Psychology of Eating Podcast Episode #179: A Doctor Rediscovers Self Care

As a doctor, Dan has devoted his life and energy to helping others heal. Lately, though, he finds his own energy is dropping day by day. Waking up exhausted and feeling burned, Dan feels embarrassed that even his patients are beginning to notice. When his blood tests did not reveal anything unusual, Dan is feeling tapped out looking for answers.  In this breakthrough session, Marc David, Founder of the Institute for the Psychology of Eating, works with Dan to uncover what’s really behind his fatigue. As a father, the primary breadwinner, busy professional, and someone who is in the beginning stages of building a new clinic with colleagues, Dan’s body is tapped out. Dan owns up to how he has to take more responsibility for his self-care. Find out what he discovers and listen in on this eye opening, humbling, and inspiring conversation.

Below is a transcript of this podcast episode:

Marc: Welcome, everybody. I’m Marc David, founder of the Institute for the Psychology of Eating. We are back in the Psychology of Eating podcast, and I’m with Dan today. Welcome, Dan.

Dan: Hello. How are you guys?

Marc: I am doing good. Let me just take a moment and check in with viewers and listeners who are new to the podcast. Let me tell you how it works. Dan and I have just been kind of hanging out for a few minutes before we jumped on here. So we’re meeting for the first time. We’re going to have a session for about an hour or less and see if we can do some smart things and move the needle forward and push the fast forward button and hopefully get to a good place.

So, Dr. Dan—I’m going to call you—if you could just wave your magic wand and come out from this conversation with something that would be really useful for you, what would that outcome be?

Dan: Probably to find more energy is the number one. I’m kind of constantly exhausted these days. In a way, I just feel like my life is disorganized. I feel like I’m reacting to things rather than responding necessarily. I feel like time management is a massive issue of mine, and that’s probably feeding into the exhaustion. To tell you the truth, my eating has been a bit dodgy as well, and I think that it’s all related perhaps. If I could get anything out of this, I’d love to get some good health habits, routine, and just to delve into why I guess I’m doing this. I’m at a bit of a loss.

Marc: Good question. I love that. I love that. I love that. Thanks for being so honest. Why don’t you give us a sense, give me a sense what’s—talk about how your life looks these days and what is life for you.

Dan: Well, I’m 38. I’m a GP, so that’s a family physician I think in the US there. I’m also an acupuncturist, so I do acupuncture. I work in a relatively straight-laced, I guess, general practice for four days a week. And I try to bring in my style of care which is, I’d like to think, more holistic and whatnot.

But then one day a week I’m now just starting a practice with a number of other great professionals, I guess, yoga teachers, craniosacral masseuses, naturopaths. So I’m trying to get that off the ground as well. And so, that’s very exciting. I’ve been wanting to do that kind of thing for a long time now.

I’m married and have a lovely 5-year-old boy.

Marc: Yay.

Dan: He is energy, energy, energy. He’s great. He’s lovely, but he’s tiring is all. And, yeah, married, I think, happily. And live in a beautiful area on the beach close to a rainforest. So all on that surface it’s exciting and whatnot. I think the main thing is that I’m waking up just blasted, just wanting to go back to sleep. I’m just exhausted all the time.

At work, particularly, that’s the more concerning thing for me. The more fatigue I get the less I find I’m able to I guess be present with the people I’m with, the clients.

That is a worry of mine because I don’t want that to get any worse. It’s very much my passion, and my heart is in that setting. That’s where I’m at I guess. I have weekends off on the whole, and they’re pretty nice.

My wife’s family live around about an hour away, and we often drive up there to catch up. Otherwise, summer’s coming down here. It’s lovely. It’s getting really hot actually, so I get to the beach. There’s a creek, a lovely creek, nearby. We have a pool, so I go falling in that now and again. I’m very much—I feel like I have nothing to complain about. I’m quite happy and blessed in that way, but in many other ways I feel kind of stuck. I don’t know.

Marc: How many hours a week have you been working?

Dan: I have a very civilized start of a quarter past nine, so that’s kind of nice. I normally get home around about 6-6:30, and that’s Monday to Thursdays. On Fridays, we’ve just moved to a different location in this new practice. So we’re kind of still figuring out the bugs of it all. Normally, I work there from nine to probably one o’clock, still kind of finding clients. It’s really at the very beginning of that practice.

