Fasting Space

Do you have a habit that you

would like to change or add or improve?

Dive in with me today.

Some more thinking from Atomic Habits.

Going to have a really great thought about it.

we're trying to create the environment.

That's what we're going.

Today
help us really shape our environment, to make it as easy

as possible to make our best choices.

What they describe in here as a choice architecture.

Think.

Think of the environment
that way. It's a choice architecture.

It's a structure that you're moving through

that is helping you to make the decisions
that you are making.

And is it helping you make good decisions,
or is it helping you make not quite the optimal ones?

And if we can see that and tweak it and change it,

then we are altering our choice architecture

and we are supporting our walk in better health.

I say it's a much more thoughtful framework
than just brute forcing our way into something

through pure willpower and fighting

as many battles as we have to to get there.

I say let's try to shape things
so that we have to fight as few battles as possible.

Move through a space fully.

Graciously. Flowing through it. This is what I want.

This is why I love a water analogy so much.

Like a sailboat or like a river.

Things
that are just moving with nature, flowing through a space.

This is what we want in a fasting space.

This is what we want energy to be doing in the body,
especially if you're trying to lose weight.

I really want to help you lose weight
if you want to do it, because this is the fundamental place

where we start in getting metabolic health and healing

is to say, let's start optimizing our body weight.

And if it's over a place where we really feel good about,

we say we want to create an environment, shape it

so that we're helping the energy to flow back

out of the body, a fasting space.

Reason I call this session

fasting space because of fasting space in the body.

Such a valuable place to be able to do that.

You say in a modern society that I call consumption culture,

where there's frequently energy coming into the body.

Okay, very hard to create a situation, situation

where energy is flowing back out of the body.

Always energy is coming in,
and then we have to overcome that and overpower it.

And this is how we get in a cycle.

Got to exercise and exercise, which I am all for

if you feel called to it, if it is the joyful path.

But what I say many times,
what I see as a more effective process for many people

is to get the dietary

process, the fasting process, balancing out

healthy eating, getting that in a place that is moving

the needle forward,
and then from that place, once that is stable,

then start adding in
the movement is often a better way to do it.

Okay, this section, we're in chapter six now of Atomic Habits

and it is called motivation is overrated.

Environment often matters more.

I do love that we did the session the other day,
remember action first.

Emotion follows something like that.

Often we're waiting for this incredible motivation to strike.

And then we think, then we'll go and then it'll be easier.

The mental shift is to say we identify the action
that would be best.

And it's often after we take the step,
then the emotion follows to say, oh, that was good.

And it starts to build momentum and excitement.

But the real trick is we have to take the first step
and that's what gets the cycle going.

And so that's what I want to help you with today.

How do you take that first step?

How do you make it as easy as possible
when it feels like the deck deck is stacked against you?

Listen to this framework.

He tells a story here about a primary care doctor at Mass
General Hospital

said, like, let us try to help

everyone be healthier
by helping them make healthier decisions at lunch.

And I love that
because hospital cafeteria can be an unhealthy place.

And so what they called it, that's where it comes.

A study on altering the choice

architecture of the hospital cafeteria.

And the thing that they wanted to target first was soda.

I say, hey, that's great.

They're saying, what if we could just get everybody
drinking less soda and more water?

And how would we do it?

I really like that. Here's what they did.

Researchers looked at the original state,

where refrigerators located next to the cash

registers were filled with only soda,

and so they added water as an option to each one.

Okay, can't get people drink in the water
if there's only soda there.

Additionally, they placed baskets of water
next to all of the food stations throughout the room,

and soda was still present,
but water was now available at all

drink locations, and over the next three months,

the number of soda sales dropped by 11.4%

and the sales of bottled water increased 26%.

Nobody had said a word to anyone, right?

Nobody forced nobody pushing things in any direction.

Here's what it looked like.

Their showing before and after.

In the cafeteria on the left.

