Maximise your brain’s potential with 3 quick and easy diet changes

In this podcast, Dr Jon Finn discusses Chapter 4 of The Habit Mechanic book.

He tells a fascinating story about a sporting world record breaker and how this played a role in inspiring him to develop the insights he shares in the book, which help others feel better and be better.

In the second half of the podcast, Dr Finn discusses media reports about the NHS’s new weight-loss injection and explains which food types we should eat for the best brain health.

Podcast Transcription

Hello Habit Mechanics I hope everyone’s having a fantastic week! My name is Dr Jon Finn. Welcome back to the Habit Mechanic podcast. We’re live streaming in the Habit Mechanic University app um and I’m really excited about today because we’re going to talk about chapter four of the Habit Mechanic Book and for me what I’ve really enjoyed about this chapter is people’s feedback. Actually it’s one of the first things I heard about the idea that hooked them into the book and really got them thinking about how effective or not the current ways they were using to be their best were, so I’m excited about that. I’m joined today by my friend and colleague Andrew Whitelam…. Andrew, how are you?

Hi there Jon yeah I’m great thank you I’m doing well hope you are too and uh yeah chapter four for me too is a really exciting chapter gets the juices flowing because it tells a fantastic fascinating sporting story… a story of sporting accomplishment… that’s certainly very well known in Britain and pretty well known across the world as well.

I’m sure we’ll talk more about that but it really is a story of amazing athletic achievement and um really drills down into the nuts and bolts of of how and why it happened so I look forward to talking about that in just a few moments and also on the podcast um we’re going to be talking about something that’s in the news in the last 10 days uh certainly in the UK um the NHS is reportedly going to be rolling out a new weight loss jab an injection to lose weight um according to quite a few media thoughts and and well-sourced media reports it looks like it’s on the way so there are a lot of things to talk about there for us Jon and I’m looking forward to discussing the ins and outs of the weight loss job with you and we’ll also be hearing a question at the end from um people who’ve submitted questions to you and keep the questions coming in by the website tougherminds.co.uk and uh we will tackle those in every podcast so yeah it’s um it’s gonna be a good one for sure yeah I think.

OK Jon let’s dive right into chapter four uh in the Habit Mechanic book tells the story of a name that will perhaps uh be be well recognized by a lot of people so Roger Bannister the man who broke the four minute mile record this was a major Milestone if you’re pardoned upon in sport and Athletics in the 1950s and um yeah Roger Bannister was the man to break the record and you’ve used this this achievement Jon and really explored the story of it to draw a fascinating parallel and take some great lessons from it if you tell us more please yeah so obviously you can read the story in chapter four I distinctly remember how I came about this I’d heard banister talk about his belief in the physiology so he he said he knew that physiologically it was possible to run a sub four minute mile and I was just I was walking I just think I remember I was walking to my office one day through the park I remember just popped into my head wouldn’t it be great if Roger Bannister had actually done I knew he was trying to be a medical doctor which is where some of the confidence came from for um the the fact that human physiology he felt was capable of of doing the sub four minute mile achieving the sub four minute mile but I thought wouldn’t it be great if actually he’d done some research if he was looking at that and when I started so I just thought I’ll Google that and see what comes up and it turned out he was actually not only trained to be a medical doctorate at Oxford when he ran the sub four minute mile he was also a research scholar Oxford and he was in the Laboratories doing research on the rule of oxygen in running so I thought wow this is fascinating and actually got hold of a copy of uh Neil biscum’s book gold I think is it the perfect mile I caught it in the yeah the perfect mile Neil bascom’s book The Perfect mile where he you know goes into Mega detail across about 600 pages into how banister managed to achieve the first person in the world to achieve this this record result and what I found fascinating what impact his training was actually physically having on his body and how his body was able to adapt um and to refine and to become more efficient at running the mile and also how he was using those insights to inform the way that he then trained and actually the way that he ran even his running style he was was being informed by insights he was getting from in simple terms what he was learning about what was going on in his body coupled with that there were two other prominent athletes who were trying to break that record at the same time um an American called West Santee and an Australian called Jon Landy they were all going for it they were it was like a three-horse race if you like the other two athletes were not doing the physiology work they were not looking at their physiology in the same way banister was so they were just looking at how fast did I run in training let me tweak my training style based on best and I don’t know what based on some insight that that trainer had about how to run faster based on their experience um but not based on actually what was going on inside the body so for me that was the hook and that’s what that’s what brought me to write this chapter yeah and and um Roger Bannister it’s probably worth setting the context you you talked about being a a medical student and a research scholar at Oxford this is in the 50s remember this is not the days of professional athletes he was a Corinthian amateur as he would call it you know he he just did his running on the side and most Elite Sports people did that in whatever sport it was perhaps not professional football at the time but a lot of people especially in athletics would would be doing other things so Roger Bannister I suppose was fortunate to be studying the human body and Physiology but um yeah he was he was uh had um two careers if you like a professional athlete or a full-time Elite athlete and um a medical student and a research scholar it’s fascinating that that put them in the position to do that and and in the Habit Mechanic book Jon you you draw very you’ve just talked about it then with the the two competitors of Roger Bannister and I I presume we can we can assume that that um these two Rivals if you like were were known to banister and he was perhaps feeling under pressure to to be the first to run a sub four minute mile even though it wasn’t the internet age and that he perhaps had to wait for telegrams and newspapers to to be published but I’m sure I I I’m sure the book will go into that detail um the Neil Baskin book but you point out how Bannister used this approach um very distinct from the other two and you would you would describe the approach the other two Rivals took as a black box approach not looking in detail at the inputs and measuring those kind of things please do tell us more about that because I think that’s so important for people to understand the distinction yeah and it’s a term people are not familiar with in this context I think we think of a black box as something you get in an airplane that records what goes on but actually that this this term in the way I’m using it I first came across when I was studying my masters and some academics um that were doing research in the University I was working in they’d published a few papers talking about Black Box theories and essentially the Black Box theory is a theory that’s created when the scientists don’t actually know what is going on inside of the phenomena they’re looking at so in other in in simple terms if um you have a cup of coffee which is think of that as the input the output is you feel more alert you feel it’s easier to concentrate but actually if you were looking at that through a black black box lens you wouldn’t understand what happened in your brain to make you feel more focused and more alert another example you might get some negative feedback from your boss that’s an input the output is that you don’t feel very good you worry you beat yourself up but you don’t actually know what went on inside your brain to make you feel like that so the black box approach in in scientific terms is describing research methodologies practices that have been developed without actually understanding what goes on inside in our case the brain but in the case of the Roger Bannister story and for where Santi and Jon Landy his Rivals they were using a black box approach to their training they were training and then they were getting an output the output may have been meant they were running faster but they didn’t know what was going on inside their body to help them to get those results so therefore they had less information to help them to refine and tweak and Advance their training further whereas banister was actually training but then analyzing what was going on inside his body and therefore the results of his training were far more meaningful and in a far better understanding of what it is Greek and refined in the Habit Mechanic approach and this sounds absolutely bizarre to say it but it’s real when you go to a coach you go to a psychologist you go to a therapist you go to a counselor all these people that ah experts um obviously on a Continuum some of them are expert than others they’re the people that you go to to help you to think more effectively in simple terms it might be to help me to supercharge your stress management or your motivation or your productivity or your confidence or to become a better leader Etc the advice they are giving you 99.9 of the time is black is based on Black Box theories because most of their training and the theories they learned were created before we actually understood how Brands worked and the point I think it’s the 1950s when banister breaks This Record

