It's not about weight - part 2

Don't judge my posture - I'm not
focused because I am in paradise.
Go ahead and judge my bathing suit
though - it totally deserves it.

But it kind of is. 

You see, while we were in Nicaragua last winter we spent several days at Rise Up Surf Camp, with really fit people in revealing bathing suits.  I was not a member of The Beautiful Bikini Body Club.  I had my own very exclusive club - the I Just Turned 40 So I Thought I Should Buy a Modest Two-Piece At Walmart For This Trip Club.

I had no choice but to face my feelings about my weight head-on.  I was happy I hadn't tried to willpower myself into reaching some arbitrary number before the trip.   I was not happy knowing that I was not at my healthiest or most comfortable weight.  But "I was what I was", as everyone loves to say.  So I accepted that as best I could.  My sweetheart could give a more honest appraisal of how well I did at that.

The mindful eating resources that I like (for example, this one) speak directly to weight loss, and how you shouldn't get all hung up about it.  One practitioner advocates a "weight-neutral" approach.  This concept appeals to me, but I keep stepping on the scale to see if my mindful eating practice is "working".

Now, 6 months after I started writing this post, I FINALLY get it!  Mindful eating is really just about developing a truly healthy relationship with food.  Like, say, eating something nourishing to your body and soul when you are hungry, and not eating when you are not physically hungry.  You know, obvious stuff like that, that's much easier to read about than to do.  

Weight management has so much baggage wrapped up in it - physiology, genetics, cooking habits, lifestyle, unrealistic expectations, etc. etc. etc.  Mindful eating deals with the fundamentals - what you put in your mouth, and how much you enjoy that.  

In my field of work there's a lot of talk of the 3-legged stool of sustainability.  Without one of the legs your stool just becomes a tripping hazard.  The 3-legged stool of a healthy and happy body (for me), is mindful eating, healthy food habits (like making lunch the night before and having a fridge well-stocked with vegetables), and adequate physical activity.  Mindful eating on its own probably won't have a major effect on what my body looks like, and that's fine.  But I can't make positive changes to my physical health without mindful eating.  

Uh-oh - now I have one of my least favourite Michael Jackson's songs trying to sneak into my head...

Who's hungry for...a cookie?

I once had a friend who had a sign that said "Who's hungry?" on her fridge.  I didn't understand the sign at that time, but we are exploring this very question in my online mindful eating course.  Now I get it.

The question "Who's hungry in there?" is a way to assess the "8 hungers".  We recently did this as an exercise for my course.  Before eating something, we do a little check-in to see which of the 8 hungers is compelling us to eat.

I shall use the perennial T!m H0rt0n's* Smile Cookie to demonstrate.  Every September, I am delighted to discover that grody ol' Timmy's has launched its smile cookie fund-raising campaign.  The staff wear smiley cookie T-shirts, and there are big smile cookie decals on all the store windows.  Even though I don't usually go to Tim's I can't miss this very special week, since Tim's is omnipresent.

Here we go then - the 8 Hungers and How They Convinced Me To Buy a Smile Cookie

Eye hunger:  This actually doesn't even look very good.  It looks like all the food from Tim's - pre-fab.  I can almost see the signature bitter chemical aftertaste.  Plus they make these things smaller and smaller each year and that bugs me.  But the sticker on the take-out bag is quite attractive.

Nose hunger:  While Timmy's smells somewhat alluring when I bike by each day on my way to work, this item reeks of food-like substance

Ear hunger:  Nothing.  Different story if we were talking about a handful of M&M's that you crack between your back teeth, one by one, snapping the candy coating off in big chunks...

Mouth hunger:  As always, the mouth is "an insatiable cavern of desire" (Jan Chozen Bays' words, not mine, but so so true), and can't wait to enjoy that perfect combination of chewiness and subtle crispiness.  Better living through chemistry is right - I've baked a thousand cookies in my lifetime and I've never replicated those textures consistently.

Stomach hunger:  I just had lunch not so long ago.  I actually don't need any food.  My belly is quite content as is.

Cellular hunger: I could use some caffeine to get me through the afternoon.  Sugar is not required.  (Luckily cookies go so very well with coffee).

Heart hunger:  I feel happy when I see the smile cookie propaganda because it happens every September and I love September.  I also recollect that the first year I got hooked on these I was spending a lot of time at one of my favourite places.

Mind hunger:  I don't need this.  It's OK that I have this because this is my tradition.  I'm going to have one smile cookie each day this week and then they're gone until next year.  I will not have 2 smile cookies a day like I have in previous years.  What am I doing?  I'm taking a mindful eating course so buying a smile cookie is a good practice.  I'm kidding myself.  I don't care. I want a smile cookie!

