Episode 165: The Connection Between "Hunger" And Harmony With Adrienne Youdim, MD
Hunger is not always about eating food. At certain times, you will also experience spiritual, emotional, and mental hunger. How can you satiate these things, especially when they happen all at once? Amy Vetter explores the connection between hunger and harmony with Dr. Adrienne Youdim. She presents the right way to address your physical cravings and beyond by chemically impacting the centers of your brain connected with hunger. Dr. Adrienne also talks about the societal biases surrounding obesity and how people can be more compassionate when addressing such conditions.
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The Connection Between "Hunger" And Harmony With Adrienne Youdim, MD
Welcome to this episode of Breaking Beliefs, where I had the pleasure of interviewing Dr. Adrienne Youdim. She's a triple board-certified physician, author, and TEDx speaker. Her decades of experience caring for executives and senior leaders have revealed the key to achieving professional longevity and success through integrating our personal needs with professional demands.
Dr. Adrienne’s core belief is that physical, emotional, and professional well-being are inextricably linked. It emanates from two decades of experience in medical practice, academia, executive coaching, and her time as a Medical Director at Cedars-Sinai. Those who have adopted Dr. Adrienne’s unique-fueled blueprint have achieved unprecedented impact in their organizations and beyond without sacrificing their personal health and well-being.
During our conversation, we talked about how she specializes in nutrition and weight loss. She also shared her multicultural background and journey from traditional medicine to focusing on mind-body approaches. She emphasized how her heritage and family experiences shaped her medical practice. We also explored her professional evolution from a prestigious medical position to pursuing a more fulfilling path that integrates emotional and spiritual aspects of nutrition.
While discussing the societal challenges ambitious women face in balancing career and family, we also discuss practical aspects of weight management and GLP-1’s emotional hunger while addressing both physical and emotional needs for sustainable health improvements. There is so much packed into this conversation that I had with Dr. Adrienne. I am sure you're going to learn so much from this conversation. Please share this with any colleagues that you think could be helped by Adrienne’s story, as well as her teachings from a holistic approach.
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All About Hunger With Dr. Adrienne Youdim
I'm here with Dr. Adrienne Youdim. Do you want to give us a little bit of background on yourself before we get started?
I am a mother and a wife. I have three kids. All three are under my roof. I'm super excited about that. I'm also a practicing physician. I specialize in nutrition and weight loss. Over the years, I've shifted from what I like to call being a “doctory doctor” to embracing the emotional and spiritual aspects of nutrition, food, health, and well-being, which impact our physical and emotional health.
I can't wait to get into it. Thank you for being here. To get a little more into you and our audience can get to know you, where did you grow up? What did your parents do for a living? Give us a little background on your beginnings.
I was born in Southern California, in La Jolla, San Diego. San Diego is the quintessential good life in America. Even though I was there for only a short period of time when I was born, it's funny because I feel like my life has circled around San Diego. I ended up going back there for medical school, and my eldest daughter is there at UC San Diego. I feel this gravitational pull back to beautiful San Diego.
I'm back in Southern California, but I spent ten years or so living in Texas in the ‘80s. Those were formative years because while I was born in America and I see myself as a true American, I was born to Persian-Jewish immigrants. They immigrated from Iran. That very much shaped my sense of being and my identity. Their parenting, which I don't want to say was at odds with Middle America, but I very much stood out, looking like I do. I stood out from the typical blonde and blue-eyed American that I was seeing at that time in Dallas. It shaped my upbringing, my doctoring, and how I practiced medicine. It is relevant.
My grandparents were immigrants. They were from Russia. They were Jewish as well. Talk about how that works into the family system, from being immigrants having such a hard life, to coming over here and what it takes to create success. Why were they coming to America? What was it?
My father left Iran when he was eleven years old. He was sent to boarding school in England. Even though the government was not the way it is now in Iran, still, the opportunities were not available to Jews in the same way. They sent him for an opportunity. It's notable that he never went back. He went to boarding school in England, and then he came to California and went to school there. In a way, they did this as an act of service. Talk about ingraining that idea of success and values, even though Persian Jewish values are very much family-ingrained, he was ousted from his family.
He was almost an orphan.