They're seeing they had two little stations where you could
grab a water bottle, but not really prime real estate.

So to get in the prime real estate there by the cashier

and then look over on the right in the future state,

they added all the
the little circles, little baskets of water everywhere.

You could buy food.

You could also grab a water.

And then now you at least got some water in

the main places right by the soda.

And so that's the difference.

So just as a perspective,
you think how do you design a space say

I mean I say tackling soda consumption in a prime location,

a really great move to help,
you know, make a little tweak to help support health.

So here is doing it in a giant cafeteria.

How do you do it in our own personal space,
like in the fridge, in our life, in our house?

And how do we shape decisions like this?

I just love that you can actually see it, right?

How do we have an environment that gets these results?

Nobody's shouting at everybody in the cafeteria

saying like, don't you want to make the healthy choice?

Nobody's shaming anybody. Like, why are you buying that?

You know, nobody's doing that, right?

They're just it's just available, you know what I mean?

And, and and then it's having these real results.

See, I love that.

This is my first thought, taking that sort of concept
and idea, identity shifting difficult.

Can something like this be a first step?

I love it where it's like, okay, doing deep

work, identity shift I describe that's deep work, right?

That's that's like I've had a way of being in the world
for many, many years.

This is like who I am down at a foundational level.

That's not the thing that you just yank over
into a different space.

As far as I see,
that's something that takes thoughtful reflection.

It's something that takes time.

It's something that takes patience.

Definitely have patience with yourself.

Don't have any sort of mindset.

That is, oh my gosh, two weeks have gone by.

And look, I haven't overhauled my entire identity.

You know what I mean?

That's the type of thing that we want to really.

Let simmer a little bit.

And then can we bring in something like this
where it just helps we make the change we want.

We're seeing the change we want saying,

what would be the most perfect space
to help flowing in that direction, be as easy

and as natural as possible, where it feels like grabbing
the water bottle out of the basket was the right thing to do.

Didn't even really have to struggle about it.

Listen to what they say here.

People often choose a product

and I would say, let's expand it to say
make any type of decision, not because of what the product

is or what the decision is, but because of where it is,

the contextual, the context around it.

If I walk into the kitchen, I see cookies on the counter.

I pick up a cookie.

Hadn't been thinking about it beforehand, didn't necessarily

want it okay, but you see that the environment shaped it.

Have you had experiences like that?

I know I've had so many experiences like that,
especially when I was at

the university and we had a special cookie table.

Always treats, always things. My personal routine.

I just didn't walk in that room anymore
because if you walk into the room and then the donut

platter is sitting there, you start smelling it
and you see it and it's like, oh my gosh.

Then the probability just went way up that I would eat it.

And then when, then when I ate one, then the probability
opens that I would have to, you know what I mean?

It's like, that's not a healthy environment.

That is not making it easy
for me is making it very difficult.

So I say, I'm just gonna I'm the type of person

that walks by that room
now, and I walk right back to my office.

So much easier than fighting the battle,

standing over the plate thinking,
now I've got to get my identity right?

Right.

I'm not the type of person who's going to sit here at work
munching donuts, right?

I got to really get into the core because maybe I am still,
you know what I mean?

But it's like,
if I don't stand there in the first place, then

then we can still flow forward in progress
without having to fight it.

Here's, oh, this is what they say.

If a communal table at the office is always filled with
donuts and bagels, it's going to be hard not to grab one.

Yeah, it is so hard.

Your habits change depending on the room you're in

and the cues in front of you.

Why we got to be so thoughtful about the rooms that we're in
and the cues that we're having?

That's when I say, especially at home,
say we can't control everything about the world,

and we've got to be in different places,
and we're going to run into difficult situations.

When we're in a world that is full of unhealthy things.

That's why I say home is like the sanctuary.

Home should be the purified space
where we make it as easy and supportive as possible.

Like he's saying, if we're keeping a platter of cookies out,
like they're going to get eaten, right?

