podcast. I’m so excited to have you here. I’m happy to be here. Thanks, Liz.

Your research is so relevant to so many people, and yet I had not heard about

it until recently. Not enough people are talking about it. So I’m so excited to

dive in today. Let’s start out with, can you explain what EBT is and how it

works for weight loss to me like I’m five years old?

[00:00:22] style=’color:#6600CC’>Dr. Laurel Mellin: EBT is a method of

processing emotions. That can be applied to rewiring the circuits in the brain,

the major circuits in the brain that control everything we do, mental health,

physical health, obesity. and turn those circuits that are spewing all sorts of

chemicals that make us overeat and be fat and feel lethargic and be down on

ourselves into circuits that actually create joy and purpose and a whole

chemical construct that soothes our soul and makes us satisfied so we don’t need

the extra food and we don’t tend to pack on pounds.

[00:00:58] style=’color:#72B372’>Liz: And I want to just be super clear style=’color:gray’>[00:01:00] on this because it feels huge. And again,

I have not heard Anybody talk about it before you said research has shown that

the eight major chemicals that drive overeating and weight regain Glp is but

one of them are all stress activated. So basically every chemical associated

with overeating Is associated with stress.

[00:01:18] style=’color:#72B372’>Liz: It’s activated by stress. Is that

[00:01:20] style=’color:#6600CC’>Dr. Laurel Mellin: true? That is absolutely

true. Because we know that just because we have hunter gatherer ancestors that

actually were involved in the evolution of our brain, that way back then,

everyone, when they were stressed, were typically hungry. And they were going

to die from undernutrition.

[00:01:39] style=’color:#6600CC’>Dr. Laurel Mellin: and underweight. So our

genes are set up that whenever we’re in stress, we’re going to activate a

chemical cascade that will make us hungry, will make us overeat, and will take

whatever we do eat and store it as fat. So essentially, even though it used to

be that everyone thought, well, some people have a genetic propensity.

[00:01:58] style=’color:#6600CC’>Dr. Laurel Mellin: Yes, that’s true. But all style=’color:gray’>[00:02:00] of us as humans have a genetic propensity

when we’re stressed to overeat and gain weight. What that means is the circuits

in our brain. The control stress are the focus of treatment for weight is

absolutely clear that even though we think that we should shoot up with a

particular chemical or that we should try to force ourselves to eat healthy.

[00:02:24] style=’color:#6600CC’>Dr. Laurel Mellin: That is actually not the

solution. The solution is to go to the root cause of the stress chemicals,

because it’s a stress chemical cascade that gets us in trouble, and go to

something called the amygdala. The amygdala is in the emotional brain. It stores

all the circuits that tell us what to do. If I’m upset in this way, this is the

chemicals that are going to come out.

[00:02:45] style=’color:#6600CC’>Dr. Laurel Mellin: These are the emotions,

thoughts, behaviors, and this is how I’m going to cope. And some of these

circuits in our amygdala are fantastic. We call them spiral up circuits. In

terms of science, they’re called homeostatic circuits. They’re all the chemicals

that make [00:03:00] us healthy and happy. But

all of us have a few of these chemicals that are not so good, and they come

from the other kind of circuit.

[00:03:07] style=’color:#6600CC’>Dr. Laurel Mellin: They spiral us down and the

chemical effects is to take us into health and unhappiness and cravings and

overweight. Everybody’s got an amygdala with some of those health promoting

circuits and some of those that are harmful. What we do in EBT is we say, let’s

switch off and rewire the circuits that are faulty.

[00:03:26] style=’color:#6600CC’>Dr. Laurel Mellin: Because the faulty circuits

are what cause these eight chemicals to go haywire and make it virtually

impossible for us not to have cravings. to be depressed, to seek food for

comfort, and to pack on those pounds. What are the eight chemicals? The master

switch is the amygdala. This is in the emotional brain, but it’s actually

attached to two other centers.

[00:03:47] style=’color:#6600CC’>Dr. Laurel Mellin: It’s called the stress

triangle. There’s the amygdala that’s in charge of stress, There’s the nucleus

accumbens that’s in charge of reward and hypothalamus that’s in charge of

habits. And all three of them are intimately connected. And style=’color:gray’>[00:04:00] you want all of them really balanced.

Unfortunately, you can’t directly affect the, uh, the reward center because

it’s usually a behavior you’re involved in.

[00:04:09] style=’color:#6600CC’>Dr. Laurel Mellin: And behaviors in terms of

those drives, those really stress drives, are in the amygdala. And the habit

center gets into a habit of doing something and it’s on overdrive. Thank you.

So the way we can control all those chemicals is by switching off the stress

response, but here’s how it works. And if you want to think about how

victimized all of us are, and 75 to 80 percent of people are stress eaters have

struggled with eating and wait for a lifetime.

[00:04:33] style=’color:#6600CC’>Dr. Laurel Mellin: I got my food circuit when

I was 11. And what happens is I was teased at school and I came home and my

mother was at home. That was the day when mom stayed home more. And my mother

was there. I didn’t know how to tell her. I was ashamed. I was And I just saw

these cinnamon rolls on the counter, and I saw them, and I was really running a

lot of stress in my brain, I was feeling very deprived and very embarrassed and

very confused and overwhelmed, [00:05:00] and

so I got the fight or flight drive going, I reached for those cinnamon rolls,

this little, you know, food circuit, the two of them combined into what’s

called a survival circuit, Because, whenever you do something in stress, the

brain strongly remembers it.

[00:05:15] style=’color:#6600CC’>Dr. Laurel Mellin: My brain would remember it,

and it stored it in the least plastic areas of my brain. And what happened is I

wake up the next morning and all of a sudden I have a special relationship with

food. I want that food because he’s ate it. chemicals are being activated. And

these are the eight chemicals. It starts with the amygdala.

[00:05:33] style=’color:#6600CC’>Dr. Laurel Mellin: And what happened is, you

know, into my brain came all this stress because I was made fun of. I come home

and what happens is the amygdala activates cortisol. Cortisol makes you hungry.

Okay. It makes you eat more. It also drains reward. So it drains your dopamine.

That’s the reward center. The nucleus accumbens drains the reward center and

drain serotonin.

[00:05:58] style=’color:#6600CC’>Dr. Laurel Mellin: So at that point, we are style=’color:gray’>[00:06:00] stressed, we are depressed, and we are

under rewarded. And we live in an environment where there’s constant access to

foods that immediately reward us with no effort at all. They’re high sugar,

high fat, and they’re everywhere. So we reach for those foods and what happens

is these foods, the sugary fatty foods, increases insulin.

[00:06:20] style=’color:#6600CC’>Dr. Laurel Mellin: The fourth chemical is

insulin. We start having high insulin levels, which blocks the fifth chemical,

which is leptin. So now we’re starving to death. We can’t lose weight and our

brain is telling us we need to store fat. Okay, so now we’re feeling really

terrible and we have a full blown stress response and then the gut hormones,

which are PYY, ghrelin, and also a GLP 1 that’s used in these, you know, an

agonist that’s used in these weight loss drugs, they all go.

[00:06:51] style=’color:#6600CC’>Dr. Laurel Mellin: So we’ve got all eight of

these happening. Now any natural solution that’s going to be lasting and not

create dependency is going to be [00:07:00]

based on changing all of those eight chemicals. Well, you’re not going to take

eight shots. Okay, so what we do with EBT is we switch off and actually erase,

rewire the circuits that are causing it.

[00:07:12] style=’color:#6600CC’>Dr. Laurel Mellin: If you use a weight loss

drug, because I really believe in people doing whatever they want, you know,

certainly, if I want to take some drugs, I’m going to take some drugs, and I

believe everyone should do that. But they should also know why there are dangers

involved. And the reason is, is because the body and the brain are very

interrelated.

[00:07:31] style=’color:#6600CC’>Dr. Laurel Mellin: And it means that one

chemical is not a lone island. All the chemicals affect other chemicals.

Instead of switching off the stress response with emotional brain training and

activating, essentially, the regulation of all eight chemicals, because if you’re

not stressed, you’re going to go back to other ways that are more health

promoting.

[00:07:49] style=’color:#6600CC’>Dr. Laurel Mellin: You just inject one

chemical. That’s an imbalance. That’s not a complete solution. Plus you’re

dependent upon the drug because you haven’t solved the [00:08:00]

problem. The problem is wires in the amygdala to rewire, not an injection. So

you’ll have more consequences and then you feel like you can’t get off the

drug.

[00:08:09] style=’color:#6600CC’>Dr. Laurel Mellin: Because, in fact, when you

do, you regain the weight. EBT is the only intervention, other than weight loss

surgery, that is shown in studies published in peer reviewed journals to keep

the weight off after the treatment ends. Which means we’ve gone to the root

cause, the emotional brain. The emotional brain The amygdala in particular is

the ruler of our eating and weight.

[00:08:30] style=’color:#6600CC’>Dr. Laurel Mellin: So that’s why we target it.

[00:08:31] style=’color:#72B372’>Liz: How does that interact with the fact that

we live in a world that’s increasing our cortisol, that’s increasing our

dopamine? We’re all addicted to our phones. We live in this very fast paced

culture. Is that creating further imbalances that make EBT more necessary? Is

that, how do you view that in your brain?

[00:08:47] style=’color:#6600CC’>Dr. Laurel Mellin: I’ll tell you a funny

story. When I started EBT, I was a young faculty member at the University of

California, San Francisco. I knew that cognitive behavioral programs weren’t

working. I was actually treating childhood and adolescent obesity. style=’color:gray’>[00:09:00] And so I went into the literature. I went

way down to the seventh floor of the, way down in the bottom of the library.

[00:09:06] style=’color:#6600CC’>Dr. Laurel Mellin: And back in those days,

they use microfiche. And I found this study from 1940. It was by Hildebrook and

Grace Terling, who are at Baylor College of Medicine. She was a psychiatrist,

about 98 pounds, sopping wet. And she had done this wonderful work on child

obesity, showing that the root cause was the connection in the family.

[00:09:25] style=’color:#6600CC’>Dr. Laurel Mellin: And if the connection

between parent and child wasn’t working, the child started coping with food.

Now, as a young woman, I was 28 at the time, I thought, that’s not a problem. I

will just teach emotional connection tools to my patients. And of course, because

I’m a researcher, because I was in the School of Medicine, What that means is

you do research around it.

