Dr. Tom DuFore: 0:01

Welcome to the Multiply your Success podcast, where each week, we help growth-minded entrepreneurs and franchise leaders take the next step in their expansion journey. I'm your host, tom Dufour, ceo of Big Sky Franchise Team, and as we open today, I'm wondering if you're an entrepreneur or a successful leader and you've struggled with overeating or maybe you've had years of inconsistent success with your eating habits and weight loss and I know it's something that we don't often talk about as a successful owner or successful leader. Well, our guest today is Dr Glenn Livingston, and he shares with us how one simple rule can help you defeat your cravings. Now, glenn is a PhD and was a longtime CEO of a multi-million dollar consulting firm which serviced several Fortune 500 companies in the food industry. He was disillusioned by what traditional psychology had to offer overweight or food obsessed individuals. Dr Livingston spent several decades researching the nature of binging and overeating via Times and other media outlets he's appeared on, including ABC, wgn and CBS Radio and UPN TV. He earned his PhD in psychology.

Dr. Tom DuFore: 1:31

You're going to love this interview, so let's go ahead and jump right into it, glenn. Thank you so much for being a guest on the episode today and what I'd love for you to talk through here a little bit and it's really tied to even the name of your company Defeat your Cravings and it's really this whole idea about overeating and entrepreneurs and business owners. Our audience, as we talked pre-show here, tends to be mostly successful entrepreneurs and founders and CEOs of high-performing organizations and CEOs of high-performing organizations, and I'd love for you just to give some overall insights into what this is about. It's a fascinating topic to me.

Dr. Glenn Livingston: 2:13

So, just by way of a little bit of background, I'm a psychologist but I've also been an entrepreneur my whole life. I consulted for dozens of Fortune 100 companies and I was also about 300 pounds. I would walk around thinking, you know, we had this multimillion-dollar company and I was thinking if I'm so smart, why am I fat? I could tell you a long story about how that all came about in detail, but I know this is a kind of short-form podcast, so I'm not going to do that short form podcast. But I'm not going to do that. I will tell you that while I was consulting for the big food companies on the wrong side of the war, I eventually figured out that it wasn't because my mama didn't love me enough when I was a kid, it wasn't because of some deep psychological problem that these companies were engineering these hyperpalatable concentrations of starch and sugar and excitotoxins and salt, and it was all geared to hit the bliss point in the reptilian brain without giving us the nutrition to be satisfied. So you take these evolutionary buttons that are designed to get as many calories with as little effort as possible in the smallest time possible, and then you provide that so you can go down to the convenience store and buy 10,000 calories for $100 and walk across the street and do it again and it's kind of like a perfect storm for overeating and problems and there's a lot of mythology about how to work with that. So people like you and I are entrepreneurs and we like to study documented, evidence-based systems and if you lay out a path for us, we can usually follow it.

Dr. Glenn Livingston: 3:50

The problem is seeing the right path in our current society because we're told to follow guidelines. Don't follow hard and fast rules. We're told to eat well 90% of the time and indulge 10% of the time, but nobody tells you that if you don't know how to choose that 10% of the time, then you're going to be making food decisions all day long. Every time you're in front of a chocolate bar you're thinking should I or shouldn't I? Decisions wear down your willpower. It's a losing game. To start with, it's a great idea in theory, but you're much better off saying I'm only going to have chocolate on Saturdays and no more than four ounces. Make all your chocolate decisions ahead of time. But the world is frightened of that and we're given the wrong information. The path is not really laid out in front of us.

Dr. Tom DuFore: 4:38

That's great. I'd love to hear more of your story about how you ended up at that point I mean, I think, not only being a professional in this field, but also being an entrepreneur and having grown businesses and done this kind of work running your own business as well as being on the professional side of understanding and research and reading these things and understanding that. So I'd love to hear a little more on that story and that revelation for yourself and then jump into some pieces here about what someone who maybe listens into this can be thinking about doing.