So we say we want to maybe not make so many cookies, right?

That's like upstream, right?

And then if we have the cookies, maybe keep them
in the cupboard, only bring it out for the specific time.

Right.

These are the types of things that could shape
the environment.

To go through a bunch of discussion here about marketing,
underline this section.

Customers will buy products

not because they want them,
but because of how they are presented to them.

There's like a key thing just to think of
how are we making decisions, aren't we?

You know, I'm talking to myself.

Aren't we susceptible to marketing just like anybody else?

I say items at eye
level tend to be purchased more than those near the floor.

Something looks good. Easy, right?

They're trying to make things as easy as possible
to sell to us.

Right.

They say 44% of Coca-Cola sales come from the end

racks, those end caps things
because it's like right there, the most traffic.

Everybody heading into the aisle,
beautiful displays like bright red things

like you want to grab it I don't know, I'm just thinking
now I was like, oh, it looks like an apple on a tree.

Like here is like somewhere deep
in, like the human experience picking a fruit off the tree.

Now we're grabbing the red can off of the shelf.

I don't know, that's kind of interesting to think about.

They see here many of the actions we take
each day are not shaped by purposeful

drive and choice, but because they are

the most obvious and easy option.

So interesting, right?

Here's a way to kind of take some pressure off
this whole thing of like, oh, I see shifting,

you know, is like, you know,
you don't want to create an experience where it's like,

oh, like I like because, like, we have an identity, right?

And it's like we can think about teasing out like our actions

from the identity even in some manner where it's like,
okay, there's like a core self in here.

There's actions that are happening
and yes, changing the identity.

If we can say, okay, I'm a person who makes healthy decisions

now, whereas I haven't in the past,
I say this is important to me.

That's the type of thing.

Or say I'm like growing, improving, learning.

But then when we see that
the choices we make can be influenced by so many things,

even outside of ourselves, including marketing and visual
hacking of the way a brain is working.

Okay, then we can start to have grace with ourselves too.

Whereas like, okay, it's not like
my identity is just failing here.

It's just that it's very difficult
and we're trying to combat these forces against us.

And remember what I like to say.

We don't have to be perfect, right?

It's doing our best when you encounter
something like that, see?

Oh, like here
is, here are things that are making it difficult for me

to make the choices
that are in line with this identity I'm trying to have.

And then it is a flow and a circle, and we're learning

and getting feedback and we're saying, hey,
we celebrate the small wins.

It's like, hey, I made it through this space.

Sometimes I would have been distracted by that,
but here I wasn't.

Okay. So we feel good about that.

And if we made a choice, we say in retrospect,

we say, oh, I think that that wasn't quite the identity

then we can be very thoughtful about it, maybe
bring this process in.

How can I shape my environment or experience
so I don't even have to deal with it?

Again, I love that.

I'll tell you.

Shopping the outside of the grocery store
a good way to avoid end caps, right?

Like if you can do it, you know,
because they're trying to hit all the stuff is not so good.

You know, if we hit the produce, we blow around,
you know, the outside.

So much processed stuff in the middle.

Here is the section I thought was really interesting.

We're talking about vision, the way things look.

They say the most powerful of all human sensory abilities,

the vision, human body.

They say 11 million sensory receptors

and approximately 10 million of those
are part of the visual system.

Some experts estimate that half of the brain's
resources are used on vision.

Given that we are more dependent on vision
than any other sense, it should come as no surprise

that visual cues are the greatest catalyst for our behavior,

and for this reason, a small change in what you see

can lead to a big shift in what you do.

Isn't that interesting to think about?

As a result, you can imagine how important it is
to live and work in environments

that are filled with productive cues

and devoid of unproductive ones.

This is like trying to summarize the whole
ethos of what we have.

We are visual people like we see things
and that is priming the system.

It's like the red can want to grab it and buy it, right?

It's like we see it.

The flashy, colorful can, whatever it is,
you know what I'm saying?