For the purpose of education. To say that that didn't inform my own professional trajectory, how can it not? My dad went back. The only time he went back was in his 30s to find a nice Persian-Jewish woman, and he did. It's quite a cute love story. They were not arranged per se, although they were introduced. From the day they met to the day they got married was three weeks. Isn't that insane?
Yes.
They moved here before the revolutions, but things were already starting to bubble up in Iran. They were trailblazers. Within a few years, their family members, one by one, fled Iran because at that time, in ‘78, that was when the revolution happened, and they had to get out for their safety.
They went to San Diego?
Yes.
Why San Diego?
My father had traversed all of America in pursuit of his education. He landed at UC San Diego. He was a professor of medicine there. It's even interesting that UC San Diego specifically is very much a part of my background and also my future in terms of where my daughter is. He ended up in not such a terrible place.
I'm guessing becoming a doctor was what they defined as success, or was it something that drove him?
100%, that is still seen in my community as the golden ticket. My father himself ended up becoming a PhD. He always longed for that, to have been able to become a doctor. That's what he thought his father wanted from him. My parents always played devil's advocate with me. You could say maybe that was reverse psychology. I struggled. My mom thought that it wasn't aligned with having a family life. I got a lot of pushback from my parents wanting me to pursue medicine.
That's interesting.
There are these unconscious cues that impact us and what we do. I love what I do so much. There is not a bone in my body that feels or believes that I'm not doing exactly what I was meant to do. This is not a story of coercion.
You were more exposed to it.
Hunger: We all experience different kinds of hunger at different stages of our lives. We must be ready to explore the unknown to satisfy that hunger.
I did become this doctory doctor. I came out of residency as the youngest female medical director for a program that I put together at Cedars-Sinai here in Los Angeles. Ten years or so later, I left that job. I quit that position to explore medicine the way I wanted to do it and practice the way I wanted to. It was not only for my patients, but there were also all of these creative ideas that I had that I couldn't pursue in an employed space.
I remember when I put in my resignation, it was shock waves. It’s like, “How could I leave this prestigious position or this prestigious title?” I was well-regarded. There were no overt problems. There was nothing to drive me out other than what I describe as a hunger for something more. It's interesting because this concept of hunger is so much a part of what I do as an obesity medicine specialist. I apply the word hunger, and it's the title of my book and my TED Talk.
Overweight or not, that's almost irrelevant. We all experience hunger at different stages of our lives, whether it be emotional hunger or spiritual hunger. The question is, “Are we ready and able to answer that call and explore the unknown in order to satisfy the hunger that ultimately drives so many of our physical, mental, and emotional health problems if we don't?”
The Family Dynamics That Shaped Dr. Adrienne
Before we even talk about that position, what made you want to be a doctor in the first place?
I always saw it as service-oriented. It was a way of being in service. I have to go back a little bit again to talk about my family dynamic. Here I have my father, who is very education-aligned, has two PhDs, a Master's, and all of this stuff, and left his family to pursue education. Education, science, research, exploration, curiosity, and the desire to learn were always very much within me, and still are. I love reading. I'm constantly hungry for more knowledge and information. I then have my mom.
Before you go into that, it was the example of your father continuously being educated.
There were always books in my house. We subscribed to the Science magazine, which is probably the most rigorous academic magazine. He always had that magazine on his bedside stand or at the kitchen table. That was something that was not just role modeled, but it was a value that was imposed. I don't think that anyone told me to be a doctor, but taking my studies seriously was very important. That was ingrained. You study hard. You don't have idle time. Take summer school. It was something that was mirrored or role modeled, but it was also something that was enforced.
On the other side, I had my mom, who had this other kind of intelligence. It was emotional intelligence. She was a hardworking woman. She was a working mother all the time. I didn't grow up in a situation where money and finances were not challenging, but she cooked home-cooked meals every single night. She had people over for Shabbat dinner every Friday night. Family, culture, tradition, and community were very important to her. That was something that was role modeled and something that I took on. I'm also a working mom, but homemade meals between my husband and me are non-negotiable. We have Shabbat dinners at my house almost every Friday.
I don't even remember what led us to this conversation, but my desire to become a doctor and the way that I practice is this combination of wanting to be in an area or a field in which I'm constantly pushed to grow my knowledge and also this part of me that believes in community, caretaking, and connection as a fundamental value of a good life. Medicine, even though that's not how we see it most of the time in this country, imposes these ideals. I have been lucky that I've been able to carve out a way of practicing medicine that still embodies both of those values as well.
