great? Well, you know who else is great. You are. So before we go, I just want to remind you that I love you. I believe in you, and I believe in your ability to take back your health to make a million happy psychobiotics yourself. Now, go make a bowl of raw vegetables, put down the potato chips. See, I'm learning. I hope you're learning to. Oh, and one more thing, and no, this is not a blooper. This is the legal language. You know what the lawyers write and what I need to read to you. This podcast is presented solely for educational and entertainment purposes. I'm just your friend. I am not a licensed therapist, and this podcast is not intended as a substitute for the advice of a physician, professional coach, psychotherapist, or other qualified professional. Got it. Good. I'll see you in the next episode. Hey, it's Mel. Thank you so much for being here. If you enjoyed that video, bye. God, please subscribe because I don't want you to miss a thing. Thank you so much for being here. We've got so much amazing stuff coming. Thank you so much for sending this stuff to your friends and your family. I love you. We create these videos for you, so make sure you subscribe.

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Key takeaways

Ultra-processed foods hijack your brain’s natural signals, flooding you with dopamine, then leaving you depleted, irritable, and stuck in a never-ending cycle of cravings.
Your gut bacteria aren’t just digesting food; they’re producing neurotransmitters like serotonin that shape your mood, your focus, and how you feel every single day.
If you want to stop overeating, use a replacement habit, like a sunny walk, and retrain your neural pathways through small, consistent interruptions.
When you skip meals or restrict too hard, your body turns up ghrelin and dopamine, making you both hungrier and more desperate for junk, which sabotages everything.
You can rewire cravings by randomly replacing your go-to treat with a healthier version, savoring it fully, and letting your brain build a new dopamine association.

Guests Appearing in this Episode

Dr. Amy Shah, MD

Dr. Shah is a leading expert in the role nutrition plays in health, longevity, and hormone regulation. She has been in clinical practice for 22 years as a double-board certified medical doctor with specializations in nutrition, internal medicine, and immunology. She has a degree in nutrition and trained at Cornell University, Harvard University, and Columbia University. Dr. Shah is the author of two bestselling books about nutrition, hormones, and lifestyle changes, and through her online education platform AmyMD, has helped millions of people to transform their health.

Follow Dr. Shah on Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, YouTube & LinkedIn
Check out Dr. Shah’s website
Pre-order Dr. Shah’s brand new book, Hormone Havoc
Sign up for Dr. Shah’s newsletter
Dr. Shah is a Founding Scientific Advisor for Pure Genius!

Hormone Havoc: A Science-Backed Protocol for Perimenopause and Menopause: Sleep Better. Think Better. Feel Better
Hot flashes, mood swings, anxiety, weight gain, brain fog—the hormonal flux that comes with menopause and perimenopause may bring some notorious side effects, but that doesn’t mean you have to feel miserable or settle for debilitating symptoms. This isn’t your mother’s menopause!

Double-board certified medical doctor Amy Shah shows you the power of targeted nutrition to manage the chaos that perimenopause and menopause can bring. There’s a growing awareness about perimenopause, the period of hormonal changes leading up to menopause that can begin as early as your late 30s. Starting in perimenopause and continuing through menopause, your immune system, gut, and metabolism get out of balance as your hormones shift.

Dr. Shah’s protocol supports your hormones by increasing key nutrients—including protein, fiber, probiotics, and vitamins and minerals—to realign and nourish your body and heal your gut-brain connection, helping to reduce and relieve unpleasant menopause symptoms while dramatically decreasing the risk of serious diseases from heart disease to depression to osteoporosis. It’s as easy as 30-30-3:
- 30 grams of protein in your first meal to curb cravings
- 30 grams of fiber to diversify and strengthen the gut
- 3 probiotic foods to balance the microbiome.
Pairing this optimal diet with circadian fasting and science-supported lifestyle strategies and 20 recipes to maximize benefits, Hormone Havoc is your all-in-one guide to taking control of your health when you and your hormones feel out of control. You don’t have to settle for feeling awful during perimenopause and menopause—Dr. Shah shows how you can not just feel like yourself again, but feel even better than before.
Podcast: Save Yourself with Dr. Amy Shah
Dr. Amy Shah is a double board-certified MD and Nutritionist who is always looking for ways we can "save ourselves." The real needle-mover of personal development is accepting the reality, no one is coming to save you. Don't panic, Dr. Amy believes everyone has the ability to single-handedly transform their own health, mindset, career and life. This podcast was created to equip you with the necessary tools for shifting your approach from helpless to hero.

Resources

- Harvard Health: Exercise all-natural treatment for depression.
- U. of Australia researchers calling for exercise to be a mainstay prescription.
- PubMed: Randomized controlled trial of EFT and CBT for food cravings.
- Trends in Neurosciences: The impact of psychobiotics and gut health.
- American Psychological Association: The future of psychobiotics.
- Nature Journal: Psychobiotic interventions for anxiety in children.
- Plos One Journal: Effects of brisk walking on sugar cravings
- Journal of Neurogastroenterology: Probiotic effects on anxiety.
- Scientific American: Is your gut making you depressed or anxious?‍
- Annals of Gastroenterology: Explaining the gut-brain connection.

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