S01E20 - Food Culture

Our third food episode is with guest Kayla Simpson @_kayla.simpson, fellow coach @crossfitbison. Food is not just fuel. Most most of us, it represents who we are - our culture, our personal experiences, our friends and our family. We are constantly bombarded by food information. How can we sort through this "food culture" and recognize how we can make our daily relationship with food better?

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S01E20 CULTURE AND FOOD

[00:00:00] David Syvertsen: All right. Welcome back to the HerdFit podcast. I'm coach Dave Syvertsen and I'm here with Dr. Sam Rhee and episode number three with our queen guest, Kayla Simpson coach Kayla Simpson here at Bison. The topic number three, that we have her on in regard to nutrition, a little bit more open-ended conversation that I think everyone in this room can relate to.

If you're listening at some point, you're going to be able to relate to it, and it really has to center around less. Less about your science with food, which we got into pretty deep with Kayla and more about just the, the culture and how it affects our nutrition, our eating, and to be Frank, our relations.

With food and it's a very touchy subject. And I know that everyone has their own story in regard to food and nutrition, and some have very dark, scary stories. And some are very I would say naive to how dark I can get for some people. And we kind of want to touch on both sides of it and what the culture has done to impact how we look, how we feel about how we look and our food is.

And we're in a very unique environment here because CrossFit is a very performance centered fitness program. We're constantly talking about our times and our weights and our scores and our PRS. And that does not always correlate with how people approach food, because a lot of people, their approach to food, I would say the majority of the public is, has nothing to do with their performance.

It's more about how they're feeling in the moment or what they want to look like. And it's it can go a lot of different paths, but I'm excited to talk about this one.

[00:01:31] Kayla Simpson: Yeah, for sure. I love this topic. I think that it's exciting to have this brought into the CrossFit space. I don't think it's, I think it's being talked about more and more, but it initially was not talked about enough, especially within the CrossFit space and the fitness space, because everything's so performance-based, but.

Like, how do you feel about yourself? Like that is something that it's tough to talk about. Like, it's tough to really like on a deeper level. Like, are, are you doing paleo and straying away from paleo or are you doing keto or these different types of diets and like, how do you feel on them? Like, do you feel.

Like crap. Are you sleeping? Okay. Not because things keep you up at night, but really because like, are you feeling your body the right way? So, so it is tough. What do you, what do you th what are your thoughts on that? Same?

[00:02:28] Sam Rhee: I mean, I would say food in terms of health is, I mean, other than say sleep and some other things is the most impactful thing, right?

It's the thing that even as non-athletes they have the most complicated relationship and it's, it's brought up with a lot of different things in it. Right. So it's your family, it's your culture. It's you know, your, the people around you, it's what you read and what you think about it's what it's pleasure.

It's right, right. It's and that complex relationship is I don't know. I out of a hundred people, I would say 90% of them do not have a perfectly healthy relationship with food and we all deal with it. I know I've dealt with it. You've dealt with it. You've dealt with it. Everyone I know has dealt with it some better than others.

And. You know, we're also surrounded in a society where we're being constantly bombarded by food messages. I mean, the commercials people's images, you know, all this diet information. Everyone I talked to has an idea of what they think healthy eating is, but boy, that, that range. Tremendously.

[00:03:38] David Syvertsen: Yeah. There's a lot of nutrition experts out there. Some say, self-proclaimed

[00:03:42] Sam Rhee: people are so sure of themselves though. They say, you know what, if I avoid this food, everything is fine. You know, you know, if I eat this way, everything will be fine and I'll be able to lose weight. And so, it's, it's something that we could probably have like 15 full length podcast and not even scratch the surface of

[00:04:00] Kayla Simpson: what it's about.

Yeah. I see this common theme happening on. Instagram, the gram I'm in that in-between zone of like, I started Instagram in high school, but I, there wasn't what it is today. It wasn't like, it gets worse. It gets worse every year and it's very body image focused. But right now, currently in like the dietetics world, there's a divide I'm seeing and it's intuitive eating versus like, The performance centered or maybe like the bikini athletes like the, how the physique athletes or diet and weight loss, and like the intuitive eating side is anti diet, anti diet culture.