[00:09:46] style=’color:#6600CC’>Dr. Laurel Mellin: So we go ahead and have

these families all learn these emotional connectivity tools, and they do, and

this mother comes to me, and she says, what have you done to my daughter? My

daughter used to steal money from my purse so she could go to the convenience

store and [00:10:00] buy food. Now, she doesn’t

even want to sit down for dinner.

[00:10:03] style=’color:#6600CC’>Dr. Laurel Mellin: She’s happy. She wants to

go out and play. And at that moment, I knew that I would be a bad person if I

didn’t find out what the neuro neuroscience of this was. And so the next 40

years was spent on that. The truth is that if we don’t go to the root cause and

change things, people are not going to lose weight and keep it off.

[00:10:21] style=’color:#72B372’>Liz: Something that I was trying to kind of

get into as I was going through all of your research is how this impacts with

environmental factors. Obesity has increased. exponentially in recent history.

This wiring in our brain hasn’t really changed. How does this interact with the

fact that we live in a world that’s playing on our brains?

[00:10:40] style=’color:#72B372’>Liz: It’s playing on our bodies in very

different ways. There’s all these different environmental factors going on. And

what would you say to a parent who says, Wait, so my child’s obesity is my

fault because I don’t have enough connection with them. What about the food

system that we live in? What about the world outside of

[00:10:57] style=’color:#6600CC’>Dr. Laurel Mellin: our house?

[00:10:57] style=’color:#6600CC’>Dr. Laurel Mellin: The issue is that the

wiring is [00:11:00] changing in our brain and

essentially everyone can assess their wiring and you can do that right now

because the wiring is created by experience. What’s stable is how wiring is

encoded. Whenever we are stressed and don’t process our emotions, the studies

have really been clear that cognitive control does not work.

[00:11:19] style=’color:#6600CC’>Dr. Laurel Mellin: Thinking your way out of an

eating binge, as you well know, is impossible. That’s why we need emotional

tools to process the level of stress we’re all in. If we can’t process our

emotional existence inside, because stress creates very toxic emotions. It

creates anxiety, depression. Panic, shame, numbness, false highs.

[00:11:40] style=’color:#6600CC’>Dr. Laurel Mellin: If we can’t take those

unbalanced, stressed emotions and turn them into balanced emotions, in fact,

joy, so we feel really connected to ourselves, we’re going to develop problems.

Right now, we have a pandemic of stress and if we do one thing in this world to

make it better, we understand that the root cause of The problems we’re style=’color:gray’>[00:12:00] facing now are the same, that the brain is

in stress.

[00:12:05] style=’color:#6600CC’>Dr. Laurel Mellin: And so we change the brain

and rewire it so it’s not in stress. So what happens is, I would never blame a

parent. First of all, parents today, my gosh, it’s absolutely impossible. I

have three children, they’re all raised. It’s much harder to raise children

now. And the more stressed the parents are, the more the children are stressed.

[00:12:26] style=’color:#6600CC’>Dr. Laurel Mellin: Very few people. are using

EBT. We’ve only had 500, 000 people use it so far. It should be everyone.

Without those emotional skills, you can’t get to anxiety and dismantle it in

one to three minutes. It’s going to take, if you use mindfulness or cognitive

method, it’s going to be a half an hour to an hour and nobody has that kind of

time.

[00:12:45] style=’color:#6600CC’>Dr. Laurel Mellin: So what I would say to the

parents is, my gosh, you’re under stress. And you’re under stress because this

world is remarkably stressful. There’s so many temptations. There’s so many

diversions. There’s so many ways that we’re tempted. What we have to do is take

care of [00:13:00] you and your stress. And

frankly, that’s, that makes a huge difference for the child, but also tell the

child how to process their stress.

[00:13:07] style=’color:#6600CC’>Dr. Laurel Mellin: Just teach them how to do

it. And what happens is, Children. One of the fun things that we started with

childhood and adolescent obesity. And after really a few years, the parents

were coming to me. So we, I moved to family medicine from pediatrics and started

doing it for children, not just for weight, but for mental health problems and

chronic diseases.

[00:13:25] style=’color:#6600CC’>Dr. Laurel Mellin: And what happens is the

children have these beautiful brains. The emotional brain of a child is just

raw. It’s just open to rewiring because it’s not until adolescence. That

thinking brain, the prefrontal cortex starts being dominant. So little kids are

just like little sponges and when their parents start Processing their stress

out of stress and into what the opposite of stress is which is not relaxation

But it’s joy you have to be in that state of joy the children begin to change

But after they go through adolescence They’re more like adults.

[00:13:58] style=’color:#6600CC’>Dr. Laurel Mellin: They try to figure style=’color:gray’>[00:14:00] everything out And once you start trying

to figure everything out instead of just opening your hand to the universe and

saying i’m just going to You process my emotions. And of course, no one’s going

to do that because if you don’t know how to process the toxic ones, you’re

going to get stuck.

[00:14:11] style=’color:#6600CC’>Dr. Laurel Mellin: Essentially, I would just

say to the family, Hey, everybody, you’re like everyone else. We’re really

stressed out. And the current techniques that are cognitive and mindfulness and

analyzing and planning are essentially making our brains worse. Because if you

don’t process your emotions for those gnarly toxic circuits that are making us

depressed.

[00:14:31] style=’color:#6600CC’>Dr. Laurel Mellin: or anxious or gain weight,

they just get stronger. If you’ve ever been on a weight loss program, what

happens is great because you have external support, you have somebody talking

to you, so you’re not stressed, you have those medications and you’re really on

a false high because as long as you haven’t said, okay, it’s about wiring and

I’m going to learn how to process my emotions so I can rewire those circuits.

[00:14:54] style=’color:#6600CC’>Dr. Laurel Mellin: The circuits that are

causing the problem just hide out and get stronger and that’s why so many of us

[00:15:00] are so frustrated because we work so

hard with these programs that don’t change the root cause, which is the stress

wiring. We get our hopes up. We think, you know what, tonight I’m not going to

even want the food or when I get off this plan I’m just fine, thank you.

[00:15:13] style=’color:#6600CC’>Dr. Laurel Mellin: And then all of a sudden

they’re a little bit stressed and boom, those circuits at the bottom of the

brain come back, those eight chemicals are being dysregulated and then people

blame themselves. In your

[00:15:24] style=’color:#72B372’>Liz: mind, why has obesity risen so much in

recent history?

[00:15:27] style=’color:#6600CC’>Dr. Laurel Mellin: Because the environment has

become so toxic, unless we reset our skills to process emotions, they go down

to the toxic stress induced experience and change it.

[00:15:39] style=’color:#6600CC’>Dr. Laurel Mellin: We will be either

overweight, or depressed, or using another, another external solution, another

addiction. That’s just the way the brain works. The problem is stress. It’s not

that the old methods didn’t work in 1980, but the research shows that starting

in 1980, they didn’t work anymore. The stress level for all of us, the shared

stress of the speed of [00:16:00] change, the

information overload.

[00:16:01] style=’color:#6600CC’>Dr. Laurel Mellin: The amazing temptations was

so high that all of the stress related conditions started rising. And you can

tell it best with obesity because you can actually measure it. It’s harder to

measure incrementally anxiety, depression, and other addictions. The idea is it

started going up and nobody did anything.

[00:16:19] style=’color:#6600CC’>Dr. Laurel Mellin: And then by 2000, 2001, it

started going up more. And now with the pandemic, 2008, and then the pandemic,

it’s off the charts. So this is what’s happening with emotional brain training.

People are flocking to it. Because what they’re saying is, okay, I get it, I

can’t take one more medication, I can’t go to three therapy sessions a week, or

if I want to do any of that, I want to bolt on going to the root cause and

getting the skills in my own brain, empowering myself to be able to process

whatever comes my way back to a state of deep connection and essentially higher

purpose and joy, the way we all want to live.

[00:16:55] style=’color:#6600CC’>Dr. Laurel Mellin: And in those states, we

don’t need the extra food.

[00:16:58] style=’color:#72B372’>Liz: We just had a doctor on this style=’color:gray’>[00:17:00] podcast talk about our metabolic health,

and she would say that there’s so many reasons that we are in this epidemic of

obesity right now, but one of them is that ultra processed foods exist in far

greater amounts in the world than they have at any time in history, and these

mess with all of our neurochemicals.

[00:17:19] style=’color:#72B372’>Liz: How does that sit with EBT?

[00:17:21] style=’color:#6600CC’>Dr. Laurel Mellin: Truly, I have to say, I

feel a little guilty. that we haven’t disseminated it further, because I’m a

bit of a perfectionist. That’s a wire. And we’ve been working for now 40 years.

I mean, a lot of people have had it, but not everyone, because people don’t

know the science on which it’s built.

[00:17:36] style=’color:#6600CC’>Dr. Laurel Mellin: And the science is that

there is a stress triangle in the brain. And what that means is, if you turn

off those wires that make you overeat, those chemicals that are driving you to

overeat, I could be sitting here with you in a room filled with cakes and

cookies and chips, and I could care less.

[00:17:56] style=’color:#72B372’>Liz: Even if those cakes and cookies and chips

are [00:18:00] Literally engineered to mess

with those neurochemicals.

[00:18:03] style=’color:#72B372’>Liz: Exactly.

[00:18:04] style=’color:#6600CC’>Dr. Laurel Mellin: Would you like to know why?

Yes, tell me why. Okay. There’s something called survival circuits in the

brain. They’re the ones that we attack first with emotional brain training.

Because they’re the ones that essentially combine a fight or flight drive and

the chips. So, when I woke up that next morning after eating those cinnamon

rolls, I began to have a fight or flight drive biochemically to eat those

foods.

[00:18:27] style=’color:#6600CC’>Dr. Laurel Mellin: So, I was instantly

rewarded by the dopamine from the foods. So, in order to change a behavior, you

have to rewire that circuit and encode a better circuit, a circuit that will

reward you anymore. Nobody stops doing eating, drinking, spending, whatever it

is, unless they have a better choice. And that choice is in your unconscious

mind.

[00:18:45] style=’color:#6600CC’>Dr. Laurel Mellin: If you were doing EBT right

now, if you were in a support group, because it’s all about support groups over

the internet, you use this skill in EBT called the cycle tool. It is the

powerhouse of changing people’s brains and it’s very simple but very deep. I

would do what your mother [00:19:00] probably

told you not to do.

