BSB Ep 80
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[00:00:00] Welcome to the Bite-Sized Brilliance Podcast. I am your host, Dr. April Darley, and today I wanna talk about substitutions. Have you ever ordered a food delivery at home, like maybe from Instacart, and you ordered apples, but they gave you onions? It doesn't make sense at all and understandably so, you might be upset. But what if you ordered apples and they gave you pears?
Most people would just kind of roll with apples and pears. Okay, may not be what you wanted, but you can still use it in much the same way. It still has a similar mild flavor. You can use it as sweet, savory dishes. It's equally versatile, apples and pears. But if they gave you apples and onions, you can't use it the same way.
That's one of the reasons you get upset about it. All your plans, all the things you had wanted to do with apples completely derailed. [00:01:00] Now that you've got onions, believe it or not, this is relevant to the way your brain works. Let me explain. If you are trying to make a substitution to get healthy, to change a habit or a pattern, it's gonna require that you do a substitution in some way.
But what tends to happen. Underneath the surface in your subconscious, because dopamine rules the show and the patterns that we have developed in a neuroscience kind of way are going to be dictating your behavior. And when it comes to dopamine, there is a cue, and then you do the action or habit, and then you get your dopamine as a reward.
You can see that with the apple and pear example. It's pretty close. You're gonna be fine. But with the apple and onions, you don't get the payoff. You don't get the reward. And that can lead to the dopamine withdrawal, which makes you irritated and [00:02:00] upset because you didn't get your anticipated reward subconsciously.
And it's really sneaky how this happens because a lot of people feel like they're doing a really great thing when they switch something out. For example, ice cream. When I was a doctor, I saw this all the time. Ice cream is full of dairy, fat, sugar, salt chemicals. So if somebody says, I wanna get healthy, and they have an issue with dairy, then we're gonna say, all right, get off the ice cream.
But what they did most often was substitute it with something like coconut ice cream. Almond milk, soy ice cream. And yes, it's better because you are avoiding the whole dairy issue, but those things are also loaded with fat, sugar, salt, and chemicals. So it's. Hitting that reward system in the brain in much the same way, and it's not significant enough for you to develop [00:03:00] different neural pathways to get to the result that you're actually trying to get to.
And we also use this in my practice with smoking cessation. Smoking has a lot of different moving parts. There is an addictive component. So yes, it ties back in with that dopamine system and you also have ingrained habits. For example, a hand to mouth habit, or the habit of having a cigarette in the morning when you get up or after dinner to finish off a meal.
It's the same reason why people crave sugar or dessert at the end of a meal because we have trained our brain to look for that as a reward after a certain action has been taken. The way we approached smoking cessation in my practice was you have to break those patterns that your brain has established that are familiar, e asy that give you the dopamine reward at the end, and that also perpetuate the habit or the behavior. [00:04:00] So we wanna mix it up. Because we need to get you out of autopilot in this express lane of neuroplasticity that you have created and put you on a new path that will be slightly uncomfortable because it's new, not because you can't do it.
And the way that we did that is the first thing we would ask you to do is do not buy your typical brand of cigarettes. That's cutting off that dopamine cue Number one. We would ask you to buy something you actually don't like. For example, menthols, or clov es because if you buy the thing you don't like, you are less likely to turn to it in times of need, like you did before.
When you get the trigger of a stressful situation, you might have reached for the ice cream or the cigarette, but if we give you something you don't like. Like the onion, then you're not going to go looking for it to get your reward. It's [00:05:00] not available to you. And that's really important if you're trying to make a true substitution into a healthy habit.
And then we have to e mbrace and change a different way to do things completely. For example, in that smoking example I gave you, if you normally smoke with your right hand, we would have you hold the cigarette in your left hand. We are trying to break the disconnection of hand to mouth in the normal way you do it.
Same thing with if you're trying to cut down on sugar. You don't go to sugar after a meal. That includes coffee with sugar in it, or even substituting it with honey because that's too close. You want to do something very different at the end. Until you create new pathways where you no longer need the thing you're trying to get away from.
