DAY 5

Day 5 Thursday, December 16, 2010

If I could describe in one word: ease.  Last night I went to bed almost sick of food.  I really didn’t even want to think about food anymore.  I don’t know if that has ever happened to me.  Today, though, there is just an ease with food.  Through breakfast, lunch and dinner I just sit down, eat, then I stop when it is time.  It’s that simple.  I might have gone a bite or two over at dinner, but there was still plenty of food left on my plate.  I still find it harder to eat consciously on weekdays.  Lunch being the hardest-since it is at my desk.  Even breakfast is hard to slow down as I’m getting ready for the day.  Dinner, I definitely developed the most presence.  I taste the squash soup; I feel how I have to press down with my spoon at little harder when it touches the soup; I see the reflections of the light in the soup.  I taste and enjoy the fat of the cheese as I eat it.  I stop leaving 1/3 of the soup and some bread and cheese.  The bread I throw out & the cheese and soup go back in the frig.  I’m going to have to start cutting my recipes in half.

I’ve been debating the concept of eating emotionally.  The problem isn’t that we eat emotionally: it is that the emotions we experience with food are all negative.  Let me know if you have even experienced: guilt, deprivation, lust, desire, disgust, anxiety, stress, isolation, compulsion, even elitism, or self righteousness?  The first seven are self explanatory in our culture.  The last two are what you experience when you eliminate that evil food group and are now superior to others still eating: sugar, gluten, dairy.   The emotions are all negative.  What about joy, satisfaction, connectedness, self awareness, pleasure, comfort, peace, ease?  Food is all of the things.  When you allow yourself to experience these emotions while you are eating, all the other negative feelings fall to the sidelines.  There is no need for deprivation, because you eat when you are hungry.  There is no need for guilt because you should eat when you are hungry.   There’s no lust because there is no deprivation.  When you eat for pleasure, joy and satisfaction there is no stress and anxiety.  You don’t have to worry about how to lose weight, be healthy, when to eat, how much to eat.  Your body tells you.  Your body is an amazingly complex organism: more complex than the science behind it.  It knows exactly what & how much to eat.  All we have to do is listen.  It doesn’t worry so much whether the calories are from carbohydrates, fat or protein; it can convert them all into glucose.  It can tell you how much to eat, and if you really listen, what to eat.

I get my vegetables from the farmer’s market so I eat them in season.  It has been an interesting process.  In the summer in Texas it is too hot for lettuce, so I don’t eat it.  Instead I eat tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers & tomatoes.  I went this entire summer without missing lettuce at all.  Then, one day it hit me.  I wanted green leafy vegetables-badly.  The next day I went to the farmer’s market, & there they were, waiting for me to eat them.  I became a lettuce glutton for the next few weeks.  Eating them at almost every meal.   During the winter, when most of the vegetables are root vegetables, I love sauerkraut.  I have it everyday.  Then, when to

the summer comes & all the cucumbers and tomatoes come back into season, I barely eat any sauerkraut at all.   My point is that our bodies are in lined with the earth.  I believe that human beings are supposed to eat seasonally.  We are supposed to eat certain foods when it is hot, and others when it is cold.  The first winter that I ate seasonally I really wanted a tomato.  The second, I didn’t miss it at all.  All the soups that can be made with root vegetables and sauerkraut with my meat satisfy me.  I don’t need the fresh tomatoes.

Here is another thing that happens when you eat seasonally.  Absence makes the heart go founder.  I remember living up in Boston when the cucumbers came in season.  I was so excited.  I called up my mom and said, “Mom, Guess what! The cucumbers are in season!”  My mom, with a condescending tone said, “That’s . . .  great . . .  Carrie.”  Most people don’t get too excited about cucumbers, but when you go without, you learn to appreciate it when it is available.  Suddenly, fruits and vegetables become comfort foods.  You associate asparagus with Easter, strawberries with fourth of July, sweet potatoes with Thanksgiving.  Everything has its season.  When you eat in season, your experience with food becomes more gratifying, because you know it won’t always be there.  The thing is though, once it is gone, there is something new to eat, when the tomatoes fade away, the squash comes in.  When the squash fades, in comes the carrots and parsnips and celery root.  When those fade, in comes the asparagus and artichokes.  Most people don’t get too excited about parsnips and celery root.  Those people, though, have never turned them into soups.  I love cooking soups and making broths in the winter.  They usually have to cook for several hours, or even days.  The heat from the stove keeps me warm, & I can often turn of the heat & rely solely on the stove for my heat.  Not to mention-they are delicious!