I I think that the technology is bannister was using to analyse what what I call a gas exchange and physiological peripheral indices things like heart rate Etc um we were able to take those measurements from from human beings I I think from about the 1930s and that kind of research ramped up into World War II so we had this ability since about the 1930s to really look in quite a lot of detail at human physiology.

We’ve only been able to look inside the human brain in real time so in a meaningful way for about 20 25 years and we’ve spent you know that the human brain is the most complex thing in the non-universe so you don’t just look inside it and go oh yeah that’s obvious how it all works Etc we’ve had to make sense of that so the vast majority of advice we’re being given before the Habit Mechanic approach to help us to do better is based on Black Box theories that means that it’s never going to be anywhere near as powerful and as insightful as it can be and it means that sometimes it’s just going to get things wrong you know one of the really simple ideas there is that certainly when I went to school it was by the top experts in the world they’re believed that when you stopped physically growing that your brain stopped changing in any um important where so that basically when you stop physically growing what you had neurobiologically your talents you want to use that word your skills your abilities your character traits were absolutely fixed and set we now know that’s nonsense and our brain is changing all the time about process called neuroplasticity and in fact the brains in males are not fully mature until we’re about 25 years old that means that the powerful prefrontal cortex sites where our willpower lives is not actually fully wired in men until we’re about 25 the females about 24. so you know some of these things that we used to believe about the brain which just fundamentally flawed but some of these ideas they still persist you know so things like psychometrics are still widely used even though we know that they’re flawed and I would argue that they’re doing more damage than good theories like Maslow’s hierarchy of needs but all the Black Books theories and they’re the dominant theories they’re 99.9 of the theories that people are using every day to inform their practice and that’s also why when we go to experts they believe that if they can get you to know what to do differently and maybe give you a few skills but that’s going to help you to change your behavior but brains don’t run on knowing they run on Habits sir yeah yeah and I think um the way you’ve drawn that parallel in the book and and today four is on the podcast between advancements in the understanding of physiology and advancements in the understanding of the brain and how those insights are used in the Habit Mechanic in the Habit Mechanic University and something else we’re going to talk about in a few moments um it is so helpful and so beneficial and it really is a true light bulb moment and I would encourage people to uh to to look at chapter four now Jon um there is the good news here because people can access this this expertise this understanding you’re helping a number of people to to not only understand it but deliver it for others with the certified Habit Mechanic coach program which you’re you’re you launched recently and are delivering successfully now to to Growing numbers of people please tell us about that and how how people can benefit from that yeah so that’s really exciting work that I’m doing at the moment I’m working with a range of people to help them to become certified Habit Mechanic coaches I think that what I would Now call Habit science which is a combination of Neuroscience Behavioral Science applied um performance psychology I think that Habit science can do for well-being and Human Performance team performance individually and collectively what sports science did for the physical conditioning of professional athletes um in the last 20 years so these people that are training to become certified Habit Mechanic coaches are on the absolute Cutting Edge from wave of that and I’m already seeing some of these people working quite big organizations I’m already seeing the positive benefits and those people can see I think quite clearly the difference between what they have previously been doing to help people to be their best.