[00:19:00] style=’color:#6600CC’>Dr. Laurel Mellin: I would complain about the

fact that I was overeating and then I would express emotions, angry, sad,

afraid, guilt in a certain way and what happens here, I’m complaining with my

thinking brain but the problem’s in my emotional brain, in my amygdala. So it

would Unlock by expressing emotions in that way, really for one minute or two

minutes, it essentially opens the circuit and the circuit includes a drive,

like a message that says, like, I get my safety or my power or my protection or

whatever it is, something of basic need existence from stuffing myself with

sugar and that is telling me that and those chemicals are driving me.

[00:19:40] style=’color:#6600CC’>Dr. Laurel Mellin: And so, of course, I’m

going to have the chips right there. Okay, because I’m being immediately

rewarded externally by the chips, and then biochemically I’m driven. So I find

the exact words, and it has to be the exact words. Now all of us think about what

is causing me to overeat, and we have ideas and insights.

[00:19:58] style=’color:#6600CC’>Dr. Laurel Mellin: Those insights plus five

cents give you [00:20:00] a nickel. They’re

worth nothing because the real message is in the unconscious mind. And what EBT

does is allow you to very quickly find out what your unconscious mind is

telling you. And once you have that exact words, like this one woman recently

was saying, I get my mothering from stuffing myself with food until I feel

complete, whatever those words are, they’re different than what you really

think you are.

[00:20:23] style=’color:#6600CC’>Dr. Laurel Mellin: Your issue is, once you

have those words, they’re magical because all you do is confront them with the

opposite, the healthy opposite. I cannot get my mothering or whatever it is

from stuffing myself with food. You change it into a circuit of higher purpose.

I can get my mothering or safety or power or whatever from connecting to the

deepest part of me.

[00:20:46] style=’color:#6600CC’>Dr. Laurel Mellin: This is an emotional and

spiritual experience. The deepest part of me. And in that state, you are in

perfect biochemistry. All of those eight chemicals are not being activated. And

so the drive goes [00:21:00] away. And I’m

going to do it for higher purpose. Once you do it for higher purpose, and the

seven purposes within EBT are sanctuary, which is peace and power from within,

authenticity, vibrancy, integrity, intimacy, spiritual, and freedom, the

thought of those higher purposes activates reward chemicals that are better

than chips, because chips only last a few minutes, maybe an hour.

[00:21:24] style=’color:#6600CC’>Dr. Laurel Mellin: But that higher purpose is

now embedded in your Amygdala is with you all the time. And so you look at the

chips and you say, I don’t think so. I don’t want that. Not that you’re

depriving yourself, but you’re being chemically affected, turning off those

eight chemicals, and giving yourself that dopamine, and that endorphins from

higher purpose, and you don’t want it.

[00:21:47] style=’color:#6600CC’>Dr. Laurel Mellin: In fact, you think it’s

rather revolting. This is something That we record over and over again,

thousands and thousands of people. I was just talking to someone the other day,

it’s a woman who just came into EBT. She just got into an EBT style=’color:gray’>[00:22:00] support group. She had just been using the

app and listening to her certified EBT provider for a couple of weeks.

[00:22:06] style=’color:#6600CC’>Dr. Laurel Mellin: And she said, I have had a

sugar eating circuit since I was 20 years of age. She was in college. It was,

she was really stressed and she reached for sugar and she got that circuit. And

she says in two weeks of EBT. What I did is I found the exact message, I

confronted it, I broke the circuit, and at some point when the circuit’s

broken, you will notice a change in your behavior.

[00:22:28] style=’color:#6600CC’>Dr. Laurel Mellin: So with EBT, you never try

to not eat the chips. If you want chips, have them. You’re gonna have them

anyway, at least I would. What you do is you focus on using these emotional

tools to demolish that circuit. And you have proof that you’ve demolished it,

when all of a sudden you go to the refrigerator and you’re sure you’re going to

get the ice cream.

[00:22:46] style=’color:#6600CC’>Dr. Laurel Mellin: Maybe you go to the

freezer, or maybe you go and have some leftover pizza and you open the

refrigerator door. That’s what she did. I opened the door and I looked in and I

thought, That’s weird. I don’t even want it. And that gives you evidence that

you have [00:23:00] security. You’ve gone to

the root cause of the problem because the circuit is gone.

[00:23:03] style=’color:#72B372’>Liz: Which is so different than dieting

because you are eating to the point of nourishment, but you’re not eating

beyond nourishment or things that aren’t nourishing you in the first place.

[00:23:13] style=’color:#6600CC’>Dr. Laurel Mellin: Exactly. And remember,

every time you put that food in your mouth, never blame yourself. Because you

have been taught by the system that is here now, the medical system and the

commercial weight loss program System that the problem is the food.

[00:23:25] style=’color:#6600CC’>Dr. Laurel Mellin: The problem is not the food

as long as you’re not addressing the circuits You’re gonna be eating the food

and if you deny yourself that food That’s sad because you absolutely need those

chemicals and you haven’t moved to demolishing that circuit So you get your

chemicals met the other way So essentially, when people come into EBT, we just

say, get into your support group, start warming it up with other people, people

helping people help themselves.

[00:23:49] style=’color:#6600CC’>Dr. Laurel Mellin: You don’t need a therapist

every day. You’re in your group and you do have a certified EBT provider, but

you know, you’re the solution and you’re going to also listen to other people

because it’s a combination [00:24:00] of warm

connection, someone just listening to us while we take those five minutes to

process our emotions.

[00:24:07] style=’color:#6600CC’>Dr. Laurel Mellin: and science based tools

that conform to the exact resiliency pathways in the brain. That combination is

what works. And then just watch the magic unfold. And what people do, and this

is to answer your other question about health problems, people do is They come

in, they usually want to rewire their food circuit first, so they want to get

rid of it.

[00:24:25] style=’color:#6600CC’>Dr. Laurel Mellin: So once they rewire their

food circuit and they can see that food has lost its power over them and

they’re not taking an injection, it’s all natural and it’s in their own brain.

Then they say, Hey, you know what? I have some other circuits too. And so they

rewire their mood circuit, maybe their relationship circuit, their work

circuit, their procrastination circuit.

[00:24:45] style=’color:#6600CC’>Dr. Laurel Mellin: They typically rewire four

major circuits in their brain because there usually are four. Okay. What that

does is it lifts up something very important, which is the set point of the

brain. Most of us have a set point, and here’s the number system. We call it

the [00:25:00] EBT five point system of

emotional and behavioral regulation.

[00:25:03] style=’color:#6600CC’>Dr. Laurel Mellin: Your set point is at one,

that’s the top of the brain is in charge, and in that state, because of state

specific memory, all your happy memories are activated. All the times when you

didn’t need the extra food, all the times when maybe you had a difficult day at

work, but somehow you just moved through it into joy, all of them, so you are a

different person in that brain state.

[00:25:26] style=’color:#6600CC’>Dr. Laurel Mellin: And then when you go to

brain state two, which is not feeling great, but feeling good, you’re still in

what’s called homeostasis, which is those circuits that are health promoting.

And so you can handle pretty much of everything. You don’t feel rewarded, but

you can handle anything. Right here at your cheekbone, that’s where the level

three is.

[00:25:44] style=’color:#6600CC’>Dr. Laurel Mellin: And that’s where you feel a

little stressed, kind of scattered, maybe anxious, maybe overthinking. Four,

definitely stressed, maybe depressed and stuck. And five is the very bottom of

your brain where the reptilian brain is in charge. And at that point, you are

flat out [00:26:00] overwhelmed and lost and

confused. So everyone has five different levels of stress in their brain.

[00:26:05] style=’color:#6600CC’>Dr. Laurel Mellin: There’s five different

emotional techniques, one for each tool, because the emotions are different in

each state. What you do is you say to yourself, I am going to notice when I’m

not in joy, not at brain state one. And whenever I’m not, I’m going to use the

app. And I’m going to switch up to one where you’re optimal chemicals, but

overall the program lasts six months to a year and you raise not just the state

of your brain, you repeatedly change your state so you feel great and rewire

whatever circuits are there until your brain naturally stays at a set point or

a habit of brain state one.

[00:26:40] style=’color:#6600CC’>Dr. Laurel Mellin: Let’s.

[00:26:41] style=’color:#72B372’>Liz: Just circle back for a second because you

said something sort of offhand, but you were like, if you don’t eat the chips,

you’ll feel stressed and you’ll feel sad because you are reliant on those

neurochemicals. You have to get them from somewhere. I just want to sit on that

for a second because I don’t think I wasn’t at least making the connection

between, Oh, I’m using these [00:27:00] things

to alter my neurochemical state.

[00:27:01] style=’color:#72B372’>Liz: So of course it’s hard for me to deprive

myself of them because then I do feel worse without them, like truly.

physically worse because these neurochemicals are not available to me. Exactly.

That was like a little bit of an aha moment to me, which is why it’s so hard to

not reach for them because it feels silly to say I would feel depressed or I’d

feel stressed when I’m not eating this donut.

[00:27:24] style=’color:#72B372’>Liz: But you’re saying that’s actually true on

a physiological level.

[00:27:27] style=’color:#6600CC’>Dr. Laurel Mellin: EBT support group, what

happens is They are told, do not diet, eat whatever you want to eat, but before

you eat, use the tools, we call it spiraling up, from stress to joy, it just

takes a minute, and turn off those chemicals, and then go ahead and eat whatever

you want to eat.

[00:27:47] style=’color:#6600CC’>Dr. Laurel Mellin: Never deprive yourself,

because the whole point is to see when you’ve used EBT long enough, maybe it

takes two weeks, maybe it takes whatever it takes, So that you have no interest

in the food because then you have [00:28:00]

verification that you’ve changed

[00:28:01] style=’color:#72B372’>Liz: the wire. Love that. I think that’s so

fascinating. And then you said you have these five emotional states and they

correlate with physically different states in your brain.

[00:28:09] style=’color:#72B372’>Liz: Is that correct? Exactly. Can you go

through those again? What are the five and what actual part of your brain are

they activating?

[00:28:15] style=’color:#6600CC’>Dr. Laurel Mellin: So from top to bottom,

there’s limbic brain, and the reptilian brain. All of our circuits, even though

they, they are stored in the amygdala, the amygdala, when it activates the

circuit, puts a certain brain area, it’s called the physiological brain state

in charge.

[00:28:32] style=’color:#6600CC’>Dr. Laurel Mellin: Imagine you have a file

cabinet in your brain and you’ve got your five circuits, which are the

reptilian brain, the four, which are in between the three, which is the limbic

brain, and the two which is in between, and the one that is purely neocortical.

Healthy adaptive memory is at the top, and it goes down all the way to the

five, where the addiction circuits are.