The same way that paying attention to the seasons can tell us what to eat, paying attention to our bodies can tell us how much to eat.  Just as the earth already knows what we should be eating, our bodies know how much we should be eating.  The paradox is that letting go of control of our food is the only way to truly control it.  It was only after I let my body, not my brain dictate how much I eat, that I was able to control what I ate.  It was only after I let the earth decide what I eat, that I was able to find joy and pleasure in what I was eating.  

Day 4

Day 4- Wednesday, December 15. 2010

If I could some up today’s experience with food in one word it would be disinterest.  I’m not sure why.  This is particularly uncharacteristic of me.  This is the girl whose first word was cracker.  I always have to have some belief system about food.  In order to prevent myself from eating so much of it, instead I look up recipes, look at it at the farmer’s market, cook it-anything but eat it.  That is, of course, until I do eat it-where I go out of control.  Today though: no interest. 

It is possible the disinterest occurred because food & I got off to a bad start this morning.  It did, after all, catch on fire in my oven this morning, forcing me to break out the fire extinguisher.  This left a nice film of dust all over my kitchen, rending me breakfastless & late for work.  I do not function without breakfast.  Granted, if I had been smart, I would have just put a pot over the fire, but this did not occur to me until halfway through the day.  Anyways, I stopped at Panera for a latte (yes the one I made was ruined by the dust too) & an asiago bagel breakfast sandwich.  I ate it on the way to work – attempting presence with little success.  Eating in the car was a big breach of my contract with myself-but necessary given the circumstances.  I spent about an hour after I got home cleaning my kitchen & living room of the dust.

At lunch, I started with dessert.  I had some more of the dark chocolate, then one bite of the chocolate rum cake everyone was obsessing over.   Let me repeat this statement;  I ate ONE bite of the chocolate rum cake.  I do not think I have ever eaten one bite of anything with sugar in it in my ENTIRE LIFE.  The craziest part about it was that I didn’t even realize that this event was significant until my car ride home.  So not only did I only eat a bite-just to see what it tasted like- but I had so little craving for more afterwards that it didn’t occur to me that one bite was impressive.  All my life I have been jealous of girls who have a little bit of dessert then put it down.  Now, I AM that girl-it’s sort of a lot of pressure-I don’t know quite how to process it.

I eat the rest of my lunch-the left over lamb from yesterday & a piece of spouted bread.  I still have hunger but just don’t feel like eating.  Who is this person?  There was a little bit of temptation to eat the cornucopia of Christmas junk food in the coffee room that afternoon-mostly due to the fact that it is easier to prepare than the other food I have, & I did still have hunger.  I settle though, for my  macaroons and go the rest of the day with a little bit of hunger.  I should specify that these are the world’s healthiest macaroons.  They are raw, made of coconut, coconut oil, agave, and a few other ingredients.  There are 5 grams of sugar for a serving of two-which is what I ate.  This is less sugar than what is in most fruits.   I end up stopping at Chipolte for dinner on the justification that I won’t be able to cook or eat in my dirty kitchen.  I get the usual & a Shiner & eat it there.  I still seem distracted during dinner, though I enjoy the beer.  Thinking a little about whether I’m still hungry,  I reach a point where I just stop.  Then something miraculous happens.  I throw the rest away.  I throw food out all the time.  Cooking in bulk, the food I make usually doesn’t freeze well, so I have to eat it all in a week.  Often, I end up getting bored with it by the end of the week & eat out instead.  Then, I threw the rest away on the weekend.   For some reason, usually when food is on my plate, I can’t throw it out.  Tonight, though, I threw it out- I didn’t take it home for later-it wasn’t enough for a meal.  I threw it away.  I apologize for anyone offended by my wastefulness-I feel a little bit guilty myself (as I usually at least compost it).  This event, though, was significant on a symbolic level.  I was able to let go of my food.  Like a hoarder justifies the mess in their house with the waste of throwing it away, I justify eating or even saving food that I’m not hungry for as a waste of food.   I hoard food.  Throwing it in the trash was my way of releasing my obsession with food.

