A year of eating mindfully

Or at least, a year of THINKING about eating mindfully, and many days of actual mindful eating.

I started this blog just over a year ago as a way to motivate myself to eat mindfully more often.  Accountability through the creepiness of the internet.

As Jon Kabat Zinn, the grandmaster of modern mindfulness says, you've got to walk the walk.  You can't just agree with the principles, or read about it, or think about it.  Mindfulness is a way of being.  He admonishes: every time you think about talking about your mindfulness practice, shut up and DO it (I'm now about to ignore that great advice and continue writing this post).

Mindful eating is becoming a way of being for me. (Dear sweetheart: Yes, even that last long day on our recent roadtrip counts!  I was fully aware of how mindlessly I was eating ALL of the crappy weird American junk food and I consciously made that choice because I was being bored to death by the audiobook we were listening to.  I didn't actually mean it when I said it was your turn to choose.)

You mean nothing to me.  Today.

What really transformed mindful eating from a nice idea that I studied thoroughly to something that is part of my lifestyle was participating in the online course based on Jan Chozen Bays' work.  Having a supportive, if virtual, community to share experiences with and learn from created a quantum leap in my mindful eating practice.  So, I'm so excited to be launching my own mindful eating introductory course in my city, with real live people! (Send me a comment in the box below if you want to learn more.) I have some more blog posts simmering, but I'm going to be focusing on the course for the next few months.


There were recently 2 huge validations of the progress I've made on my mindful eating journey.  I'm sharing them so that you might be inspired on your path too.  

Huge Validation #1:

I read some of my earlier blog posts from a year ago.  There's no better evidence of your own transformation than seeing your thoughts in black and white.  That's why so many different kinds of programs advocate using a journal.  

Tip for you: If you're trying mindful eating, consider keeping some notes on your experience.  The "Before I Eat" mindful eating app is one handy way to do that.

Huge Validation #2:

I attend many meetings each year where meals are provided.  I just came home from yet another one, where the food was plentiful and quite tasty.  There were yummy desserts at every meal, and - get this - hot chocolate AND chocolate milk dispensers!  And, of course the best part was I didn't have to shop, cook, or do dishes.  

In such circumstances I used to struggle with the temptation to eat so much that I was uncomfortably full, to eat desserts every time they were available, and to drink chocolate beverages all day.  This time there was no struggle.  My body wanted to eat mostly fruit and veggies.  I didn't even think about the chocolate milk.  I quickly recognized that the hot chocolate was sub-par.  I chose to have 2 chocolate desserts over the course of a few days, and I thoroughly enjoyed them.  I was not a perfect mindful eater.  But, I was not a total mindless eater, either.  I'm talking sea-change here!  

Tip for you:  If you've been trying to eat mindfully and feel like you're not getting anywhere, try to notice if there are any specific habits, cravings, or ways of thinking that have changed for you.  Even if it's something simple like putting down your fork between bites.  That's a big deal!  You've changed a lifelong habit, and if you look at the people around you, you'll notice that you're having a regular moment of awareness while you eat that few others are experiencing.

3 more tips for you:

Be patient.  Try again.  ENJOY eating!

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.

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.

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?

One thing at a time

My sweetheart has a peculiar routine.

In the morning he makes a cup of coffee, and then he sits and drinks the coffee.  He doesn't read, he doesn't write lists, he doesn't listen to the radio, he doesn't chat, he doesn't do chores.  He just sits.

For the first few years that I observed this ritual I thought he was wasting precious time.  I couldn't understand how he could stand to just sit there, especially first thing in the morning. Once I actually manage to get out of bed, I am a morning person. I've got lots to say and lots to do during that first hour of being awake!



Me and my best buddy, enjoying a morning coffee.

This summer we were on a canoe trip, and I was torn, because I wanted to drink my coffee as soon as I got up (since it had been delivered to me in my sleeping bag), but I also wanted to meditate (since I was trying to develop a consistent meditation practice).  Oh, the dilemmas I face in my life!  Because I'd been learning about mindful eating I decided to give his approach a whirl.  I made the enjoying of the coffee my meditation.  I just sat and drank my coffee.

Jan Chozen Bays describes the perils of multi-tasking this way: "When we don't pay attention to our food and our body as we eat, we rob ourselves of the full experience, and therefore the full satisfaction, of eating."  For a newsletter from the Centre for Mindful Eating with tips on how to avoid multi-tasking while eating, click here. 

Taking time to enjoy something you're eating, without distraction, is a fundamental mindful eating habit.  Especially treats.  The other evening I encountered a tin of Quality Street chocolates that had been put out for Christmas.  I carefully chose one.  I almost unwrapped and ate it in the car on the way home...but I didn't.  I knew I wouldn't fully enjoy this special treat if I ate it in the car, in the dark.  I saved it until I got home, and ate it somewhat slowly.  Now, I did end up wishing I had chosen the dark chocolate orange one instead of the coconut one, but at least the experience wasn't totally wasted. 

I've come to realize that my sweetheart's routine is not peculiar at all.  It might even be brilliant.  It's definitely textbook mindful eating.  What IS peculiar - no, incomprensible - is the fact that if I'm not having a coffee too, he drinks cheap instant coffee.  I swear this man has a tastebud deficit.

Right Amount

Something highly unusual has happened.  I'll set the stage:

Every morning I have a smoothie for breakfast.  I'm a proud initiate of the Magic Bullet cult.