This is the sort of thing.

Think about it.

If we think, okay, I am like a brain. I am a mind.

It's like the brain works on vision.

Like what are the cuz? Like, what are we actually seeing?

This is why I did the video for Friday digital fasting.

I, you know, I thought it was good.

It's like okay, what we see is so important
and and we got strange devices.

I, I don't even have my phone here.

Look at that.

Got the device
and it's all, it's trying to sell us something, right.

And say let's, you know, use it for good things.

We're connecting on it.

I say, that's great, but like, let's put it in its place.

And as we are carving out spaces where we say

fasting space for the body
don't have to worry about PFAS and microplastics

and highly processed stuff coming on into the body,
at least for a little while.

Screen is away during as much of that time
as we can to means nothing coming into the mind,

and we're not seeing things
that are trying to manipulate us through an algorithm.

Anything that we can just do to say,
hey, how do I flow through this space

in a more natural, peaceful, positive way?

Being very choosy, right?

What are the things that we choose to see, right.

That is creating the experience that we want to have.

They say here,
you don't have to be the victim of your environment.

You can also be the architect of it.

Super loved that.

Have you thought of yourself that way?

Can you be the architect of your environment?

Like this.

This is how we start bringing in the creative process.

You know, like Rick Rubin, we were reading,

how do we be the creator of our life
and our experience as much as we can, right?

We can't necessarily change any everything.

But like a certain things we say are a given.

And like from the hand that we are dealt,
the places that we are

in, we say,
how do we take this and then bring in those thinking?

Obstacle is the way we say,
oh, I don't like how this environment is.

Well, how do we take it and shape it to our advantage
very thoughtfully.

This next section is like, okay, how do you do it?

How do you design an environment for success?

In the next session section, they say here
every habit is initiated by a cue,

and we're most likely to notice the cues that stand out.

Unfortunately, environments where we live and work often
make it easy

not to do certain actions
because there is no obvious cue to trigger the behavior.

I was thinking this a lot in our space, like fasting space.

How do you cue something that is nothing you know?

Isn't that interesting? I have some thoughts about that.

It's easy to not practice your instrument
when it's put away in the closet.

It's easy not to read a book
when the bookshelf is in the corner of the guest room.

When the cues are subtle and hidden, they're easy to ignore.

But obvious visual cues draw your attention to the habit.

How do you make like?

If we're going to dial in on our fasting space,
we can talk about anything.

It's easier to see with food, right?

He tells a story here where he's like, he didn't.

He'd by apples and he'd throw him in the back of the fridge
and they'd sit there, and then they would go bad.

Over months, he'd never see them. Okay.

But then when he got a dish and he put them out on the table,
and that's the thing that you see.

Easier to start eating an apple.

You know what I mean?

It's like it's there.

Out of sight, out of mind.

Like present like top of mind.

Like what are the things you see?

Make the apple a centerpiece in the place

where you see it easier to grab it.

How do we make fasting easier to grab? Like it's nothing.

Maybe it's just by keeping everything else out of the way.

Okay, that's one thing.

Or it's like putting a nice picture of water

with a
a little sliced up lemon in it, you know, and some ice.

So it's always cold. And then that is in a prominent place.

So you can always say, oh,
the thing I am doing in this space is grabbing the water,

you know, whereas like if you're using coffee
to get through a space,

like the coffee is out in a thing,
it's like where the snack plate used to be.

The black coffee is there.

You can always just grab it,
you know, help you flow through that morning space.

So that's the type of thing keeping everything away.

That is the negative distraction,
putting the positive things in there.

You know, I was reading his description of this,
you know, grab an apple.

I think it's pretty fair to say nobody gained too much weight
by eating too many apples.

You know, I was having this silly little thought of like,
apple fasting.

You know, it's like you just ate apples, you know, like,
for a while, like, if did an apple get you through an app?

Pure fasting.

