Just One Thing

So this morning, as most mornings, I made my oatmeal as I drank my morning coffee. I LOVE my oatmeal with flax, raisins, cinnamon and agave nectar. Most mornings I am rushing to cook it and then eat it in a hurry as I head off to work. But Sundays, ah Sundays! Don’t ya love them? Slow prep, slow planning of the day, and relaxing music. And this morning the extra bonus of fresh snow to beautify the yard and give me permission to stay inside where it’s warm.

So, in my efforts to be more mindful when eating, I do my best to focus on the food I am eating by just EATING when I’m eating. Novel idea, eh? Well actually it seems to be novel in our life today. We drive while we eat, we watch TV while we eat, we read while we eat (especially if we eat out alone), we listen to music while we eat, we write lists while we eat, we text while we eat, and we surf the web or respond to email while we eat at our desks. All this activity during eating limits our awareness of what we are actually eating!

Somedays, like today I had difficulty putting down the pen, turning down the music, stopping my reading and getting off the computer long enough to eat my oatmeal with mindful attention. I had lots of scattered attention and rationales for why it made sense to eat NON-mindfully this AM. “Its just breakfast”, “I got get this done”, and as you’ve heard from me before, my perennial favorite “I don’t wanna!”.

And I did not succumb to the rationale that the texting teens in my groups use: “I can multi-task. I hear every word you say.” Said as they keep their fingers and minds focused on their text dialogue. Yes, they may be able to repeat the words I used (short term memory), but they cannot process the discussion at any deep level. They are not fully present in either activity.

When it comes to food and multi-tasking, awareness of the food we are eating usually takes a back seat to the other activity we are engaged in. Some of us may multi-task SO that we can binge or eat something that a part of us says, “Uh-uh! Stay away from that!”. Some of us multi-task while eating as a habit, a method to get more done in the time we have.

Either way, multi-tasking while eating is bad for your health.

You can eat too much: It takes about 20 minutes for our minds to get the signal that we are full. Eat without focus and you can really pack it in before you start to feel full. Which results in “packing it on” (pounds that is).

You can eat too fast: Digestion starts in the mouth with our saliva. For full digestion of the nutrients in our food we need to chew our food fully. Chewing fully also helps our body process the food for elimination. Eat too fast, your physical body misses out.

You can miss out on enjoyment of your food: Savoring the flavors, texture, smells and sights of food is part of the Joy of eating. When we focus on how the chocolate tastes and melts in our mouth, or how the hot soup feels as it moves past our tongue and down our throat, or the smells of banana bread sliced warm from the oven, we experience sensual pleasure. If we multi-task right through it, we miss all that.

So for today, I chose to do JUST ONE THING while I ate my morning oatmeal. JUST ONE THING – I ate my oatmeal with focus and intent. I noticed the way it looked and the way it felt in my mouth. I noticed how I felt as I started to feel full. I noticed how my coffee and oatmeal make a wonderful combination. I let impulses to jump up and do something else just flow on by.

JUST ONE THING can feel odd or uncomfortable when you give it a try. It may feel as though something is missing. You may feel a bit anxious without a split focus as you eat. It’s OK. Just re-focus on the food in front of you. Focus on the smells, textures, tastes and pleasure found in your food. As your mind wanders just gently bring your mind back to the present moment in which you are enjoying your meal.

JME Affirmation:

For today, I choose to do Just one Thing while I eat. I breathe out any anxiety I may feel as I choose to focus and be fully present as I eat. As I notice my reactions, I grow in understanding of my relationship to food.

Thanksgiving

Today is Thanksgiving Day! Thanks Giving Day! It seems that our focus is on the food, the feast and not so much on the giving of thanks on this day. Families (and especially the cook) plan and dream and prep and bake and steam and roast and serve gorgeous, wonderful food for us to celebrate with. In my family celebrations it is turkey, gravy with potatoes, cranberries and banana bread. Oh and don’t forget the green bean casserole, cheese, lime jello with pears, veggies, crescent rolls, bread and pie. Well and sometimes several pies with ice cream!