I also have been hoarding the definition of fullness.  Trying to understand it.  Thinking about it really hard so I would know just when I was no longer hungry-trying to have control over it.  The point of not having hunger, cannot be analyzed, it cannot be controlled.  You recognize the time to stop by letting go.  There is a feeling to it-but the more you try to find it, the less you feel it.  The point of no longer having hunger is like riding a bike, just hop on and you go; analyze your pattern & fall over.  It’s like when you hold something slippery in your hands and the harder you try to grasp it the more it falls out of your hands.  It isn’t until you relax your grasp that you can hold it.  We all have the ability to know when to stop eating.  It is hardwired within us.  We just need to let it be to find it.  Our culture creates an unnecessarily complex relationship with food.  We are shown commercials to make us crave it then made to feel guilty when we eat it.  We go nutrient by nutrient, trying to understand it.  We grab onto food trying to analyze to maximize our health.  Yet since we have started this campaign for health, out incidence of obesity and heart disease has sky rocketed.  We’ve been trying to control our food, shout nutrients in take out others.  Yet we remain fat.  It isn’t until we release food, let it BE food, instead of nutrients, that it can nurture us.  Until we release our control over food, it will control us: How much we eat, what we eat, how often we eat.

Jessica Prentice describes in Full Moon feast her determination to stop her obsession with food like this:

Did I ever develop a system? No.   Did I ever move beyond my preoccupation with food? No.  But that wasn’t what I really wanted, even at nineteen.  I just wanted to stop suffering in my relationship with food.  And that indeed happened.  I finally just stopped fighting food and dived into it headlong . . . It has opened me to a world of politics, of history, of art, of pleasure, of anger, of grief, of faith-all the profound things I thought food was keeping me from.  It has helped me to feel God’s healing presence in my life, and taught me how to be vulnerable, how to love, and how to let go.

It seems a little too good to be true that letting go is all there is to have a healthy relationship with food.  That being a little more present and stopping a little bit sooner is all it takes to stop cravings and addictions.  Is this really a sustainable method?  Is it really this easy?  Have I been over thinking this whole eating thing?  Have we all been over thinking it?  Only time will tell.  I will let you know in two years if I can still throw my food away, when I no longer have hunger.

Day 3

Day 3- Tuesday, November 14, 2010

I eat breakfast after yoga today.  I have to go out for it because I no longer have milk, but I eat it at home.  It is enjoyable –I stop when it feels right to stop, put the rest in my lunch-I still can’t throw food out.  Lunch is only like three hours later, so I really am not very hungry.  But it is the only break I get until 4:30-so I eat.  I eat about half of my meal before giving up: I have no hunger.   I finish with something a little lighter-some dark chocolate in the big pile of junk food in the kitchen.  Dark chocolate-the one thing I can eat.  I nibble on about three small bites, then do some paper work.

Not all that hungry come 4:30.  People, however, have been raving about the peanut butter snacks-so I try one.  They are pretty easy to stay present for because they taste so good..  I eat one & finish treating my patients.   By the time I get home, it is 7:30 & I hungry is present.   I mean, hunger is present.  For dinner I finish my Greek food leftovers: dolma, tabouli, and lentil soup.  I am pretty much able to eat all of this while still having hunger.  When I finish, though, I feel satisfied & stop.  By the end of the day, I feel relaxed, at least in relationship to food.

Today, my relationship with food is less stressful than on Monday.  It helped that I didn’t go through the long stage of hunger I experienced on Monday.  Also, though, I didn’t over think it as much.  My stomach felt full on Monday because I ate dense food-yet it was so little food that I wasn’t satisfied & fifteen minutes later I was hungry again.  Often, I want to eat something even though I am not hungry.  I feel guilty afterwards.  So upon embarking on this journey, I had thought if my stomach wasn’t empty- I wasn’t hungry.  All other eating was “emotional” & unnecessary.  This theory, though, is too simple.  Your mind has a complex system involved in communicating whether or not you are hungry-there are multiple ways to hungry-some more well justified than others.  Though my stomach was full, I had not consumed enough calories.  Today did not seem so difficult-I don’t know why.   I haven’t quite figured out what the difference is between true hunger and being eating out of stress, boredom, or the fact there is still food on the plate.  It is hard to tell during the meal.  Thirty minutes later, though, I always know.  If I ate too little-I’m agitated, too much-lethargic, just right- I feel . . . well . . . just right: the food volume version of the three little bears.