Marc: Sure. And are you the primary breadwinner in your family?

Dan: I am. My wife just graduated from primary school teaching, and she’s just getting some jobs now, just casual jobs. But for a long time, decades. I’ve been married to my wife for ages now. And most of that time I have been the primary breadwinner, particularly once Elijah, my son, was born.

Marc: Yes. How long has it been that you’ve been feeling a little burned out?

Dan: It’s been getting worse over probably the last five years I think. It’s only really got me now where I actually have patients or clients who are telling me I look exhausted like I haven’t slept or whatnot. That’s always a little bit embarrassing when you have someone coming in who’s sick and then telling me that I look horrible, which is probably true. That’s the thing. I’m not putting them out.

Marc: So why do you think you’ve hit this point? Do you think it’s overwork? Do you think it’s stress? Is it both? If you were diagnosing yourself—you’re a smart guy—what are some of your thoughts?

Dan: I don’t think I have a very good balance in terms of… I’m giving myself at work I guess, and when I come home, I’m with my family and I love that. But there’ll be a certain point where Elijah goes to bed, my son goes to bed, and I feel that’s my time. And it’s kind of my only time sometimes. As a result, I stay up quite late. The later I stay up, the more I kind of do little snacks of—it seems healthy, but just the quantity sizes are crazy.

So I’m getting into nuts. I have a particular weakness for cheese, I have to admit. I’m just eating kind of snack foods in general—and also sugar—at anywhere between nine to 12 sometimes, 12:30. I feel like that’s got out of hand. I’m not completely sure why that’s got out of hand. So I’m a bit stumped I guess in terms of diagnosing myself, and I’m also aware that I think if I came to a conclusion it’s probably going to be pretty biased as well.

Marc: So then these days, what time are you usually roughly asleep by?

Dan: I’m trying to make an effort to go to sleep before 10, but realistically, these days, 11:30 or 12 would be a normal night for me.

Marc: Got it. And then you’re up at what time?

Dan: Around seven or 7:30.

Marc: Okay. So then maybe you get about seven, eight hours of sleep at the most is what it sounds like.

Dan: Yeah. Yeah, I guess so. Elijah always has to jump on me and kind of semi wake me up and, ugh, and that kind of grumpy dad in the morning. But, yes, probably seven hours.

Marc: Let me ask you this question. Are you under a physician’s care? Are you under somebody’s care who you trust, you like, and looking at your labs and all that sort of thing?

Dan: No. As a general rule, I think doctors make the worst patients.

Marc: Oh, they do. 100% agree. 100% agree.

Dan: Yeah.

Marc: Here’s a challenge. Doctors make the worst patients, but doctors also have some of the most bizarre pressure on them of just about any profession because we want our doctors to be gods.

We want them to be right. We want them to do everything right because you doing everything right means my health is going to be safe. The training of a doctor is a burnout kind of training.

Dan: Yeah.

Marc: So the training itself basically teaches you to be in a lifestyle that’s impossible to maintain, a work-style. So doctors are really given a very odd beginning which is push, push, push, push, push. Some of them shake it off, and some don’t because it has its demands, depending on where you’re working, what hospital, etc. So all I’m saying is that I feel for you because the odd thing is here you are in this profession, but you’re an insider so you can’t always get the best of it in a weird way.

Dan: Yeah.

Marc: Is there somebody that you have in mind who’s local to you that you would say, “Ok, I could trust that person”? Somebody who’s got some good distinctions and good training and good skills who can help you do a little bit of detective work.

Dan: Yeah, there is. There’s someone who I work with. I used to be a nurse before I was a doctor, and he used to be a nurse as well before he was a doctor. And he’s a good guy, and he does understand that holistic side. I’ve gone to him in the past, years ago, for random signatures here and there for a driver’s license or whatnot. Yeah, he’s probably the guy to go to. You’re right. It’s easy to get embarrassed, I think.

Marc: Yeah. First and foremost, Dan, what I’m wanting for you is—what I’m getting from what you just shared it’s like you pour your heart and soul into what you’re doing, your life, your family, your work, and you’re feeling a little fried. We don’t know exactly why. There could be something going on. There could be some metabolic issue.