I love the creative ritual of assembling the ingredients* in the evening.  Then, in the morning, all I have to do is whiz it up and gulp it down!



from: http://eatingmindfully.com/

In the summer, I would sit on my deck and enjoy looking at my garden whilst gulping (slowly). With colder weather I've been sucking back my breakfast smoothie while getting dressed and blow-drying my hair.  I've been telling myself that it's OK to have breakfast in a non-mindful way because I'm on a timeline and I can eat supper mindfully later.

A few Saturdays ago it was warm enough to sit outside - a rare treat for late fall in Ontario.  So I decided to enjoy my smoothie while sitting on my deck and looking at bare soil and leaves I needed to rake.

That's when it happened.  About halfway through my regular smoothie, I noticed I was getting full.  This triggered an internal debate.  I knew, because of all my good mindful eating research, that I should stop and put the smoothie away.  But it was so yummy!  So I decided to have 3 more sips.  And then I put the rest in the fridge.  Baby steps to liberation - that's what I'm talking about.

Dr. Jan Chozen Bays is a Zen teacher, and a wise and engaging writer.  She describes the concept of  right amount in her book "Mindful Eating - A Guide to Rediscovering a Healthy and Joyful Relationship with Food".  She explains the connections to Buddhist teachings and Zen traditions, and teaches us how we can become familiar with what is "just enough".  There are many reasons why we keep eating after we've had just enough.  All of them constitute overeating.

Since I've learned about "right amount", I'm much more conscious of the physical cues that my body is sending to my brain, telling me that I'm starting to get full.  Seems like an obvious concept, but it's been quite surprising to find out how often I think about eating something when my belly is actually full.

*Coco's Breakfast Smoothie Ingredients*
I'm one of those people who is hungriest in the morning.  This usually lasts me until lunchtime.

The basics
- 1/4 cup of instant rolled oats, kamut or spelt flakes, or quick-cooking steel-cut oats (all these things need to soak - that's why you make it the night before)
- 1 tsp. raw cacao powder (forget Fry's processed cocoa - enjoy life AND actually get some of chocolate's benefits)
- about 1/2 cup of organic cow milk, sunflower milk, coconut milk, or quinoa milk
- about 1/3 cup of Ceres brand natural fruit juice
- about 1/2 cup kefir or local organic yoghurt
- 1 tsp. organic nut butter - sunflower or almond/cashew is nice

Embellishments
- a few drops of stevia and sometimes some local honey
- Floradix iron supplement (foul-tasting to me - hence the honey)
- hulled hemp seeds
- fresh or frozen fruit (I have a freezer full of organic strawberries I picked this summer!)
- beet seedlings (only during garden-thinning season, of course)

I should warn you: a friend tried this recipe and said it made her nauseous.  I have this every single day and I feel great.  Maybe she did something wrong?

Sometimes mindless eating is OK; judgment never is

A few days ago I travelled to a dreary town with no redeeming qualities* for a work meeting.  At the end of the meeting a colleague recommended we check out the baked treats at a local cafe on the way out of town.  "Their brownies are to die for!" she promised. 

Dreary town's redeeming feature.

What do you know?  This town now has a redeeming feature.  The cafe was charming, with friendly staff and a countertop full of fresh-baked treats.  The obscene brownies had a chocolate chip cookie base and a thick, dense brownie centre topped with a half-inch layer of icing.  They weighed about a pound each.  I requested the largest one.

"It's also important to understand that mindful eating includes mindless eating", Jan Chozen Bays says in her book (see side panel).  This is the first mindful eating book that I read, and that phrase was the one I remembered most often for the first few months of my attempt at mindful eating.  Funny how thinking "it's OK for me to eat this massive amount of food when I'm not hungry because I acknowledge that I am doing it mindlessly" didn't really change my eating patterns.

Back to today's brownie.

I may have mentioned before that chocolate is not the boss of me.  I may even have been a little righteous about that declaration.  So why did I buy that colossal brownie and then eat the whole thing in the span of 10 minutes in the car on the way home, while talking to my coworker AND driving?  Why did I make such a mindless -  and ultimately unsatisfying and slightly nauseating - choice? 

I wasn't actually having a chocolate craving, and I definitely wasn't hungry.  Our colleague planted a seed in my brain, and I let it take root and get watered by several factors.  I was tired.  It was the low point of the afternoon (2:45 pm - you kill me). I hadn't had a coffee all day.  I told myself this was my monthly over-the-top treat.

When Jan Chozen Bays talks about mindless eating, she's not talking about a Get Out of Jail Free card.  She's talking about the times when you choose to eat your food without fully appreciating it, for practical reasons.  Eating that brownie, at that time and in that way, was not the best choice I've made in the past few months, and I didn't have a good reason for making it.  But judging myself is not going to help; in fact, feeling guilty leads down a dangerous path.  For a moment in the store I worried that I would slip into my old daily cookie/chocolately treat habit, just because I was buying one brownie. Before I learned about mindful eating, that might have been true. 

Now I have more conscious control over my food choices.  I didn't fully enjoy that brownie, and I felt yukky after I ate it.  It's kind of like Pavlov's dog again, but in reverse.  When I have treats like that, I don't feel good afterwards.  When I take the time to enjoy each bite of a treat and stop when I've had enough, I feel good.  So, with this huge, complex, human brain that I've been training for years through yoga, meditation, and other means, I can make those connections each time.  And, I always have the option of making my next food choice a healthy, satisfying, and mindful one.  I love this quote from the Centre for Mindful Eating: "Remember that when you feed yourself, you are feeding your life.  Make wise choices so that you can grow into the person you were meant to be".

*I apologize for the hurt feelings of anyone who recognizes their town in this post.  I don't take back what I said though.  I have never come to your town without getting lost or feeling a derelict, gloomy vibe.  I do like the look of your downtown yoga studio.