And some of them are really extreme. I think there's a happy medium that can be met in the middle. And then the other side is like, well, we don't know how to. Intuitively eat to our hunger cues. Like we don't know how to do that because not everyone is thin like you naturally or not everyone can relate to when we feel really full, let's just stop eating.

Like we need this structure. And then the other, the anti-diet culture is intuitive eating, which is a really awesome thing and can be really beneficial for some people, especially who have this disordered eating pattern type history or eating disorder, which they're completely two separate entities.

They're two different things. They really are. And can you intuitively eat while being an athlete? Cause sometimes athletes don't know how much to eat and they don't necessarily want to eat, but it's going to make them perform better. It's something I'm trying to also work out. And that's part of my story.

I was that girl in high school who. I was on Instagram and seeing the skinny was skinny was beautiful. That was the time there wasn't that like muscular CrossFit strength yet until I got to college, but I just didn't know. I thought eating celery and carrots and lettuce was healthy. I thought that was health.

And it messes with you. It really does. So I'm thankful for the CrossFit space bringing in this like muscular, beautiful strength. It's beautiful to have muscles it's beautiful to at all sizes. But then it can also tip over of like, okay, well now I'm getting into my macros and like being really obsessive that way too.

So, I honestly thank CrossFit that I have it because I feel like I would have gone down the path of still having disordered eating. Patterns. So it's, there's, there's a lot of pros and cons there.

[00:06:55] David Syvertsen: Yeah. I mean, the we've said this for a couple of times. We think that CrossFit, you know, no bias here. I mean that, and especially women and cross it have really changed the land.

More than any group of people in the fitness industry. I think ever in my opinion and the over the past decade, I'd say, and I know we should always be cognizant of that. And even thankful for that, that a like women, like you had noticed that and you actually took it on. And now I think even without you even knowing you're kind of inspiring others to do the same, whether they're in this gym or outside this gym, because they see that you're lifting big weights.

And getting jacked, like we talked about and really using food as something that you're going to need so that you can perform in the gym and in your training with all the training goals. And so I think one thing that I think a lot of us struggle with, or have struggled with in regard to what we're talking about right now, just like the cultural and internal pressures that we feel in regard to food.

What are you trying to do? Like what, what is your goal? And. If a lot of your goals are performance centered. There's a lot of thought that needs to go into probably eating more than you are. And we need to get away from eating celery, carrots, and lettuce, and thinking that that's a healthy diet at the end of the day.

It's not. And I, I, in regard to that performance center, Approach now, if someone's like, Hey, I mean, we talked about this a few weeks ago. I think in the latest podcasts that we release body image versus performance sent across it. I think that if you do have a body image goal, and there's nothing wrong with.

You know, then it can shift some diet related decisions that you need to make and how disciplined you need to be and how regimented you need to be. But we've talked about this, that the number one thing I always want as a coach is the athlete to be able to always tell me what they, what they're shooting for.

And it can change. It's a moving target. But if I asked you right now, Kayla, what's your goal going? We talked about this last week after a 7:00 AM class, like, all right, what is the goal is if the answer was so like, I don't know, like. Just want to be helped. Like I just want to be healthy, but I don't really know like how much are want, like it doesn't no one's really going to have to help you out.

And I think it's going to make a lot of those gray areas more prevalent. And I think, I think the more time someone spends in that gray area where they just want to go back and forth, back and forth, they're not sure what they're training for. I'm not sure what they're living for. I think that's when a lot of the bad, bad times with food because you based, you basically just making spontaneous decisions.

Yeah. You're in a bad mood. You know, it'll it'll fix my day. Oh, I want to celebrate something. Let's go eat. And then two days later, you're at the gym and you're trying to do, you know, squat, snatches and muscle-ups and you feel like something hurts and you're dealing with inflammation or you feel bloated, you feel heavy, then you get upset in that moment, you know?