I heard the other day that the typical American Thanksgiving meal is 4500 calories! 4500 calories! That is almost 3 days worth of calories in one meal. Mindful eating can help us to enjoy the tasty treats without gorging ourselves. Mindfully we can choose to have small portions of the foods we truly love. We can choose to stand away from the nibbles before dinner. We can choose to have one desert, not three. AND we can choose to refocus on mindful, healthy eating once the meal is cleaned up and put away. We can remind ourselves that Thanksgiving dinner is one meal, not the beginning of a 4 week eating free-for-all until Christmas. And Black Friday does not have to be a day of mourning for your bulging belly but can be the day you return to focused mindful eating.

Thanksgiving does not have to be ALL about the food. We have family to celebrate! Be mindful of how important these people are in your life. Be kind, be generous, be loving throughout the day to the people who have been there for you always. My mother once told me, “Your family will never leave you” and in my life, she has been right. We stick together. We support, sometimes from afar, but support is always there. So for today, I will celebrate my family. I will pay close attention to their stories and jokes. I will be interested in their life’s adventures. I will be fully present with them during our celebration. I will shift my focus to my loved ones when the focus on food gets overwhelming. And I will breathe in deep the sense of gratitude I have for them in my life.

My Gratitude List for Today:

I am grateful for all the wonderful people in my life.

I am grateful for my work which gives meaning to my life.

I am grateful for the changing seasons which keep me aware that change is constant in life.

I am grateful for my physical body which continues to be resilient and strong.

I am grateful for the hundreds of people in my life who show me the way.

I am grateful for the bounty of healthy, delicious food available to me.

I am grateful for my warm and comfortable home.

I am grateful for my sweet dog Gracie who teaches me about exuberance.

I am grateful for breath, as it brings me back to the present moment.

I am grateful for each new day.

May your day be filled with family, friends, fun and frolic and oh, yea food.

JME Affirmation for the Day

I am grateful for my life – This Life. The more grateful I am, the more I experience health, wealth and prosperity. I am grateful and life is bountiful. 

Advertising’s Influence

I saw a film clip the other day in which Ralph Nader was asked “Where can we go to be free of advertising?” After a brief pause, he stumbled over his words and said “When you’re asleep!”.  Wow! Consider that the vast number of those ads are food or drink related ads. Estimate how many advertisements we see each day on television, in magazines and newspapers, in our mailbox, on the Internet, on the radio, on billboards and store signs related to food. It’s staggering! And our only break is when we are asleep. And in our country, this is even more of a challenge because we are sleep deprived. Ha!

Do you ever find yourself watching a TV program after you’ve finished a nice dinner and all of a sudden you think “Are there any of those cookies left?” or “Popcorn sure would be good”? Do you then hop up and search the cupboards for a treat even though you’ve just finished dinner? And if you’d stop to ask your stomach, you are actually FULL. Don’t despair – those thoughts pop up in most of us – especially when we are watching TV due to the advertising messages. TV ads are specifically designed to activate your senses. The ads reach us on an unconscious or semi-conscious level quickly bypassing our logical selves.

Some TV ads target our emotions. These ads show fun, family and especially childhood celebrations linked with food. Some ads target our ego showing how “sexy” or attractive we can be by drinking a certain liquor or grilling a certain food. Others target our desire to be in control by showing one succeeding in the “hunt” for food and being powerful winners. Other ads seek to access your memories of good times with food, such as Birthday celebrations, and Holiday feasts.

Forget the content and the story of the food commercials because they all have one goal – to get you to buy and eat more food! If we want to remain free of outside influences like multi-national food vendors, we need to be mindful of our impulses and our actions. We need to take back control of our minds.

Using mindful eating as a prevention tool to ward off cravings and binges the TV ads suggest that we engage in, takes practice.