Dr. Glenn Livingston: 5:10

As an entrepreneur, we're subjected to more stress than the ordinary person. I don't know if there's such a thing as a nine to five job anymore, but there's definitely eight to six, and people go home and they can have life. And we are people who will work 23 hours for ourselves because we don't want to work one hour for somebody else right, and so we don't tend to have the same level of self-regulation. We're talking about getting power, morning routines they're really important, but the truth is we act as if we're three or four people, and everybody knows. To really get a business off the ground, you have to pretend you're three or four people, and everybody knows. To really get a business off the ground, you have to pretend you're three or four people. You usually don't have the capital to hire enough people, and if you do, you want to be conservative with it in the beginning because cash is king. And so we're sacrificing self-regulation. And it turns out that the brain, on a gross, oversimplified way of explaining it, it has two parts. It's like the reptilian brain, this brainstem that's all about eat, mate or kill very primitive survival stuff. And then there's the neocortex that says before you eat, mate or kill. What about the people that you love? What about your long-term goals? What about weight loss and fitness and everything like that? Well, it turns out that this very primitive survival response has the ability to knock your neocortex, your higher self, your thinking self, strategic self, out of the way if it perceives there to be an emergency. And when you're not getting enough sleep, when you're not nourishing yourself throughout the day, when you're not getting enough water, if you get too isolated by sitting in a cubicle and hoping electrons flow into your bank account for too long, then your brain starts to perceive. This animalistic part of your brain starts to perceive that your basic human needs are not being met. And so what does it do? It knocks that out of the way and it says feed me, feed me now. And that's why you can have the best plans Sunday after reading the world's best diet book, and Monday afternoon you can be in a Starbucks and there's a chocolate bar on the counter and you say screw it, I'll just start tomorrow. Right? It's like a perfect storm. And the important thing about that is to understand it's not your fault, but if you want to fix it, you have to do something different, right?

Dr. Glenn Livingston: 7:31

A craving brain is not a sign of disease or sickness or weakness. It's actually a sign of a healthy human being with a brain that's doing its function in a sick food environment, because 100,000 years ago the people who had the strongest cravings would have been the most motivated to do what was necessary to gather and hunt food in a scarce environment. Today it's not helpful to us to have those strong cravings, but it's actually a biological survival advantage that you have. So you're not sick, you're not diseased, you're not powerless. It's a biological strength that you have that that takes away a lot of the shame when you kind of understand what's happening and it makes it possible, I find, for people to look more rationally and realistically at what the evidence says really works.

Dr. Glenn Livingston: 8:22

My grandfather said he was a fan of Yogi Berra and he had a paraphrasing Yogi Berra. He said if you don't know what you're aiming at, you're probably going to hit something else. And so, if you think about it, when an Olympic archer aims at the bullseye, they don't hit it 100% of the time, but they know where it is and it's very clearly defined. And if they miss the bullseye they have specific feedback about by how much and in what direction. But for some reason in our culture people are taught to be afraid of very specifically defining their bullseye with food. They say food rules are dangerous, they're going to make you rebel. What if you miss? Then you're going to feel too guilty and then you're going to eat even more. And so they're taught to go after progress, not perfection. And what they don't understand is that progress, not perfection, is a great mindset.

Dr. Glenn Livingston: 9:14

After you miss, like if you miss the bullseye, then you figure out what adjustments do I need to make? You don't say, oh my God, I'm a pathetic archer, I should just shoot all the arrows up in the air right or into the audience. You say, let me get up, figure out what I learned. And then you want to commit with perfection. An Olympic archer doesn't let go of the arrow. They call it loosing the arrow. They don't let go of the arrow until they feel at one with the bullseye. They can actually see the arrow going into the bullseye before they let go. And they purge that doubt and insecurity out of their mind If they're thinking maybe I'm going to make it, maybe I'm not going to make it, they're probably not going to make it. There's an old Gary Larson cartoon about a drummer in a marching band thinking I'm not going to F up, I'm not going to F up, I'm not going to F up, and underneath the caption it says Gary F's up. So when you're constantly thinking, maybe I'll make it, maybe I won't, you don't realize that that doubt and insecurity is detracting from your ability to focus on the goal. So I call this committing with perfection, but forgiving yourself with dignity. And the way to get started is with one simple rule. This functions on many levels, but you want it to be a low bar.