You said that when you decided to be a doctor, or that's what you wanted to be, both parents weren't exactly supportive of it. How did you feel? Were you questioning yourself? How did you feel as you were embarking on this?
What your question brings to mind is that I want to step back and take a more global view. My father always said, “If you work hard, you can achieve anything. There's nothing that you can't do.” I believe that to my core. It is informed by the fact that I went after medical school, that I wrote a book, and that I started a product company that ultimately failed, but it doesn't matter. I do these things because it was instilled in me that I can.
There are these other parts, which were, “Be humble. Don't show yourself.” There’s that thread that I also grapple with because I want to be at the forefront, but then I pull back. I grapple with that. Now, I'm an adult, so I have the words for it and the understanding behind it, but knowing doesn't necessarily mean that it doesn't show up in our lives. It is an interesting paradox. You can be whatever you want, but at the same time, don't be too much.
Negative Connotation Around Ambitious Women
From a mom's perspective, I've had my own epiphanies. My mom passed away, and there have been some things that have always not been congruent. One of them goes along this path that I've had my own epiphany of. She had given me these books when I was young about these professional women. It was in a time when you didn't have examples of it.
In my head, I thought that's what she wanted me to be. That was a vision I had, but I realized she had no idea what was going on in my head, nor did I understand why she gave me those books. They have no frame of reference for what a woman can do now. Your mom is saying that to you and being supportive, but saying, “How are you still a mom, cook, and have a community?” There was no reference to that. It’s that whole shift of coming back to what the two perceptions were at the time that you never talked about because there wasn't any reference to talk about it.
Also, the societal piece that I think is still very much present. At the end of the day, for ambitious women, there's a negative connotation to that ambition. I always remember when we were in the hospital as attendings. You can imagine from shows like ER or whatever, this dynamic of a pecking order. If a male attending who was at the head of the pecking order was harsh or even pushed the students or the residents, he was teaching. If we, as women, were acting in the same way, then the female attending is being difficult.
It's the same in business.
In my entrepreneurial life, it's like, “When is it going to be enough?” or, “Why aren't you satisfied?” Whereas that kind of ambition in a male is seen as growth or evolution. You're always pitted against your children.
It’s like you're doing something against them.
The fact that you're pursuing ambition on some level means that you care about that more than you care about your children, or you can't create a life that is aligned if you have a supportive partner who also feels like there's a role in parenting. These subliminal messages, and not only subliminal, but sometimes very overt messaging, are something that we have to navigate. It plays tricks on your head.
Staying True To Your North Star
What was your North Star to keep you going? What was it in your head that you were like, “I'm going to be able to do this, even cutting out the noise?” What you accomplished is a lot for not having that example.
There was this deep knowing. Even though my mind was constantly questioning, badgering, harassing, doubting, and all that stuff, there was a part of me that always knew who I wanted to be and how I wanted to do it. I have to say that there's also a lot of luck and serendipity, and I have a very supportive partner. My husband was my high school sweetheart.
There was a lot of resistance there, too. People were like, “What are you doing? He’s your first boyfriend. You're both young. You're so silly and stupid. You can't do this. Who's going to pay for anything?” There was a lot of resistance there, but there was a knowing there as well. He shares similar values. He never questioned his own role in parenting and family life. He never questioned what I could do professionally. It’s probably a combination of listening to that inner voice, the stars being aligned for me in this moment in time, and having a support partner.
I am from the yogi world. I'm a CPA, but I bring them both together. It’s so important to think about your intuition and let that voice rise over the monkey mind or the rational mind and fight that. That's a very important thing to pause on. When we get silent, we have a knowing, instead of letting the negativity drown out your inner voice and what's possible or what might not be the right path as well when you're pushing against something and you can't explain why you have that energetically, like, “This doesn't feel right, but it's probably not right.” You have that intuition.
The other thing about your husband is that for a lot of women, they don't necessarily speak up to their spouse or their partner and say, “I need help to do this. I'll help you with this, and you help me with this.” It's a joint decision or discussion on any move either one of you makes in your career to be able to create that family time and the kind of relationships you want with your children, and still pursue whatever your passions are.
Hunger: If you work hard, you can achieve anything. There is nothing you cannot do.