There again they went to The Experts they said what do we need to do to make this happen well they’re suggesting the difference between what they’re told that what they were told and trained they needed to do to help people to be their best and the Habit Mechanic approach um so that’s really exciting so these are really a really powerful part of the Certified mechanic coaching program is one I get to work with all these people one to one this will I won’t be doing this forever but right now that’s what I’m doing so I’m working with people over about three to six months we worked together for about 10 hours of a six core sessions but people get the books for their clients or their teams they got access to the the full version of the app for their people for their teams and they’re already using these tools to help others to do better so immediately they’re able to start using the 30 plus Habit Mechanic uh tools and also the what we call the Habit metric assessments with their clients with their teams and already we’re seeing the benefits of that yeah so that’s that’s really exciting so you know it’s one thing and this is why I suppose I have a mechanic approach and that mechanic book is different on the app is that yeah there’s a chapter in there about um Roger Bannister and how he was using a new approach that wasn’t a black box approach many books I read would just then repeat that idea maybe 10 times across 10 different chapters and maybe using 10 different case studies so what the Habit Mechanic approaches about is giving you the toolkit then to make that a reality in your own life your clients lives your teams lives Etc um so yeah so that that’s really exciting if anyone wants to become a certified public mechanic coach do get in touch and let’s have a conversation it’s a selective process we we’ve we’ve not been able to work with everybody who’s wanted to do it but I’m happy to have a conversation with everyone because if it’s not the right time for you right now or you don’t have the skill set right now to be able to do it then maybe it’s something you could do in the future so if you’re interested do reach out and let’s have a conversation and and just to just to restate then Jon I think you mentioned it the certified Habit Mechanic coach this is for people who perhaps are coaches already are wanting to establish themselves as coaches which is of course a growing part of society but also for people in organisations and businesses too this is a uh something that will work for both those those sectors as it were yeah so we’re working across a Continuum of uh with the military, within Elite Sport within higher education Elite higher education by working with global businesses so training people in the businesses and then we’re working with smaller businesses uh business owners who want to learn how to embed this into their their business culture and then people who are coaches who’ve got their own coaching business – you know very a particular profession – and they’re now passionate about helping others to get good at what they were good at could be they were good at sales for example but they understand that actually to help other people it’s not just about giving them more Knowledge and Skills they also they need to help them to build better Habits so yeah it’s across an entire range um so and also a school some schools are starting to sign up to do this as well to train some of their staff to become Certified mechanic coaches we’ve with tougher Minds we established our program first of all we’re going to Elite Sport and we went into education and then into business so we have the case studies and the the toolkit the specific language we know how to apply this in a new one to across all those areas so yeah ultimately our mission is to make it as easy as possible for people to be at their best so anyone that wants to become a certified Habit Mechanic coach.

Yes we’re happy to explore working with you and people can contact you via tougherminds.co.uk just to just to confirm Jon if they are interested in the certified hammock Habit Mechanic coach program absolutely I just drop us a line and uh we’ll come back to you and schedule a call fantastic well um that’s a great example of uh the insights made real and made accessible to people let’s just finish off the the Roger Bannister story if you like then um we’ve been talking about how he succeeded in Breaking the four minute mile record in the 1950s an iconic sporting achievement at the time and subsequently it’s been immortalized really um because Roger Bannister didn’t use this black box approach he did um seek um to specifically measure the effects of what he was doing physiologically in the same way that um The Habit Mechanic benefits from measuring the measurement and the Insight that we’ve gained into what happened specifically in the brain um and and hence um all the Insight that brings and I suppose the final thing to say then Jon is that with this insight and and with your work you’ve developed a two-step process then based on this this non-black box this this scientific understanding for people to use to be their best to perform better to feel better in their lives and in their work you you talk about it in the in the book um understand how the brain works you you say that this is the approach we’ll take you on the journey will take people on as Habit Mechanics understand is to understand how their brain works and then and understand the role of Habits then of course as a pivotal um inextricable part of that and then the second part to start building new helpful Habits yeah that’s the starting point to becoming a Habit Mechanic Roger banister for me is a Habit Mechanic um he took a deep dive into how his body worked and got the benefits from that was able to to build better running Habits essentially is what he was doing training Habits and performance Habits whether we want to improve our sleep our diet our exercise uh improve our ability to manage stress to build our confidence performing the pressure to become more focused productive to get better work-life balance whether we want to become a better role model a better Communicator we want to become what I call a better cultural architect we want to become a better Coach so we can actually help people to not just know what it’s a good idea for them to do but help them to build better Habits first step is to learn how our brain actually works um so we’ve got a better sense of what’s driving us of these you know the brain is sometimes described it’s like you’ve got a trillion cogs in your head just whirling around mindlessly and that’s what the first section of the book helps you to do is to understand how your brain works and then it’s about understanding about how to identify the Habits it would be more helpful for you to build identifying the destructive Habits that are stopping you being at your best and then having simple practical ways to build and sustain new helpful Habits so yeah it’s a two it’s a two-step process at a very high level um and I think the great thing about the book is that you know the book we didn’t just sit down and think oh you’re going to write a book so let’s just start on a blank piece of paper and write down you know as much as we can and see where we get this book is essentially a summary of all the training we’ve been developing and running with over 10 000 people over the past uh 20 years so all these ideas in the book The toolkit is tried and tested however when you put into a book format there’s no guarantee that it’s going to translate that you can translate a presentation if you like that you’ll you know that you did in a room with people or a program of working in a room with people or coaching sessions that you do with people and I guarantee that will translate into a book and that’s why I’m delighted with the feedback that I see whether it’s on Amazon or um even in the app and other places people leave reviews and reach out on LinkedIn Etc is telling us what a positive impact the book is having on their lives so it’s great that this is translated and I think people are getting the most benefits are actually coupling the book and the app which are designed to be used together um and we can see that on a daily basis people reporting in the app the work they’re doing on themselves that what we call personal research in order to learn more about themselves and develop their Habit Mechanic intelligence and the positive the results they’re getting as a consequence for that not only for themselves are actually able to help others as well so that’s really exciting yeah and and in the app as well um of course I think um if people can can see they’re on screen there it’s e it’s down downloadable for free from the App Store and Google play um a wealth of uh opportunity and resources in there and and also the chance to access the free audiobook version of The Habit Mechanic and we’ll come on to that later and talk about how specifically um there are so many tools and so many opportunities to learn in that free audio book about specific challenges you might be facing but worth pointing that out at this stage as well it’s free to download um just finally then Jon on this on this um the chapter four section of the podcast uh as I said we’re going to talk go on to talk about uh some news we’ve had on the on the health front in in the UK but but the fact that you yeah I think for me the fact that you set out as you say it’s far more far more to it than that but you set out a two-step process uh that that’s part of the Habit Mechanic approach for me this the the clarity the Simplicity uh in terms of setting out for people how to start and how to approach this uh the accessibility you offer is something that’s so so beneficial uh why is that important I suppose is the question and and I think you’ve said already it’s it’s been something that people have really taken to and found beneficial for them.