And it's just like this vicious cycle that goes back and forth.

[00:09:46] Sam Rhee: I think one of the things that I would sell a tell people. That is, and we've talked about this and this is what I love about CrossFit is you start thinking about food and you start thinking about how society pushes food on us. And CrossFit is you can call it a cult, but it's.

It's antiestablishment in a lot of different ways. It was antiestablishment when it said you can be muscular and, and, and redefine what, what fitness is and what looking good is for a lot of different people. It's also antiestablishment in the sense that processed food and food that is being pushed on us as a society is generally not good.

There have been trends. I remember 10, like you talked about this, how we would eat foods that were low in fat snack, well cookies, oh. You know, no fat in them, but it was all processed sugar and carbs, and yet it was supposed to be healthy. So all of these trends that we've sort of seen have hurt us in terms of health.

Right. And I think the one thing I would say, and we've talked about this in multiple podcasts now is processed food. Are bad. They're not good. They are bad for us. And they're bad for us on a bunch of things. You know, we, we talked about stickiness about inflammation and, and there have been really good studies that, and you've talked about this, the absorption of foods that are processed and easily digestible is not good for us.

I read a study where they say a calorie is not a calorie. So if you ate almonds, for example, the if you have 170 calories almonds, you're actually absorbing about 128 of those calories. If you eat white bread and cheddar cheese, as opposed to Whole wheat bread. The amount of absorption is like 10% more for that process to white bread, as opposed to the unprocessed, like, you know, nuts and stuff in seeds that they throw into whole wheat bread.

So in general, if there's one message that I would say we need to fight culturally is don't listen to. What's being pushed on us from a daily food perspective. If you look at every food commercial, if you look at all the foods that are available and you know, it's getting better, right. And I know that you, as a nutritionist has seen, see what's being marketed and what's being pushed out there for all of us.

It's easy. Right? It's so much easier at the end of the day to go pick something up

[00:12:22] David Syvertsen: from a fast food restaurant. Exactly.

[00:12:24] Sam Rhee: And we've all done it. And I still do it on occasion just because I've done a poor job planning or Susan's out

[00:12:32] David Syvertsen: of town or something like that.

[00:12:35] Kayla Simpson: And the, in the supermarket keto in the egg side, there's a, the egg aisle.

I'm like, thank you for letting my letting me know my eggs are my, or like the paleo chips that are in the, you know, it's funny because I it's, I laugh at those marketing thing. 'cause they're just trying to get you to buy it and like the process food that they claim to be healthy. But at the same time, I like, I buy some of those things like processed food is bad.

I think we can all get behind that, but I love ice cream. I mean, ice cream doesn't love me, but it's the morale behind it too. Like it's okay to have. You can find some sort of balance. And I, I do,

[00:13:21] David Syvertsen: if someone comes up to you and says, are Kayla, like I'm going to eat healthy, I'm going to do whatever diet regimen you want me to, but how often can I have ice cream?

And it's probably, you don't want to get that question because it's different for everybody. What is the response? Is it like, can I have it once a week? Can I have it, can I have it once every two weeks? Like what, what would your response. I

[00:13:39] Kayla Simpson: would honestly respond with, how often do you have it now? And if it's like a huge serving every single day, right?

I would say, all right, cool. Let's just, you can still have it every single day. I know crazy dietician saying, saying that you can still have it today. Ha. Every single day and let's just have less of it. Right. I don't want you to cut it out and then crave it even more and then binge on it later on. Yeah.

It's especially for someone who's not the 1% of the world going for the CrossFit games. It's going to look different if you are. But even then, there's still, like, you can still have some sort of enjoyment in your

[00:14:22] David Syvertsen: food. Right. I think that's one of the biggest things is you need to get past. Feeling bad about yourself.

If you had a bad night, a cheat night on ice cream, because at the end of the day, you are your bot, especially if you're consistent with, you know, other metrics, water intake your exercise, your stress levels. You having a scoop of ice cream every night, isn't going to be a big deal. You craving it every night will eventually turn into a big deal right now.