I have my medical practice. It isn't separate so much anymore because I bring it in. In the office, I was prescribing weight loss drugs, and still do, like GLP-1 and all of that stuff, but I also am trained in mind-body medicine. Understanding that even our hunger is a form of reactivity. I am using mind-body skills to help people manage their reactivity so that they can be more intuitive, they can be more intentional, and they can quiet themselves down to listen to that inner voice.
We talked about my background and how much my Persian-Jewish culture is ingrained. After October 7th, 2023, having children in college in America and seeing the negativity, the hate, and the vitriol that popped up on October 8th. You don't have to be Jewish to feel this. There's so much geopolitical turmoil. There's so much social turmoil in our own country. There is so much opportunity for reactivity. We're seeing that play out in our politics. We're seeing that play out in our college campuses and the streets. That is also playing out in our workplaces. It's playing out in our homes.
For me, doing this mind-body work and sharing that with people in terms of my keynote speeches to corporations or the courses that I have, I feel like this is a lifeline for us. This is the only way that we are going to be able to ratchet down the reactivity so that we can live in a way that is harmonious in our homes, our workplaces, and our communities. That includes our global community as well. I don't want to be pessimistic or nihilistic about it because we have within us the tools and the opportunity to see what's going on in the world around us and be proactive in making a change that can ripple from the nuclear family out into the greater world.
Making A Huge Shift In The Medical Practice
Why did you decide to shift from a traditional medical career that you had and a great job at a great place to make this shift in your practice?
I'm still practicing, but it is a shift in the way that I'm doing it. It goes back to this concept of hunger. When I was in the office, seeing maybe 25 patients a day in that traditional fast food manner that we were doing back then, I was doing everything in my power to suppress people's hunger so they could lose weight. To some degree, I'm still doing that. I'm still prescribing the drugs.
It became clear to me that this hunger was representing something greater. There was a spiritual hunger and emotional hunger that was not meant to be suppressed. It was an opportunity to lean in to recognize what it represents and how people could answer that call. There's great science behind this. When we're stressed or distressed, it changes the release of those very hunger hormones that we are managing with these drugs. It's pretty fascinating.
When we are perhaps in a job that is not fulfilling, when we're not living our purpose, when we're not fully connected with our partner, when we're experiencing disconnection or lack of belonging, or we're mired by negative thinking and not giving ourselves enough self-love or self-compassion, these things trigger difficult emotions that then trigger our hunger in a very physical way.
I couldn't explore this. I couldn't have these conversations in that model. I had to step out and change the model so that I could practice it, and also to be able to explore it in these different ways, the speaking, the writing, and the learning of this stuff that I wasn't taught. Nobody taught me the psychology behind all of these things. It had to happen. I had to move out of that space and into one that would allow me to explore these ideas further.
I'd love to get a little bit into the GLP-1s because you brought it up.
Why not?
Using GLP-1 To Address Obesity
I know. I'm sure a lot of people have questions about it as well. What are you seeing as the benefits of it, and the things that people should be aware of?
I have done this work for twenty years, meaning working with people who are overweight or have a diagnosis of obesity. People don't like that word, but that's a clinical diagnosis of excess weight.
What would be the definition of obese? How much excess weight?
Usually, roughly 30 pounds or more is associated with a BMI or greater. We're shifting away from BMI because body composition and age matter. There are caveats here. It's an imperfect tool, and yet one that we use. They're either at risk for health effects of excess weight, or perhaps they already have the health effects of excess weight.
Here's the thing. Once people are overweight, their body protects that. From an evolutionary perspective, we weren't created to lose weight. Calorie restriction or weight loss triggers a threat to our survival. We have all of these mechanisms that when people start to lose weight in even the right way or even the healthy way, the body perceives that as a threat. That is why it's hard to lose weight and maintain weight. Your body is doing everything it can by releasing hunger hormones, slowing down your metabolism, and being better able to digest fat because it feels as though it is a threat to your survival if you don't get the calories that you need.
We talk about diet and exercise. Diet and exercise are super important. To say that is enough for the majority of people who are in that category of struggling with their excess weight, it is not enough. That's why even though we talk about diet and exercise, it has not been sufficient to stem the tide of this problem that we see not only in our country, but around the world. In comes these drugs that are effective at helping people feel greater appetite suppression and dial back the food noise, which is an important piece of this. It’s that constant compulsion with food.