I think understanding how your brain actually works is really empowering but it’s moving beyond um you know knowing about what different areas of the brain are called Etc moving beyond what some research papers might say about how your brain works but understanding it in a really user-friendly way our life is dominated by stories and often the story we’ve been told about ourselves how we think why we think in that way our ability our inability often to change those stories are very limiting and their ads towards many of the stresses stress and challenges people are experiencing in their day-to-day lives so actually understanding how your brain works and being able to articulate that to yourself in a simple story whether it’s willpower versus Hue or the lighthouse brim model or you can go into a bit more detail with the apron if you want that’s really empowering for people so that they’ve actually got a much better sense of what is going on inside in between their ears and the they are able to start making positive changes and they can couple resisting that old urge to do the unhelpful thing whether that’s beating yourself up too much or getting distracted or eating the wrong type of food or communicating political colleague or staying up and watching the next episode on Netflix instead of getting to bed on time that they can resist that and also they can use the nine action factors model to make it easier for them to start making um longer lasting sustainable changes so I think that it’s much easier for us that we we live so I I as most professionally I’ve operated in a space in an industry if you like that’s full of I think the Americans would say uh woo-woo which means like and you know not sort of a bit of nonsense basically it’s a bit of mumbo jumbo and I think for a long time because psychology has been so intangible and it has been based on these black box theories that it has felt really intangible even if you wanted to go there the the information that was out there wasn’t that robust and when we actually bring bring brain science into it and we couple that with Habit science and really start to understand that most of what we’re doing most of the time is just Mindless subconscious unconscious thinking and doing but that we can start to proactively direct manage any simple terms reprogram our Habits for the better that’s really exciting for people because you know we do want to I think the the Dr the driving uh the the driver for most people is they do want to feel better they do want to do better they do want to look better in front of important people in their lives and learning that we can actually we have far more control over over what we think can do than we’ve previously had before and actually the stuff we might have tried before wasn’t actually based on great science and that’s why we might not have been able to have made the positive change we would have liked you know it’s exciting and then people very quickly you know from chapter one for example in the Habit Mechanic they’re complete that t plan and they get a little bit of progress a little bit of momentum and then that drives you on to the next thing so yeah I think a combination of all those reasons is why people understanding how their brain works and then having some simple practical things they need to start making change is so important well well thank you for that Jon and thank you for taking us through um chapter four in that detail and that depth and drilling down into some of the the stories that you tell there and let’s hope everyone can experience the type of success with feeling better and doing better um that Roger Bannister experienced in his athletic Endeavor so it would be a hopefully um a record-breaking achievement if if it could happen in great numbers uh we’re gonna go on then to talk about uh some some fairly major health news and and some well-being news that uh broke in the UK in the last 10 days or so um and the implications and the issues around that but before we go on to that Johnny I know you’ve been out and about with your work and training people um one of the recent stops was at St George’s Park the home of the English Football Association um I understand you gave one of the first tougher Minds talks uh to an audience there um that keynote service you offer now is in full swing just just tell us a little bit more about that briefly uh and I’d like to ask you about you know how people can really benefit from the Keynotes but but uh again that’s something you’ve just started recently yeah so we’ve reactivated our what we call tougher Minds talks obviously um the world was turned on its head over the last three years or so and it’s great to get out there again and look into people’s eyes in real time but we’ve redesigned the tougher Minds talks with the girl to make that hour 90 minutes however long it is have the best possible chance of actually helping people to start building new helpful Habits and that’s why we don’t just give an engaging interactive talk um that really gets people understanding more about themselves and and their colleagues and that and their teams but also we couple it with the book and the app and we give people the resources and the tools that they can carry on using in their day-to-day life so that they can not just leave the room with a few nice ideas but they can start to um put into practice some of the things they’ve learned straight away and they’ve got a way of building a new Habit and I know people are in the app for example from that talk and I see them every day they’re um not just they have did they didn’t just know something differently at the end they’re actually putting it into practice and I can see their progress that they’re making um a couple of weeks after that talk so that’s what we that’s what we set out to to design and then and clearly people are recognizing that because there’s been a huge demand for those talks since we released them I think just the other day yeah okay um well if we can just spend a few moments then talking a little bit more about them um as you say uh great to be out and about after that that very very Bleak period for many people and and mixing with people um one of the first things that uh people take away then from a tougher Minds talk is is feeling happy and more focused and with an ability to to work in towards fulfilling the potential tell us a bit more about that Jon yeah I think again helps people to understand how their brain actually works the fact that brains a driving organizations and teams and the individuals in the organizations but um the brains run on Habits so one of the things we do in the keynote is we show people how to analyze their Habits using our Habit metrics and straight away that gives you a better understanding of yourself but also you’ve got the toolkit then to start working on any area that you want to