Dr. Glenn Livingston: 10:30

Bj Fogg is a psychologist, a behavioral psychologist, who works with habits. He's figured out that because motivation waxes and wanes, it comes and goes. That if you read a diet book and you have all these new rules and you're going to, you know you're going to be a perfect eater from now on, or at least until you lose the weight. That's really great while you have your mojo, but a couple of days later, when you wake up without your mojo, it's not going to be so easy to do that. So you want to start with a low bar, and an example might be oh, I knew a trucker who said I'll tell you what. I can't give up fast food, but I can stop going back for seconds. I have to eat fast food three times a day, but I'm just not going to go back for seconds. And because that was a low enough bar for him to hit every single day, he triggered what we call the identity function. He starts to think, oh, maybe I can beat this game.

Dr. Glenn Livingston: 11:22

Most people feel kind of hopeless and powerless and, you know, despairing when it comes to overcoming their food problems. But you set a low bar, you hit it every day and your brain says, maybe I can do this, maybe I'm a person who doesn't go back for seconds. It's really interesting. Some people find out that I don't eat chocolate and they say, well, how do you just never have chocolate again? And I say, well, that's not exactly how I think about it. I just became a person who doesn't have chocolate. You can become a person who blank. You know it's much, much easier. Your brain is set up for those type of character. Building shortcuts, character is just what you habitually do at the moment of temptation.

Dr. Glenn Livingston: 12:01

Okay, so you set a low bar, one simple rule what could and would you do? That would not be too burdensome. Yet you know what would make a difference. For some people it's I won't go back for seconds. For other people it's not restrictive at all. It's just that I will always take three deep breaths before a meal, or I'll always put my fork down between bites. For other people it might be, you know, I'll only have chocolate on the weekends, or I'll only have pretzels at Major League Baseball parks. Just think about one simple thing you could do so you can learn how this game is played.

Dr. Glenn Livingston: 12:35

Once you have that rule in place, it functions as a kind of trip wire. It's like an alarm that tells you when this part of your brain is going to wake up. Right, because inevitably, when I say I will only have chocolate on the weekends and no more than four ounces, there's going to be a Wednesday sometime when I'm in a chocolate bar when this thing is going to say you know what? You worked out hard enough, you're not going to gain any weight. A little won't hurt, it'll be just as easy to start tomorrow. And this is a little crazy thing that I did to make myself better. I probably should have called it something different, but I called this thing my inner pig way back when I kind of figured out what was going on and I said okay, anything that suggests I'm going to break my rule is pig squeal, and anything that is off my plan is pig slop. I'm a sophisticated psychologist with all types of credentials.

Dr. Tom DuFore: 13:27

And just for someone who doesn't see the video on this, you're referring to that reptile brain, and so what?

Dr. Glenn Livingston: 13:34

this rule does is it functions as an alarm to wake you up when this part of the brain is what you're talking about. Yeah, and so what this rule does is it functions as an alarm to wake you up when this part of the brain is getting active. But you can still listen to it if you want to. We have free will. The good news is that we have free will, and the bad news is that we have free will. I can't stop you from overeating, but you can. You're free to binge if you want to, but you're also free not to binge. So what I can do is wake you up so you have the opportunity to choose one way or the other. Once you're awake, what you're essentially doing is put a space between stimulus and response. Your brain wants to automate the acquisition of calories, so you're not even thinking about it, but you kind of put a pause, an unnatural pause, in that space. There are a number of things you could do.