[00:28:51] style=’color:#6600CC’>Dr. Laurel Mellin: So all day, are we moving

in and out of these five states? Absolutely. You know about heart rate and

heart rate monitoring, that the heart rate is always [00:29:00]

changing. More so, the physiological brain state is always changing. It’s

perfectly normal to be in all five states in any given day. And it’s not even

bad to be at four or five.

[00:29:11] style=’color:#6600CC’>Dr. Laurel Mellin: This is really important.

And this is, this makes me tear up. Because I went through 20 years where I had

my food circuit before I rewired it. And I know the pain and agony I went

through. But the issue is people in a traditional program will tell you, eat

healthy, be happy, try to stay in that happy state.

[00:29:33] style=’color:#6600CC’>Dr. Laurel Mellin: Actually, that makes it

worse because if in fact you want to rewire your food addiction or your strong

drive to overeat, you have to go down into the stress momentarily, just for a

moment. Using EBT takes 1, minutes. Stress activate the circuit, otherwise it

stays closed. The synaptic connections between the neurons are closed.

[00:29:58] style=’color:#6600CC’>Dr. Laurel Mellin: It will not change. You’ve

got [00:30:00] to stress activate it, so the

neurons begin to be open to change. The synaptic connections are fluid. And

then in that state, where they’re fluid, you give it a different message.

People don’t do that because if you don’t have the emotional skills to get

quickly out of that state, you’re going to get stuck in it, and you’re going to

be in a bad mood all day.

[00:30:19] style=’color:#6600CC’>Dr. Laurel Mellin: The current programs that

are not treating the stress, the emotional circuits in the brain, force you to

be better and better and better on your diet. So you’ve got to be perfect on

your diet. Meanwhile, The circuits in the fourth and fifth drawer of the brain

are getting stronger and stronger, and then boom, all of a sudden something

happens to your brain, you’re back to binging, or back to needing that food

like your life depended upon it, and then we blame ourselves.

[00:30:42] style=’color:#6600CC’>Dr. Laurel Mellin: And that’s why I have

serious concerns about the weight loss drugs. And the reason I do is finally,

you know, having suffered from this myself, and I’ve treated thousands and

thousands of people, with obesity and disordered eating. Finally, there’s supposed

to be a solution, except it doesn’t give us all eight [00:31:00]

chemicals.

[00:31:00] style=’color:#6600CC’>Dr. Laurel Mellin: It costs a lot of money.

There are side effects, and I think some people should just really need them.

But the problem is, it doesn’t get to the root cause of the problem, and then

we can’t get off it. without gaining the weight. So it sets us up for being

dependent or failing. And that feels like more of the same the way people with

eating weight problems have been treated in this country.

[00:31:22] style=’color:#72B372’>Liz: So you said that we need to get into that

four or five state and then be able to get back out of it. And you said that it

only takes one to three minutes. Can you explain what that might look like?

[00:31:31] style=’color:#6600CC’>Dr. Laurel Mellin: The reason that we can’t

get out of that state is because when we’re at three, four or five, the

emotions, are very difficult to process.

[00:31:41] style=’color:#6600CC’>Dr. Laurel Mellin: If you’re at one or two,

you’re in homeostasis and so you say, how do I feel? I feel sad. I need to cry.

I feel happy I need to share that. We know how we feel and what we need. The

emotions are actually biologically based on helping us understand what we need

to survive. They’re accurate. Once you go into [00:32:00]

the stress zone, which is called allostasis, what happens is the emotions are

scattered, stuck, or toxic.

[00:32:06] style=’color:#6600CC’>Dr. Laurel Mellin: Two things happen. Number

one, the emotion themselves does not tell us what we need. They just tell us

that we feel bad. Secondly, the stress chemicals activated by that circuit take

the thinking brain offline. So we can’t self regulate very well anyway. So we

have these gargantuan emotions, we have this thinking brain that’s not working,

and so what do we do but go get some food or any of its substitutes?

[00:32:30] style=’color:#6600CC’>Dr. Laurel Mellin: The purpose with EBT is we

have cracked the code on how to dissemble those scattered, stuck, and toxic

emotions very quickly. And I want to tell you, people do come into EBT, it

takes, like I say, six months to a year to get your set point up to that joy

state, and so you have lasting results. They see results right from the

beginning.

[00:32:49] style=’color:#6600CC’>Dr. Laurel Mellin: What it means is that you

essentially do this formula. It’s on the app. And we don’t give out the app out

of integrity. Because the [00:33:00] app is the

scientific. basis for dismantling those circuits. But what do we most need in

our emotional brain but loving connection? And it’s only when someone is

listening to us.

[00:33:11] style=’color:#6600CC’>Dr. Laurel Mellin: We do it a lot on our own

too, but you have a group and you have someone who’s listening to you for five

minutes and what happens is the thinking brain all of a sudden starts working.

And you feel heard, seen, and felt. And as you use the tools, it gets not down

to the third or fourth drawer of the brain, but all the way down to the

addiction circuits.

[00:33:29] style=’color:#6600CC’>Dr. Laurel Mellin: And that’s what we’re

after. So we want it to be coupled with an environment of loving support and

excitement about people helping people help themselves. This is the formula.

It’s the opposite of what your mother told you to do. And often what your therapist

will tell you to do. We certified a lot of therapists in this as well as

nutritionists, other people, but it is a new paradigm that is really based on

one thing, neuroplasticity and neurophysiology.

[00:33:54] style=’color:#6600CC’>Dr. Laurel Mellin: And when you are true to

those, the process is extremely different than cognitive or style=’color:gray’>[00:34:00] mindfulness programs. You start by being a

kid, and you start by sitting up in your chair, and you’re not just talking

about your thoughts or your insights, you’re connected to your body, and you’re

frustrated. And in five sentences you complain.

[00:34:14] style=’color:#6600CC’>Dr. Laurel Mellin: You say the situation is

last night I overate and I’m completely out of control of my food. You don’t

express feelings here, you’re trying to get more stressed. And when you do that

you activate the circuits at the bottom of your brain. You have to be stressed

to activate them. So you say it in just five sentences, not anything long.

[00:34:29] style=’color:#6600CC’>Dr. Laurel Mellin: You pause, you say, what am

I really stressed about? You say, I overeat. See how simple it is? Because the

bottom of the brain is very simple. The reptilian brain doesn’t even use

language, right? So it’s very simple. So I complain, I overeat. Right then, if

I didn’t have a way to process my emotions, I would just go to the

refrigerator.

[00:34:49] style=’color:#6600CC’>Dr. Laurel Mellin: Because I’d be stressed.

Instead, we use the natural flow of feelings, a big burst of anger. I hate it.

I feel angry that I do that. I can’t stand it. I hate it. You can do it louder

to [00:35:00] yourself. Can’t. And what happens

is two things. That anger procedure that takes, you know, what, 20 seconds,

essentially activates the very bottom of the brain.

[00:35:09] style=’color:#6600CC’>Dr. Laurel Mellin: So the most damaging

circuits are now unlocked and ready for rewiring. And then it dissipates the

stress. So you’re back to about a brain state two or three and you feel pretty

good and your thinking brain is online so you can follow the rest of the procedure.

You say one sadness, one fear, and one, hey, I do have some power here, why

don’t I just, and you imagine what you could do.

[00:35:32] style=’color:#6600CC’>Dr. Laurel Mellin: This is the magic of it. At

that moment, the unconscious mind opens up and tells you the precise message

that the unconscious mind is giving you. That you need that information in

order to rewire it, and it floats up to your thinking brain, and now you have

what you need to rewire it. And also, this is why EBT is so much fun.

[00:35:54] style=’color:#6600CC’>Dr. Laurel Mellin: When you, when I struggled

for years thinking, how many therapists do I need to go to? What is wrong with

me anyway [00:36:00] that I can’t seem to stop

obsessing about the food? And so there’s a lot of confusion and self blame that

goes on around eating and weight. In that moment, about two minutes into using

that tool, as you have to learn to use the tool, use it with other people as

well as yourself, you know exactly why you do it.

[00:36:18] style=’color:#6600CC’>Dr. Laurel Mellin: And then you check it out

with your neocortex. You’re thinking where you say, that’s the message coming

from my unconscious mind. Does that ring true? And if, in fact, in your body,

you know it rings true, that means the message in your unconscious mind matches

the words in your conscious mind, and now you can rewire it because it’s that

perfect match that cleanly rewires that circuit enough so that you don’t just,

you know, sort of kind of want to eat differently, but you simply don’t even

care about the extra food because it really rewires or crushes that circuit and

transforms it into a circuit that promotes health.

[00:36:53] style=’color:#6600CC’>Dr. Laurel Mellin: Do you have

[00:36:54] style=’color:#72B372’>Liz: to consciously rewire it? Like, do you

have to replace it with a statement that rings also true, but style=’color:gray’>[00:37:00] is more healthful? Exactly.

[00:37:02] style=’color:#6600CC’>Dr. Laurel Mellin: So the little circuits,

maybe the three and four circuits, you can rewire on the spot. But most of us

who have struggled with eating and weight, these are deep in the brain.

[00:37:11] style=’color:#6600CC’>Dr. Laurel Mellin: They have been encoded

through trauma. And sometimes we don’t even know when the trauma was, but it

makes us just go numb or on a false high, or it could really, we know because

we’re depressed or anxious. Yes. Essentially, the strong circuits that are the

four major circuits, we want everyone to rewire four circuits.

[00:37:26] style=’color:#6600CC’>Dr. Laurel Mellin: Typically, the food circuit

or another habit, a mood circuit, everyone has a mood they get stuck in,

everyone has a relationship pattern they suck in, and we also have a program

for stress overload for people that don’t have eating and weight problems, and

those people do a work circuit, because a lot of circuits come out about work.

[00:37:41] style=’color:#6600CC’>Dr. Laurel Mellin: This is very important.

People who have struggled with eating and weight, the fourth circuit of the big

four that they rewire when they come into EBT is called a body circuit. Our

relationship with our body is extremely important to our relationship with

ourselves. And what we’re doing in EBT is rewiring our relationship to the love

[00:38:00] inside of us, to the connection to

our source or our spiritual connection or the deeper meanings of our lives.

[00:38:04] style=’color:#6600CC’>Dr. Laurel Mellin: What happens with the body

circuit is when we’ve been out in society and people have criticized us for our

weight or judged us for our size. We internalize that and we start judging

ourselves. Or when we start to gain weight, at first, it’s just because we’re

overeating, but it turns out that that weight has some benefits.

