This week we're talking about the fine art of being nourished. By that, we mean not just being adequately fed or fueled, but being amply supplied with all the subtle nutritive and sensory properties that our bodies and minds require for optimal function and satisfaction.

We look at the epidemic of chronic undernourishment — driven both by under- and over-feeding — and we explore the strategies that most reliably lead to a happy nutritional balance. Finally, we suggest some experiments to help you fine-tune your self-nourishing strategies in ways that work for you.

"Nourished" Episode Highlights

• The advantages of getting your nourishment from whole, unprocessed, nutrient-dense plants and animals vs. processed foods + nutritional supplements
• Moving beyond nutritional reductionism
• The common "overfed/undernourished" and "underfed/undernourished" phenomena associated with standard American diets
• Why "well-nourished and overfed" is not a common scenario (thanks to the leptin signaling and hunger/energy regulation of healthy systems)
• Effects of food choices in nourishing the body and brain
• Why a lean and muscular appearance doesn't necessarily signal vibrant health
• The key to moving from overfed/underfed to properly fed and nourished (it's not just a macronutrient problem)
• How low-nutrient, empty calories lead to the "always hungry" problem
• The role of the thyroid gland in regulating nourishment and body composition
• Why calorie-focused diets don't work for most people (and often compound the undernourishment problem)
• The process of getting to an optimally nourished state

Get full show notes at: http://livingexperiment.com/nourished/

This week on The Living Experiment, in what Dallas calls our "most terrifying episode" to date, we're talking about the qualities of masculinity and femininity. What does it mean to be masculine or feminine, and how do these traits both limit and empower us?

We wade into this delicate topic in an effort to explore the rich territory of gender-associated characteristics and the complex relationships between them. We share our own experiences with masculine/feminine dynamics and we offer you some trait-related experiments to help you explore them in your own life.

"Masculine and Feminine" Episode Highlights

• The nature of feminine (yin) and masculine (yang) traits, and how we experience them in ourselves and others
• How entrenched chauvinism has caused us to undervalue the feminine, and contributed to patriarchal societal imbalances that don't really serve any of us
• The complex spectrum of masculinity and femininity, and how to best honor the full range of these traits in ourselves and each other
• Our culture's approved gender-expressed roles — the competitive, conquering, producer-protector and the nurturing, sensitive, relational peacemaker — how we learn them, and how adhering to them too rigidly can limit our full expression
• One fun way that masculine and feminine energies can serve and balance each other — the honest expression and mutually satisfying fulfillment of feminine desire
• How stress interacts with masculine and feminine traits, and the health implications of that difference
• The value of exploring our assumptions and perceptions around gender-nuanced traits, and of perceiving our own preferred expressions of them

This Week's Experiments

Dallas suggests:
Find someone you trust and who knows you well, and offer them the opportunity to comment constructively on how you express both your masculine and feminine traits.

Pilar suggests:
Focus on two accomplishments in your life, and reflect on both the masculine and feminine characteristics that helped you achieve both goals.

Get full show notes at http://livingexperiment.com/masculinefeminine/

Busy is the new black — and none of us are wearing it well. We're all over-scheduled, under-rested, rushing and running on empty most of the time. It's costing us in ways most of us don't even recognize. So this week on The Living Experiment, we talk about the epic burdens of busyness, and how we can get out from under them. We offer suggestions for reclaiming your margins and for managing your energy (rather hyper-controlling every last minute of your time). And we suggest some experiments to help you restore spaciousness and sanity in your life.

"Busy" Episode Highlights

• The cult of "busy"
• The nature of the stress that busyness produces — and why, on some level, we like it
• How work hours have increased over the past 50 years
• Why most of our "leisure" activities aren't really helping us relax
• Our culture's glorification of the busy lifestyle, and the consumer machine that has us in its grip
• Dealing with the uncomfortable thoughts and feelings that arise when we aren't stimulated
• How to become comfortable with being idle
• Strategies for transitioning from being a "human doing" to a "human being"

This Week’s Experiments

Dallas suggests:
Read How to be Idle: A Loafer’s Manifesto by Tom Hodgkinson as a way of challenging your current patterns and assumptions around how you spend your time.

Pilar suggests:
Practice doing one thing and one thing only.  While you do it, notice what it feels like to have your attention on this one thing, and to allow your mind to wander. See if you can get comfortable just being with yourself for this brief moment.

• For example, instead of working or surfing social media while you eat your lunch, simply eat. For extra credit, put your utensils down between bites so you pace your bites and keep your attention on chewing and tasting, rather than wolfing down your food and rushing back to your work.
  