Dr. Glenn Livingston: 14:18

What I did to get better was a logical intervention which might appeal to a lot of entrepreneurs. I said what's wrong with what my pig is saying? How is it lying to me? And over time I figured out it will usually say a half truth to get my attention but then it'll have a bigger lie. So, for example, it seems like it will be just as easy to start tomorrow and it seems like I'm not going to gain any weight. But the way that the brain works, if you have a craving for chocolate on a Wednesday and then you indulge that craving after you say to yourself, I'll just start tomorrow, by the principle of neuroplasticity you can look it up if you want to. But it just means that what fires together wires together. The thought will get reinforced and the craving will get reinforced. So I'm going to have a deeper craving for chocolate tomorrow if I indulge it today and I'm going to be more likely to say start tomorrow. So you can only ever use the present moment to be healthy, right, and if you're in a hole you better stop digging. So that's an example of what I would call a cognitive refutation, or just fixing your thinking about food. It takes away that justification. It's only one thing that you can do in that space. Sometimes that's the whole story, Sometimes it's not. But when you no longer have that excuse, suddenly you feel a little guilty and uncomfortable if you're going to break the rule and it gives you pause and it's more likely to get you to stop. That's how I got better. I didn't do anything else to get better than that. I kept the journal for eight years. I lost 75, 80 pounds and had all types of little miracles with my health, with that and my energy, and I actually dug myself out of debt during that period also. It turns out okay. So I published a book when I got divorced in 2016. I published it in 2015. It got popular in 2016.

Dr. Glenn Livingston: 16:06

And all of a sudden, I have millions of readers and a little coaching agency. I'm talking to all these clients. We had, over the course of the next eight years, about 2,000 paying clients. I got really good at helping people fix their thinking about food. I know all the excuses. I know reasons to overcome them. Right. I fix everybody's thinking about food really quickly Within about a month. The people that engage with us some people buy coaching programs and they don't engage, which drives me crazy, but I can't force people. When they engage with us and more than half our clients did they would get an 84% reduction in overeating in the first 30 days, drops down to about 60%, 55% or 60% at the six-month level, because some people stop using the tool. If they keep using the tool, it keeps working. Why do they stop using the tool? This really bugged me the last year or two we had the agency. I really wanted to figure that out.

Dr. Glenn Livingston: 17:01

Turns out that there is a point that people get to a lot of people where they say I know, I don't have any excuses, you took all my excuses away, but screw it, just do it. I just really want to. And I said, well, what's causing that? Because these people, we have a process called the big why, where we figure out why do you want to do this? And this is like so I don't get diabetic retinopathy, so I don't have another heart attack, so I don't get disabled, so I can roll on the floor with my grandkids or I can go hiking with my dogs. These are really big reasons.

Dr. Glenn Livingston: 17:32

Why in the world would you stop using something that worked just because, well, I really want to. It turns out there's something called a simple word, for it is distress. It's organismic distress, but it's what we were talking about before. If you don't get enough nutrition or rest or self-regulation, then this part of the brain can push all of your reasons out of the way, including all your good reasons for doing what you want to do, and so it turned out, like everybody else was saying, we also had to focus on getting people to self-regulate, more particularly with nutrition. That turned out to be the kind of magic formula to do them both, and I've written eight books on overeating. Defeat your Cravings is actually the eighth one, but that's the best one that includes all this information, so that's the shortest version I can give you on how to tackle this problem.

Dr. Tom DuFore: 18:22

That's fantastic, and I was actually just going to ask how someone can get a copy of your book or the one you'd recommend. Where can they do that and how can they connect with you? Learn more about what you're doing here.

Dr. Glenn Livingston: 18:34

Defeatyourcravingscom is the website and there's a big blue button on the website where you can get a free copy of the Kindle, Nook or PDF, no charge whatsoever, and a copy of a food plan of them. But it's actually a very compassionate process and I wanted you to hear people go from feeling despairing and hopeless and confused to feeling excited and confident in just one session, so I recorded a bunch of that. This is all free at defeatyourcravingscom and that will lead you every place else you need to go, If you need to, if you're looking for a coach, if you're looking for other materials. That'll lead you every place else. Defeat your Cravings is the eighth book. It's really the only one you should read at this point. I can't take the others off the market because of business contracts, but Defeat your Cravings is really the only book you need to read.