[00:38:20] style=’color:#6600CC’>Dr. Laurel Mellin: It makes us feel safe. It

makes us feel like who we are. So the body circuit is either. Self judgment

about our weight, which is very, very pernicious. If we have, essentially, our

self judgment about our weight is a self judgment about ourselves. And the

essence of feeling healthy is that self love that’s inside.

[00:38:39] style=’color:#6600CC’>Dr. Laurel Mellin: So if we don’t have that

self love, but we’re judging ourself, that creates a lot of stress. Another one

that’s been studied by the Kaiser Family Foundation that we believe is one of

the key reasons people don’t lose weight and keep it off is that there are some

secondary gains of keeping the weight on.

[00:38:55] style=’color:#6600CC’>Dr. Laurel Mellin: It feels safe. It feels

even just familiar. So you find out what [00:39:00]

that drive is and rewire it. And what happens is when the judgment stops,

something beautiful happens. And we call it the joy of releasing extra weight.

The basic program is come in, rewire your food circuit, until you have freedom

from it, you don’t stop.

[00:39:15] style=’color:#6600CC’>Dr. Laurel Mellin: Might take a week, it might

take longer. And then the same with emotion, people get into anxiety or

depression or numbness. A relationship pattern, either essentially unplugging

from ourselves and plugging into someone else, and merging with people so we

have to please them or rescue them or fix them. or essentially disconnecting

from others and only caring about ourselves and distancing.

[00:39:37] style=’color:#6600CC’>Dr. Laurel Mellin: So either distancing or

merging, everyone does it in stress. And some people do, like I did both,

distancing and merging. It blocks that sweet spot of connection of intimacy.

And it also blocks another chemical, which is oxytocin. And oxytocin is an appetite

suppressant. So you rewire, The love circuit. And then you rewire the body

circuit.

[00:39:58] style=’color:#6600CC’>Dr. Laurel Mellin: By the time you style=’color:gray’>[00:40:00] rewire the body circuit, this is what

people say. I’m just releasing extra weight. And you know what? It’s really

fun. Because I don’t need this anymore. I don’t judge myself. I obviously

needed this extra food because I wasn’t getting my dopamine and endorphins in

another way. And now I am, this just feels natural and I love every minute of

it.

[00:40:21] style=’color:#6600CC’>Dr. Laurel Mellin: The joy of weight loss, it

means you are being so chemically rewarded from dopamine and endorphins because

you’ve changed the set point in your brain that you move on to other things and

typically at that point people don’t even care about the food. They’re moving

on to getting some of the higher order rewards of life.

[00:40:37] style=’color:#6600CC’>Dr. Laurel Mellin: They want to build a brain

that gives them more of these higher order rewards. And that’s what we do in

EBT, there’s a course for each one of those seven rewards. And they end up

after six months to a year and they say, Hey, I’m wired for joy and purpose.

I’m biochemically different. Thank God I had an eating problem because it

really bothered me.

[00:40:56] style=’color:#6600CC’>Dr. Laurel Mellin: It bothered me enough to go

to the root cause and [00:41:00] rewire my

brain for joy and purpose and freedom, not just from the eating and weight. But

all the substitutes that will easily take its pattern. I remember when I first

started getting at my food circuit and rewiring it, I moved to shopping. I work

really hard and then I’d finish working and then I’d go out and spend a lot of

money.

[00:41:19] style=’color:#6600CC’>Dr. Laurel Mellin: I mean, I made up for it

and more, whatever the substitutes, you’re not really free when you just have

let go of the eating and weight, but all their substitutes so that, you know,

that whatever comes your way, You are so rewarded inside and you’re so resilient

that you can move to a state of connection and well being and you can do

whatever it takes, not only to be there for yourself, but to give back to the

world in just the way that makes your life complete.

[00:41:45] style=’color:#72B372’>Liz: Just to be clear, because I think we’ve

been really trained to think, oh, I get oxytocin from this, I get serotonin

from this, I get dopamine from this, and all these things are sort of outside

sources. Are you replacing the outside sources with the real world? better

outside source choices, or are you just naturally feeling style=’color:gray’>[00:42:00] all of these things?

[00:42:00] style=’color:#6600CC’>Dr. Laurel Mellin: You’re naturally feeling

all these things because, in fact, the circuits in your brain do it

automatically. Okay. So when you replace a maladaptive circuit, like I get my,

my safety from eating, I get my safety from connecting inside. You go

automatically to a state called neural integration. That’s best for mental

health, physical health, and addiction.

[00:42:22] style=’color:#6600CC’>Dr. Laurel Mellin: And in that state, you are

naturally rewarding yourself in ways of higher purpose. For example, the first

reward of EBT, after you finish these four circuits, you go right into building

the brain with a purpose. Each course is 30 days, you can finish it sooner than

that. But it actually teaches you some of the skills we didn’t learn as

children.

[00:42:40] style=’color:#6600CC’>Dr. Laurel Mellin: And rewires a few more

circuits. So what that means is, you say, Sanctuary, I want to feel peace and

power from within. When I feel that way, I’m getting those chemical needs met.

Authenticity, you know, feeling genuine and being, being really an authentic

person, feeling whole. Vibrancy. It’s more than healthy.

[00:42:57] style=’color:#6600CC’>Dr. Laurel Mellin: It’s having a zest for

life, but it moves up [00:43:00] to integrity.

Intimacy is big because when we have that intimacy connection, when we’re

giving and receiving love, that’s how we live our lives. Most of us, if we are

in stress, we either overgive or we wall ourselves off, and that doesn’t happen

anymore. So what happens is we’re getting those chemicals naturally, and we’re

not even trying to change our behavior, because these are in our unconscious

mind, and they become naturally how we live our life and who we are.

[00:43:27] style=’color:#6600CC’>Dr. Laurel Mellin: And when that’s happened,

we have all this energy, and this is why people come into EBT and they stay

with it until their brain set is one. I have a lawyer, for example, a woman

who’s a lawyer, and she came in, and she just had a horrendous food addiction

problem. And she would go home, and here she is, this really famous lawyer,

she’d go home, she’d buy a big old pizza, and she’d eat the whole thing.

[00:43:45] style=’color:#6600CC’>Dr. Laurel Mellin: And she’d follow it with

some drink, too. So she had a really, really hard problem. What happened was,

she hated her job, too. So when she rewired her circuits and got more toward

almost being wired at one, She came to me and she says, you know, Laurel, the style=’color:gray’>[00:44:00] issue here is that not only do I don’t

have this food situation anymore or the drinking or the spending, but what’s

happening is I think I’m going to change my job because I want to be of

service.

[00:44:12] style=’color:#6600CC’>Dr. Laurel Mellin: This job is not helping me

in the way that I want to really nourish my spirit. So she changed to a

slightly different role within her same firm where she was giving back. And

what she said is. I never would have the ability to do this if I was still wasting

my time thinking about food. My energy was freed up because I have freedom, and

now I’m going out in the world and people don’t always like what I say, they

don’t like what I do, but I’m changing the world.

[00:44:36] style=’color:#6600CC’>Dr. Laurel Mellin: So you take that energy

that used to be for food, And now it’s just not an issue in your life and you

take it to make your dreams come true, to give back in just the way that makes

your life complete.

[00:44:46] style=’color:#72B372’>Liz: Specifically what are ways people are

rewarding themselves after they’ve achieved this level one brain or are they

not needing any rewards?

[00:44:55] style=’color:#72B372’>Liz: Like would I still be wanting and

experiencing pleasure in my [00:45:00] life?

Would I still be wanting to go on a vacation, wanting to eat a really delicious

meal or not anymore?

[00:45:05] style=’color:#6600CC’>Dr. Laurel Mellin: You’re going to eat a

delicious meal, but you’re more like the French. where you don’t need quite as

much of it. You want to go on vacations.

[00:45:12] style=’color:#6600CC’>Dr. Laurel Mellin: You want to do everything

that’s pleasurable. But you know, you can be out looking for pleasure and

underneath it is this bad feeling in your body. You’re never quite connected.

This is also called attachment. These are trauma circuits. And when you rewire

and raise your set point, you’re becoming wired for secure attachment.

[00:45:29] style=’color:#6600CC’>Dr. Laurel Mellin: And when you have that

connection inside, you’re able to You get all the chemicals that are healthy,

and then you add some pleasurable things to it, and you take yourself into the

stratosphere. There’s nothing wrong with eating some chips. There’s nothing

wrong with eating cookie. It’s just how often and

[00:45:45] style=’color:#72B372’>Liz: how much.

[00:45:46] style=’color:#72B372’>Liz: And if you’re eating it to the point

where you don’t feel good about it anymore. Like, I think we’ve all had that

experience of like, I’m eating this one cookie. It’s so delicious. I’m really

enjoying the taste. The melty chocolate and the buttery caramely notes and all

that. [00:46:00] And then you reach for a

second cookie and a third cookie.

[00:46:01] style=’color:#72B372’>Liz: And by the third cookie, you’re like, I

don’t even know what I’m getting out of this, but I’m still wanting more and

more. So you’re saying by doing all of this, we’re still going to enjoy that

first cookie. Absolutely. But after our brain has gotten the pleasure out of

it, we’re not doing it more and more where we’re like, why am I even doing

this?

[00:46:18] style=’color:#6600CC’>Dr. Laurel Mellin: The stress chemicals,

because it goes back to the amygdala, EBT gives you the ability to shut off

those circuits in the amygdala on the spot. Because that circuit that’s making

you with the eight chemicals is not in your brain anymore. So you don’t have

that drive. So for example, you eat the cookie and at some point it’s just,

you’re done.

[00:46:38] style=’color:#6600CC’>Dr. Laurel Mellin: If you try to diet, and

this is why I’m so against dieting, you’re going to say to yourself, I have to

stop right now. Do you know how much stress that

[00:46:45] style=’color:#72B372’>Liz: causes? Ugh, which makes you want more.

Like it literally telling yourself that you cannot have these things is

impacting your neurochemistry in a way that makes you want them even more.

[00:46:56] style=’color:#72B372’>Liz: It’s

[00:46:56] style=’color:#6600CC’>Dr. Laurel Mellin: even worse with food than

other addictions because the [00:47:00] food

circuit is related to the spirituality circuit and to the love circuit. So when

you feel like you have to deny yourself, it’s an assault to the deepest part of

yourself. And that’s why don’t do it. Eat whatever you want to eat. And again,

the whole idea is you start using these skills and at first they help a little

bit.