Day 2

Day 2 November 13, 2010

First work day-this will be much harder than the weekend.  Okay, breakfast was awesome: huevos rancheros & a latte-as I will have for breakfast pretty much every day this week.  I added an extra egg since one egg did not quite fill me up yesterday, & it is a long time until lunch.  I ate a little past when I was no longer hungry, but not quite when I was full.  This is okay since lunch in six hours away.  I try to finish the latte-but can’t justify it.  So I take it to work with me & have it around 10:00.   I also have my macaroons half an hour before lunch due to starvation. I eat lunch; unfortunately at my desk since there isn’t really a lunch table. I clear off the work though & focus just on eating & conversation with co-workers.  Being conscious of eating is much more difficult with all the people walking by & stopping to talk.  I also have some candy that a patient’s mom gave each of us as a Christmas present, not to mention the ten different desserts and snacks in the coffee room.  I eat my lamb & sweet potatoes, then later snack on a chocolate covered almond-which made me more hungry-so I had my tangerine. 

It is much more difficult to determine when I no longer have hunger at work-I find myself feeling full- after two bites-but then hungry ten minutes later.  I was full after two bites of sauerkraut  but then hungry ten minutes later.  I had a bar on my way to the Round Rock office- I didn’t eat it in the car-I ate it on my way to the car.  I was still hungry after I ate it.  So here is my dilemma.  I am a pediatric physical therapist, which means I schedule appointments with each child for half an hour to an hour.  I do not get a snack break like most people do, so there is never a time to sit down & have my snack.  Yet I did not have hunger after eating all of my lunch.  So, how do I stop eating when I no longer have hunger at lunch, yet manage to not be starving all afternoon?  I don’t think it helps that my job is so active & requires so much activity & sometimes heavy lifting.   My stomach tells me when I have eaten enough for someone who hasn’t been working all day, so I am hungry an hour later, & there is barely enough time to scarf down a snack – let alone be present during it.

Lunch also felt very distorted for me.  It isn’t like when you eat dinner with friends or family at a dinner table or at a restaurant.  People were coming and going, chatting with me.  Going back and forth from their work to socialization.  It was disconnecting, distorted.  I realized that it never really did feel like lunch.  I did a decent job of focusing on the meal through all of this; however, I never really felt satisfied by the end of the meal.  The microwaved meal out of the pyrex container is not that much more satisfying than a tv dinner.  I may need to break down tomorrow & eat at the small table in the coffee room. People still come & go & there is a lot of microwaving.  But at least there is usually one or two sitting there.

I eat my open-faced mushroom gravy sandwich again for dinner.  I eat it.  My stomach feels full after about three bites.  I agonize over whether or not I really am full.  I walk away for a little while.  I don’t know for sure whether or not I have hunger, but I am definitely NOT SATISFIED.  I take some bread and some cheese, sit back down, take two deep breaths & eat it.  I find comfort & satisfaction.  Our society says that I should not have found comfort, satisfaction in food.  It  says that food is a form of nutrition & should be viewed as nothing more:  I was eating emotionally and not for nutritional value.  I should have dealt with the emotion instead of turning to food for the answer.  I disagree.  I had been hungry ALL DAY.  That is why I was stressed.  My over analysis of whether or not I had hunger caused the stress.  It wasn’t until I exhaled & enjoyed my meal & did not freak out about whether or not I had hunger that I found satisfaction.  Instead of stressing over food, I enjoyed it.  I wasn’t quite full-but I was satisfied.

Day 1

Day 1, November 12, 2010 (Sunday)

I wake up hungry & make my traditional morning latte.  I sit down on the couch and drink it.  I enjoy it & also wake up a little.  Drinking a warm beverage is probably one of the easiest times for me to be present-I already do it most of the time.  The only thing easier is probably a good beer or glass of wine.  Next, I make huevos rancheros.  I sit down at the table to enjoy my breakfast & half way through realize I have not been paying any attention to what I am eating at all.  I refocus & for the most part am able to concentrate on what I am eating.  I am still a little hungry, I mean, hunger is still a little present, but I feel satisfied enough to continue with my day.  Later, I snack on a tangerine (I love the local food in Austin!). 