Try this: When you sit down to watch a show, notice your level of hunger and rate it 1 to 10 (1 being stuffed to the gills and 10 being ravenous, hamster hungry. (One of my brothers once said he was so hungry he could eat a hamster! I know, YUCK!). Anyway!  Rate your hunger 1 to 10 as you sit down. If you are between 1 and 3 (stuffed to the gills), make a decision right then and there that you will not be having a snack while watching the TV show. And if you need a reminder, write the number down on a sheet of paper and set it next to you. When you feel the impulse to go check the cupboards or the fridge, just look at your Hunger number and reconsider.

If you rate yourself as a 4-6, which would be not hungry, then write that number down and note to yourself that you are not hungry. If you rate yourself as a 7 or above (moving toward hamster hungry), you did not just have dinner! And you should go eat a balanced meal before you sit down in front of the machine that is going to trigger all your cravings.

This week, as you find yourself settling-in to watch a favorite football game, show or movie, remember to engage your logical mind. Remember that you are in control of your appetite, not the TV advertisers. You can maintain control by being aware of whether or not you are hungry and making thoughtful decisions about what to do about it – get that snack from the fridge or choose hot tea to curb your craving or choose to just notice how cravings will pass if we don’t fuel them with food fantasies. Don’t let that TV screen push you around! Assert your independence!

JME Affirmation for the Day

I am free to choose healthy patterns for myself. As I listen to my body, I learn what my body needs to be healthy and whole. I am healthy, I am happy, I am whole. 

Using Food to Manage Mood

Food and feelings are closely intertwined. When are the times you over-eat or eat mindlessly? Generally these are times when you are feeling an emotion that you want to avoid or extend. Food, when used as a mood management tool, can miraculously make strong feelings disappear for a time.

Take boredom for example. Do you find yourself perusing the cupboards and hanging onto the wide-open fridge door looking for something to eat when you are feeling a restless sense of boredom? When you are watching bad, boring TV, do you find yourself thinking of and then hunting for some morsels of food that might make the sense of boredom (lack of excitement and interest) go away?

Consider sadness. When we experience the loss of a love to death or break-up, we reach for food. Our culture supports this with the ritual of providing food for the grieving family. This is a wonderful tradition and it’s very helpful as one deals with a great loss and may lose focus for a time in caring for oneself with meals. But if you struggle with emotional eating, you may carry this pattern of over-eating and binging to deal with the strong feelings of sadness on and on. This delays the normal working through of sadness and loss, and packs on the pounds.

Do you ever eat “at” someone? Sometimes when we are angry, we eat “at” the person we are angry with. Some of us rely on the hurried pace of locating the food, the chewing, and the gnashing of teeth to squash the feeling of rage down. Eating at someone never works, of course! We end up numb or at least the rage has simmered down to a bubbling resentment. The one thing anger needs is release - not at a person but a productive release of the energy of anger. When we eat our anger, we stuff the feelings and ourselves.

And when you feel your heart has been broken, is chocolate the answer? Well, maybe for a brief time, chocolate is soothing and feels like a comforting treat. But really, when our heart is broken, we need to grieve the loss, consider what we learned in the experience, and make sense of it over time. Eating away the hurt often leaves one with unresolved losses and greater self-loathing in the punishment the once-soothing food has become.

When you are anxious or fearful, do you turn to food to soothe your nerves? Does a cookie, or box of cookies, or a bag of chips calm you? Do you find that food distracts you from your concerns and thus provides some respite from the worry?

So, what can we do with these normal, common feelings if we choose to be more mindful? Mindful eating does not preclude that we’ll ever eat in boredom, or anger, or sadness. Mindful eating guides us gently to greater awareness and acceptance of feelings as normal, tolerable, passing states of experience rather then something intolerable that we need to run from and into food.

