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?

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.
 

It's not about weight - part 1

According to Weight Watchers this lovely
young lady is "overweight".  According to me
she is fit and healthy - check out the quads!

At some point last year I decided I was DONE with looking at this perfectly healthy, attractive, strong body and judging it negatively.   For 20+ years I've been trying to "manage" my weight so I could achieve an arbitrary ideal.  Funnily enough, I could never reach that ideal.  Every single day I'd look in the mirror or step on the scale and feel disappointed, frustrated, etc, etc, blah, blah, blah.

You know how the definition of insanity is "doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result"?

Mindful eating was my insanity antidote.  Rather, the books I've read on it were.  No more barrage of negative thoughts every morning.  My body tells me what it needs.  I make choices.  What I see is the outcome.  It's pretty simple.

I have a big birthday coming up this month.  Until recently I had a ridiculous goal: I wanted to weigh "1$0" pounds by the time I turned "$0" (I'm being cryptic - it's a riddle).  Thank you mindful eating gurus (I'm talking to you, Charles Eisenstein) for helping me ditch that goal!  I've weighed 1$0 pounds exactly thrice since I was 23 years old:


1. When I was in graduate school and walked one hour to get to school and home every day.  Oh, and I also swam, played squash (sure miss that free gym membership you get when you go to university), rollerbladed, and had no money for delicious things. 
2. When I had the Norwalk virus. 
3. In my early 30s when I was training for a triathlon.  The training didn't get me to 1$0 - a crazy cleanse during which I got so weak I couldn't even open the lid of my jar of meal replacement powder almost did.  I think I was "1$2" for a day - and then I started eating again. 

Not EXACTLY words to live by, but close...
maybe "Eat what your body needs or what you will fully enjoy..."

1$0 pounds is not a healthy goal for me, regardless of what Weight Watchers and all the BMI charts led me to believe.  I'm glad I finally realized and accepted that.  What a relief to not be stressing over that stupid number and wasting precious moments of my life not being grateful for the body I have.  I know it's not perfect.  I think I would feel better and be able to fit into more of my nice clothes if I lost another 5 or so pounds.  But the only way I'm going to get there (if at all) is by slow, deliberate, sustainable (and therefore permanent) lifestyle change. 

There may come a day when I know I am eating mindfully as consistently as possible, and I still don't fit into some of my pants.  I'm OK with that.  What a weight off my shoulders!

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.