Can I pause there? How does it do that? I love chocolate. How am I going to change my brain to not want to eat chocolate or a bunch of fries?
Let's back up. These drugs are called GLP-1s. Why? GLP-1 is a hormone that we all release in our bodies. When you ate breakfast this morning, the food went down into your gut. Your gut, your intestine, releases this hormone called GLP-1, which then tells your brain, “We got food down here. You can shut off that hunger.” It's mimicking a normal physiologic response to food ingestion.
It has many other effects. It affects the pancreas so that you get more insulin. That's why they're also FDA-approved for diabetes. It slows down the gut so that food hangs out in the stomach longer, so you feel fuller. GLP-1 also impacts parts of the brain involved in dopamine release. We found that not only is it reducing food noise or compulsion around food, but people are not drinking as much. They're not smoking or nail biting. I had a patient who was a chronic nail biter and had that compulsion. It is dialing back compulsions as a whole. That is the way that it is changing the brain. It is chemically impacting the centers of the brain that are involved in the desire to eat food.
If you were to stop taking it, would your brain continue that habit?
Absolutely. The drug is going to work while you're taking it. I love that you brought this up because one of the criticisms or critiques is when people go off the drug, then they regain the weight or resume their cravings, hunger, or desire for food. If you had high blood pressure and I gave you a blood pressure medication, and it worked great in bringing down your blood pressure, would I expect your blood pressure to magically stay down when I stopped the drug?
If I gave you a drug for cholesterol and it managed your cholesterol, and then I took it off and your cholesterol went up, would I say the drug didn't work, or would I say, “Why did you stop taking the drug?” It’s this ridiculous belief that people should continue to experience the benefit of the drug when they go off of it. We have that expectation for anybody else.
The number one reason for diabetes in this country is weight gain. Think about the bias here. If I'm using the drug for diabetes, then nobody would expect me to take the patient off the drug or expect me to have them manage their blood sugar magically without the drug. That same patient who hasn't yet developed diabetes and is using it for weight loss to prevent the onset of diabetes, we tell them, “You should be able to come off the drug.” It drives me nuts because I feel like it's an unfair bias. There's no other health condition in which people have to defend against that bias, but in obesity medicine, we do.
Hunger: Our hunger can become a form of reactivity. Learn how to use your mind and body skills to be more intuitive and intentional.
Is there a maintenance dosage, or does your body settle out with it?
For the majority of patients, it does settle out. You don't just continue to lose weight indefinitely. The studies show a certain percentage, whether it's 11% 15%, or 17% for one. It can go up to 25% to 28% for another. You don't just keep losing. That having been said, I have patients who are losing a lot. Maybe in those patients, I never escalated the dose, or I have to scale back the frequency of dosing. There is individual variability there that people don't necessarily always fit the textbook of how a certain medication is used or prescribed.
I also have to say that it's important in terms of who's a candidate. That's where things went awry. When these drugs came on, everybody wanted to use them. People who are 5 pounds overweight want to use them. People are microdosing for prevention. There are no studies around any of this. In a way, that lent to the bias of it because people who were not candidates were getting the drug. Physicians who didn't understand how to prescribe it were prescribing it and escalating the dose quickly
You can mail it. I’ve seen commercials about that.
There are compounded formulations. Those are not regulated. God only knows what you're injecting into yourself when you're doing one of these mail-order deliveries. Like everything else, there's the good and then there's the other side. I am so glad that we have this in our toolkit. It's life-changing.
If you're not a candidate, then how do you help someone who is not a candidate for GLP-1s?
First of all, there are other drugs that are not nearly as effective, but perhaps you don't need something that effective. There are still guidelines around using any medication. For a lot of people, I always include a dietary piece and a lifestyle piece. For a lot of people, their diet has gotten away from them. Talk about professional people. There's this trickle of a few pounds every year for the last twenty years while you've been working at the firm. People eat out constantly and drink alcohol every night. These are things that can easily be cleaned up in the diet.
Movement has been engineered out of our lives. People are not exercising, which not only impacts weight, but it also impacts your health in so many more profound ways, like mental health and well-being. People are not getting enough sleep. Sleep deprivation increases your hunger hormones and makes you feel hungrier. Sleep deprivation is also associated with cognitive decline, Alzheimer's disease, and insulin resistance. There's a lot that we can do, not just for weight, but just so that people live better lives, mind, and body.
