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.

Perspectives on eating, from afar

Nothing like travelling to somewhere completely different from home to shake up your perspective.  I just got back from Nicaragua, a country rich in sunshine, heat, colour, fresh food, and life, but not in $$$.  Now that I'm back home in snowy, grey, dull, produce-impoverished but ridiculously affluent Ontario, my trip photos remind me of views of food and eating from a new vantage point.

When I go to new places I love to try the unusual food that is endemic to that area. (Unless I'm in Oaxaca where the local speciality happens to be grasshoppers - then some primal part of my brain mutinies from the adventure.  Or I'm in a diner serving "chipped beef".  Never eat that.  Don't believe the smiling waitress with the warm southern drawl. You will definitely gag.)  In Matagalpa "steam-table" buffets were abundant, and Lonely Planet rated this place highly.  Although it may not be obvious from my plate of food, I wasn't that hungry.  So, I passed on several items on the buffet and chose only the most delicious-looking things.  Also, the portions the ladies scooped out were large, so I shared mine with my sweetheart.  Mindful!

Matagalpa is also well-known for its coffee. Although I had just had a cup of strong coffee at our hotel, and we were a bit rushed, AND I was already buzzing a little, I was determined to sit at a local cafe and enjoy a cup of coffee.  Because the guidebooks said I should.  The coffee was good, but I didn't actually want or need it and had to gulp it down kinda fast. Not mindful.


Everywhere we stayed offered a huge, protein-packed traditional breakfast - often eggs, salsa, fried plantains, rice and beans, and fruit or cheese (for which you shell out about 2 to 5 bucks).  These breakfasts would last us well into the afternoon, even after spending a morning in the ocean or hiking.  Since I've been back home I've tried beefing up my breakfast smoothies so that I can last longer until lunch - just like on our trip!  Except it's not working here.  Sitting at a desk thinking really hard must suck more energy out of me than paddling into waves for a couple of hours did.  Weird.

One night our hosts took us to a local home for a BBQ dinner.  They really talked it up: "The meat is super-fresh - the animals were killed yesterday!".  What an excellent endorsement.  If pigs in Canada lived like this one resting in its family's yard, I'd eat a lot more pork.  The BBQ was delicious. 



Many meals came with huge chunks of chewy salty cheese from these cows, which get herded along the roads between fields each day.  We saw a lot of calves nursing from their mothers - a sight not often seen on dairy farms in Ontario.  It was a treat to be so close to the source of our food.

When you see where food comes from, you may be less likely to waste it. Wasting includes consuming it when you don't really want or need it.  How many pots of coffee get poured down our gullets, or down the drain, every single day?  After my coffee gluttony in Matagalpa we stayed at La Sombra shade-grown coffee farm/ecolodge.  We saw toucans and sloths on these farms, which made me feel righteous for seeking out fair-trade organic coffee at home, like the kind they sell at Coffeeco here in Kingston. These families (including kids) work 9 or more hours a day, 6 days a week during the coffee harvest, picking and sorting the coffee. It's exhausting, sometimes dangerous work (on account of the venomous snakes that may be resting in the coffee shrubs), but these are considered to be good jobs.  The workers get 2 or 3 meals of rice and beans a day on the farm.  It is fascinating to learn about what my choices at home translate to many countries away.  I felt very very lucky to have been born in Canada.

Sugar-addiction is universal, and sugarcane is a major crop in Nicaragua.  Matagalpa was celebrating its anniversary and vendors everywhere sold fantastical sugary monstrosities.  And yet all the children we encountered were incredibly well-behaved, even on standing-room only 2 hour school-bus rides through the mountains...

I wonder who put a visit to the Cocoa Castle on the itinerary?  Two women work in this tiny factory to transform beans into bars for Nicaraguans to enjoy, adding only sugar and a bit of coffee and cashews for flavouring.  The chocolate is rich, with a grainy texture that comes from the way the beans are ground.  Its intensity makes it binge-proof.  I savoured my sample with a black coffee.  Clarification for the observant: Although I am wearing the same shirt in every picture, these were not all taken on the same day.  We like to travel light.  So I didn't buy a 1 kilo bar of their baking chocolate, since I didn't want my carry-on to be overweight.  Yes, we wouldn't want too much chocolate making our "carry-on" overweight, would we?

To be honest...

My sweetheart threatened to post the following comment on this blog:

"Liar, liar, liar!!"

I think it was when he discovered me helping myself to a second piece of chocolate birthday cake after he left the room.

My mindful eating practice has been...um...on hiatus for the past few weeks.  I've been busy and surrounded by yummy food.  Sugar's been weaseling its evil way back into my life (but thanks for all the cake everyone!)  My "grace" experiment didn't take root as I had hoped.  I kept forgetting until after the first few bites of food, and then I'd pause my chewing for a nanosecond or two to spare a token thought for the source of my food.

January is a month of resolutions.  Resolutions, like diets, don't work in my view.  Mindful eating is
about creating a lifestyle change, not blindly following external rules. It's about recognizing unhealthy habits, and gradually use attention and awareness to drop them.  Rewiring the brain, not overriding it.