And what I see too often is some people use substitution [00:06:00] as replacement addictions, and you'll see that with the ice cream example. So yes, they may have stopped the dairy ice cream that was causing these physical symptoms, but they replaced it with coconut milk ice cream, so they might experience a d ecrease in certain symptoms, which they'll think is a win, but in reality, their blood work is still coming back equally bad. They're still maybe pre-diabetic or diabetic. They've got metabolic syndrome. They're not releasing the weight that they're trying to because. It wasn't different enough to break that subconscious pattern or to break that pathway that you have created in your brain.
So substitutions, the most successful substitution are the apples and the onions, something that is different to break the habit. Or the addiction entirely. And that takes place over time because what we also [00:07:00] see is that it's easy to get overwhelmed when you are thinking about starting a new habit because it's new, not because you can't do it, but your brain is going to look at doing something different as "I can't do it",
because what it means is that the brain has to get off the well traveled pathway that it can run on automatic pilot in its sleep just like that with very little energy and we're forcing it to kind of move into a pathway that. I liken it to hacking a new path through a jungle With a machete, you don't get to walk the well worn pathway, the trail with all the signs on it.
You have to hack your way through the jungle with a machete. Building the way as you go, and fortunately or unfortunately, that's really what it takes when you're looking at a substitution that is very [00:08:00] different from the pathway that you've created. For example, if ice cream is your go-to, it's fat, sugar, salt, then it might look different when you eat an avocado because it's still giving you fat.
It's not giving you the sugar or the salt, but it's giving you a creamy mouth feel, but it's different enough that the brain might go, okay, we will accept this as a substitution. Or it could be that you finish off a meal with a handful of walnuts, also high in healthy fats, but without the salt, sugar, et cetera.
If you get them raw or plain. So there are ways that can still be close without sabotaging what you are trying to do i n regards to your health, building new habits. But don't let your substitutions be replacement addictions, and that's easy to do because your brain is trying to get you back [00:09:00] into a default pathway.
It will allow you to make tiny changes, but anything other than a tiny change, you're back in the jungle. Hacking your way through takes a lot of energy and your brain doesn't want to do that. The brain is very energy efficient, so just understand that it's not that you don't know how to do something.
It's not that you lack willpower or that you are not good enough, and believe me, your brain will fill in those stories because it's a sneaky saboteur and it would love for you to believe those stories. Why? Because it wants to get you back on the well-worn path by any means necessary, and it's your survival brain that does this.
But when you understand the mechanism in a neuroscientific kind of way, then you can really call out the sabotage and override it. So this is not about your willpower, this is not about being good or bad. This is not even about [00:10:00] the food or the substitution itself. It's about doing t hings in a very particular way to get you the results that you want.
It's that definition of madness. If you try to do something too similar, you're most likely going to get a similar result. And if what you're experiencing is not what you want, unfortunately, or fortunately, however you view it, it requires the jungle pathway. Not the easy breezy, well worn, tourist driven pathway that your brain wants to put you in.
So just know that the jungle pathway is uncomfortable because it's new. Again, it's not because you can't do it. It's not that you're not smart enough or that you're not working hard enough because I guarantee that you are. But. Things have to be done in a particular way to trick your brain. Now that is different for everyone because you have a unique brain.
It's like snowflake. There is literally no one else in the world [00:11:00] that has wired themselves the same way as you, even when they face the same stimuli. And that is why I love to work with people one-to-one in my Bespoke Brain program. Because I'm going to teach you the patterns that your brain specifically has developed and teach you how you can hack the brain and make these substitutions in a way that works for you to get you to the end result that you're trying to get to.
Again, that's unique. So if you have tried some cookie cutter solutions. Just know this knowledge is not enough. And that pains me to say, because I'm a lifelong learner, it's not enough to know the thing because logically you already know that ice cream is not good for you. You already know that smoking is not good for you, but, i t's overcoming that circuit to put you on the jungle pathway, and that is where you may need specific guidance and support that resonates [00:12:00] in the way that you are able to receive it because of the pathway you've built for yourself. And that is u nique. So if you would like to learn more about my Bespoke Brain System or how to work with me one-to-one, you can go to aprildarley.com and at the booking tab at the top, schedule a complimentary phone consultation, and we'll talk about how the Bespoke Brain System can address the individual patterns you have created a nd get you to the result that you want to see and get you off the well-worn pathway so that you can be comfortable but not overwhelmed. All right. I'll see you next week. My friends. Have a great one.
