Willpower vs. Systems: Why Your Diet Fails & How to Fix Your Relationship w/ Food | Sohee Carpenter

**Sohee Carpenter** (0:00)
People tend to struggle less with exercise than they do with diet. Exercise is something you do in a finite period of time, and then you can move on with your day, whereas nutrition is, you have opportunities all day long. Eating behavior is so complicated. For me, it was about the control of the food to then look a certain way, to then be accepted in a certain way, and perceived a certain way.
Another big reason why people struggle with binge eating, a lot of it is poor stress coping mechanisms. When you have poor emotion regulation skills, every time you're stressed, you're bored, you're something, you turn to food. A big reason why a lot of people will take GLP-1s is that it eliminates food noise. I cannot tell you how freeing it is to be able to eat a meal, feel actually satisfied, and move on with your day, and going like four or five hours without having to think about food.

**Dr. Gabrielle Lyon** (0:49)
It's amazing.

**Sohee Carpenter** (0:50)
It's so freeing. And a lot of people have never experienced what it's like to not have food noise.

**Dr. Gabrielle Lyon** (0:55)
What is the psychology of when we restrict something makes us course correct the opposite way?

**Sohee Carpenter** (1:01)
The key to behavior change is not in relying on willpower. I think the smarter way to do it is I'm going to use willpower to form new habits. The key feature of habits is that they are cognitively not fatiguing. They're automatic.

**Dr. Gabrielle Lyon** (1:15)
That is fascinating. Sohee Carpenter, welcome to the show.

**Sohee Carpenter** (1:24)
Thank you.

**Dr. Gabrielle Lyon** (1:25)
Fun fact, I've been following you for, you've been a coach, now a PhD, since?

**Sohee Carpenter** (1:33)
Technically 2012

**Dr. Gabrielle Lyon** (1:34)
Okay. You've had also a very interesting journey. Yeah. And I'd love to hear for the audience a little bit about you. You studied human biology, biology?

**Sohee Carpenter** (1:46)
Yeah, hum bio, yeah. Very popular major at Stanford.

**Dr. Gabrielle Lyon** (1:49)
Okay, so no slouchy school. No. And then just finished your PhD, just got your PhD.

**Sohee Carpenter** (1:56)
A couple months ago.

**Dr. Gabrielle Lyon** (1:57)
And one of the things that I thought was so interesting is, I've actually been following you for a really long time.

**Sohee Carpenter** (2:01)
Yeah.

**Dr. Gabrielle Lyon** (2:02)
And you were working and also doing your PhD and all of these things in combination, which is unusual.

**Sohee Carpenter** (2:10)
I was in a really fortunate position where I was in a distance program, a virtual program. I don't know if you felt this way, but I first got my bachelor's degree, obviously. I worked for four years and then a few years later, I was like, I need a bit more. So I went back and got my master's degree in psychology. That was a two year program. By the end of my master's degree, I was so not really enamored with academics from my personal experience that I was like, I don't think I think I'm done. And then I found out that Eric Helms, who we know, the icon in the industry was, had gotten his PhD from AUT, Auckland University of Technology. And he was at the time taking on PhD students as an advisor. And there was also at the time, which I believe they don't do anymore, they had a distance program, a virtual program. So I was like, wait, if Eric Helms has taken on students, he's willing to take me on. I've met him before. I get along great with him. We have overlapping areas of interest.
And I can do this while staying in California, staying from staying home, because you know, I was working from home. I was like, this is the only way I think I would ever do my PhD. So I was super fortunate that I was able to stay home, keep running my business, which was a personal decision of mine. I like staying busy. I like having more going on. So yeah, I was running a full-time business while also pursuing my PhD at the same time, which was a little bit tricky when it came time for data collection. I won't lie. Especially because it was because of pandemic and other variables, I ended up moving quite far away from my satellite school while the ethics approval process was still happening. So by the time it was approved, I was living 80 miles away from campus.

**Dr. Gabrielle Lyon** (3:55)
So if you are doing a satellite program for PhD, and you did it in sports science, if we lay out the framework for the audience with bachelor's in biology, then you did a master's in psychology, which is kind of interesting, and then did a PhD in sports science. Okay. So take me through why psychology, and I do want to touch on, if you're open to it, a little bit of your struggles, and how you've helped.