There's this whole other component of what hunger is representing. When we know we're not hungry physically, and we're heading to the pantry to grab something, what is the hunger in that moment? Maybe you've been stuck at your desk and you need a reprieve. You need respite. You're using food as a way to give yourself that reprieve when what you really need is to get outside and give yourself a nature break, or pick up the phone, call your best friend, and connect.
What is that hunger representing? Maybe you're in a job that is sucking the life out of you, and you're using food as a coping mechanism. There's also a profound and beautiful way we can approach this problem to recognize, “What is it that I'm doing? What is it that I'm hungry for in this moment? How can I lean into that, not only to lose weight, but to change my life in a way that is following that inner voice or that intuition?”
Recognizing Humanity’s Universal Thread
What would you say you've learned about people or humans from dealing with patients?
We are all the same. I don't care if you're a doctor, a fintech CEO, a psychologist, or a stay-at-home mom. We all have the same needs and the same desires. We all have the same struggles and the same tribulations. Whether you've studied it and know all the things or not, we all suffer from the same human condition.
When I wrote my book Hungry For More, the impetus was that I'm sitting behind a desk, and I have the opportunity to talk to all these patients. I am seeing the universal thread in these stories of people who are coming to me, not only between them, but I can relate to every single story that my patient brings in. I almost felt like it was an injustice because people carry so much shame around their own personal story. Writing the book was a way, like in a HIPAA-compliant way, to try to share the universal thread of these stories, bring myself into them, and share how, on some level, I could relate to every single patient.
That's what I've learned and what I hope to impart. One of the fundamental components of self-compassion is acknowledging our common humanity. It's acknowledging that it's not just me who experiences these failures or limitations. It's every human on the planet. When we recognize that common thread, then it softens it a little bit. It allows us to soften for each other and then, hopefully, also soften towards ourselves.
Answering Rapid-Fire Questions About Family
It is knowing you're not alone. I'd like to end each interview with some rapid-fire questions. You can pick a category. One is family and friends. One is money, spirituality, or health.
What if I love all of them?
What is the one you love the most or haven't talked about lately?
You said family first, and that's very dear to my heart.
Things or actions I don't have that I want to have with my family.
More presence.
Things or actions that I do have that I want to keep.
It's almost the same. I have a wonderful time with my family. One of the things that I love is a shared dinner time around a homemade meal.
Things or actions I don't have, but I don't want to have.
More busyness.
Hunger: We all have the same desires. If we can see each other through that lens, we can move forward with our shared goals.
Last one. Things or actions that I have that I don't want.
More mental noise. We jumped from family to maybe spirituality.
You've given so much great information and been so open with your story. What is something that we didn't cover? Is there something you want to make sure the audience takes away that we didn't talk about or that you want to emphasize?
We touched on this concept of reactivity and what's happening in the world around us. We also talked about the commonality, the universal thread. I put myself and my experience out in everything I do, whether it be my parenting, my doctoring, my speaking, or my workshopping. I would love for people to recognize that we all have the same needs and the same desires. If we can start to see each other through that lens, that's the first step in shifting from the othering that triggered some of this reactivity and allowing us to come together towards what's ultimately shared goals and shared desires.
Episode Wrap-up And Closing Words
Thank you so much for taking your time out. I appreciate it, and I appreciate everything you shared.
It was lovely to meet you and to have this conversation. Thanks.
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Now, for our Mindful Moments of this conversation that I had with Dr. Youdim. She has such a fascinating background to me. I can relate to so much of what we talked about, coming from this immigrant family, more traditional thinking, and how you break free of those belief systems and allow yourself to be able to listen to your own intuition rather than listen to all the noise around you.
This is so important in all decisions that we make in our lives. There's a lot of noise. We question ourselves. When we truly get silent and listen to how we feel on the inside, we notice our energy. We notice what we get excited about, what we don't get excited about, and what seems off. When we are true to ourselves and make decisions along that line, then we know we are making the decisions that are right for our path. Everyone's path is unique.
We talked about her strict upbringing around education, success, and knowledge. Especially when you come from an immigrant family, there's a hunger for a better life. We can truly be able to understand what that means when we've walked in those people's shoes. When you look at her parents' life with the struggle and determination to have a better life for future generations and understand the importance of education, we get further away from that as we get more comfortable in our lives. We get more comfortable in the country that we have and the freedoms that we have, rather than the dreams that we believe can be true.