Dr. Tom DuFore: 19:33

It's great info you've shared, as well as not only your expertise in this as a professional and really understanding it, but also having lived through this, and I think that's inspiring, especially for other entrepreneurs that are in the grind and have been the founder and know the startup to growth and all of the other things. You've been through that as well. I really appreciate that. Thanks, Glenn. This is a great time in the show and we make a transition. We ask every guest the same four questions before they go and the first question we ask is have you had a miss or two on your journey and something you learned from it?

Dr. Glenn Livingston: 20:08

I learned that there is a fine line between stupidity and fortitude and persistence. And in 2001, I had run this advertising research organization for a lot of years very successful, was doing million-dollar projects and we decided to change sides of the industry. The industry is comprised of eggheads, like my ex-wife and I, who advise companies about how to design their research and then they interpret it for them, and then there are facilities that execute the research for you. It's not quite that simple, but that's it. And we decided we were going to change size because we thought we really knew both sides of the industry and we didn't. On top of that, it was in New York City right before 9-11. And we had $150,000 not every month the fanciest focus group facility that we'd ever seen at that point, and we were sure we were going to be successful.

Dr. Glenn Livingston: 21:08

And then 9-11 came and nobody wanted to do groups in New York and I couldn't agree with my ex-wife about when to close the business. And we decided to be stubbornly persistent and we went $700,000 in debt and that took me six years to pay off, if not to clear bankruptcy. I have to give my ex-wife credit for that, because I wanted to and she didn't, but every entrepreneur has their debt story and out of the Phoenix, out of the ashes, came the Phoenix and we climbed out and built and sold an advertising agency after that and had a little publishing company and then, when I got divorced ever since then all I've done is this is the most meaningful thing I've ever done in my life is to help people with overeating, because it was the bane of my existence for a lot of years. So, yes, I've had a miss. How's that for a miss?

Dr. Tom DuFore: 22:01

Thank you for sharing that, and very, very commendable as well, for you to honor commitments and figure out a way to dig yourself out of the financial hole that you had dug, and without declaring bankruptcy. Well, let's talk about a make or to a highlight that you'd like to share.

Dr. Glenn Livingston: 22:16

I have over 2 million readers for my series of books on over-reading Ever since I got divorced and published that and kind of put my heart and soul into it. It's not the most lucrative thing I've ever done, but it's the most successful thing I've ever done and the most meaningful thing I've ever done. There was a period when we were getting about between 60 and 90 new clients a month and I had 10 coaches working for me and I was really spreading the word far and wide. I got a blog on psychology. Today I got another million readers there. That was definitely a make. That was definitely a make, but not the make that showered millions of dollars on me, because I didn't need millions of dollars after I got divorced. But it was the make that made me feel like I was. I did the most in alignment with my mission and my personal soul drives that I've ever done, so that was definitely a make.

Dr. Tom DuFore: 23:12

Let's talk about a multiplier that you've used to grow yourself, personally or professionally, or any of the organizations you've run.

Dr. Glenn Livingston: 23:19

It was documentation, partially. I read a book about the e-myth I'm sure you know the e-myth and I started documenting systems like that. But more so, I created this 20-hour training that taught coaches to do what I did, because I realized I couldn't handle 60 new people a month. And so I got this 10-hour training and I recruited people.

Dr. Glenn Livingston: 23:46

At first I tried to recruit out-of-work psychologists and they were eager to work with me, but they didn't get it. They didn't quite get it the way I wanted them to, and then I realized that you had to have the problem yourself and you had to have felt like this solved the problem for you. So I actually recruited people who ascended through my systems, who had read the book and felt like it was like taking the thorn out of the lion's paw, and they were the ones who wanted to work with me and I combined that with the training and then I put them all in a group and I supervised them once a week and I told them they could call me if they had to, and that was very successful. We were able to, you know, work with thousands of people over the years doing that. So that was a real multiplier for me.

Dr. Tom DuFore: 24:31

And the final question we ask every guest, Glenn, is what does success mean to you?

