Tapas - a state of mind

I’m not talking little plates of chorizo and olives, although they too are perfect for the mindful eater.

Tapas is also a Sanskrit term from the tradition of yoga, and it’s more of a personal observance, or positive activity .  Like any ancient - but still relevant - text, the writings that deal with the concept of tapas have been interpreted a million ways.

In the context of mindful eating I like the interpretation of tapas as the cleansing fire that is fed by the momentum of good habits.  The fire of my mindful eating practice dwindled to a few scattered glowing coals over the past several years.  I was surprised that happened, and I’m still not sure why it did.  I thought that, like the recent Australian bushfires, the power of my newly-sparked mindful eating practice of 2014 was so powerful nothing could extinguish it.

I think I’ve taken that metaphor far enough.  In the last 2 months I’ve been re-inspired in my mindful eating practice.  Once again, it’s developing a momentum that allows it to sustain itself.  The individual little habits I’m fostering again, like noticing hunger, putting down my fork between mouthfuls, eating only until I’m 2/3 full, and meditating regularly, are all supporting a very comfortable and natural mindful eating practice, and I feel good.  That’s tapas.

I’ve learned through experience that tapas doesn’t make my practice invincible.  Mindful eating is a way of life, not a willpower-driven diet, but even nourishing, rewarding ways of life fall by the wayside.  Why is that?  What are the individual choices that cause a practice to unravel?  That’s what I’m curious about right now.

Tapas is one of 10 guidelines for living that come from the teachings of yoga.  As part of my 2020 Depth Year commitment to myself, I intend to fully explore all 10 of these concepts in relation to mindful eating.  I’ve logged a lot of hours learning about these yogic principles, and yet in the past few years I’ve wondered “Where did my mindful eating practice go?  What can I do to get it started again?”  Like Dorothy, I had the answer with me all along – I just wasn’t ready to use it yet.

The Secret Sits

Sigh....this is not my sweetheart.

I just had a textbook demonstration of our collective mindlessness sucking the richness out of experience.  It was at a Royal Wood concert.  What?  You don’t know Royal Wood?  Well, as they say on the good ol’ CBC (which you obviously don’t listen to), your next favourite song is right here. Or here.

His voice is resonant as a cello.  His songs are Michael Ondaatje novels, or maybe Tom Thomson paintings.  His live shows are aesthetically satisfying in so very many ways.  You know that corny term “dreamboat”?  This is a man to whom you could apply that word without irony.  I mean, he closed his show with his own adaptation of my favourite Robert Frost poem.  Mercy.

Excuse me.  I’m getting carried away.

Anyway, there was this moment in the show.  The intimate little theatre was dark and still, with a single spotlight glowing on him. He was at the grand piano, carefully drawing the song to a close.  Before he could conclude the audience started in with the clapping.  It was so unsatisfying.  Even he seemed a little frustrated, like we cut him off before he got to his final point.

Wait for it.  This post actually relates to mindful eating.

This happens at movies too.  I didn’t mind people getting up before the credits of American Hustle at the multiplex, but when I’ve just had my mind blown in some moving or thought-provoking way at the local art-house theatre, I’d like to sit for a quiet moment before the lights come up.  Where’s everybody in a big hurry to get to?  It’s not like there’s going to be a traffic jam on the sidewalk as they walk home.

I’ve realized I do this same thing pretty much every time I eat - as do most people, I’ve observed.  Doesn’t matter if it’s a square of my new favourite mint dark chocolate, or a delicious (or mediocre) meal I’ve cooked.  Before I’ve finished chewing the last bite, I’m outta my chair and on to the next thing.  Filled my gut; time to hit something else on the to-do list.

Ridiculous, isn’t it?  So, my practice lately has been to try to notice the urge to wrap things up before the last bite has reached my belly, and to just PAUSE.

At the end of a yoga class we don’t put on our sneaks and scram.  We rest in corpse pose – sometimes for a long time.  And then we sit.  And then we chant Om.  There’s a reason for this.  Why not treat our meals with the same appreciation? 

Way back in the early days of my yoga life, I sometimes left the class before the final savasana.  Too busy to lay around doing nothing!  This was a lie, of course.  I was a grad student.  I had nothing to do but find ways to avoid finishing my thesis.  I really didn’t get the point of yoga back then.

I’m more aware now.  Taking a moment to appreciate my food with some gracious thoughts at the beginning of my meal still eludes me, but I can remember to rest in satiety after eating.  I used to be a premature clapper too.  But where’s the pleasure in that?

Sigh...THIS is my sweetheart.  Making me coffee in our outdoor kitchen.
That's way dreamier than playing the piano.