Are we going to sit here on this podcast and tell you to eat ice cream every night? No, but Kayla said, this is a specific question that needs specific answers from you before she can answer, right? If you're someone like Ash and I usually get we'll get ice cream, every, I would say every two weeks. All right.

Maybe every three weeks. Okay. If it was up to her, it'd be twice a week or twice every week, but okay. If I came to Kayla and I said, Hey, you know, I'm really, I want to change a few things up. I think it's just kind a little lacking here and there. And she asked me that question. You know, she should not are, I would think she should.

She's not going to say like, right. They have no more ice cream ever again. Yeah. Because what's it going to do other than just make Ashley very angry. Right. But it's gonna make me crave it. And then at some point I'm going to break, you know, because I'm a human being and I would like to think I'm disciplined, but I'm not perfect with discipline.

And you go down that path and then say you break new. One weekend two, three days in a row. And then it's, again, it kind of takes you out of this lifestyle or what is the point of clean eating, you know, like what is the point you want to, again, it comes back to Kayla would say, what's your goal? Like, are you trying to, are you trying to make the games?

Are you okay then? Yeah, we're going to have to probably cut some things out. You know, you want to be healthy. You want to look good. You want to feel good. Do you want to be able to come in and wad five days? Yeah. Have ice cream every other week, stay on that routine or cut down the portion a little bit, you know, just, just don't binge it.

And I think that's something that a lot of people need to hear. You're never going to tell us you never, we're never going to tell you that you can't eat things. Right. I think that that's step that that might be a further step down the road. But when you tell people that I remember during reset last year, I think we're two weeks in and reset.

Lasher was really long. Because we do reset to the open and the open started at the end of second half of March. I think it was 10 weeks and five weeks in. A lot of people gave up and it was because they were just starving themselves from cheese, you know, like simple things like, and I was like, you know what?

I bet if that, if she had a piece of cheese every day with her lunch, Yeah, and it probably, it was less than what she used to eat. So there would have been a positive result out of that, but because we go cold Turkey and a lot of things, it's almost like asking a smoker to stop smoking by literally just stopped smoking cigarettes.

No, like easing off no patches or anything. It usually it gets pretty ugly at some point.

[00:17:12] Sam Rhee: I think a lot of these issues are okay. So we know what the logical. Things to do about eating our right keeping track of what we eat, you know, following some general principles you know, avoiding processed foods.

But the, but I feel like a lot of what we do in food is illogical. It's not driven by our rational mind. It's driven by. Are illogical, irrational mind. There's a lot of emotion associated with eating and usually it's negative. And when it's negative, that's when we start shying away from the behaviors that really should help us.

Everything I don't do well is generally associated with a negative emotion and, and the farther along I go in life, the more I feel like, okay, how can I turn this into a positive thing? And. Some of it is just coming to grips with. Acknowledging that, you know, why, why am I doing, why am I not eating the way I should?

W you know, what am I facing? What, what negative emotions are in my head that are causing me to do this. And some of it is just acknowledging it to myself and just throwing it out there. Some of it is, is finding others to help me with it, because it's a secret that I've kept for myself. It's like, okay, well, you know, at night I know.

I do. And I've talked to a lot of patients who, who have acknowledged like secretly I will do this and nobody else knows about it. And, and when I'm at work, I eat super healthy and everything looks great. And then at home I secretly, you know, indulge in this and I feel awful about it. And, and, and I have a lot of negative emotions.

And so when, when you're dealing with people, how do you try to one, get them to be honest with themselves and to sort of start turning these negative thoughts. Positive

[00:19:02] Kayla Simpson: it's there. First of all, they, you are not alone. If you experienced this. So many people experienced this. I like what you do behind closed doors and what you eat.

And during those moments, it is really tied to emotion. And what other stressors you have going on in your life, in how that food makes you feel and what helps. In a lot of cases is just keeping a journal, like a log of like not of a food log. Like how do you really feel after a meal? Are you sitting down and enjoying your meal in front of you without distractions?