work on so whether it’s sleep down exercise managing stress building confidence performing Under Pressure being more focused productive managing your work life balance better being a better leader being a better team member so you could use our five stage team power model use our action Communicator tools our role model tools use our swap coach tools use our cultural architecture so straight away um we’re getting people not just knowing some more stuff but analyzing themselves in a tried and tested way and then showing them what which tools they can begin using so yeah it’s almost this is immediate benefits as you’re going to get from from this you know type of approach and the these tools will enable people as I understand it then to start improving things in their lives have more control over their lives improving all sorts of things like like well-being how they feel about themselves that their performance perhaps under pressure and their leadership skills too um and and critically I think Jon um you you’re guiding people to start identifying the Habits that are unhelpful or destructive Habits as you call them and they’re helpful Habits or the super Habits as you name them yeah so we’ve we’ve got Habits wrong of psychologists done a bad job on it Habits are not just sixty percent fifty percent of what we of what we do they’re at least 98 of what we’re thinking and doing right now and sometimes it’s up to 100 percent and we often only think of Habits as good Habits so we only we only frame something as a Habit when it’s positive oh yeah I’ve got a great Habit around that or I need to build better Habits most of what you’re doing most of the time is a Habit so all the unhelpful stuff that you do is Habitualized all the in the same way the helpful stuff is and what I’ve learned over the past 20 years is that some Habits are more impactful than others so I call the negative that that the negative Habits that are more impactful destructive Habits that might be for example a destructive Habit for me um this is just an example it’s this this would have been true for me actually but it’s not anymore but destructive factor for me is I finish work too late and because I finished work too late I’m really hungry I started to eat too much because I eat too much um I don’t sleep very well you could couple them as well because I finished work too late I’m very stressed I have a glass of wine as well it does sleep very well I don’t sleep very well I don’t feel very productive the next day I have brain fog Etc and I’m very efficient inefficient the next day and then I end up finishing worklet again and I end up eating too much again and now I’m starting to gain wet and now I don’t feel very good about my body image and it goes on like that just by doing that one thing finishing work to it on the other end of The Habit Continuum you can have super Habits so super Habits are disproportionately positive in their impact on your day-to-day life so for many people creating a daily tea plan is becoming a Super Habit because they spend 10 minutes in the app or in their own notebooks writing out this very simple three-step team process and it it leads to the trigger running of lots of other helpful behaviors throughout the course of the day I’m more focused and more productive I finish work on time I get to spend more time with my family I get a better night’s sleep um my my health is better I feel better the next day and it goes on like that so yeah destructive Habits super Habits they’re having Matrix that we um get people using in the keynote is the start is the start to that Journey yeah and and it’s again uh worth pointing out as well as the Insight you share part of of a tougher Minds talk your your keynote service people are everyone taking part everyone attending receives a copy of the Habit Mechanic which is the best seller now and premium level access um to the new Havoc mechanic University app which as you say is this is this tool to to start the journey with yes sir you don’t just leave the room with a few notes and a few ideas you get the manual and the toolkit not just as a static book which is but that’s really important as well if you don’t want to be online but also you get the perch in your pocket they have mechanic University which is a faster more reliable way to beat your best and you start to create that language across the team across the organization that’s shared powerful language a language about ourselves but when we covered this in the last podcast didn’t we but we’re gonna have a it was interesting yeah the um there was a big political uh pact announced yesterday between the UK Australia the us about Neville working together the Navy’s working together and actually one of the UK prime ministers points was they’re going to use the same language although I was really interesting that they’re going to standardize some of the language that they use across those navies but isn’t it bizarre for example that if I work at a law firm that we have all this very precise language that we use about law but when it comes to ourselves the people that are driving the law and driving the work we don’t have a very precise language about ourselves about the ways that we think and the ways that we do things and that’s what the Habit Mechanic does so we get this shared language around well-being and performance and Leadership and high performing cultures um so yeah the Keynotes really are packing a big punch and if people are interested just get in touch we only have limited slots available available but getting get in touch register your interest and we might be able to squeeze you in yeah and there’s a tougher Minds talks a keynote page on the tougher Minds website tougherminds.co.uk you will see keynote in the top menu so people can find out more information and start that process of contacting you as you say Jon right there um well something else that was in the news um not yesterday with uh as you say the the news of the new defense pack between um Australia the US and the UK but but prior to that was um news of a weight loss jab um one article in the Daily Telegraph talked about the NHS rolling out a new weight loss jab which um as it described it could suppress your appetite and then hence bring about weight loss um and it was described in the telegraph as part of a productivity drive to improve people’s productivity self-evidently but also um to to do things like uh perhaps reduce uh the burden on the state when it comes to disability benefits that kind of thing um nothing massively official that I’ve seen certainly out and about but but certainly loads of coverage of this weight loss jab in terms of its development by the pharmaceutical industry and its purpose if if it is a productivity driver that’s something Jon you you know a lot about what what do you make of it what’s your initial reaction to this news.