*******

What do you know?  Miracle of miracles!  After doing this exercise, I lost all interest in the smile cookie.  I finally realized that they USED to be delicious when they first came out over a decade ago.  Back in those glorious days they were enormous, and tasted like a human may have been involved in their manufacture.  Those days are gone, gone, gone, and I was just eating them out of a craving habit.

I tried this exercise before eating a small, beautiful supper with produce from my garden one night.  It wasn't so illuminating that time.  Basically I was hungry and it was a nice meal that also looked pretty and made me feel righteous.  The power of this exercise is doing it when you're eating something you know is somewhat iffy.

The most fascinating part of this exercise, aside from realizing that smile cookies actually are kinda gross (you were right, RT), is that so many of my fellow course participants noticed that their stomachs were full before their eyes, mouth, or heart was.  And, most of us discovered that it took much less food than we thought to make us full.  

Only cellular and stomach hunger need to be nourished by food.  The rest can be nourished in other ways (as in Die Augen Essen Mit).  If you want to feel content in life and eat an appropriate amount of food, learn to distinguish the 8 hungers and act accordingly.  Simple?  Nope, not at all.

*Names of implicated fast food chains have been changed to avoid litigation.

You know where it's easy to eat mindfully? France.

The scent wafting from this picturesque
bakery each morning was truly satisfying.

And that's because when one is in France one is on holiday (not in front of a computer or in a car), one does not have access to one's own kitchen, one is happy and well-rested, and one is surrounded by a cornucopia of beauty for the eyes, ears, nose, AND mouth.

Beautiful AND delicious.

I seriously did eat somewhat mindfully on my trip to Provence and Paris this summer.  I told myself before the trip that I wasn't going to limit myself or worry about gaining weight or avoiding sugar or caffeine or anything - no rules.  As Dr. Jan Chozen Bays says in my online mindful eating course, in North America we try to solve problems by attacking or incarcerating them.  I didn't want to take any of that North American messed up nonsense on my trip of a lifetime.  I wanted to experience the French paradox fully.  In France they don't do coffee to go.  In Canada, our biggest cultural icon is a chain that has taken over the country and people's common sense with its bitter, scalding coffee to go.  Vive la difference.

Before.

Now, I did clean my plate and even have seconds at most meals, but I savoured every single bite thoroughly.  I ate slowly and enjoyed the smell of the food, its presentation, the wonderful combinations of flavours and textures, and the company I was with.

My most interesting observation during my trip: I had NO afternoon chocolate cravings (despite what you might assume based on the accompanying photo), or sugar cravings for that matter, at all.  Every guide to Paris goes on and on about chocolate and macaroons.  Neither called to me, as I was not interested in eating between meals.  I even got sick of cheese, meat, and bread by the end.  I did not get sick of the wine.

During.

I felt pretty pleased with my approach when listening to the ladies I was travelling with talk about food and eating.  Many of these ladies were a decade or more older than me, and vibrant and healthy, and yet they were STILL concerned about their waistlines. Do I need to say that they did not clean their plates?  They even mentioned the c-word - calories.  My god, I thought, I DO NOT want to be running that same old tiresome soundtrack through my brain 5 years from now, let alone 15 or 25 years from now.  I figured I would never eat food this delicious again for a long time, and it was prepared with great care, so I should just enjoy eating it (all of it).

After. I alone cleaned my plate,
and I don't regret it!

Of course, continuing to eat when I'm quite full is not the epitome of mindful eating.  But at least it was a choice I made consciously (I hope our chef appreciated it!).  I did not let all my hang-ups about food follow me to France.  I ate a lot, but I didn't do it out of compulsion, or boredom, or tiredness, or any of the other reasons that I usually have for eating when not hungry at home.  


Vive la liberation?

Memories of...100 cookies

Whether or not chocolate is the boss of me is debatable.  Chocolate chip COOKIES, however, are undoubtedly the boss of me.  They are my kryptonite.  Therefore, I have avoided them almost completely for the past year.

On the eve of launching into my mindful eating online course, I had a chocolate chip cookie disaster.  My last chocolate chip cookie disaster is known as The Time I Ate 100 Cookies.  It was a few years ago now, but was so epic that my sweetheart and I still refer to it when I am teetering on the brink of a mindless eating maelstrom.  My most recent CCCD (chocolate chip cookie disaster) was almost as grisly. I think that sharing it may help me process and move past it.