But like, I guarantee you,
like if you're trying to do a nomad but you can't do it

and it's just an apple gets you through, you know,

it's good enough, you know, it's very likely good enough.

I put a few notes around this section too.

Yeah, I have the easy stuff out.

And then like, that's just to me
that's bringing in these concepts.

I really like, like minimalism, like just and just like

cleaning the house as an idea to collect, clean the body.

Right. We're shaped by the environment.

Think on the the big level.

I've done some big talks on like how our bodies

collectively as a society are mirroring industrial society
and then like

we can just bring it like on the small scale, like,
are you keeping the house clean?

We talk about autophagy, clean the cellular structure

like burn through everything,
like we want every environment mirroring each other.

So like,
are you having trouble getting the interior space clean?

Like maybe just clean the house, you know, it's like,
just get everything really clean there.

It's like giving such a metaphor for, like,
the mirroring between the environment and the body.

Really do like that. Get rid of clutter.

If you have clutter, get rid of clutter.

We're trying to get the clutter out of the body,
out of the mind and out of the environment.

Like bring it all together.

Say, if you want to make a habit a big part of your life,

make the Q a big part of the environment.

That's something really to think about.

They say the most persistent behaviors usually

have multiple cues or like big prominent cues.

So like I was thinking about this, I'm saying,
okay, like fasting.

How do you put a big fascinating
maybe you buy a ridiculously big picture.

You know, it's like it's just.

And it's like prominent you know

like I invested a big beautiful glass picture
that we can like really make

or like a water cooler or something that we put there to say,
hey like this is a focus.

You know, this is a focal point where it's like
it's not always snacks or food even that is out.

But we're going to focus on staying hydrated.

And especially if you could make it beautiful,
like something really nice to look at

or say, hey, that is something I want to

see is making it a priority.

I like that they just reiterate here,

make sure the best choice is the most obvious one.

Environmental design is powerful,

they say, not only because it influences

how we engage with the world,
but also because we so rarely do it.

An a double blind this sentence

most people live in a world others have created for them.

But you can alter the spaces where you live and work,

increase your exposure to positive cues,
reduce your exposure to negative ones.

Environmental design allows you to take back control
and become the architect of your life.

Be the designer of your world
and not merely the consumer of it.

Just think that is such a thoughtful, powerful situation
to create.

Stop living in a world others have created for you.

Start living in the.

To the greatest extent you can.

Design the world that you want to live in.

That'll make the atomic habits
the easiest way to flow through.

Do you feel that way?

I say do some thinking on it as share.

I do want to know, like do you identify?

Do you find small places where it's like,

oh, this is a trigger in the environment
that I can change and move it?

Is it taking away something that you had out

a clutter of some kind of food cue of some kind, or

is it adding in some thoughtful sort of thing

that is helping you to make a better decision,
making some sort of beautiful place

where you can get delicious, pure water

to help support that fasting process.

Maybe we've done other cues in the past.

It's getting the gym clothes out.

It's getting the running shoes by the door.

It's getting the swim stuff there.

So it's like everything is lined up
so that you can make that movement choice.

Maybe it's making the shopping list.

That's a big one.

So it's like,
I love to say win the battle at the grocery store.

Like anything that you buy at the grocery store
and bring into your house,

high probability
just went up that you're going to eat it, right?

So go to the grocery store in the right frame of mind.

Maybe after you ate a meal, then go
so you're not so hungry going into it.

Have the list.

That's the best, cuz I'm just getting the stuff on the list.

I'm not looking at the end caps where I know people trying
to manipulate me and sell me things that aren't on the list.

This is how we flow through these environments
in the best possible way.

What what ways do you see these sort of effects in your life,

both from the positive and negative side,
where we can kind of turn down one and turn up the other?

I would love to know.

Very nice to share this space with you today.

Let me know your ongoing thoughts
in the comments of this video.

Love to have an ongoing discussion with you, and I'll be back

with more reflections and thoughts tomorrow.

Have a great day everybody!