Are you surrounded by people during your meal? Are you connecting with others while you eat it? What other stress do you have going on at work at your, in your life? And it's sometimes playing this game of like psychologists a little bit, and that is not my, my expertise at all. I refer out if I really need to, like, I don't try and pretend, but a lot of times nutrition is really linked to what's going on at home and having them keep a journal and a log of.

All right. I had breakfast or even if it's just once a day at the end of the day, and reflecting upon how the food made you feel getting a little bit away from performance, taking like bringing the human into it. Because if you're, especially, if you're just trying to be healthy, it's something that can just bring awareness to.

Like, when I had the five Twinkies, I felt this way, but why did I have them in the first place? Em, is it because I'm hungry because I didn't eat enough throughout the day. And now I'm just bingeing on all of these other things, because I'm so hungry because I restricted them or is it because I'm stressed on something else?

So it's something that can help. Just something that gets the wheels turning and. We dive into other stressors in life is this, that's where I like connecting with the client is really important. And connecting with that person and understanding their goals is really important.

[00:21:11] David Syvertsen: Yeah. I think stress is probably the biggest driver in, in food issues.

I really, I mean, I can, I'll speak for myself on the. Is, you know, like I always will. I have the bad habit of just trying to jam too many things into a day, whether it's training, coaching, Brock, Ash next level work, the the other work that I do outside of fitness. Right. And at some point I, the doing the work never stresses me out.

Like I actually, I think that's when I'm at my best, like when you're in this zone, you're like the worst is at nighttime. When I know what's coming. And like, I get that anxiety at nighttime, like that 9, 9 30, 10, if I'm coaching 9 45, 10, 10, 15. And I started thinking like, all right, I'm only going to sleep about five, six hours tonight.

I got to go coach the morning, but try to work out after, but I hate working out there. I coach, and then I have to go train this person and then I have to do this programming work. And then that, those thoughts right there in that moment, the only thing that makes me feel better is eating and. You know, when I did my near a cleanse, the best I felt was when I woke up because I didn't eat, but my habit is I'll eat at 9 45 at night, and I'm talking a 1500 to 2000 Cal meal.

And then I'll try to be in bed 15 minutes later. It's really one of the worst things you can do. You know, for, for several reasons. And like, and then I start my next day, like kind of like feeling sluggish, but then I have to be on to coach. Right? Like you can't, you have to fake it sometimes. Right.

And though I would say every eating issue I have had in the past, or I continue to have, when I have like bad weeks was this town. Sam had a bad couple of weeks lately. It centers around the stress of what's coming. It's not necessarily, I had a bad day. This is going to make my day feel better. It's more like, man, I am so overwhelmed right now.

I almost want to distract myself from what's coming up. It's like, you know, it's sometimes you go to bed. You're not even relaxed because you know that it's going to be a short night asleep. And when I worked with Kayla over the summer, it wasn't anything like, wow, like I never thought of that, but it had an outside voice saying.

You know that 2000 cow meal that you're going to have at night, try to have half of it at four. Maybe if you can get squeeze it in, like have half that so that when you do go back to eat it, you have the second half of it. It's not that much food. And I did it. And honestly, the, I think it was two, three weeks of doing it.

It made a significant difference on a lot of different levels. And most importantly, for me, how I was working out when I was training, just felt better. You know, it felt less sticky, less, less inflamed. And it, again, it just goes to show that like, stress isn't always just like, what happened to you today?

It's also like, we always like, especially in this area, I feel like everyone in this area, especially in this world right now, we're always like, and anxious about something that's going on. You know, I think that having an outside voice helped me with. With that, you know, if I didn't have the outside voice saying.

Okay, go do this. Then I probably would have never changed that. And it was a huge help that anyone out there that struggled with that kind of thing, like your binge eating at night, I think if you have someone that either you're reporting to, or you just talk to someone about it, and Kayla said like, a lot of people struggle with this.

I would say almost everybody. I think you could help you out a lot.