I didn’t eat quite enough at breakfast, & have an early lunch to make up for it: spinach miso soup, bread with butter, & two slices of cheese.  As I work my way through I start to realize the hunger is leaving.  Is it gone? Not quite.  I still have a lot of food on my plate.  I can’t just throw it out.  I can’t just put it back in the frig.  There are children in Africa starving.  Despite the fact that my mom never actually used this phrase, the American clean your plate culture has still penetrated me, & I can’t just stop eating when there is food on my plate.  I sit back & pause.  Yes, I can just put this food back in the frig-it will be okay.  “As for the children in Africa, you developing coronary heart disease is not going to help them”, I tell myself.  Okay-there is still a little hunger present.  I finish the broth & put the remaining cheese & bread back in the frig.  I guess it can be done.

I am at the store later that day & realize how good it feels to just not have hunger versus being full.  I don’t know how to describe it, but there is something freeing about the experience, I feel & am a little lighter.  I am somehow less tempted, less addicted to food, simply by stopping eating when I no longer have hunger for one day.  All those diets where I gave up carbs or sugar or fat for three weeks to get rid of my addiction were not as affective as one meal of stopping a little bit sooner.

The bar of chocolate I bought has been tempting me all weekend.  I put it off until I have hunger again.  Okay-finally I eat it.  I sit down on the couch to focus solely on the chocolate.  Half way through, though, I realize . . .  I have been thinking about taxes.  TAXES!!  I have been thinking about the chocolate all weekend.  Wanting it, trying to justify eating it.   It is my favorite food & something I spend a lot of time thinking about.  I finally get around to EATING it & what to I think about-TAXES!  Why is it so hard to think about the thing I am actually doing!?!

Let’s take a little detour to understand how frustrating this is for me.  After switching to skim milk at the age of 7 & being on every diet under the sun before finishing college.  I finally settled on an eating philosophy that gets at the heart of my & I imagine many other American’s problem with food.  Our culture tells us we are fat because we eat emotionally.  I get want they mean-why else did I want the chocolate when I wasn’t even hungry?  But I would almost argue the opposite.  That we do not eat emotionally enough.  Every ancient culture had a significant  emotional relationship with their food.   They named their moons around it, the developed their religions based on when food was harvested, the grew it, they processed it, they cooked it, and they ate it all themselves.  They were connected with the entire process intimately.  When it was harvested, they gathered together to celebrate.  Food connected people to each other, to God, to themselves.  It was an integral part of their lives & because they were so connected with the process, they knew that their lives were dependent on it. 

We, on the other hand, buy the boxes of –what some might call-food at the store; stick them in the microwave, then eat in front of the TV, in the car (20% of the time), or at our desks.  It is ultimately unsatisfying-so, we eat more.  I am convinced that we need food to provide joy and happiness and connection in our lives.  I am convinced that American’s relationship with our food is shallow.  We don’t have a real relationship with it, so with keep shoving it down hoping for satisfaction the same way a sex addict misses the intellectual, spiritual and emotional relationship with his partner for a one dimensional sexual relationship.  This is why I garden, go to the farmer’s market, volunteer on the farm, spend hours a week cooking.  It is so my relationship with food would not be shallow.  The presence I have while chopping up herbs, simmering wine with onions, oil and garlic, planting some seeds, or digging into the earth is, however, all diminished by the fact that while I am eating- I am thinking about . . . taxes.  This is depressing . . . or enlightening.  Guess I’ll get some enlightenment after all.

After having another snack of the bread from lunch that I put back it the frig, I feel a little better about the starving children in Africa.  Next, I cook dinner.  I had already made the cranberry sauce earlier that day; now I needed the open-faced mushroom gravy sandwich with tempeh and maple-roasted carrots.  I cook it up & put it on my plate.  I realize I put a lot of food on my plate.   If lunch had been any lesson, I wouldn’t be able to eat it all.  But I really wanted to at least get through the carrots.  So I finished them up first.  I realize sooner that I am not really focusing on what I am eating- which is sad because this food tastes AMAZING!  I slow down, pay attention not just to the taste, but the smell, how it looks on my fork, the reflection of the light on my fork.  There is still some play back and forth between focus and distraction, but the meal is enjoyable.  I find myself at peace while eating it.  Near the end, I am not quite sure when to stop.  I feel full, but wouldn’t quite say I do not have hunger- I have a little hunger-one more bite. Putting the dishes away I realize-I probably did not have hunger before that last bite- I feel a little past full and on the continuum towards stuffed-oops.  I still ate less then I would have otherwise.

