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.