[00:24:22] Kayla Simpson: Another thing is like put down the phone when you eat or just notice, like, if you can notice over the next three days, how many times you scroll when you eat. And what are you consuming? Not literally consuming, but social media content.

Where do you consume? What are you consuming while you scroll? Because when I look at my explore page pages, all these really Jack girls and what message subconsciously is that sending while you eat, and then you're not paying attention to the food, which then in turn, your hunger cues are thrown off.

[00:24:54] Sam Rhee: That's a huge one for me. I just realized when you said that. So the first thing is, is when you were saying, you're describing yourself, Dave, I was thinking, here's a guy who, this is his life. This is his, he should know all of this. Right. And it makes such sense to say, okay, well eat half of it earlier. And I was like, but it took someone to tell you that yeah.

For you to sort of try it and. Everyone needs that coach or that little outside thing to say, because it makes such sense, but you don't think about it on your own.

[00:25:29] David Syvertsen: You're just doing your thing. 'cause I think when we think about things on our own, we just like, we always just feel bad for ourselves. Like, oh, I deserve this too.

Like, I work really hard. Like, you know, like I had a bad day and I worked really hard and I did this at the gym today, so I can do this, you know, but you know, we, we. As hard as we are on ourselves. I also think we're a little, it's going to be contradictory, but we're way too soft on ourselves. I think I actually think more people would benefit from being a little harder on themselves when it comes to food decisions in the moment.

Right. I don't want people hating themselves every day, but you know, It took someone who's even sitting next to me. Right. You know, it was just like a zoom call one day, like, Hey, do this. And

[00:26:10] Sam Rhee: it happened and you know what, it actually made it more positive,

[00:26:13] David Syvertsen: so. Right, right, right. So it was a generally a positive experience, which is also

[00:26:16] Sam Rhee: a good emotion.

The other funny thing is, is I that resonance. Me what you just said, Kayla, because especially when I've had a really hard day, especially on a Friday and I've, I've just worked. I just, something just kicked my ass work. Right. And the F the only thing I can think about is I'm going to go home. I'm going to put up my tablet.

I'm going to watch. Something, I binge-watched something I'm going to binge eat something and I deserve it because I've been really good all week. I worked out, I've been doing all my stuff at work. I've been, you know, pretty disciplined. And I don't even think about what it is that I'm putting in my mouth because I'm just watching something.

And for me to be more mindful, the fact that you just said that I said, okay, well, you know what? I think I need to try that. That lack of mindfulness about eating is a problem. Part of some of the issues I have not necessarily from a weight perspective, from a feeling perspective, then that's exactly how I feel.

I feel bloated. I feel, Ugh. I don't feel

[00:27:21] David Syvertsen: good. And then you have a shitty sleep than a shitty workout.

[00:27:25] Sam Rhee: And then I come in in the morning and listen, generally I can get my ass up and do the workout, but how much better would I be performing or just generally feeling? Yeah, if I didn't You know, do that.

And half the time on a Saturday, I, you know, I've binged so much on bad food. I'm like on Friday night, I'm like, oh, do I work out with people who are going to kick my ass on Saturday or not? And probably half the time I'm like, yes. And sometimes I'm no, but that's the sort of behavior that is not helping me on.

And I don't and I don't even realize

[00:27:58] Kayla Simpson: it. Yeah. You don't even realize it. I'm going to play devil's advocate for you. Yeah. With the perfectionist part of it. Like I think that half the people can have people in general can definitely benefit from being a little bit harder on yourself in the moment, but I'm going to switch it to just being more mindful of yourself in the moment.

Instead of scrolling, maybe take out a journal, take out something, right. Why, why you're grateful for what you're grateful for. It's just, it's not, this has been done in the past. It's not people use that all the time. Right. But with the perfectionist side of things, like hearing that for some people can be like, oh crap, I need to be harder on myself.

Like for me, for people who have spent years undoing being a perfectionist, being too hard on them. Yeah. That can also be detrimental as well, but I think both sides, cause I was, I am the person who is too hard on themselves, needs to be perfect. I've spent I've, I've done work to try and undo that. Right.