There could be some imbalance going on. And the challenge is you’re a doctor, so you’re around this stuff. Part of you wants to be immune to it all.

Dan: Pretty much.

Marc: Part of you wants to be immune. I get it. Well, if I’m a doctor, I shouldn’t get sick. And there’s a level where I can totally relate. I can totally relate because I have self-treated myself forever. Forever. And I’ve had to stop that because I also hit a burnout point, and the hardest thing about hitting the burnout point was having to admit to myself that I can’t do this alone. I don’t want to figure it out. I literally don’t want to figure it out by myself. It’s too hard. It’s too hard. It’s hard to have your patients be your relatives, your kids, and yourself.

Dan: I understand.

Marc: It’s very difficult.

Dan: Yeah.

Marc: All I’m trying to say is to me I want to see you start to get people who are supporting you and in your corner and where you could just go, “Hey, tell me what to do. What do you think? How should we proceed?” But it has to be people that you trust. Because I would love to see just some standard blood tests done, standard hormone tests, just kind of find out what’s going on.

Dan: I did do some labs probably two months, maybe three months, ago.

Marc: Anything interesting? What did you find?

Dan: Not a hell of a lot. My liver, kidneys, salt, all of that are good. Thyroid is good. Cholesterol strangely was good or okay. I did some magnesium, selenium, your trace elements, that were fine. If I recall, probably my magnesium was a bit low actually or at least borderline.

I remember there was some low-grade, acute inflammation. My CRP was elevated. I think my cortisol was mildly elevated as well which I guess goes with the territory.

Marc: Did you look at testosterone?

Dan: No, I didn’t actually. No. That’s a good idea.

Marc: Yeah. Might be an interesting piece of the puzzle to check out. So far, there’s a little bit of a cleaner bill of health, at least on paper.

Dan: Yeah.

Marc: Right. It’s on paper, but we know you’re feeling different. How hard is it for you to take time off at this point?

Dan: Look, as long as I’ve got probably two weeks’ notice, I can do that. That’s reasonable. There’s a lot of practitioners from the Monday to Thursday, and it’s a pretty good understanding that you can take time off. For this Friday, it’s just starting up. I want to get that word of mouth. I want to get a client roll, if you know what I mean. So it’d probably be a bit difficult in my mind at the moment to take those Fridays off, but the health comes first at the end of the day.

Marc: Yeah. It feels to me, plain and simple, like you need some momentum in your court, some momentum towards your health. So momentum to me means, okay, we get a practitioner who can help you out, and we start taking a little bit more time off. And you start doing things that rejuvenate you that are very specifically all about rejuvenating you.

You have to tell me what that is for you. I know what rejuvenates me is good acupuncture, good massage, a little bit of time off and just being by the ocean. Literally, it feels like a part of you needs to catch up and come back. And maybe it’s also a part of you needs a little bit of quiet to see, “Who am I? And what’s going on here?”

Dan: Yeah, that resonates a lot really. I think that’s probably part of the issue in the last particularly years is that I have felt that I’ve walked away from something that I held onto—walked away from a part of my identity or whatnot. It’s very difficult to explain I guess at the moment. I usually do a martial art, and for some weird reason I put that down, just felt too exhausted to do it. The ocean, definitely, and now that it’s coming summer.

I’ve found my health in general, particularly more my lung capacity and whatnot, has decreased to the degree that I can’t go in and do the kind of more full-on things I used to do. That kind of gets me too.

To me, the irony is that all I have to do is get back into it and probably my lung capacity will get better. But I don’t know; it does make a difference. I think motivation is a problem.

Marc: Yeah. So motivation is a problem in part because you’re tired, in part because you’re burnt out a little bit I think, and in part because you’re probably in a mild and I mean mild version of a midlife crisis. I think these days what I start to notice with men anyway is they don’t just have a midlife crisis; there’s usually two or three that can come along, which is a good thing. I look at it as just time to look in the mirror and say, “Who am I? What’s going on? What do I want? What’s important to me? What helps me be a man in this world and feel good about myself?”