Yes I think that we need to be careful not to get carried away about the impact that an appetite suppressant or suppressor is going to have. Not feeling as hungry as you might otherwise feel is probably going to mean you’re going to eat less and that’s as far as we can or make claims about what it’s going to do if you eat less you might lose weight um it depends maybe previously you were exercising quite a bit but also eating quite a lot but then maybe you eat less but then you stop exercising um we know the we know that effect already with um um things like smart watches and smartphones and I can’t think of the actual name of the effect but it’s been observed quite a few times where essentially you overestimate your the calorie burn of your exercise because now you can see it on your wrist and therefore you end up eating more calories than you’re burning so you think well I walked to the office and I burned uh 250 calories fantastic I can now have a double chocolate chip donut without recognizing there are nearly 700 calories in the chocolate chip donut that you’ve just had is it the licensing effect Jon I think you warned me about it once when I was uh I said to you that I’d walked up from the station so I could I have have one of those uh Donuts that you described yeah so it’s a licensing effector I do write about in chapter chapter 18. so yeah so we have to be aware so if it suppresses appetite that’s what you’re gonna eat less but I think where we often get lost with diet or misdirected is that we’re off we’re always thinking about diet in relation to body image how fat or thin are you but for me the first thing to think about with diet is brain function this thing we’ve spoken about a lot in this episode and we’ll continue to do so in others but your brain is encased inside your skull you can’t see it we’re not all that aware of it but it’s there and it’s driving everything that we’re doing and we now know for example that um you know a lot of the processed foods that we have access to and even what we call them micro processed foods they can’t even they can’t even um get into your brain they can’t pass what they call the blood brain barrier because that brain doesn’t our body doesn’t know what these new things are that we’re putting into our body you know we’ve been around for over 300 000 years and our body is designed to a natural food essentially so I think we need to think about brain health first and foremost what am I thinking about what are we putting into our into our mouths is it going to actually help your brain to work better