IF you’d like to practice mindful eating with emotions, try this:

The next time you feel bored, sad, angry, or anxious, feel it. Yep, just allow some time to FEEL the feelings. Examine the feeling. For example, What do I experience when I feel bored? Where do I feel it in my body? What am I saying to myself that makes this feeling more uncomfortable? If I allow the feeling, just the feeling, and not feed it with inflamed thoughts like “I am so bored.” “There is nothing to do.” “My life is so dull.”, what do I experience? How long does the feeling last? What might I like to do other than this activity? What is holding me back? Is my sense of boredom turning into another feeling like anxiety as I just allow and observe it? OK, then what does that feeling feel like in my body and mind?

This kind of mindful observation can interrupt the pattern of eating to avoid or squash down feelings. You may find after a few times through this process with feelings, you’ll learn about your pattern of using food to manage mood. And over time you’ll feel freer to allow a wide range of feelings, having learned that they are just feelings and will pass, like everything. Managing your mood by allowing your feelings rather than eating them away will result in a brighter mood, as your mind and body are not numbed out but free to experience the joy available in the present moment.

JME Affirmation for the Day

I accept my feelings as a natural part of life. I am safe. I am strong. I honor my feelings by allowing and examining them. As I honor my feelings, I grow in respect for myself and the power of my mind and body.

Dealing with Obsession

I recently had a birthday and birthdays mean cake, right? Cake, candles, singing – that’s what birthdays have been since I was little. I even have photos of me and birthday cakes in the high chair. And that’s a LONG time ago!


Well, possibly birthdays used to mean cake. As my birthday neared, I found myself in turmoil over flour, eggs and cheese – a bit crazy, eh? Since birthdays mean cake, I had to figure out how to have cake but still be mindful of my health. First, I went through bargaining. “Well, maybe I can have sugar one time for my birthday” “ I could get one piece of cake at a restaurant and share it with my dinner mates” Then I began plotting which kind of cake I’d get and where to get it. Obsession was setting in.  After writing out all my thinking and plans in an email to a friend, I realized this is CRAZY! For many, if not most folks, having a piece of cake for their birthday is just that. For me, it has the potential to turn into a downhill slide in to sugar again.

So, then I planned to make a sugar free (stevia based) cheesecake for my birthday. This way I could have a celebration cake still remain faithful to caring for myself by not eating sugar. This also started to get obsessive. Figuring out where to eat, with whom and how to take a homemade cheesecake into a restaurant was the next challenge. After I realized the best time for my family and friends to get together was Sunday brunch, I LET GO of the cake! Yes, it was grace, a gift – a huge birthday gift. I just Let Go of the need for a cake. Obsession lifted. My brother orchestrated a surprise fruit bowl “cake” with candles in it at the restaurant. A very sweet surprise! And I had no sugar hangover – Sweet!

Mindfulness saved me here.

Being aware of the twists and turns of obsessive thinking is central to mindful eating. Obsessive thinking is a habit, a compulsion, a reaction to external and internal stimuli. Obsession is characterized by relentless, looping patterns of thought. During an obsessive binge the object of your obsession becomes the seed around which behavior, thoughts, and reactions grow. Mindfulness helps one become aware of the patterns of thought and behavior arising from your unconscious desires.

So, how does one use mindfulness to Let Go of obsessive thinking? Start with becoming aware that you are caught in the loop of obsessive thinking. Notice that your mind has shifted into scheming and plotting how to get your obsessive prize.

Once you are aware of your thought pattern, assess the purpose or the underlying goal of your obsession. It is not the Cake! You may need to look closely through writing or meditation or talk with a trusted friend but I can almost guarantee you that your obsession is about something other than food. In the case of the birthday cake, my goal or desire was to experience a celebration and feel loved. My goal was to feel loved. Cake cannot love. People love.

And to Let Go – simply Re-Focus on your true goal. Re-focus, shift your gaze to the deeper desire. For me, it was to re-focus on my loved ones and a sense of celebration for living another year. I no longer feared lack of a cake because I was receiving my deeper desire – celebration and love.