So the tricky thing is right around the age that you’re at is when mortality starts to creep in. When you say, “I don’t have the same lung capacity anymore,” correct. You don’t. You’re not going to have the same anything capacity anymore, so it’s harder to just kind of get up and be a superman because the habits that got you to this point have to change. The habits that got you through life, through medical school, through sports, through martial arts, whatever they are, they’re changing because you’re getting a little older. And we’ve got to refine our game.

I’m going to say we as men, we as people, as we get older, we need to play a tighter, specific game because otherwise the body’s going to talk to you.

Dan: Yeah, I feel like it’s doing that already.

Marc: Yeah, so body’s talking to you. The body’s talking to you, and you’re going to have to, have to, have to move past your resistance to being the doctor and the healer who usually is taking care of everybody else, and you’ve got to let it in. You’ve got to let it in. You’ve got to invite it in, and you have to be the general manager of your own healing journey here.

Here’s my selfish desire for you. I’m going to just be very selfish right now. My selfish desire for you is that you say to yourself, “I want to go on a bit of a healing journey. I’m not quite sure what that means, but I want to focus on my healing like never before, focus on my health in a different way.” That doesn’t mean you have to be a fanatic. It just means to start to identify the little things, the little things. I’m not talking about big, humongous things. Little things day to day to day that will start to put some gas in your tank. It just feels like the tank doesn’t have a lot of gas in it, and you’re good at running on fumes.

Dan: Yeah, pretty much. And I think I have for a while. I think I’m a good improviser.

Marc: You are.

Dan: I think that’s got me through a bunch, but it’s not a good way to be.

Marc: Really, it’s about rest. It’s about time off. It’s about whatever it is that fills you up that doesn’t take a lot of effort.

Dan: Yeah.

Marc: And I would do a little bit more sleuthing. I’d be interested for you to check out your testosterone level, because oftentimes if it’s a little low that’s enough to take away enough of the edge. So we do become less motivated.

Dan: Yeah.

Marc: And it’s going to lower with stress for sure, and it’s going to lower with less exercise and movement for a man. So that could potentially make a difference for you, but it sounds to me like it’s a mindset shift. Because even what you shared about what you do at night, sometimes which is like, “Hey, I find myself eating. And maybe it’s good food, maybe it’s not good food. But it’s like all of a sudden I’m eating.” And it could be for a number of hours.

Here’s how I read that. Here’s what that tells me. What that tells me is you’ve said, “Evening time for me, that’s my time.” I get it. You’re a dad. You work during the day. Your kid’s asleep, and all of a sudden, finally, you’re not responsible for all these humans. So, good for you. So you made it to that point. And what’s happening is there’s so much discomfort in your system that the best way your body knows how to manage that is with food.

Food is right now for you the best way and it’s the easiest way for you to manage your discomfort. So when you’re eating at night, all I’m hearing is you’re entertaining your taste buds. You’re stress reducing. You’re probably also reaching for nutrition that your body’s hungry for. Because if you’re not…

Dan: I do.

Marc: If you’re not nourishing yourself well during the day, you will want to eat like that at night. It is predictable.

If you gave me a million dollars to turn somebody into a nighttime binge eater, I would just be working them during the day, starving them a little bit, make sure they skip meals and don’t get enough good food, and they’ll be bingeing in the evening time.

Dan: That’s me.

Marc: Okay. So there we go. So what you’re doing at night, just so you know, actually makes perfect sense. It’s what you should be doing because you’re actually listening to your body signals. Your body’s telling you it’s hungry and nutrition-starved and in need of stress reduction. Hungry, nutrition-starved, in need of stress reduction. So those are three things we can handle in a different way, in a better way. But that’s what you’re using them for, and it makes perfect sense because your system needs more nutrition. It’s not getting it during the day.

So what happens when the brain is finally a little bit relaxed, no kid, no patients, just me, the first thing that comes up is basic survival needs: hungry, need nutrition, need density. If you’re going for nuts and cheese, what that tells me is your body’s needing density. It needs grounding. It needs strong nutrition.

Is it possible for you to have time for a meal or two during the day?

Dan: Yeah. I try. Particularly for lunch, I try to keep to a Chinese medical hourly clock where I really want to eat lunch around 12 to one with others, you know the heart time. But I don’t know. Practically, it’s very difficult. Over the last couple of weeks particularly, I’ve just had these huge days, just lots of particularly mental health stuff. I’d say a third of the time I’m working I probably eat virtually nothing really, stuff here and there.