"Meditation" on a mug of hot chocolate

One of the participants in my online mindful eating course inspired me to try a fascinating exercise.  She described how she took a small plate of PC chocolate chip cookies (the drug of the nation*) and took the time to deliberately apply all that we've been learning in the course to eating them.  She ended up feeling full after only 2 cookies, and only ate a total of 4 cookies in the space of 40 minutes.  I was impressed.

I tried a similar approach with a cup of hot chocolate.  I had been thinking about having a hot chocolate all evening.  I do love a hot chocolate - as much as I love a chocolate chip cookie (or 100 chocolate chip cookies).  Hot chocolate can quickly transition from a rare treat to a can-a-week habit for me.

Here's what I did. I treated the mug and its contents as an object of meditation, much like you would use a candle, or a sound, or your breath. I even turned off the music, sat on my meditation cushion, and lit the candles on my little meditation table (Hey, I'm a yoga teacher.  Having such items hanging around the living room is part of the job description).

Much like any other meditation practice, a series of impressions floated in and out of my mind:

• The swirls of bubbles in the surface of the hot chocolate mirror those in the mug pottery.  I love this mug.  I'm so glad I bought one like it for my friend.  What's the name of this potter again? I better find out when the potter's guild sale is.  Oops.  Thinking.
• A sudden very strong and happy image of drinking cheap hot chocolate from a styrofoam cup while skating on the frozen lake in the centre of my hometown on a cold and bright blue day.
• The liquid is surprisingly viscous.  That might be gross.
• The heat coming from the mug is very pleasant on my hands.  Where should I place my hands for the optimal level of warmth?
• How come this is so ridiculously sweet?  Why have I never noticed that before?

Like any other meditation practice, I also got distracted and forgot what I was doing.  I stopped for a bit I took a bunch of blurry underexposed pictures of the mug.  I looked at all the little doodads on my meditation table.  I wrote this whole blog post in my head.  I wondered about the lady who shared the idea of this exercise with me.  I thought about going to bed.

Sometimes, on very special occasions, insight or inspiration may arise during meditation-like activities. Tonight was my lucky night!  I was able to detach myself from pure desire and all the other non-stomach forms of hunger for the hot chocolate.  It was very much like when you say your name, or any other word, out loud or in your head too many times.  It stops sounding like a word and you start to question whether it really is a real word, or your name.  (C'mon.  Every kid has done that at some point, haven't they?)  It's a disconcerting experience.  The mug of hot chocolate became a neutral object that I could observe with curiosity, but I lost my interest in ingesting it.  In fact, the thought of pouring it in my mouth and swallowing it seemed faintly absurd. 

Now kids, be careful if you try this at home.  This is not for the newbie mindful eater. I'd call this an intermediate level act of liberation.  Liberation it truly was though, because I usually down a cup of hot chocolate fast enough to poach my stomach lining.  Tonight it took me a good 20 minutes to drink 3/4 of it, and I let the rest go cold because I lost my interest in it.  That has NEVER happened in my entire life.  Doing this exercise with a bowl of canned fruit cocktail or "wax" beans or sardines with entrails intact would not be nearly as powerful, if you want to ease into it.

*Fans of Michael Franti should check out this thought-provoking video he made in the days before he did yoga and got all joyful.  Hmm.  I just realized this man has been influencing my thoughts since 1992...

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.

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?

Let your body do the shopping

Well.  THAT was interesting.

I just walked down to the neighbourhood deli to get something delicious and vegetabley for supper.  Disappointingly, they were out of brussels sprouts.  So I just started wandering around the store looking for something that appealed to me.  I ended up picking up some Bufala Maple Yogurt (no surprise there), a nice fresh store-made Greek salad (so lazy, but made sense), and a can of mackerel fillets (????).

 


You tempt me not. Tonight.

TRUE FACT: I even started down the aisle with the Coco Camino chocolate bars, but my body had no interest tonight (see, chocolate is NOT the boss of me).

Wandering around a grocery store to see what you are drawn towards is an actual mindful eating exercise, meant to help you tune into "cellular hunger".  This is not to be done on an empty stomach.  I spontaneously did the exercise in the store tonight, and I'm glad that I did.  I rarely buy fish, but I know it's good for me and I know Canadian mackerel is a sustainable seafood.  It was delicious on my salad.  My body is happy now.