Obsession with food can be a cover for many desires. Obsessive food episodes often cover fear. Fears about what people will think of you at the party, can spur binge eating to numb the fear. Fears about how well you’ll meet expectations of your partner, your teacher or your boss can also lead to binging to soothe the fear. When your underlying desire is for safety (or to relieve your fears), shifting your focus to your underlying need of being accepted, loved, or respected and OFF of the food, is the beginning of Letting Go of the obsession.

Awareness, Assessment, and Re-Focusing is a process that works for me to Let Go of obsession. When I find myself again caught in an obsessive loop, I can choose to breathe deeply and pause to ask the big question: “What is it I truly want?” and find greater peace in the knowledge.

JME Affirmation for the Day

I grow in awareness every day.  As I understand myself more, I grow in love and acceptance. I love, I am loving and I am loved.

Recipe for Non-Mindful Eating

There are five key steps in the process of Non-Mindful Eating. I unfortunately am proof that these steps work! If you carefully, or even lackadaisically follow these steps, you are certain to have a non-satisfying meal, pack on the pounds and get mired in depression!

1. Get too hungry. You can easily get this way if you skip breakfast, wait too long to eat or put yourself on some crazy restrictive diet. You may know this feeling – growling stomach, slight headache, maybe even slight weakness from drop in blood sugar. Even before you make it to the car to head home, you are developing food fantasies.

2. As you think about your next meal, focus on a trigger food. While trigger foods may differ for all of us, the result is the same – we go unconscious as we eat it, eat more of it than is reasonable, eat it too rapidly, and crave more the next day or next meal or next hour. Trigger foods for me include sweets of most any kind but candy in particular and potato chips and dip (YUCK! I know – how disgustingly perfect that combo is! – Salt and Fat). To become expert at Non-Mindful Eating, I need to keep these foods readily available.  

3. Make more food than you need. Last night in my Non-Mindful Eating activity, I made black bean nachos. Now, there is nothing really wrong with black bean nachos, even with light sour cream added.  My problem arose when I pulled out the round pizza pan I use to make them. Rather than make ½ the tray full, I very rapidly justified that I had not eaten enough lunch and it would even out. So, basically I made enough nachos for 2 dinner-size servings. I think I even thought for a moment, I’ll just put a half on a plate for my dinner. But instead, when they were bubbly, I took the whole pan and ate right off of it!

4. Sit in front of the TV while eating. Pull up your chair, your TV Tray (Why’d they invent those things?), or just bend over and eat off the coffee table or your lap. Scan the channels, using the remote of course to prevent burning calories. (Does anyone remember when we used to have to get up to change the channel?) You have two options here, you can scan through your entire meal or find a show that intrigues you but be sure to “Pay No attention to the woman eating” behind her curtain of non-mindfulness. Before you know it, the food will be gone and since you had little awareness that you were eating, you’ll find yourself craving more even though you just ate two meals worth!

5. Probably the most important step to Non-mindful Eating happens after you’ve eaten. To do a most excellent job of Non-Mindful Eating, you must get out the big baseball bat in the closet and bang yourself over the head with what a slothful, rotten, worthless human being you are since you ate this meal that way and Give Up! Decide right then and there that you’ll never get it right, you’re hopeless and OMG “What’s the Use?”. This final step assures that you’ll continue eating non-mindfully to cover the self-hate you are fueling. Non-Mindful Eating is very difficult to perfect, so you just have to keep trying!

WHEW! Are you bummed out enough in reading this? I am! And this is the process that I and so many of us emotional and binge eaters engage in over and over and over. So, What’s the antidote?

Recipe for Return to Mindful Eating:

1. Honesty. Be honest with yourself about what just happened and how you feel about it.

2. Plan to begin again. Better yet, just begin again now. Begin again to commit to Mindful Eating. Begin again eating mindfully aware of your process and the foods you eat.