[00:47:20] style=’color:#6600CC’>Dr. Laurel Mellin: And you just say, don’t

worry about it. Just keep eating whatever you want. Just before you eat, just

go ahead and spiral up. And when you get into rewiring, go ahead and find that

food circuit and demolish it. And somewhere along the line, couple weeks, maybe

a month, whatever that is, into it. You just noticed that I never deprive

myself.

[00:47:39] style=’color:#6600CC’>Dr. Laurel Mellin: I honor how I feel and what

I need, and I needed those cookies. And right now, I don’t know what’s going

on, but I just don’t need it. And that’s a scientific solution to obesity and

eating. And it’s also one that, again, nourishes our spirit because it honors

how we feel and what we need and there are absolutely no style=’color:gray’>[00:48:00] judgments.

[00:48:00] style=’color:#6600CC’>Dr. Laurel Mellin: They’re just circuits.

[00:48:01] style=’color:#72B372’>Liz: I want people to get the app and I

definitely want people to get your book, but I also want them to have that win

at home so that they. Want to keep going with this program. So can you maybe

share is there one spiral up technique? We could be doing and then one breaking

down the food circuit technique We could be doing at home for like a month and

see the results in real time

[00:48:21] style=’color:#6600CC’>Dr. Laurel Mellin: I’d be happy to share two

techniques with you But I would feel guilty if I told you that it would really

work to solve the problem And the reason is we have plenty of data that if

you’re not with another person doing it Where you have fun and you get that

loving connection, you probably won’t use it as deep as you need to or as

frequently to have lasting results.

[00:48:43] style=’color:#72B372’>Liz: But that could be an action step, too.

Like, my podcast was originally called Healthier Together, and my last cookbook

was called Healthier Together, too, because there’s so much research around the

fact that when we do things in community, we have so much more success. So,

maybe you could give us these two techniques, and then, you We say, do it with

a partner, and then if you’re [00:49:00] seeing

that success, like, we have all these other resources so you can go further on

this journey.

[00:49:05] style=’color:#6600CC’>Dr. Laurel Mellin: Remember that intimate

relationships are extremely sensitive to stress, and if you are in a

relationship right now where you say, this person drives me crazy, and I don’t

know why I ever chose them, please, don’t do it. Unless you’re in an abusive

relationship, do not leave the relationship because your set point is probably

3, 4, or 5.

[00:49:27] style=’color:#6600CC’>Dr. Laurel Mellin: And the other person’s set

point is probably 5, and no one is their best selves or intimate unless they’re

at brain state 1. So begin to introduce into your relationship the idea of EBT

and the five levels of stress. I do it with my husband, you know, I know for

sure. That if we didn’t have EBT and both use it together, this marriage would

no longer be in heaven.

[00:49:50] style=’color:#6600CC’>Dr. Laurel Mellin: Okay, we probably wouldn’t

be together because we take our stresses out on our partner. So number one is

tell your partner or your friend, you can do it [00:50:00]

with your friend, that you’re no longer to talk about feelings, you’re going to

talk about brain states, numbers. And so when you get together, you say, what’s

your number?

[00:50:10] style=’color:#6600CC’>Dr. Laurel Mellin: Am I at one feeling great,

two good, three, a little stress. This is the danger zone for definitely

stressed and five stressed out. You don’t have to talk about your feelings at

that point, but you let someone know what’s going on in your inner life. There’s

five different people in every person. There’s a person at one, two, three,

four, or five different circuits.

[00:50:29] style=’color:#6600CC’>Dr. Laurel Mellin: Different ways of

[00:50:29] style=’color:#72B372’>Liz: being as a perfectionist. I’m like, what

if I get my number wrong? Do you have any advice for identifying the number

that we’re at?

[00:50:35] style=’color:#6600CC’>Dr. Laurel Mellin: I will tell you a little

bit about that But I would say it’s more important to have a system in place a

structure in place with the other person to say your number Okay, because

implicit in that is acceptance and that no one’s good or no one’s bad and everyone’s

in the five states So if I say to Walt, my husband, I’m at five, I’m toxic, I

would love to listen to you, but I don’t have the bandwidth.

[00:50:58] style=’color:#6600CC’>Dr. Laurel Mellin: But when I’m in a style=’color:gray’>[00:51:00] higher state, I will. And I love you. What

happens then is he knows, okay, I get what’s going on and I don’t really want

to talk to her if she’s at five anyway, right? That’s part of it. So just speak

in terms of physiology instead of all these feelings, really emotions.

Psychology is based in physiology.

[00:51:16] style=’color:#6600CC’>Dr. Laurel Mellin: EBT is the new

neuroscientific psychotherapy. EBT. Except it’s so repeatable that we also have

the website so you can go there and do it yourself with the support of a group

and a provider. So that’s number one. Start speaking about the reality of life because

when you’re at five, it’s not that just your emotions are off, but your

relationships, your thoughts, your spirituality, your health, everything’s

equally important.

[00:51:41] style=’color:#6600CC’>Dr. Laurel Mellin: dysfunctional. And at one,

everything’s functional. So person really understands what’s going on with you.

So share your number, not your feelings. Secondly, I want you to try this one

little technique. It’s called the flow tool. We use it with children. It’s also

preventive. When you’re at four or five, you use the same thing, but with much

more [00:52:00] effectiveness, but it’s still

the same eight feelings.

[00:52:03] style=’color:#6600CC’>Dr. Laurel Mellin: So this is what you do. And

you can do this with your kids too. You say, One thing you’re angry about. I

feel angry that. Just complete the sentence. And then I feel sad that. I feel

afraid that. And I feel guilty that what I, what I’m contributing to it is you

do that when you’re just at three, it’s just a light stress response.

[00:52:27] style=’color:#6600CC’>Dr. Laurel Mellin: You essentially stop the

sympathetic nervous system from being activated that causes these stress

chemicals. And then remember getting to a, uh, Place of peacefulness or calm is

not enough for the brain. The brain needs positive emotions because that’s what

really shuts off that sympathetic nervous system and activates the

parasympathetic nervous system so you can relax and be connected so those

chemicals stop raging.

[00:52:54] style=’color:#6600CC’>Dr. Laurel Mellin: And then say, I feel

grateful that, I feel happy that, I feel [00:53:00]

secure that, and I feel proud that. And by that time, you’re going to turn your

attention to your body and you’re going to notice sensations in your body that

are associated with brain state one, optimal physiology, and you’re going to

say, Hey, Wow.

[00:53:15] style=’color:#6600CC’>Dr. Laurel Mellin: That really

[00:53:15] style=’color:#72B372’>Liz: works. How does that interact with the

fact that you said, talk about your number, not your feelings? That’s the

feelings process. In other words, the self regulatory process for brain state

three. If you are in brain state three, you can try this technique. Exactly.

And the result of the technique in the simplest terms will be?

[00:53:33] style=’color:#72B372’>Liz: Brain state one, joy. Okay. So if you’re

in three, you can get to one, but if you’re in like four or five, this

technique is not going to be the thing that’s going to get

[00:53:40] style=’color:#6600CC’>Dr. Laurel Mellin: you to one. You need

something much more focused and intensive and you are rewiring your unconscious

mind. Okay. Okay. So it’s a big deal.

[00:53:47] style=’color:#6600CC’>Dr. Laurel Mellin: Yeah. So you’ve got to

learn. We have what’s called precision EBT. So you learn it very precisely.

It’s on our app, but you need coaching and support to do it. And you go right

to the bottom where those trauma circuits are, because most of us, Take style=’color:gray’>[00:54:00] who have problems with food, it’s a

trauma, like with me. I didn’t have the skills or the support to make it okay

to talk about the fact that I had been shamed and ridiculed at school.

[00:54:10] style=’color:#6600CC’>Dr. Laurel Mellin: That sounds like a little

problem for an 11 year old. The brain works very differently. What happens is,

our brain was designed to have a stress response that is appropriate for a lion

eating our arm off. People say, oh, it’s just a psychological stress. No, what

happens biochemically Is if we’ve been shunned or hurt or disappointed or

whatever that is, the brain activates this fight or flight chemicals that feel

like you are going to be annihilated, even though the assault feels moderate,

and as a result, you’re going to have to do something like overeat.

[00:54:46] style=’color:#6600CC’>Dr. Laurel Mellin: Or you’re going to need to

have the skills to switch off that response one way or the other.

[00:54:50] style=’color:#72B372’>Liz: So going

[00:54:50] style=’color:#6600CC’>Dr. Laurel Mellin: back

[00:54:50] style=’color:#72B372’>Liz: to my fear about misidentifying my

number, I want to use that tool. Can you give us just like a very brief example

of when we’re at one, we’re going to feel like this. When we’re at two, we’re

going to feel like this.

[00:54:59] style=’color:#72B372’>Liz: When [00:55:00]

we’re at three, five, we’re like crying under the covers. Yeah, that’s a good

[00:55:03] style=’color:#6600CC’>Dr. Laurel Mellin: point. Okay, take a nice

deep breath. At one, you feel connected to your body and you have, you can see

me, a glow in my eyes, maybe even a little bit of sparkle of tears. You can

feel a glow all over. You feel connected to the deepest part of yourself.

[00:55:20] style=’color:#6600CC’>Dr. Laurel Mellin: You feel secure inside. You

feel the purpose and there’s a certain amount of joy. All the elevated emotions

you feel. You can feel love, Compassion, gratitude, hope, forgiveness, awe, and

joy. And these are the elevated emotions.

[00:55:35] style=’color:#72B372’>Liz: Kind of the things that we’re trying to

get when we’re like eating all the cake and looking for that alcohol or

scrolling on social media.

[00:55:42] style=’color:#72B372’>Liz: We’re trying to feel these things, but

they’re not actually making us feel them.

[00:55:45] style=’color:#6600CC’>Dr. Laurel Mellin: And it’s one, two, or three

minutes away. So that’s state one. State two, both homeostatic, which means

good chemicals, which means the chemicals, the chemicals that cause overeating

are not being activated. You feel present to both your positive and negative style=’color:gray’>[00:56:00] emotions.

[00:56:00] style=’color:#6600CC’>Dr. Laurel Mellin: You can actually feel very

sad, but the difference is your brain, your thinking brain and your emotional

brain are connected and the feelings fade. They flicker. They don’t get stuck.

So I might say, I feel sad about my dog because he’s sick. It’ll go away. I

just say it and it goes away. That’s to you feel present.

[00:56:18] style=’color:#6600CC’>Dr. Laurel Mellin: You don’t have that glow of

brain state one, but you feel solid and you feel connected and you’re healthy.