There happened to be a bag of President's Choice "The Decadent" Chocolate Chip cookies in our office this week.  If you live in Canada, you know these cookies well - President's Choice brand's flagship product. The brilliant, sinister marketers at PC brand use them to advertise insurance and mortgages, for the love of pete.  I don't even like packaged cookies, but I love these.  I have never bought a bag of them for myself as an adult because I know I can't control myself.  It is rather suspicious, don't you think, that they have not disclosed the narcotic substances that the cookies must be laced with in the list of ingredients?

So anyway, I thought maybe I'd just have 2 as a mid-morning snack, while I continued working on the computer.  Poof.  Gone. Surprise!  OK, maybe just one more.  Wait, where did that go?

I continued like this for a few hours, with furtive trips into the common area where the bag of cookies lurked, before a brilliant insight came to me: 

No matter how many of these cookies I eat, I will never feel satisfied, so I might as well stop now.

How righteous I felt!  I made it through the rest of the day, triumphant at 4:45.  I think a sympathetic colleague hid them, just to be safe.  One of the first mindless eating episodes that's cemented in my memory is a bag of these same damn cookies in our family pantry, and me tiptoeing down the hallway instead of concentrating on algebra homework in my bedroom.  25 years later and I may have actually tamed this salty, slightly chewy, and maximally chocolatey beast.

The next morning at home I consciously acknowledged that the bag of cookies would be at work when I arrived there, and that I had a choice.  I decided that I would not eat any of the cookies, since I had had so many the day before and was not that satisfied by them.

At 10 am I revised my decision based on new information (I was hungry and had packed a disappointing lunch).  I decided that 2 cookies, eaten very consciously with my cup of tea for maximum appreciation and satisfaction, was acceptable and prudent.

Let's skip past the graphic and disturbing details that followed.  An hour later the bag of cookies was empty and I felt really gross.  The end. 

A disturbing scene.

The tiny monster within

At home on a lovely summer evening it's easy to overhear what is happening in the backyards around me. The following exchange between my neighbours and their daughter H was quite hilarious to me, until I recognized myself in it.  I should mention that H is a sweet and cheery 2 year old.  Oh, and I don't have kids, so I'm free to laugh at this sort of thing.

Neighbours: OK H, come and get your ice cream.
H: Yayyy!!!  Ice cream!!!
(footsteps running)
H: Yum!
(spoons clinking on bowls)
H: More ice cream?
Neighbours: No, that's enough H.
H: More ice cream!!
Neighbours: No.  We can have more tomorrow.
H: MOOORRRRE!!!!
(screaming, crying, and doors closing)

These neighbours of mine appear to be conscious of their food choices and the way they raise their daughter, judging from their lush veggie garden and her tasteful outfits.  And yet, the tiny mindless eating monster lurks within her...

Beware.

A few weeks later I experienced an equally hilarious, if more disturbing, demonstration of the tiny monster within at No Frills.  A sinister marketing expert had placed bags of massive candy-coloured marshmallows in the bin in front of the checkout, right at kid eye-height.  These things were as big as kittens, and just as alluring to anyone under 10 years old.

Beware.

The first drama happened right in front of me.  A man and his two kids were loading their groceries onto the checkout when his daughter spotted the marshmallows. "Daddy, can we have those?"  He answered in the negative, of course.  "Pleeeeeaassssse???"  The daddy stayed strong.  That's when things got ugly.  The little girl before me transformed into a 3 foot, 50 pound, punching machine, throttling her dad over and over for the marshmallows.

The next unsuspecting parents got it even worse.  A similar dialogue occurred between them and their son (who had a mohawk and was actually named "Cowboy").  When Cowboy didn't get his way with the marshmallows, he launched into a full-on wobbler, his screams and cries ricocheting off the industrial walls of No Frills.

Beware.

After a summer dominated by apathy towards mindful eating, I'm now trying to face that tiny monster within.  I'm being re-inspired by the people around me, a fancy new phone app, and an online course, but I've still got that insidious voice inside me that is convinced I will die if I don't have something sweet in the middle of the afternoon.  The voice that thinks I deserve a treat because I'm going to be stuck in a car for a few hours.  

The easy route, as anyone who has dealt with a tantrum knows, is to give in to that tiny monster, just to SHUT IT UP.  And, as everyone knows, that is a short-term solution, because the monster will come back, louder and even more insistent than the day before.

When you know better, you do better

Crickets chirping.

Pins dropping.

Church mice not squeaking.

Suspicious silence on the mindful eating front occurring.

There are many good reasons why I haven't written a post in over a month.  Chiefly, mindful eating is challenging!  Furthermore, food is so yummy/comforting/distracting!  And, eating is so ritualized and habit-forming! Let's not forget, sitting at a desk or in a car is so boring and tiring - eating fixes that!  Also, I'm going to France soon and have been spending ALL of my spare time trying to navigate the high-speed train website.