And don't want to go down there and you don't want to go down that path again. So having both sides of the spectrum is in the middle. Just be more mindful. Like you can, you can always be better, but it just, which side are you on? And which side can you come? Can you come to that middle

[00:29:23] David Syvertsen: ground? There was a, an OPEX on my OPEX course say w one of the things they talked about nutrition is it was being mindful when you're eating and they had, if you struggle with like, what does that actually mean?

They said. Yeah. It's like when you put your food in your mouth, think about you chewing your food and there's, there's physical advantages to that center around your saliva, but, and your digestion, but they said it makes you not scroll, not watch TV. Like I think about like how you're actually chewing your food.

Okay. Rather than like, just like shoveling it down your mouth, down your throat swallow and it a, it slows you down, but B it's like exactly what you're talking about just makes you more mindful of what you're actually doing. Yeah. The

[00:30:05] Sam Rhee: other thing is, is that and I think you highlighted it, Dave, it's not about the food.

It's about the stress in your life. Yeah. And I think that manifests in food issues That happens

[00:30:16] David Syvertsen: to me all the time and I've seen it in my life. The, the higher

[00:30:19] Sam Rhee: levels of stress result in. Poor food behaviors. And it's not a daily level of stress. Is that chronic? Like you said, things overhanging other things in your life.

And, and that's just a simple, it's a symptom of an underlying issue and I'm not telling people like how to fix stress in their lives. Like that's freaking ridiculous, but sometimes just recognizing it's not. I have food problems. It's life slash stress problems that need to be addressed. That will

[00:30:53] David Syvertsen: address.

Yeah. The food compounds, the issues. Yeah. If you can fix again, we're not qualified to fix your stress issue. I don't think anybody is. That's going to be a very internal. But recognizing it, yeah. Recognize it, like take maybe not working as much, taking some things off your plate. You know, I mean, we don't get too deep in here, but like removing some toxic relationships out of your life, like that really can maybe be the driving force that's making you eat more than you think you should.

It's funny

[00:31:21] Kayla Simpson: going into a master's degree for nutrition. It's so funny. Cause I struggled with this during the, when I was completing my final push of my degree and I was like, all right, Dave, I'm overwhelmed. I need to, like, I was doing like 500 different things at once.

[00:31:42] David Syvertsen: So like Kayla and I do this with all the coaches here. It's like, Hey, like what can you guys do schedule wise? What do you want to do? We'll try to get what you want, no promises, but pretty much everyone gets what they want schedule wise. And then we fill in the spots in between. And, but now that I have a kid and I have someone that watches him one day, one morning, a week, I'm more regimented that I've ever been.

Like, I don't have the flexibility. Like, oh, like Sam called out today. I'm just going to go coach his classes. I did that for five years. Can't do it anymore. And I remember, so we talked to Kayla about her schedule and we found like little pockets here and there. Like, you know what, like let's try Monday five, 6:00 AM.

And I was like, okay, that's, that's tough to do. I did the Monday five, six for five years. It's tough. Like, you're just like, you're thinking about it throughout the weekend and coaching early mornings, you have anxiety. Alarm not going off,

[00:32:29] Kayla Simpson: Dave. I can only talk at nine. And

[00:32:31] David Syvertsen: I think I started texting her like at nine 15 about the why the next day.

And I was like, oh gosh, she's probably sleeping. And so long story short, you know, the next day. And this is when she had so many things going on, Kayla is kind of like, I relate to her, like almost sometimes has too many things going on, but she, she she's a hustler. And you don't want to take the hustle out of a hustler, especially right now at this point in her life.

Like she's got to do it right now. But I think at so five and 6:00 AM, she thinks she coached. And I think maybe at, by 11:00 AM Dave, I'm overwhelmed that I can never remember what I said. I remember the first thing I said back was like, I'm proud of you for saying that because. You know, this has been such a shortcoming on my ends for so long that you just don't tell anyone that you are, you just keep saying, suck it up.