Yes I think I think um that’s a very interesting perspective on it Jon witch I’m sure a minority a tiny minority of people I think we’re fairly safe to say that would have considered it certainly something I never considered before I started working with you food as as fuel for your brain not just your body uh and and arguably that’s the first thing you should think about I think it’s pretty pretty clear um you you you you make that excellent point then that uh reducing your appetite might have this disadvantageous side effect then of limiting your intake of beneficial Foods I think that’s what the broader point is and it’s something worth considering but um again just just going back to the broader coverage of of this weight loss job this so-called weight loss jab if if it is about improving productivity and making people now helping people to improve themselves I guess you would say then that yes okay you can you can have a jab if you want it might be part of a a whole Suite of of measures you take or or actions you take but what the Habit Mechanic does is is lay out a pathway for people to to embark on and start making positive changes without having to to take new medicines and new substances and of course nobody’s um saying that medical advancement is should be dismissed and it’s important to consider but um people can just start this in their own right by using the simple and practical tools in the Habit Mechanic yeah so I would if you want to start working on better diet and also sleep and exercise that for me they’re all coupled together and they are get it doing those three things well is the foundation of good brain health I’d start with chapter 19 in the book you can get you can listen to that for free absolutely free you know have a mechanic University at chapter 19 in chapter 19 we really take a deep dive into the knowledge and the skills around why do we need to to eat well how does how do different foods impact brain function we do the same for sleep we do the same for exercise we then talk about some simple practical skills you can use to improve all those three areas but then we introduce what we call the death swap tool so Des is our acronym for diet exercise and sleep swap stands for self-watch aim plan it’s our most basic uh change cycle so we have a tool that’s in the book um you can listen to it for free from the audiobook in the app if you want if you don’t have the book or you can obviously get a copy of the book and it shows you how to start doing but the key to being the key super Habits for for all of us are more intelligent self-watching and more intelligent planning and all the 30 plus tools in the book are all about more intelligent self-watching more intelligent planning they make it easy for you to do those things so if we’re actually going to help more people in Britain to be healthier happier and at their best the core driver of that is empowering those people to do more intelligent self-watching more intelligent planning and to develop what I would call The Habit Mechanic intelligence having a job might be a tiny part of their success story if we want to help people to actually become healthier happier not their best more often um so yeah you can start to you can start to do more intelligent self-watch your more intelligent planning around your sleep your diet or exercise by starting with chapter 19 but you can do exactly the same thing for your stress management for your confidence for your productivity Focus work life balance for performing Under Pressure so your leadership so your communication skills your ability to be a role model your ability to perch and help others the ability to be a cultural architect your ability to build a great culture in a team or an organisation all those tools are in the book um because ultimately if we’re going to make successful change we need to focus on building better Habits and again it’s better Habits first and foremost around more intelligent self-watching and more intelligent planning so that will be my advice to people that really want to make sustainable change and it would be my advice to people that want to help others to make sustainable change medicine is very alluring because it’s just swallow that thing and it’s going to have this huge impact on your life sometimes we need the medicine to help us to get back on track um or to give us a bit of a supercharge in the beginning But ultimately we get good at what we practice and we practice what we’re in the what we’re in the Habit of doing so it’s like we saw myself fulfilling Loop so the Holy Grail really is to build better Habits and again I’ll repeat for me the key Habits to build are around more intelligent self-watching more intelligent planning yeah um it’s perhaps there will be a day when the NHS prescribes The Habit Mechanic for people Jean not uh not a jab but uh well let me let me say something dear so someone has told me very reasonably they’re on the they’re on they get access to the best mental health support the NHS offers and they’ve told me that just reading the Habit Mechanic book is far more powerful than that sort of supports they’re going so yeah but look when we’re not blaming anyone here we haven’t known this stuff before um I I spoke to someone the other day you know they’re asking me they’ve seen me a talk at you later presenting a keynote and um they were asking you know digging more into what I do and they just said I’m not surprised it’s taking you over 20 years to put this together because it’s so complicated it’s such a complex area you know so this isn’t easy to do um but he’s here now the tools and the techniques are here everyone that’s putting these into practice they’re getting benefits and I do think that the more people we can help and support to become Habit Mechanics the better the world will be it’ll be a better place ultimately which might sound a little bit fluffy and grandiose but I just think if you can help people to feel better and do better then the world becomes better and the good news is it doesn’t even cost you any money to start the journey because you just get the mechanic University up and you can start listening to the audiobook straight to her or start posting your tea plans or whatever so yeah more intelligent self-watching more intelligent planning yeah well um certainly I I think uh that that’s a very a great great anecdote to share Jon and um I think they’re just worth emphasizing that whilst yeah massive complexity in the science and the understanding getting started as you say is very straightforward with either the Habit Mechanic University or or the Habit Mechanic book and I’d just like to take you back briefly Jon before we conclude this this section of the podcast um we’ve just been talking obviously about you made the excellent point that um consider eating for your brain as well as your body and brain health driven by diet um that’s a critically important issue as I get as I said again not something I’d ever considered and on the subject of press coverage I think there was something in the Guardian newspaper today um another piece of research talking about how a Mediterranean diet can can slow the effects or limit the effects of dementia um what do we know um and I know you do talk about this in the Habit Mechanic bucket in a accessible way what do we know about the types of foods then we should be eating to to optimize our brain health yeah so I like to think of it across Three core areas so the question is what does our brain need in order to work well the first thing that it needs is energy so we know that our brain’s number one operating release to conserve energy we’re designed for survival but without energy we can’t we’re not going to be alive so it’s like if your car doesn’t have any Petrol in it can’t go anywhere so our brain needs energy and its primary source of energy is glucose our brain uses a surprising amount of glucose intake.