This is a lifelong practice folks - it's gonna wax and wane.  I'm not going to flagellate myself over my tenuous mindful eating commitment the past few months.  Instead, I've been asking myself "what are the things that are getting in the way of my mindful eating practice?" with genuine curiousity.

Here's one: I've been choosing food items that are just too darn hard to enjoy mindfully, especially when I am travelling and famished.  Upon recognizing and accepting that it is physically impossible for me not to drink an entire litre of chocolate milk in 2 sittings or less (and that its deliciousness really is because it's full of sugar, not because it's a nutritional powerhouse), I made a better choice recently.  Even though many new and alluring varieties of chocolate milk were ON SALE last week, I did not buy any.  I did stand in front of the shelf for a good 5 minutes thinking about it though.  This was a victory of conscious decision-making, not willpower.

What would you do????

With the knowledge that I get ridiculously hungry in the afternoon when I'm travelling, which I do a lot at this time of year, I can also come up with a list of more appropriate snacks to take with me, instead of stopping at every country corner store on the backroads of eastern Ontario.  Mindful eating saves money, but hurts small business.

Sometimes when you know better you do better (thank you mom and Maya Angelou).  Sometimes you know better, but you do whatever you want anyway.  But without knowing, understanding, and recognizing the challenges, there's not much chance of making better choices, now is there?  So, let's just say these past few months I've been putting a lot of effort into fully exploring my mindful eating challenges.  And now I can do better.  Maybe even in France - we'll see.

Shamrock Shake-Up

I do love a Shamrock Shake.  You know, from McDisgusting's.  They are so minty and sweet and creamy and refreshing.  And chemically.  And sweet.

Although my mindful eating practice has been a little lacklustre lately, I am proud I have resisted the lure of the Shamrock Shake for 2014.  Instead, I was inspired to try "mindful substitution", as Dr. Jan Chozen Bays calls it.

You see, we can't deny the fact that we have cravings.  "It does no good to stifle them; they just go underground where they can cause mischief.  It does no good to indulge them; they just gain strength", Dr. Bays says.  Instead, we can recognize them for what they are, understand where they came from or what they are signalling to us, and mindfully deal with them in a variety of ways.  One of these methods is mindful substitution.

My shamrock shake craving was purely a product of highly effective marketing by a massive corporation.  And of high school years spent in a small northern Ontario town with absolutely nothing going on in March.  After my friends and I were done checking out the SAAN store and BiWay (that's the proto-dollar store for you young folk) at our infamous mall, we'd walk down the highway to McD's for a Shamrock Shake - the highlight of our weekend.  No wonder that 20+ years later a glimpse of a green billboard can short-circuit my rational brain.  The seasonal orange-flavoured McDonald's shake doesn't have the same grip - probably because it came out in the summer when we were at the beach instead. 

I really really did not want to get sucked into buying a Shamrock Shake this year.  The last time I had one I was in the US, where, to my total disgust, they topped the thing off with whipped topping and a maraschino.  I scraped that garbage off, but I still ended up with a sad belly full of toxic cement.  As one generally does when one eats at McD's.  Those were the dark, pre-mindful eating days of early 2013.

And yet, let's not kid ourselves - when the thought of a Shamrock Shake has taken hold of one's mind, is a nice cup of mint tea really going to cut it?  No, it's not, for this fledgling mindful eater.

As I've mentioned before I like to be creative in the kitchen.  So I thought if I brewed some really strong mint tea and froze it into ice cubes, and then blended that with almond milk, a bit of maple syrup, a banana, and half an avocado, I'd have my own McMindful Shake.

I give the McMindful Shake top points for texture, healthiness, and minty-ness, and for satisfying the Shamrock Shake urge.  It left no odd oily post-shake mouth-feeling, and it did not punish my belly.  I did not gulp it down in one long slurp.  I had lots of time to anticipate its deliciousness since the mint cubes needed to freeze solid.  It definitely lost points in the flavour department though - a little too much avocado, a regrettable lack of vanilla.  You can be the judge of the visual appeal.  Regardless, it was pretty yummy, and my Shamrock Shake inklings have dissolved. 

So, on a mindful substitution success scale, it gets an 8.  Not bad!

March 2015 Update: Mindful eating success!  The Shamrock Shake has no appeal to me whatsoever this year!!  I crave it not.  I even sort of talked a friend into trying one today (it's OK - she's one of those "intuitive eaters").  I went into McDonald's with her, saw the marketing, saw her shake, and...nothing.  It didn't even register in the deep brain recesses where cravings are spawned.