[00:33:19] Kayla Simpson: No, good to tell someone that. Right. Cause you usually just suck it up

[00:33:23] David Syvertsen: and then, right. And if you CA, if you're doing that in a lot of different areas of your life at once, you're going to need a stress relief at some point. And for a lot of people, it turns into food and, you know, it's, I think that's like, that was like a very grown-up thing that she did.

And, you know, we worked something out everything's good to go and you know, nothing, nothing bad happened. And I think that sometimes we tell us in our, tell ourselves in our head like, oh man, if I try to get this stress out of my life, by telling Dave I'm overwhelmed, I can't do these five, 6:00 AM on Monday.

Something bad is going to happen. Nothing bad. And it only helped her out. You know, I think that's a huge part of our food issues is can you acknowledge, what's stressing us out. Can we remove it or change things up so it's not stressing us out. Yeah.

[00:34:07] Sam Rhee: I mean, it's another manifestation of self destructive behavior that you can see in people.

And I saw it especially in residency training, you know, you you're working insane numbers of hours. And at that point it was just so. There was no grace for anyone. And there was no understanding and there was no there was no ability to, there were a lot of super negative things that were going on.

Just that's one of about 500 different negative things going on at the time. And. You saw it manifest in people in really weird ways. And some of it more often than not where people gaining 20, 30, 40 pounds, 50 pounds in residency and you know, what, they never learned how to deal with it. And I see some of my fellow people that I trained with and they.

They're obese. They have health issues. They're not happy. And it's just, you know, whether it's substance abuse or poor food choices or just poor life choices in general, you know, you can just see how, if you don't identify the stress factors in your life and do something about it, this is just

[00:35:17] David Syvertsen: one manifestation.

So it's like, can you, can you make a statement that people don't have food? They have stress issues, you know, could you, could you say that statement definitively or know that there

[00:35:28] Sam Rhee: are no food issues? Just stress

[00:35:29] David Syvertsen: issues? Yeah.

[00:35:31] Sam Rhee: I don't know. What do you think Kayla?

[00:35:33] Kayla Simpson: No, I think people have food assistance. I do.

I really, and we'll give you the

[00:35:38] David Syvertsen: happiest person in the world and slapped food issues.

[00:35:41] Kayla Simpson: I think that, yeah, I think that's some people just do have food, like really like disorder eating disorders, you know, like I think, but I also think that. Stems from other psychological things that maybe happened in childhood or other things that happened in growing up.

You know?

[00:35:58] David Syvertsen: So if someone does have a significant food issue, and again, I know you said you don't want to go into like the, like the deep psychological stuff with, you know, we're just not qualified to do that. But if someone comes to you with a food issue, at some point, whether it's binge-eating or not eating enough going back and forth yo-yo dieting or.

Is one of your initial thoughts to kind of dive into the mindset a little bit.

[00:36:20] Kayla Simpson: Yes. Yeah. Always. I think finally, once they get kind of get to know them a little bit better, we start talking about their habits, right? Yeah. It's mindset. It's, it's definitely a lot

[00:36:32] David Syvertsen: of that work. Yeah. And which is tough to do.

It's very tied in

together.

[00:36:36] Sam Rhee: I think for a lot of us who hate dealing with others, the fact that you suggested just writing. More importantly, not your journal, like, your food, but what you're thinking about your food is is telling an important yeah, yeah. It's

[00:36:51] David Syvertsen: bounce balance. All right. Well, thank you, Kayla.

I think that's a good talk to hopefully just get we'll spend. Do you guys have anything else?

[00:36:59] Sam Rhee: No, I, I love the fact that Kayla has so much insight about food and then the greater. Bigger picture, picture of it. And, you know, I'm sure you've seen so much of that in a training and you know, on every level, not just athletes, but all the way down to everyday people.

So that's, that's super important. Yeah.

[00:37:16] David Syvertsen: All right. Thank you, Kayla. Thank you. Probably have you back on at some point.