Dr. Glenn Livingston: 24:36

It means I can do what I want to with my time and I can spread the word of what I've learned far and wide fairly easily. That's what it means to me In my old age. I just turned 60 and I actually had a heart attack. I had some genetic risks very bad genetic risks from my family, and before I stopped binge eating when I was about 40 years old, I probably did a lot of damage. I probably bought myself an extra 20 years before it happened by fixing all my eating and eating really well. So I'm just kind of doubling down right now.

Dr. Glenn Livingston: 25:11

This is only a month ago, but it's caused me to be very pensive and think about things and I realized that what makes me happiest is seeing clients myself not necessarily supervising my coaches I like that too but seeing clients myself teaching myself not necessarily having people teach for me and writing, and so when I'm making a plan for what I'm going to do, I'm going to slow down a little bit.

Dr. Glenn Livingston: 25:37

I'm going to keep a small practice. I still have a couple of coaches that will stay with me. But I had this plan to build a billion-dollar company up until a couple of years ago and it was going okay, but it was going to be another 10 or 15 years before it really came together and I decided that that's not really the path I want to be on right now, because I don't know how long I will have and I really want my life to mean something more. So I'm going to be a country doctor. I hope that's not the wrong message for your audience, but for me personally that resonates the most. I've done a lot of big things in my life. I've run international projects for big companies. Right now I'm just going to be a country doctor and I'm going to write books to have more of an influence and multiply myself.

Dr. Tom DuFore: 26:23

So thank you for sharing and, glenn, as we bring this to a close, is there anything you're hoping to share or get across? You haven't had a chance to yet.

Dr. Glenn Livingston: 26:31

I mean, I could talk for two hours about the intricacies about that, but one thing I wanted to make sure people understood is that one simple rule is just the beginning. It's just so that you can get a win in the first couple of weeks and start to feel like a success rather than a failure and get a sense of how these techniques work. Once you've done it for a couple of weeks, then you start to make adjustments with other rules, and there are examples in the book that will help you achieve your health and fitness goals, because you can't necessarily always lose weight with one simple rule. So the guy who lost 150 pounds that trucker started with one simple rule. That was not the only rule that he used. He started losing weight with that one rule, but he added a few things after that. So just wanted to make sure people understood that they didn't have to stay with one simple rule.

Dr. Tom DuFore: 27:20

Glenn, thank you so much for a fantastic interview and let's go ahead and jump into today's three key takeaways. So takeaway number one is really just this idea of having this conversation today and thinking about it as a talking point, something that we've never had on our show and thought it'd be something worth noting and talking about. Takeaway number two is the advice that he said was to start with one simple rule to help with the cravings. He said you start with one simple rule and it has to be a very low bar for that. So it might say to have chocolate at one certain specific time or not, to go back for seconds or to take three deep breaths or some of the other suggestions that he said. And remembering the saying what fires together wires together for neuroplasticity. So I thought it was a great little catchphrase to remember that. Help him build off that one simple rule.

Dr. Tom DuFore: 28:23

Takeaway number three is when he talked about there's a fine line between stupidity and persistence, and he said he found that he was on the wrong side of that statement when he and his ex-wife and former business partner went into over $700,000 in debt and it took them seven years to pay it off. So I think the takeaway there is what he was talking about, that stupidity and persistence. But also I say, you know, congrats and good job for being committed to honor your commitments, to pay that back over that time period. And now it's time for today's win-win. And now it's time for today's win-win. So today's win-win comes when he was talking about what matters most to him and how he previously thought that he wanted to have a billion-dollar company which he was poised to grow to, but he decided that wasn't what was really most important to him.

Dr. Tom DuFore: 29:21

And after he discovered that, he realized how he truly wanted to spend his time, which, for him, was running a much smaller company. He wants to work directly with his clients and he wants to write more, and he found out that that is really what's most important to him. And so I thought that's just a great win-win to end the episode on for you to think about what's really most important to you and what you are spending your time doing. And so that's the episode today. Folks, please make sure you subscribe to the podcast and give us a review, and remember if you or anyone you know are ready to franchise their company or take their franchise company to the next level, please connect with us at bigskyfranchiseteamcom. Thanks for tuning in and we look forward to having you back next week.