3. Be kind and gentle with yourself. If you struggle with this, consider how a loving friend might respond to your faltering in your commitment. Or choose someone like the Dalai Lama or Jesus or Mother Teresa or another person who loves so well and ask “How would he/she respond?” Offer yourself this level of kindness as you continue on your path.

I recommend you use the Recipe for Non-Mindful Eating sparingly. There may be days or moments when these choices make sense but as a long term strategy they result in self-loathing and numbness. No Way to go through life! I recommend you honor yourself and your human-ness and return to mindful, supportive eating when you stray off course. That’s my plan for the day!

JME Affirmation for the Day:

Each day I begin anew with my commitment to eating mindfully and healthfully. Each day I grow in love and respect for myself. 

Letting Go

In your efforts to become more mindful about eating, are you surprised by how frequently you find yourself having just eaten something you did not plan to eat or eating more than you planned? Did you tell yourself “I will only have one piece of that Halloween candy” and then find yourself finishing off the fourth piece? Have you found yourself sitting down to dinner with a single serving sized bowl of pasta (2 oz.) with a plan to stop after that bowl? And then found yourself deep into a second bowl wondering, “How did I get here, again?”

This kind of unconscious response to urges can keep us stuck in a sense of powerlessness and loss of control over our eating. We can end up losing hope about our ability to change our behavior. I understand the sense of helplessness one can feel when they find themselves, once again eating more than they planned.

One way to help ourselves is to practice Letting Go. But what would we be letting go of in the case of mindless or binge eating? We let go of the automatic fulfillment of urges. We let go of unconscious, non-mindful eating. We become mindful, or aware of our thoughts. An urge starts with a physiological stimulus, e.g., a drop in blood sugar or salivary glands stimulated by the thought or sight of a food. And then, very, VERY rapidly the urge becomes a thought such as “I need’, “I want”, or “That would be good!”.

In mindful eating, we can increase awareness of our thought patterns. This begins with awareness of times you typically feel urges and tend to go unconscious and let them control you.  I am aware that urges readily arise for me when I am hungry in the grocery store, after an emotionally stressful event, and when there are sugary foods around. Once I know target situations, I can stay alert. Then I notice physiological responses. This takes time. If you have numbed your body’s normal reaction from too much binging, you may not notice reactions such as blood sugar changes or salivation as part of your eating process. And finally I note my thoughts. This is where I really have to stay alert! Cause the mind is a tricky tool!

Letting Go of the thoughts that lead to me binging such as “Just this once”, “It’s a special occasion”, “I deserve it”, and even the classic 5 year-old thought “But I waaaaant it!” results in a stronger sense of self respect and efficacy. Letting Go feels GOOD, once you get in the habit!

Here is a brief visualization you can use to let go of urges (thoughts) which could lead you to overeat:

Begin by taking 3 deep breaths to help yourself become present in your body. Then begin to see in your mind’s eye a bouquet of brightly colored balloons. See yourself select one, pick a special color. See yourself bringing the balloon closer. Begin to visualize the thoughts or phrases you are trying to release as words floating in your mind. Move the words in your mind into your balloon. As you do, notice the lightness you feel already.

Now take the balloon by the string into your left hand and walk the balloon away from where you are. See yourself walk away holding the balloon high. And when you are ready, release the balloon into the sky. Watch it begin to float away, watch it as it flies high over rooftops and buildings, notice as it get farther and farther way. Notice as it becomes a speck in the sky and Then *Ping* disappears!

Give this visualization a try when you are experiencing a persistent urge. Let it Go and feel freer to focus on the present people and activities in your life rather than food. And if you feel the urge to run after that balloon and refocus on that urge to overeat, just release it with your breath.  Just Let it Go, up, up and away!

JME Affirmation for the Day

I am free to choose the thoughts I think. I am free to choose the actions I take. I am grateful to be growing in  peace as I choose to let go of urges to overeat.