[00:56:25] style=’color:#72B372’>Liz: So two is almost recognizing that we’re

not floating through a magical world. Bad things happen and we’re not in this

state of toxic positivity where we’re ignoring that. But we have the resiliency

to deal with those.

[00:56:36] style=’color:#6600CC’>Dr. Laurel Mellin: Exactly. Okay. You want to

stay at one or two, but of course you want to go to three, four, and five

sometime during the day, because if you use EBT at that time, it helps rewire

the circuits. And

[00:56:47] style=’color:#72B372’>Liz: you can use EBT at three, four, and five

either by artificially creating that three, four, or five state by being like,

I feel angry, building up that state, or can you recognize I am really stressed

right now?

[00:56:58] style=’color:#72B372’>Liz: I’m in a three or four. I want to style=’color:gray’>[00:57:00] do these techniques.

[00:57:01] style=’color:#6600CC’>Dr. Laurel Mellin: If you honor the fact that

you have that number, you’re going to decrease what’s called secondary stress.

Secondary stress is a big deal. All of a sudden we get stressed. And now, the

problem is not that we’re stressed, it’s that we’re stressed about being

stressed.

[00:57:15] style=’color:#6600CC’>Dr. Laurel Mellin: So it stops the secondary

stress. Oh, I’m at three, of course I’m going to feel kind of anxious. So it

stops the secondary stress. And that helps. So

[00:57:22] style=’color:#72B372’>Liz: your point is almost when you feel a

three or a four or five, then you shouldn’t be like, Oh, why am I so stressed?

Why is life so hard? You’re like, this is an opportunity to rewire my brain.

[00:57:33] style=’color:#6600CC’>Dr. Laurel Mellin: Exactly.

[00:57:34] style=’color:#72B372’>Liz: Love that.

[00:57:34] style=’color:#6600CC’>Dr. Laurel Mellin: And because the more you

use the app and you are in your support group where people understand

neurophysiology, because the neurophysiology of stress, most people don’t know.

You’re in a safe environment, and everyone else is doing it, and we’re social creatures,

we’re doing it together.

[00:57:47] style=’color:#6600CC’>Dr. Laurel Mellin: And when you’re at three,

it’s different. You’re not connected. And once you’re not connected, once the

thinking brain is not connected to the emotional brain so it can control it,

you’re in danger. So how do you feel at three? You feel scattered. style=’color:gray’>[00:58:00] Okay. When you’re at two, all you have to

say to yourself is, How do I feel?

[00:58:04] style=’color:#6600CC’>Dr. Laurel Mellin: And about three feelings

will come up. And you pause. This is the tool for brain state two. You pause

until one of them is dominant. When one of them is dominant, that’s the genetic

purpose of emotions. If you pause and ask yourself how you feel, one particular

emotion will be dominant and it will point automatically to your most important

need.

[00:58:25] style=’color:#6600CC’>Dr. Laurel Mellin: So you don’t have to figure

out what you need, it just points you there. Not so at three, because you’re in

what’s called allostasis. These are circuits that have no shut off valve. The

emotions are toxic. And essentially those biochemicals are raging. At three, I

feel scattered. I don’t, I feel anxious. I feel upset.

[00:58:43] style=’color:#6600CC’>Dr. Laurel Mellin: I don’t know how I feel.

I’m kind of this and that. I could do, you’re all over the map. And sometimes

people start overthinking. And then the thoughts become their own problem. I

think I spend a lot of time at three. It’s very common. And that’s why my

husband, when I first met him, he loved the three tool.

[00:58:58] style=’color:#6600CC’>Dr. Laurel Mellin: He just says, that is the

way [00:59:00] to go. At four, it’s different.

So you might be a little anxious at three. At four, it’s not good. It’s not.

You feel bad in your body. You know that you are definitely stuck. You cannot

shake this mood. You are maybe depressed. You are down on yourself. You feel

like the world is not working, and you’re just stuck in a really bad state.

[00:59:22] style=’color:#6600CC’>Dr. Laurel Mellin: If that goes on long

enough, you’ll go to five, right? Now brain state five is where we’re toxic,

and this is called A stress overload experience and the chemicals are just

raging and the job of Brain State 5 is to convince you that whatever

expectations you have, you have to act on and you have to do it now and that’s

why they affect food so much because you have to get that food right now or you

will die.

[00:59:46] style=’color:#6600CC’>Dr. Laurel Mellin: And you know you have to

get it as if your life depended upon it. Now, really hear that because it means

that when you’re in that brain state 5, never blame yourself. This is called

biochemistry. And what [01:00:00] happens is

you’re going to do whatever you do. That’s why never judge yourself for the

food. Never judge yourself for the food.

[01:00:05] style=’color:#6600CC’>Dr. Laurel Mellin: You’re in brain state five

and you may even not know you’re in brain state five because you don’t feel

horrible. You just feel numb or another thing you can feel like an addict

would, right? Say, Oh, it’s no matter. I just like food a lot. It’s just that I

have diabetes and I have whatever. So essentially a false high, that’s really

strong.

[01:00:24] style=’color:#6600CC’>Dr. Laurel Mellin: Numbness, no feelings or a

real low, but either way at five, what is happening for you is you’re

biochemically affected and you feel as if you’re going to be obliterated and

whatever you do, don’t judge yourself instead rewire the circuit. So it stops affecting

you. The problem is not you or me. The problem is the circuit.

[01:00:46] style=’color:#72B372’>Liz: Do we need to know the route of our

circuit to rewire it? Like you told the story about the cinnamon rolls and bean

teas. Do we need to ultimately be able to find that story for ourselves or can

[01:00:57] style=’color:#6600CC’>Dr. Laurel Mellin: it work without that? It

goes back to the kind of circuit it [01:01:00]

is. If it’s a circuit at three, you can pretty much change that circuit really

easily.

[01:01:04] style=’color:#6600CC’>Dr. Laurel Mellin: If it’s at four, there may

be a story you need to tell. And at five, you definitely do. So this is how EBT

works for the big four circuits. Not the little circuits that you’re going to

do all the time, but the big ones that you really care about like food, mood,

love, and body circuit. You take three steps and the first step is you do a

really good cycle and you get right down to the bottom of your brain and you

find the exact words.

[01:01:27] style=’color:#6600CC’>Dr. Laurel Mellin: Once you find the exact

words, and this may sound counterintuitive, the first thing you do is you love

the circuit. Because you say to yourself, when that was encoded, my brain did

that for me because there was no better option. And all healing starts with

self love. And then once you’ve established that this is something that’s just

a wire, it’s not your fault, your brain just encoded it, then you begin to do

something called the travel back tool.

[01:01:56] style=’color:#6600CC’>Dr. Laurel Mellin: Now this is magical. It’s

one of the most powerful EBT tools. [01:02:00]

Your brain is set up for healing. And all we’re doing here is giving you the

structure of the techniques to make that happen. Because, let’s say I found my

food circuit. I get my, my love from eating sugar. And not just a little bit,

but to the point I make myself really sick.

[01:02:14] style=’color:#6600CC’>Dr. Laurel Mellin: In that moment, the circuit

is activated, and that circuit is like a magic carpet. And what it does is you

say to yourself, Am I drawn to traveling back? And it’s a yes or a no. If in

fact there’s not a lot of memories back there that need to be cleared, you

won’t be drawn to traveling back to the past.

[01:02:34] style=’color:#6600CC’>Dr. Laurel Mellin: You will instead just sit

with your feelings and feel the awareness that that is a circuit. It’s been in

my brain for a long time. I’m really getting to know myself in a deeper way.

But if in fact you say to yourself, Wow, am I drawn to traveling back? You

don’t have to answer that question with any checklist.

[01:02:51] style=’color:#6600CC’>Dr. Laurel Mellin: Your body will tell you

because it wants you to heal. And if it’s better for you just to sit with it

and be aware of your feelings, that’s what you’ll want to do. style=’color:gray’>[01:03:00] If in fact it’s better to travel back,

some magical things happen. What happens is, you ask yourself several

questions. Hmm, can I find one memory?

[01:03:10] style=’color:#6600CC’>Dr. Laurel Mellin: And you say, well, your

mind travels back through a lot of different images until it comes up with one

particular one that’s really powerful. And you answer the question, yes. And

then you say, can you see yourself in that image? If you say, yes, I can. Can

you find love and compassion for yourself? And you say, yes, I can.

[01:03:29] style=’color:#6600CC’>Dr. Laurel Mellin: And then finally, do you

feel drawn to stepping in, you, the older, wiser person, stepping into that

previous you and that’s in that image and giving that person the safety and

love and wisdom that you needed at the time? If you answer all four of those

questions with yes, you have what’s called a reattachment experience, and you

can rewire the circuit right in that spot.

[01:03:53] style=’color:#6600CC’>Dr. Laurel Mellin: If no, you don’t feel that

way, you’re going to need to use the EBT tools of processing the emotions to

clear away what [01:04:00] we call that

emotional clutter, because your brain will not let you do that. release that

circuit for good until you’ve gone back a little bit to that time and learned

some lessons so that you will never not take care of yourself again.

[01:04:13] style=’color:#6600CC’>Dr. Laurel Mellin: You’ll never let someone

harm you again. You will speak up for yourself in a new way. So it’s very self

protective. And what it does is it leads to, I don’t believe in clearing out

all the emotional clutter from my childhood. I mean, I have other things to do,

but what EBT does is it takes you just to that piece of clutter that is most

productive to process so that you have freedom from it and you’re at peace

inside.

[01:04:36] style=’color:#72B372’>Liz: What would you

[01:04:36] style=’color:#6600CC’>Dr. Laurel Mellin: say to somebody who

[01:04:37] style=’color:#72B372’>Liz: doesn’t really remember their childhood?

[01:04:40] style=’color:#6600CC’>Dr. Laurel Mellin: No problem. If you don’t

remember it, then it’s not there to rewire and don’t worry about it.

[01:04:45] style=’color:#72B372’>Liz: And

[01:04:45] style=’color:#6600CC’>Dr. Laurel Mellin: you’ll just sit with those

feelings and have compassion for yourself. And also many people have circuits

that are not encoded in one event, but over time there’s learned and they won’t

have those travel back experiences.

[01:04:57] style=’color:#6600CC’>Dr. Laurel Mellin: So essentially, your brain

will tell [01:05:00] you what’s best, you don’t

have to figure it out, and the tools of EBT give you all the options, so you’ll

be able to listen to your body and know exactly what to

[01:05:08] style=’color:#72B372’>Liz: do. One of the things that I think is so

fascinating is how much we are continuing to wire in these faulty circuits,

like, if every time we need safety and security, we’re eating a donut to get

that, then we are wiring in that circuit that the donut gives safety and

security.