Even for her parents, who dreamt and got here, they even started being less risky when she wanted to take a path that was different than theirs and go into the medical field as a woman. We can see how we get scared for the people around us, of them taking risks or not following the path that maybe we have found success with. However, when we give people that space, look at what they can become. Giving them that space and also support is one of the most important things that we can do because when we do, they're not questioning themselves in their head.
Many of us have gone down paths that maybe were not paths that people before us went down, or even made decisions that maybe not everyone agreed to. When we do that, we might be listening to our intuition of what we think is possible. That noise or that negativity that might be coming our way is very hard not to have circling in our minds at the same time, which creates stress and limiting beliefs. We've got to fight that all the way through.
It is understanding how we are supporting the people around us. She was talking about how important it was to trust her intuition, but she was also talking about how important the support that she got from her husband was during this time of letting her fly and take a path that hadn't been taken before. It's very hard to take a path that's non-traditional and leave a job that you know is a sure thing or that you know is well-respected, and take a path of your own. As you can see with what she's done, she's taken medicine in a whole new direction and made it holistic. We had so many interesting conversations about hunger from that aspect.
When we have hunger, a lot of times, we don't step back and think about what is making us hungry. Is it the emotions that we're having? Is it boredom that we're having? Is it some other reaction than us being hungry? Medicine is one piece that may help us if that's something that's necessary in our journey, but no matter if we're taking medicine or not, we've also got to take care of our minds.
Our mind is an important thing to take care of. We are observing it and researching it. There's never a time that we don't continue to learn. I've been going to therapy for probably twenty years. Still, things open up for me when there's nothing else I can learn because I've been going for so long. That's why I don't stop going because it's research, knowledge, and education.
It may not be in a book, but when we step back and observe why our behaviors are the way they are, they're a reaction to a belief or to our identity that is creating that behavior that maybe we haven't even uncovered yet. We have to peel the onion one little piece at a time. It’s important to think about this concept of hunger, what it represents in our life, and where we might be out of alignment with the work that we do, the partner that we have, negative thinking, and anything that can trigger it as well.
We also got into a big discussion about GLP-1s that I found very interesting. There are a lot of assumptions that people make. With education, knowledge, and going to the right medical professional who is trained in this, we can be able to work through how we make sure that we're doing the right things with medicine, whatever it might be, whether it be GLP-1s or anything else. There’s the importance of diet and exercise in everything, in how we show up in our positivity and our energy. That is contagious to the people around us. These lifestyle things are so important. It's so important not to assume that we're hungry and we're eating, but that we're understanding what it represents.
One of the biggest learnings that we talked about, and it represented so many pieces of the conversation, was that she was talking about the human condition that we're all the same. We all worry about similar things. There is a universal thread amongst ourselves. When we can shift from thinking we're so different and instead have this shared experience with others, we can feel more supported and feel more like we're in a community.
It's okay to disagree about things and have different opinions, but we need to understand from a human perspective how we share in these experiences, how we share in the noise that's in the world, and how we come together so we can bring more peace to this world, not only to ourselves, but the people around us.
I hope you enjoyed this episode. I know I did. There were so many great learnings in this episode. I hope that you walk away taking your own actions out of this conversation of how you can create more presence in your life and how you can step back, continue to observe and learn, and constantly be aware of who you are, where you are in this moment, and where you want to be so that you can be more aligned internally and with the rest of the world.
I hope that you share this episode with your colleagues, your friends, your family, and anyone that you think this could help. Subscribe to this show and like it. It always helps us to get more attention for the important conversations that we have on this show, and we share them with you. Thank you so much for all of your support. It means so much to us.
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About Adrienne Youdim
Dr. Adrienne is a speaker, author, and practicing physician with a passion to empower professionals to take charge of their physical, mental and emotional health so they can thrive in the workplace and beyond. Her decade’s experience caring for CEOs, entrepreneurs and seasoned leaders in all industries has revealed the very “nutrients” that promote health also lead to resilience and success in the workplace. She believes good nutrition is not just about the food that you eat, but all the ways in which we can nourish ourselves physically, mentally and emotionally. By equipping them with the knowledge and tools they need, she empowers her clients to live, love and lead with intention, clarity, and purpose.