For full show notes visit http://livingexperiment.com/busy/

The start of a new year is a great time to re-evaluate and adjust the way you are spending your time and energy. So this week on The Living Experiment, we pull back the curtain on how we are doing that with one project in particular: the podcast itself.

As a way of modeling a reflective and strategic process you can use in your own life, we discuss our original goals and intentions in doing the show, where we feel like we're on course, and where we feel we're losing steam or burning valuable time and energy (mostly with the copious amounts of behind-the-scenes work).

We also invite input from you on our initial ideas for making pragmatic adjustments in ways that won't undermine the value of the podcast for us and our listeners.

"What Now?" Episode Highlights

• Dallas and Pilar share what's going on in their lives, the big changes they made in 2016, and what they're re-assessing (3:10)
• Reflections on creating and producing a podcast (7:55)
• Positive feedback from listeners that confirms the podcast is achieving its primary goal of helping people rethink their choices and improve their lives (11:30)
• What's been working, and what we feel needs to change to support a more sustainable process (don't worry, we're not quitting!) (13:15)
• The limitations of using social media for communication and promotion, and why we're dropping the podcast's Twitter feed at the very least (25:00)
• The hours that go into these show notes, and our desire to know if they are valuable to listeners (Let us know!) (33:50)
• Re-thinking the content of the weekly newsletter (42:15)
• Modeling the reflective process — scrutinizing goals and objectives and what you're doing to meet them, deciding what works and what doesn't, identifying options, and facing fear of change (45:55)
• The love for the work and fear of self-promotion that Dallas and Pilar share (50:10)
• Final thoughts on the importance of periodic reflection (56:05)
• Suggested experiments for the week (58:15)

This Week’s Experiments

Dallas suggests:

Think about a task or activity that isn't serving you, and swap it with something you've wanted to try or do more of. You may find that eliminating what isn't bringing value or satisfaction will free up the time, energy, or money you need to do sometime more rewarding.

Pilar suggests:

Pick one area of your life that feels overworked or an activity you’ve come to dread, and renegotiate the commitment. Give yourself permission to not do a thing you don't want to do, or do it in a way that is more enjoyable.

Bonus experiment:

Let us know what you think about our proposed changes to the podcast! We'd love to know if we talked about eliminating something that you find extremely valuable, if you think we're on the right track, or anything else you want to share.

Get complete show notes at http://livingexperiment.com/what-now/

For many of us, the New Year is a fresh start, an opportunity to get a new outlook on life. This week on The Living Experiment, we talk about the nature of the New Year experience, from the "New You!" media frenzy to the tradition of setting goals and resolutions, to the value of investigating the motivation behind those desires. We share our favorite approaches for pursuing change in our own lives, and explore expert theories about why your goals may be eluding you.

"New Year" Episode Highlights

• The New Year holiday as the caboose on the Thanksgiving-to-Christmas marketing train (2:10)
• Arguments against January 1 as a hard date for making big changes (4:00)
• Pilar's Goal Flower model for setting and achieving goals (7:10)
• Accomplishing less instead of more (10:30)
• Why uncovering the belief systems that are holding you back may be more effective than simply addressing surface problems like excess weight, disorganization, and debt (12:15)
• Dallas's approach to goal setting (and the holidays) (13:30)
• Making resolutions when you're ready and in your own way, instead of when and how the calendar or culture says you should (16:40)
• The shared energy of forming new habits with everyone else in January (or any other time), and the value of using camaraderie to launch into autonomy (20:15)
• Creating sustainable change and escaping commercially-driven cycles (23:15)
• The Prochaska Transtheoretical Model of change (25:15)
• Dallas's insights on self-sabotage, and Pilar's thoughts on our inherent "immunity to change" (28:30)
• Making small transformations on the road to accomplishing larger goals and avoiding self-sabotage (34:10)
• The difference between building sustainable change and making cyclical changes to break up an unsustainable lifestyle (38:15)
• The right and wrong motivations for modifying behaviors – love vs. fear (40:05)
• The power of conscious language (42:30)
• How to embrace the opportunity of the New Year to achieve what you really want (44:45)
• Acknowledging universal obstacles to change (48:50)
• Suggested experiments for the week (55:25)

This Week’s Experiments

Dallas suggests:

Look at the changes you want to make for 2017, and articulate the motivation behind them.

• Ask yourself: Am I doing this out of fear or out of love?
• Replace a behavior that has typically been fear-based with one done out of love. It doesn't have to be a different behavior; it may be the same action, but with a different motivation in play.

Pilar suggests:

1) Make an Immunity Map following the steps in the Experience Life article, "How to Overcome Immunity to Change".

2) Create a Goal Flower using the "Cultivate Your Goals" section of Pilar's "Refine Your Life" workbook.

Get full show notes at http://livingexperiment.com/new-year/