Again, I guess that’s one of the things, coming back to the magic wand, I’d like to kind of problem solve. I don’t know how to get around that other than maybe nibbling on stuff as I go.

Marc: Let me ask this question. Is it possible to have a scheduled…? So your schedule, like there’s a 20-minute lunch period, like 20 minutes. Is that possible?

Dan: That is. That’s a good idea. I can get the receptionist to just say, “Don’t book between this time and this time.”

Marc: Right. What I’m looking for, for you, is a scheduled time where the books are clear at a consistent time as best as possible every day, consistent time. Here’s my fill-in-the-blank. If you could do 20 minutes, 20. If you could do 30, great. If it’s only 15, great. But 15 minimum. Fifteen minutes, so there’s your time where it’s you and nourishment.

Now, where’s the food coming from? Who makes the food for you?

Dan: Peeta, my wife, she’s an excellent cook. And now and again, I’ll bring stuff in. I get a fair amount of it’s kind of like a shallow fried, chili calamari from a sushi place of all places. Otherwise, there’s a tavern pretty much next door, and I don’t have a drink or anything. I feel like it sometimes. But they have good food there. I wouldn’t necessarily say I always get the best, but I try to get salad.

It’s an odd thing though because I’m there and I’m talking to others, and I end up not really eating a lot. I think I must be still unwinding from the morning. I eat probably anything from like a beef salad to like fish and chips really, an odd burger. It’s not bakery food in the morning. Definitely not the way I want to be, but that’s where I’m at.

Marc: To me, it’s going to be a nice evolution for you to have a consistent slot every day you’re at work where there’s going to be a mealtime, and you either bring in your meal… I’m almost not caring what you’re eating because I’m hearing that you’re going to make at least some good choices. I want you to have food. I want you to actually be clear that you’re nourishing yourself, and you’re going to try to make the best choices possible. When you don’t, that’s fine. But even if you go next door to eat, you have to figure out a way where you’re eating.

So if that means bringing the food into the office and eating by yourself so you don’t get distracted, because what’s going to happen is, yeah, you are unwinding. And if you go next door and if you get distracted, that kind of circumvents the whole point here which is I want to get you feeding yourself during the day. At a regular time, get a meal in there. I don’t care if it’s fish and chips. I don’t care if it’s a big salad. I don’t care what it is. Whatever it is, whatever it is, whatever it is, get food in there.

Next, what I would love to say is pack what you feel like are healthy snacks. Have your wife make you some healthy snacks. Pack what you feel are healthy, small, tiny, mini meals. And find times during the day to take five minutes and fuel yourself. So think of it as I’m taking five minutes to fuel. And anybody could stop for five minutes and fuel. So the net result is you’re putting attention on your nourishment. And especially if you could do a little bit of forethought in bringing food in so you’re not stuck, I don’t know, without food, without what you want to have. So it’s a little bit more pre-planned. You know you’re bringing these things in for the day.

I don’t care, honestly, if you snack four or five times when you’re at work. This is about you adapting to your lifestyle. We are like creatures in the wild. So it’s winter. Great. We’re going to eat differently. It’s summer. We’re going to eat differently. The food source got cut off. We have to wander a little bit further. So we’re being wild animals, and we are adjusting to our environment. So if you can’t take two hours for a meal, then, great. Take 15 minutes for a meal. And if you’re going to be working on your feet all day and giving out energy, I want you to at least have snacks and go, “Okay, here’s a snack here. Here’s a snack there.” That’ll give you consistent nourishment, and it’ll give you nourishment when you need it because that’s when you’re doing all your activity is during the day.

Dan: Yeah.

Marc: Right. So that’s when you need to be fueled. So it makes sense to me that you’re going to feel burned out or even you’re going to get inflamed. Because if that’s your output, if you’re outputting during the day, if you’re hunting and gathering during the day and you don’t have a fuel source, you’re going to burn out.

Eating at night is not working for you. Eating the bulk of your calories in the last third of your day is not going to work for you. Do you follow me?

Dan: Yeah, I do. I do. That makes sense. It really does. Yeah.