It is amazing how hard it was to stop eating this meal.  I did not have hunger.  I put the food away from lunch & world continued to revolve around its axes; yet, again, it was hard to stop at dinner.  What do I think will happen if I simply put the food back in the frig.  Granted, this meal will not recover as leftovers as well as lunch.  Does that really justify ignoring the cues from my body saying enough is enough? Why does a plate have more say over what I eat then my stomach?  I have for the last few years based what I chose to eat based on what my body tells me to eat.  I am convinced that it is not nutritionists, the latest diet fade, and certainly not the USDA that knows what I should eat.  I am convinced that my body knows best what and how much I should eat.  Yet, I am so tempted to let an innate object such as a plate, determine when to put down another innate object: the fork.

It takes 40 days to change a habit; or so I’ve been told.  So I am embarking on a journey.  The goal, is, in all honesty, to lose 15 pounds.  I like to pretend it is some nobler goal: health, self awareness, enlightenment.  But honestly, it’s to lose weight.  I could do this by cutting out the new bad food group of the month (I think right now it is carbs or sugar or omega 6’s or something).  Except,  I’ve already tried it & though temporary weight loss occurs-it always comes back.  Besides, I already  don’t eat meat if I don’t know where it comes from: limiting my choices at restaurants enough as it is.

So, already giving up meat at restaurants decreases my options of food groups to give up; carbs, even just refined carbs, would leave me with no options at a restaurant; dairy or eggs would be pretty much impossible.  I would not be able to eat out for forty days, limited my ability to socialize.  Socialization has been an important part of eating in almost every culture, & I am not willing to give it up.  Besides, giving up a food group is not the issue.  If you look at indigenous cultures around the world, you find a huge variety of carb/fat/protein ratios without the ill health effects-or tight jeans.  From people to who eat mostly corn & beans in the Americas, to a high protein diet in Africa, to an 80% fat diet from seal blubber in Greenland.  Yet none of these people suffer from chronic health diseases of the western diet.  It appears the Western diet is the only diet that people should not eat.  So giving up some category of food does not appear to be the answer.

So, what habit am I changing:  The habit has two parts:

1)   I cannot take a bit of food without being present with food while I eat it.

2)   I must stop eating when I no longer have hunger.

This phrase, “when I no longer have hunger”, was the phrase given at the Michael Pollan lecture I attended two days ago.  It is used by the French to determine the when to stop eating.  The phrase has two parts for me.  The first is that instead of being hungry, the French have hunger.  This objectifies hunger and gives the person power over the hunger.  When a person is hungry, it is all consuming, it controls you.  When you have hunger, it separates you from the hunger & allows you to control it.  This is also how you describe hunger in Spanish: Yo tengo hambre.  ( I have hunger).  Not Yo estoy hambre. (I am hungry).  There is a form of yoga called yoga nidra that involves a variety of meditation techniques.  One of these techniques involves taking a feeling, emotion, or thought that you have and changing it from “I am______ “to “ _____is present”.  This separates you from anything you are feeling: pain, cold, anger, fear, even happiness.  You can now control it. 

The second part of the phrase is that you are not full, but no longer have hunger.  What’s the difference?  It is day one for me & I already suspect about 100-200 calories per meal.   Being full is quite different from not being hungry (or having hunger).  It requires much more awareness an attention to (or presence in) the eating process.  I cannot describe it, & it does take some experimentation; but it is definitely before I am full and even sooner than when I am stuffed.

The motivation for this journey a the Michael Pollan lecture I attended last Friday.  Pollan’s philosophy is this: Eat Food, Not Too Much, Mostly Plants.  I knew this already, but was more inspired by the second rule during this presentation.  The first part I have down, the third is debatable (how much is mostly?), but the second is clearly the reason why I can’t fit into that pair of jeans anymore.  I have heard of similar diets, only eating when you are hungry, and I have dabbed in them for half a day or so.  I never really committed to it though.  Now I am ready.  The idea is not that I will succeed in being present for every single bite, but will develop the habit of being present while eating.