All animals eat - it's one of the defining characteristics of animal life.  Humans, with our enormous problem-solving brains, have managed to turn an essential biological function into one full of hang-ups and issues.  I estimate I've eaten between 70,000 and 80,000 times in my life - maybe more if I counted every single little snack.  That's a lot of opportunities to reinforce habits and patterns.  So what makes me think I'm going to neutralize all that conditioning in less than a year?  I'm in for the long haul.

January hasn't been a total write-off.  I have a chair in my kitchen I've designated as the "treat chair".  When I'm going to have a treat or a snack, I've been trying to sit in the chair and just eat the snack.  It's surprising how quickly eating a treat can get boring.  I know I have an addictive personality (in that I am easily addicted to things, as opposed to people being unable to resist my charms...).  I can very easily slip into a habit of staying up until 1 am on a work night reading a novel or watching an entire season of a TV drama on DVD.  When I'm doing that, I am very focused on the book or on Dr. Greg House's caustic wit.  Not so with the treat chair.  After 5 minutes I'm ready to get up and do something else.  I'll take my victories where I can this month!

Die augen essen mit

I've mentioned my old university roomie German Nat before.  The one who would leave half a chocolate bar lying around.



How could I NOT enjoy this?

She also had a saying which roughly translates as: "the eyes eat too".  I have no idea what the context for her saying that could possibly have been since I recall a lot of lentils and rice getting eaten in our house, but that saying has stuck with me for 20 years.  I remember it when I am presented with an artfully arranged meal, like the slice of chocolate cake served on a Via train that's the banner at the top of this blog.  You can bet I ate that cake slowly and enjoyed every single bite.  I should mention that this particular piece of cake was enjoyed prior to my mindful eating days, so there is a possibility I was already quite full before I started eating it.  The point here is that it looked so nice I took my time to appreciate it instead of shovelling it down like a barbarian. 

What do you know?  Most mindful eating experts talk about die augen essen mit, although they might not use those words.  A good exercise is to prepare meals so that they are aesthetically pleasing on a nice plate, instead of standing at the fridge eating whatever it is right out of the jar.  Doing so nourishes us visually and physically - our brains get stimulated and satisfied more than one way.

A friend just sent me a flowering jasmine tea.  Another friend had given me a glass mug designed specifically for enjoying such a tea.  Having that tea reminded me of good ol' German Nat and her die augen essen mit.  Before my first sip of tea I watched this tight little owl pellet slowly unfurl into an enormous flower.  Then I watched its essence infiltrate the hot water as it "steeped".  Many minutes later it was actually cool enough to safely take a sip.  If only more of our food was like that - designed to be appreciated visually and enjoyed slowly. 

Coffee shops have it right - that little heart or leaf they draw in the foam of my mocha enhances my experience (and makes me feel like that was 4 bucks well-spent).  This perhaps may be going too far though:
this cafe will put your face on a latte...

Why?

Grace

I'm going to try another experiment (if I can remember), but I hope it actually becomes a way of life.

This latest experiment was inspired by a play I read about.  In it, a young woman dies.  In the afterlife she wishes for one more ordinary day on earth.  "I didn't realize", she confesses mournfully, "all that was going on and we never noticed...Good-bye, world...And food and coffee...and sleeping and waking up".  That line struck me - how lucky I am to be alive, AND healthy enough to eat, AND living in a country of such abundance.  Sometimes I forget.

Most mindful eating resources talk about the concept of saying some form of grace before a meal to recognize and show appreciation for all the energy that has gone into supporting you.  The best grace I ever heard was at a lovely hard-core hippie retreat centre in B.C.  This is it:

Yummmmmm  

Chanted in the style of "Om".  What made it awesome was the 5-year old girl who ate with us - she put such gusto into it!  Who can blame me for busting out laughing? (For a fascinating discussion of om click here. To hear om like you've never heard it before don't be shy - click here and skip to the 20 second mark).

Jan Chozen Bays suggests tracing your food back through all the steps and hands it passed through to get to your plate as a mindful eating exercise before you eat.  I did try that once - it took forever!  And I make my food from scratch with mostly local or basic ingredients.  What if you tried this exercise with a Big Mac?  The thing would congeal - but never, ever decay - before you finished your mental world tour of industrial "food" production.  (Aside: am I the only person who didn't know what the little white squares on a McD's hamburger were?)



Two things I'm grateful for; NOT two things I'm going to eat:
 my best buddy and a great garden harvest last summer

At the very least I can take a moment to acknowledge the origins of my food: to consider the people who worked to make it available; to appreciate the plants, soil, water, and sunshine that are the source of all food; and to respect the animals who died so I can nourish myself.  Most cultures have a tradition of doing this - there must be a reason.

I knew a wonderful person who died of bowel cancer much too young.  Not long before he died Tom and his wife invited me for supper.  I'm pretty sure we had pizza.  Tom explained that because of his cancer he HAD to eat doughy, low-fibre foods.  He had two wishes: to go for another paddle in his favourite provincial park with his friends, and to be able to eat a fresh-picked, crunchy apple.

How can I not take a moment to feel gratitude for life (and think of Tom) when I enjoy a beautiful apple from a local orchard?