Marc: And, Dan, also, another part of this here, and I’ve kind of said this but I want to emphasize it again, which is this is you as a man making a choice to take care of yourself in a whole different way. You have to step out of immortality.

You are functioning—and trust me. I did this up until my 40s. I functioned as if I was an immortal teenager, meaning I could do whatever I want because I had a strong body. I took good care of myself, and so I’d push myself. I’d push. I’d push. I’d push.

Think of your child. Think of this as a long-term game. This is a long-term game. You want to be around for when your kid goes to medical school or your kid graduates college or whatever it is. You want to be there for the grandkids, I’m assuming. So you’ve got to be healthy. If you want to be a good father, you’ve got to be a healthy father, number one. This is not just you taking care of you. This is you taking care of your people, meaning wife and kid.

It’s like extra level of oomph and push and commitment there because right now it’s not just you not taking care of you. It’s you kind of not really 100% being responsible in your role. If you’re the primary breadwinner and you’re the father and you’ve got a little kid, I’m sorry, you’ve got to take care of yourself. You’re smarter than that. You’re smarter than that.

So I’m just being big brother here and telling you I want you to do this for you and for them.

Dan: It resonates hard. It makes sense. It’s time. That’s the other thing.

Marc: It’s time. You need a little push here. You need a little push, but I want to make sure that there are people kind of urging you on a little bit. So who can be in your support system of people who are going to be by your side going, “Okay, Dan. Are you bringing meals today? Are you taking a little extra time off? Are you getting to the ocean? Are you getting acupuncture?” Who is that person or people?

Dan: Definitely my wife. She’s great.

Marc: Yes.

Dan: There we go. I have some great friends, and we’ve gone through a lot of health journeys and education and whatnot together. They live around about an hour away or even an hour-and-a-half away. But I should link up with them. I used to call them all the time. I used to visit them much more often. But that’s kind of fallen by the wayside. And they’ve always been great in—I’ve known them for a long time, and they don’t kind of hold their punches I guess. They tell me what I don’t want to hear sometimes which is exactly what I should hear I think. I think I would do well to get back into nurturing that relationship more.

And I think the people on this Friday new practice, there’s a psychologist who I’ve gone on—we’ve kind of started this adventure, if you will, together. And she’s very good. She’s a good listener. She has the skills I guess in many ways. But she cares. She’s a lovely person. To a degree, I feel a little bit of trepidation about that because I feel like I’m going into a venture and then kind of asking for help essentially. But I know that she’ll be fine with it. She’s a lovely person, so I think that’d be fine.

I think they’re probably my main go-to. I also have some other friends who, again, are around about an hour away. And they’re very good as well. They’re nice and supportive. They have the same kind of mentality or outlook as myself. And it’s just really fun to be with those guys. Now that you asked the question and I’m answering, I feel like I have cut myself off a little bit from these good, good friends, good support.

Marc: Life happens. We become parents, and your kid becomes your focus. So totally understandable. And then work becomes a focus, and family is a focus. And all of a sudden, getting sleep becomes a focus. And finding some energy becomes a focus. So it’s understandable is all I’m saying, and it just feels like this is a time for you to start to gather up your support system so you can put gas in your tank. It’s like I just keep getting you having situations, people around you who are supporting you in moving in this new direction and that’s a mindset shift for you. It’s a real mindset shift because it’s a little bit of humility around health and mortality. It’s a little bit of humility around, “Hey, I could use some help and support because it’s hard to do on my own here.” That’s plain and simple.

That’s why there’s just lots of us in this world and not just you or me because we need each other.

This is a good time in your life to reach out for that. Again, you’re in a kind of job that takes a lot of energy, and I have a feeling you might not even realize how much energy it takes. Because on the one hand, it’s physical energy, but on another hand it’s also emotional and psychic energy when you’re dealing with people’s health and their health issues, their fears and their concerns. And it might be—maybe, maybe not—impacting you more than you realize. That’s why I just want you to have support in your corner, plain and simple.

Dan: That can never be a bad thing.

Marc: Right?

Dan: It can never be a bad thing.

Marc: Yeah, I agree.

Dan: Yeah, well, I think that’s the next step then definitely. I’ll reach out. I’ve got a couple of free weekends coming, so I don’t see why there’s any reason not to travel and see some of these guys.

