Margy and Jess are excited to be exhibiting for the second year in a row at FinCon in Dallas! On today’s episode, we feature an interview with longtime client, Dr. Glenn Livingston.
What was life like when you were obese, personally and professionally?
Glenn grew up in a family of psychotherapists, and always wanted to be a psychologist on the radio (like his dad)
Glenn started as a couples and family therapist
His work required a lot of presence, but he couldn’t say present because he was so preoccupied by food
In addition to his concerning mental obsession with food, he was also experiencing serious health risks
What role did shame play in your life when you were binge eating?
Shame played a big role
Glenn has realized that bingeing is only possible when you are also self shaming
This led Glenn to think about the survival role that guilt and shame play in keeping us alive
Like physical pain, shame can draw your attention to mistakes and prevent you from doing destructive things again
Glenn calls his inner destructive self his “pig”
Removing shame and guilt made it possible for Glenn to recover
What can we do as individuals and as a community to help people struggling with shame and disordered eating?
As a community, we need to recognize the economic, sociological and physiological forces aligned in the culture to create binge eating
It’s amazing that anyone is able to eat normally
Billions of dollars go into engineering super concentrated starches, sugars and other unhealthy food chemicals designed to short circuit the pleasure centers of the brains
When rats can directly activate the pleasure center of the brain, they will do nothing else (sacrificing things they need to survive like food in favor of pleasure)
The mammalian brain will engage in serious self neglect in pursuit of pleasure
The advertising industry also helps convince us that we can’t live without unhealthy foods
The addiction treatment industry gives the message of “you are powerless to resist”
As a society, to remove shame we can look at what’s happening in the society as a whole and have compassion for how it’s creating binge eaters
Glenn presents the idea that people whose drug of choice is food are more selfless, because unlike drugs addicts they don’t affect the people around them with their addiction
Who have your biggest critics been over the years?
Glenn is a compassionate person and is also highly educated on these topics
Ultimately, Glenn figured out that he couldn’t “love himself thin”
Glenn has developed a paradigm where you distance yourself from the lizard brain (which he calls his “inner pig”)
He draws clear boundaries (no chocolate on weekdays)
Some people believe Glenn’s philosophy and use of the word “pig” is fat shaming, but Glenn’s theory is that this lizard brain (or “pig”) is NOT you
This relates to the Buddhist practice of realizing that your thoughts are not you
What we think of as our identity is a subset of thoughts driven by our neurology
You can make a statement of character like “I’m not the kind of person who eats chocolate during the week,” forming an identity around that statement of will
What’s the balance between loving yourself and also wanting to be