[01:05:24] style=’color:#72B372’>Liz: Exactly. Yeah. That’s

[01:05:25] style=’color:#6600CC’>Dr. Laurel Mellin: why if you don’t go to the

root cause to the amygdala and say, Hey, I’m going to have fun here. I’m going

to learn how to rewire my unconscious mind and clear this out. So I have

freedom. Essentially you’re pushing it down the road and those other circuits

are getting stronger and at some point people just give up.

[01:05:42] style=’color:#6600CC’>Dr. Laurel Mellin: And they just say, all

right, I’ll just be on as many medications. I’m just going to be miserable with

my food for the rest of my life. I want to tell you is this method is so

powerful and so exciting to use and so liberating that it’s not about you, that

you can do this wiring work and you [01:06:00]

can start changing pretty quickly.

[01:06:01] style=’color:#6600CC’>Dr. Laurel Mellin: One of the things that’ll

happen if you start rewiring is that people around you will notice. And they

will come to you and one woman I’m thinking in particular, her adult daughter

came to you and said, what are you doing mom? You’re the mother I always wanted

to have. And another reason people do EBT for mental health problems as well as

chronic disease as well as obesity is because they don’t want to pass their

wires along to their children.

[01:06:27] style=’color:#72B372’>Liz: What do you think about general stress

relieving practices? Are those helpful but not getting to the deeper level or

how does that fit into thinking about EBT?

[01:06:36] style=’color:#6600CC’>Dr. Laurel Mellin: There’s nothing wrong with

it except for one thing. I don’t encourage it in the first three months of EBT

when you’re really getting at that circuit because you want to be stressed.

[01:06:46] style=’color:#6600CC’>Dr. Laurel Mellin: Okay, I’m going to do

everything I can to exercise every day, to eat healthy, to do all these things.

You’re staying above the stress. It is not that hard to rewire circuits. And

also, it’s really hard to eat healthy or [01:07:00]

sleep well or exercise when you’re at 3, It takes a lot of effort. Don’t put

your effort there.

[01:07:06] style=’color:#6600CC’>Dr. Laurel Mellin: Put your effort on the

problem, which is the circuit. When you change that circuit, it’s

[01:07:12] style=’color:#72B372’>Liz: easy. We started off this conversation by

talking about the fact that it is crazy that there is this very well researched

way that we can quite literally change our brains, but very few people know

about it. Why is that?

[01:07:24] style=’color:#72B372’>Liz: Why are more people not doing it? What

are the things that are inhibiting more people from taking up this approach?

[01:07:29] style=’color:#6600CC’>Dr. Laurel Mellin: We actually discovered at

UCSF the five point system in 2007 and here it is all these years later. What

have we done? What we’ve done is we’ve made an app that will do the work for

you.

[01:07:43] style=’color:#6600CC’>Dr. Laurel Mellin: What we’ve done is done the

research to show that we don’t give this app out because it’s the human

connection that That we really need in addition to the app to make it fun, to

make it exciting, to make those relationships so rewarding you stay with it.

And we’ve done the research to show that [01:08:00]

the deepest circuits in the brain, the trauma circuits, are where it’s at.

[01:08:03] style=’color:#6600CC’>Dr. Laurel Mellin: So we developed Precision

EBT. So now, you can go onto our website, get a membership, and learn how to

get right at those circuits rather than fooling around and wondering how to do

it. So a lot of it I really believe has been our need to take something as

valuable as emotional brain training that some people say should get a Nobel

Prize because what we’re facing now in society are symptoms of people’s

amygdala having stress circuits in it and people don’t have the skills to do

anything about it.

[01:08:33] style=’color:#6600CC’>Dr. Laurel Mellin: I do believe on a spiritual

level we were doing what we needed to do to get it to the point where the need

was so high and the method was so effective. that all of a sudden when we got

it out, it would just be in everyone’s back pocket. And a year ago, two people

who had used EBT, one for weight, their married couple, one for weight and the

other for marriage.

[01:08:55] style=’color:#6600CC’>Dr. Laurel Mellin: In other words,

relationships are very sensitive to stress. And it changed both of their lives.

[01:09:00] And they gave us a huge gift, 500,

000. And they said, method needs to be in everyone’s repertoire. And so what’s

happened is we’ve used those resources to get EBT to a point now that we

believe the interest is going to ignite.

[01:09:16] style=’color:#72B372’>Liz: Can you end us with just one homework

assignment, something that anybody can do the second they turn off this podcast

to begin to tap into some of the benefits of EBT? The

[01:09:25] style=’color:#6600CC’>Dr. Laurel Mellin: first thing is an energetic

change. I want you to forgive yourself for all the things that you’ve done.

done that you say, why didn’t I eat better?

[01:09:33] style=’color:#6600CC’>Dr. Laurel Mellin: Why didn’t I do that? Why

didn’t I do this? And appreciate that the science shows that it’s about

circuits in the emotional brain and nobody has given you the skills to know

that and to do something about it. So start with forgiveness and appreciate on the

day you were born, you had all the inherent strength, goodness, and wisdom you

would ever need to stop having a weight problem.

[01:09:54] style=’color:#6600CC’>Dr. Laurel Mellin: You just would. And now you

have the to move forward and then start tomorrow morning. style=’color:gray’>[01:10:00] And when you wake up, say to yourself,

Hey, what am I doing with my day? And what I want you to say is, I am creating

joy in my life. And whenever I’m not at that brain state one, I’m not going to

blame myself. I’m going to say, Hey, that’s just a wire and I can rewire it

when I get around to it.

[01:10:17] style=’color:#6600CC’>Dr. Laurel Mellin: I don’t have to do it now.

And secondly, during that day, notice some time when you’re a little stressed.

You’re at brain state three. And then follow this formula and see what happens.

I feel angry that, I feel sad that, I feel afraid that, and I feel guilty that.

And notice the shift. And then go to the positive emotions.

[01:10:43] style=’color:#6600CC’>Dr. Laurel Mellin: But I do feel grateful

that. I feel happy, even a little bit happy that. I feel secure that. And last,

I feel proud that I. Those eight feelings, you’re beginning to break up those

circuits in the bottom of your [01:11:00] brain

and spiral up to a state of connection. And you will feel that sense of joy,

And pride right in the moment.

[01:11:08] style=’color:#72B372’>Liz: Can I ask one tiny clarifying question?

Yeah. Do they need to be related at all? Can I feel guilty that I’m a bad

friend but proud that I’m successful at work? This has to

[01:11:19] style=’color:#6600CC’>Dr. Laurel Mellin: do with the five levels of

stress. If you’re at three, the brain’s going in all directions. And the topics

will be different. Okay, and that’s okay.

[01:11:27] style=’color:#6600CC’>Dr. Laurel Mellin: And it’s fine. If you’re at

four, the brain is saying, Okay, there’s a thread here. I need to do something

about it. And they will all be on the same topic.

[01:11:34] style=’color:#72B372’>Liz: Ooh, so it’s a signifier of what level

you’re at. And if you’re at a four, this is probably not the tool for you at

this moment. Okay, that’s, that’s actually really helpful and wonderful.

[01:11:44] style=’color:#72B372’>Liz: If people want to find out more about

your work, about EBT, where should they

[01:11:48] style=’color:#6600CC’>Dr. Laurel Mellin: go? The website is ebt.

org. And right there, you can sign up to get into a support group with all of

the program. We have daily support where you can drop in with a style=’color:gray’>[01:12:00] certified EBT provider every single day

and be listened to and taught how to use these skills in addition to your

weekly group.

[01:12:07] style=’color:#6600CC’>Dr. Laurel Mellin: Also, there’s a new book on

EBT called 1 2 3 Joy, which gives you all the science and the practice of EBT.

I wrote this book earlier in this year when I said, I think I want to get in

one book, the major awareness and science that I’ve spent 40 years on to how to

stop having issues with food and weight.

[01:12:27] style=’color:#6600CC’>Dr. Laurel Mellin: And so it’s a long book,

but it’s got the science and the practice in it.

[01:12:31] style=’color:#72B372’>Liz: And for anybody listening who’s like,

wait, daily support, is this going to be something that’s going to take up a

ton of time? I just want to be clear again, this is not something that you have

to devote hours to every day or every week.

[01:12:41] style=’color:#6600CC’>Dr. Laurel Mellin: Absolutely not. The basic

requirement is 30 minutes a week where you have your support group and then

during the week, you just integrate it into your life. In other words, whenever

you’re at three or four or five, that’s not a good thing. And so it’s not like

taking time to use the method to spiral up to one because style=’color:gray’>[01:13:00] everyone wants to be at one.

[01:13:01] style=’color:#6600CC’>Dr. Laurel Mellin: But in addition to that,

people have times when they’re really stressed. And when you’re really

stressed, that circuit at four or five is unlocked and it’s a moment of

opportunity to change the circuit. Let’s say that your group isn’t meeting that

day, you just show up at what’s called a spiral up group and someone will guide

you through it.

[01:13:21] style=’color:#6600CC’>Dr. Laurel Mellin: So you get much more of an

advantage. Anytime you want to drop in the group, there is support there for

you. And also you can connect with your buddies in the group. So there’s lots

of ways to take five minutes. Now, if you went into psychotherapy, it takes 50

minutes to work something through. With EBT, because we’re using the resiliency

pathways in the brain, it takes one to three minutes.

[01:13:42] style=’color:#6600CC’>Dr. Laurel Mellin: So when you connect through

our private telephone system with the other group members, remember the same

people, there’s only five people, six people in a group. You get to know these

people. What happens is you get on the phone, you say, do you have time for a

connection? If they do, it’s five minutes. And what happens is the person who

is using the tools spirals up to [01:14:00]

one.

[01:14:00] style=’color:#6600CC’>Dr. Laurel Mellin: But because the emotional

brain has no walls, the person who’s just being a warm presence and listening

and then saying a few kind words afterwards, they get an automatic surge of joy

too. So both people end up after five minutes being in brain state one, and

that’s why people love the group so much because you can also connect here and

there just for a few minutes.

[01:14:22] style=’color:#6600CC’>Dr. Laurel Mellin: It makes a huge difference

in weight loss and in quality of life. I love that. Thank you so much, Dr.

Mellon. This was fascinating. It’s a pleasure.