I can’t remember the exact figures it might be 40 or 50 of or even higher than of of glucose so because it’s working and whirling all the time those trillion -ish cogs are turning so to cut to the chase the best sort of um fuel we can put into our bodies our complex carbohydrates because they give a slow release of glucose into our brain um so I think we typically would think of things like whole wheat or brown bread rice pasta but there are other sources that you can um get complex carbs from as well which you can see a list of those in chapter 19. so our brain needs energy um the second thing that it needs is building blocks because our brain is changing all the time so we’re building new neurobiological connections so as you’re listening now and as you know maybe an idea that I repeated quite a few times a while ago was more intelligent self-watching more intelligent planning that those two words will start to form in your brain as neurons neurobiological connections so everything we know and can do is stored in our brain somehow by a neurobiological connections also our brain is burning itself all the time so neurons are dying so for example when you were at primary school or Elementary School the chances are that you knew everybody’s name in your class do you still know everyone’s name in your class I’d be surprised if you did that means that the neurons that you developed for remembering and learning those names have died aware they’ve been pruned because you don’t use them anymore but essentially we need to make sure that we’re putting um Foods into our body that our brain can use as building blocks and the core tools that the core food sources that our brain uses building blocks our omega-6 and omega-3 fatty acids so our brain is a fatty organ and typically in a western diet the fatty acid group that we don’t get enough of is omega-3 fatty acids again if you look in chapter 19 you can see a list of the different food sources that you can get omega-3 fatty acids from a surprising range of food sources and then third so we’ve got energy we’ve got building blocks third we need to give our brain nutrition to allow it to cleanse and clean itself out um and we get that through antioxidants so you know through the course of the day we’ve got lots of um hormones and neurotransmitters that are building up in our brain when we get these these overwhelming amounts of stress responses which many people are having to process because of the way the world currently is so we need to give our brain the best chance of clearing those things out good deep sleep is really important there but also getting enough antioxidants into the system and getting antioxidants into the system in a form that you can use so certainly my understanding is that things like supplements are not very powerful because your body’s not very good at absorbing them so it’s about taking things in as Whole Foods um so you know instead of having some vitamin C is an antioxidant many of us are familiar with instead of having a vitamin C supplement eaten orange or eat something that’s got vitamin C in it because that’s giving your body a better chance of absorbing it and that being moved up into your brain so they’re the three things I would think about in order to eat but brain health have are you put in the the right energy into your body are you putting building blocks into your body so your brain can use them and are you putting um antioxidants into your body in a form that your brain can use them much more detail on that in chapter 19 as well yes and again just worth stating one more time you can access chapter 19 and all the chapters as well as audio chapters the full audio book of The Habit Mechanic is available in the Habit Mechanic University app free to download from the App Store and Google Play and in chapter 19 yes that that you talk in Greater detail about foods for brain health and improving your diet your exercise and your sleep with with a very accessible approach so that’s a great opportunity for people as well Jon well once again Jon absolutely fascinating to talk in depth about the Habit Mechanic book and drill down into one of its chapters and the issues and the stories that emerge from that um look forward to talking to you again soon about the book but just before we go just remind us then um two things that you’ve been specifically working with a lot of people on at the moment the certified Habit Mechanic coach which is for for individuals perhaps coaches and people in businesses and organizations and the new keynote you’ve been offering via tougher Minds talks just just give us an overview of what they are and how people can get involved one more time yeah so if you want to learn how to use the Habit Mechanic toolkit they haven’t mechanic um Habit metrics to help your clients or your team and people your organization you can train to become a certified Habit Mechanic coach I’m working with the select a group of people to do that um you get the books you get the resources so you can start coaching and working with your people straight away if you’re interested in that just get in touch also we just launched our new range of tougher Minds talks our Keynotes essentially and we’ve very deliberately created that so that it gives people the very best chance of building sustainable new Habits not just leaving the room with some more ideas that was interesting and engaging but actually they’ve got things to put into practice so for example the the app and the book are part of those talks and we get people using those you know in the talk so that they’re already starting to work on themselves and build bad Habits if you’re interested in booking one of those for your organizations just get in touch yes and people can contact you via the website tougherminds.co.uk well Jon once again thanks for all that if you have a question Andrew we did sorry Jon yes of course yeah I uh I had my piece of paper covered up on my desk let me just do that thanks for reminding me yeah please do submit your questions to us and um let us know if you if you want us to talk about anything specific again the website is a place to do that tougherminds.co.uk via the contact Section um but we do have a question um this week um from an Aza um and this does touch then I think on um the certified Habit Mechanic coach um offer that you were just talking about uh and this coach uh this person I’m sorry I’m not sure they are a coach um but um they ask uh my team are having problems working across projects efficiently my understanding is that they’re generally feeling overwhelmed how do you how would you reply to as a Jon yeah so I think it’s a great question it’s something many people are struggling with so if we’re feeling overwhelmed the first thing is that our brains are probably not working very well so we have to go back to the good sleep a good diet the good exercise the only people that can manage that are the team members and actually just throwing ahead to March 21st where we’ve got a free webinar which focuses on improving team performance using our five-step blueprint um so we’re going to share our five-step uh Team power model the first step is what we call me power conditioning so if you want to have a really effective High performing team we need everyone on the team to deliberately be working towards being at their best we know the first question in the T plan for example is how well did I do my best to be at my best because that’s the starting point for feeling better doing better for being at your best so I’d be interested to see you know how proactive team members are being and looking after themselves and I think well I would also do if I was as I would use the five stage team power model and I would get the team to assess itself across the five areas you can actually learn more about the five stage team power model in chapter 28 of the book and there actually is a self-assessment in there that you could use um so that you can start educating and making it clear about what it takes to be a really good team member and actually what it takes to be a really good team and we start assessing ourselves across those five areas and then we can keep coming back to those those ideas periodically to see how we’re progressing and we’re developing because I think that most of the people in any team I hide because of their specific expertise in an area But ultimately when you join a team it’s because people the organization wants to couple your expertise with other people’s expertise so we don’t naturally understand what we need to do to be a fantastic team member and I think that that’s become much more difficult in the hybrid world so it’s really powerful to have that five-step structure in the team power model just to make everyone understand what we need them to do to contribute to the to the team as a collective and also it gives you a simple way to to measure and then we have our our team our what we call our team power model that allows you to show people how they can start building different Habits in different areas so that will be a quick summary overview of my reflection on that and I hope that answer is helpful yeah many thanks for that Jon do please keep your questions running uh coming in I’ll try to remember to to bring them up at the end of the podcast.

And in all seriousness, we will tackle your questions and uh share insights and and point you to places within the Habit Mechanic that uh you you can benefit from so many thanks for that as a please do keep your questions coming in by a tougherminds.co.uk well Jon again thanks very much for your time this week great to talk to you anything you’d like to say in closing well likewise thank you to you Andrew thank you for fantastic feedback people are giving us on the app remember if you like the app follow give us a review um review any of the of the content that you’re seeing if you if you like it and it’s helping you it’s great to see those stories so just thank you to that mechanic Community for engaging and you know putting these things into practice and wanting to be at their best I know that sometimes it can feel life can feel really challenging but I think the key thing to always keep in mind is that you’re only ever one Habit away.