If you think your workout will make you lose weight, will it be more effective? Can one milkshake make you hungry or full based on what you're told?

#124 is all about mindset and specifically how what we believe about our workouts and diets can actually have a biological effect on our bodies.

Rod reads crap motivational Instagram posts and gets angry about 20 years old giving him life coaching. Do you find poorly translated quotes written on a stock photo of a mountain inspiring?

We're joined by special guest Dr Isi Okolo, a Paul Farmer Global Surgery Research Fellow at the Program in Global Surgery and Social Change (PGSSC), and master of public health candidate at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. She is also an obstetrics & gynaecology senior resident in the National Health Service in Scotland...and she's married to Rod, continuing our streak of guests who just happen to be friends/family.
Born and raised in Nigeria, Dr Isi explains how the phrase "Nigerians don't come last" has influenced her work ethic and intrinsic motivation.

Can a high achieving mindset ever be a negative?

Is there such a thing as "toxic positivity"?

Is there anything you can "Keep calm and" do, that you can't get on a poster or fridge magnet? We troll through eBay for answers.

Get in touch via Instagram; @JustTheFitnessTip @JasonProUnicyclist @RodPenn

Just The Fitness Tip, Edinburgh's no.1 health and fitness podcast with Jason Auld and Rod Penn.

“The total effect of anything is a combined product of what you’re doing and what you think about what you’re doing.” - Dr Alia Crum.

Today's episode is inspired by the work of Dr Alia Crum, we look into her studies including how hotel housekeepers lost weight by just believing their work was exercise and her popular milkshake experiment; where participants actually produced more or less ghrelin (a hormone secreted in the gut. People in the medical profession call it the hunger hormone. When ghrelin levels in the stomach rise, that signals the brain that it's time to seek out food.) based on what they believed they were consuming rather than the actual nutritional value of what they consumed.

Dr Crum hypothesises, the effect of food consumption on ghrelin may be psychologically mediated, and mindset meaningfully affects physiological responses to food.