Of course, I may also have been subconsciously influenced by *Michael Pollan's "In Defence of Food", which I just finished reading.  This is not a mindful eating book; it's an eater's manifesto.  Pollan's aim is to help people reclaim their health and happiness as eaters by exposing the aberration that is the Western diet, and by providing some simple guidelines on what and how to eat.  He champions real food (as opposed to engineered food-like substances, or fud as one of my clever friends calls it).  Like many mindful eating authors, he notes that when we eat real food and pay attention to our body's signals, we no longer crave crappy junk like no-fat instant pudding.  Instead we crave mackerel fillets and brussels sprouts while shunning the Panama extra dark.  It's almost like magic.  Except for the part where I have to remember to try to be mindful every day to actually reap the benefits.


Michael Pollan's "Eater's Manifesto"

*Michael Pollan is a super-smart contrarion.  Learn more about his books and other writings here.  If you haven't heard of him yet, you must not be a granola-type nerdy biologist who likes to garden.
 

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.

Mindfulness classic

I did an experiment.  You see, almost every mindfulness text ever written describes the classic raisin exercise, whereby one eats a single raisin as slowly as possible, taking time to hold each tiny raisin bite in one's mouth, noticing its flavour and texture, and swallowing only once that bite of raisin has been fully explored and appreciated.  The point is to reacquaint us with what it's like to fully experience the present moment.

The first time I tried this experiment I used an almond, because I thought keeping a raisin in my mouth for that long would make me gag.  A few weeks later I was at a yoga workshop and we did the exercise with an actual raisin.  I didn't gag.  Instead, I was surprised to be washed in feelings of happiness and well-being.  An image of the familiar red box of SunMaid raisins popped in my head, and I knew a dim memory of primary school lunches carefully packed by my mom was being lit up by one or two sparks along some long-abandoned neural pathway.

Observations from my short-lived* experiment:

• The first bite of a Christmas spiced pecan is satisfyingly crispy.  The second, third, and fourth bites are pretty much flavourless.  So I'm not sure what it is that entices me to eat the entire batch that I made for hostess gifts.
• Kimchi by the individual forkful = flavour extravaganza.  It's the video for Gangnam Style in one's mouth, and all the good parts are missed when one eats it straight out of the jar standing in front of the fridge.  I had never before fully registered all the facets of its complex medley of sourness, spicyness, and saltiness.  Who needs chips?  Not me.  And, I don't need more than three bites of kimchi when I take the time to actually taste it.  Good news, since the kind I like to buy is REALLY expensive. (I know, I should make my own. I'm a little nervous after some failed experiments with home-made ginger beer and fermented figs.)
• I don't actually like milk chocolate - not even the expensive kind.  Too cloying. 
• *Eating each bite mindfully gets boring really fast.  Hence the short-livedness of this experiment.

Oh, if you're wondering what the good part of the Gangnam Style video is, it's not the yoga part.  It's the part with Peter Mansbridge.

Speaking of classics (can Gangnam be considered a classic yet?  Or should we wait until 2014?), here's a video called Top Hat Classic.  It's totally unrelated to mindful eating.

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?

Rome wasn't built in a day...

...and dismantling a lifetime of food habits and hangups won't happen overnight, either.  A reassuring thought, no?  No need to beat myself up when I forget (every single day) to try to eat mindfully.  Baby steps are good enough for me. 

I started my new mindful eating approach by writing out some of the tips that I found most resonant, and keeping them in a jar on the kitchen counter.  Things like:

• slow down and enjoy
• is a cup of tea what you really want?
• let yourself experience emptiness
• fully love all treats

Here are a couple of practices I've been trying each time I eat (when I remember):

• Put down the fork or spoon between each bite 
• Pay attention to what your body, rather than your ingrained habit mind, is asking for

There are many, many, many, many mindful eating tips and practices.  Your habits, patterns, and deep dark food issues will determine which ones really click for you.  You might be surprised.  I certainly am each time I realize that I have the next forkful of food waiting at the door before I've even finished chewing, swallowing, and experiencing what's already in my mouth. I had no idea I was a shoveller.  I've also found it quite satisfying to listen to my biological hunger, rather than my craving/habit hunger.

Craving/habit hunger: It's Tuesday.  You know what that means.

Me: Tell me.

Craving/habit hunger: You should get a mocha latte.  You'll be going by the coffee shop.  You haven't had one since last Tuesday.  They're so delicious.

Me: Good idea!  I love that ritual. I think it makes me feel happy.

Biological hunger: Uh, not only am I not thirsty or in the mood for coffee, but how about some vegetables?  I need something green.

Me: Hey, GREAT idea!  You just saved me $5.35 (+ tip). Kale it is!

Craving/habit hunger: You haven't heard the last of me...<<sinister cackles>>