Marc: Or have them come to you or even just visit over the phone. It’s really I’m looking for anything that you can do that adds to your life that makes you feel better, that fills up your tank, that doesn’t deplete your tank.

Dan: I feel hot and hollow if that makes any sense whatsoever.

Marc: No, I get it. I totally get it. So there’s something that your system’s wanting, and I want you to get it. And part of that means you have to put it out there. So we’re talking regular food, regular meals for you, regular snacks at work. And then see how that affects your evening eating. We’re talking about you seeing your doctor friend who can maybe advise a little bit more. Any other health services that support you and feel good and help you get more energy. I don’t care what it is literally.

Especially passive stuff. Passive might be good for you. When I say passive, I mean, yeah, martial arts. If you can get back into sport, great. But at the same time, if you could lie down on a table and have somebody give you a good body work.

Dan: Geez.

Marc: Yeah.

Dan: Yeah. It’s funny. I’m an acupuncturist, and I probably haven’t had acupuncture on myself for five years or something like that, something crazy.

Marc: Bad boy. Bad boy. That’s got to change. Change that by next week, please. You should be getting regular acupuncture. It makes a difference. I get regular acupuncture. It makes a difference for me, so I know.

Dan: Preaching to the choir.

Marc: Yeah. Good.

Dan: You’re right. Excellent. There’s so many acupuncturists around here as well. Some of them are great. Maybe that’s part of the humility as well. Maybe I have to give that up a bit.

Marc: Yeah. Oftentimes, nobody’s as good as us in our minds. It’s hard for me to go to another nutrition person because that’s my life and my field. And the truth is we don’t know everything. I don’t know everything, and it’s hard to self-treat and self-medicate. Sometimes it’s very effective, and other times it just ain’t. It just ain’t.

So to me, you’ve just needed a little bit of a push. You just need a little push. You just need a push. So I’m hoping this is enough of a push to get you into action, but you’ve got to push yourself to the next place of gathering support. I would love for you to speak to your wife after this conversation and say, “Honey, here’s what we talked about on this session. Here’s what I want to enroll you in. I really need to start turning things around for me, for you, for Elijah. That’s what the deal is here.”

So let’s nip this in the bud. I would rather this conversation than you talking to me, telling me you have chronic fatigue and you can’t get out of bed and you can’t show up for work. That would suck. Here we are at the beginning stages, taking care of business before things get out of hand. That’s how I look at this time for you.

Dan: I feel that. That really resonates. Yeah. No, no. That really resonates. I think you’re right about the push in a way. I feel good already. I feel propelled if that’s the right word.

Marc: Yeah.

Dan: But, yeah, I feel like these last couple of years I thought it was discipline for a long time, and it still very well could be. But you just said that it’s so much easier to sit on my bum rather than get out and go. My martial art often ends up just being qigong or more like tai chi type stuff.

Marc: That’s perfect. That’s fun.

Dan: Yeah. But even then, it’s just like, ugh. Then I go home and at 10:30 I eat cheese. I think you’re right. I think a bit of a push is good. Recruiting friends resonates as well just because I want to enjoy their company again. I miss them.

Marc: Yeah. That’s going to give you energy. You’ve got to be a guy.

Dan: Yeah. It’s true.

Marc: Yeah. So good job, my friend. I think we did the piece here today that we could do together. I got really clear that I wanted to inspire you to really take that step and make that leap and give yourself a little push and gather momentum, gather support, gather help, gather people who will give you a little push. And that’s a good thing. That’s a good thing to do.

Dan: Thank you, my friend.

Marc: You’re so welcome.

Dan: Yeah, that’s lovely. Yeah, just thank you. I don’t know. It feels like it’s a lovely, warm, little hug. So thank you very much.

Marc: Yes, that’s exactly what it is. It’s an honor for me to be in this conversation with you and to be of help in any way because you’re a helper and that’s kind of what you do for a living. And sometimes the helpers need to learn a few things of how to self-help.

Dan: Indeed.

Marc: Great job, Dan. I really appreciate you taking the time and doing this.

Dan: Thank you, my friend. Thank you.

Marc: Okay. And thank you, everyone, for tuning in. Much appreciated. Once again, I’m Marc David on behalf of the Psychology of Eating podcast. Always more to come, my friends. You take care.