The Body Doesn't Lie (16 page)
Read The Body Doesn't Lie Online
Authors: Vicky Vlachonis
Tags: #Health & Fitness, #Pain Management, #Healing, #Medical, #Allied Health Services, #Massage Therapy
Dr. Still said that structure governs function—and the way we can most impact our function directly is through our diet. But don’t dive headlong into some new diet scheme. In this Reflect week, I don’t want you to change the foods you’re eating. Instead, I want you to spend time reflecting on what you eat and how you eat it. The following exercise will help you with that process.
To gather data, eat as you normally would—every single soda, coffee, cookie, tub of popcorn, everything. Immediately after eating something, write down that food (as in the one-day sample shown in figure 12). You’re studying yourself as if you were an animal in the wild: What are her habits? When does she feed?
In your Food Diary, note several things:
- The content of each meal or snack
- The approximate serving size (“breast of chicken” is fine—no need to weigh or measure your food, i.e., not “4 ounces chicken”)
- The time of day
- Your emotional mood
- Who was with you (if anyone)
- How you felt afterward, emotionally or physically (do you feel more or less pain?)
Figure 12.
Sample of Food Diary—Before
Sample of Food Diary—After
Try to record your eating for the whole Reflect week, but even three days (the minimum) will give you a wealth of data. It will also help you become more aware of just how much crap—or good stuff!—you’re eating. At this stage, most people have a fairly disturbing picture to look at. It can be amazing to realize just how much garbage we typically put into our bodies. You’ll also notice if you’ve been feeding your emotions.
You probably won’t want to
record
specific nutrient information, but pay attention to it as you’re shopping. The habit of noting such information may actually help you reduce any excess pounds. An international study by researchers from Spain, Norway, Arkansas, and Tennessee, using information from twenty-five thousand observations on health, eating, and shopping habits, found that women who read food labels weigh nearly nine pounds less than women who don’t.
5
Whether this difference is the result of reading labels itself or simply a sign of these women’s greater orientation toward healthy food, we can’t know—but the practice of tracking your food during this week will certainly give you essential data that will help you craft your nutritional approach in the Release and Radiate stages.
If I can suggest that you do anything different about your nutrition during the Reflect stage, it’s that you pay closer attention to eating. The Food Diary is an excellent first step. The second is to eat “mindfully.”
Mindful eating is actually a form of meditation. (We’ll learn more about meditation in the “Positive Emotion” section below.) When you eat mindfully, you focus with your entire being on the act of eating.
Sound boring? It doesn’t have to be—in fact, if you do it right, it can be endlessly fascinating. You’ll be actively training your attention on sensory information. By focusing so intently on such a small number of sensory details, you’ll help to decrease your distractibility. You’ll develop insight, concentration, absorption—all master skills that will help enrich and deepen your experience in other areas of your life.
A few ground rules about mindful eating:
- You must eat at a table, sitting down
- You must not
eat
near a screen of any kind (computer, television, iPhone, or other smart phone or tablet) - You must put all your food on a plate. If you can manage to use silver cutlery, a nice glass for your water, and a cloth napkin, even better.
- You may eat with other people, but the mindful eating meditation is more easily done on your own (which you’ll understand in a second)
- You must give yourself at least thirty minutes to eat your meal
To begin your mindful eating exercise, put your food on your plate, carry it to the table, and sit down. Put your napkin on your lap, and rest your hands on top of it. Close your eyes and take a deep cleansing breath; then say to yourself (or to God or the universe or any higher power):
Thank you for this moment to truly taste and savor my food.
(In case you’re reluctant to invoke God or a higher power, let me reassure you that, when meditating, putting yourself into the hands of something or someone “larger than yourself” has therapeutic value in and of itself. Scientists writing in the
Journal of Affective Disorders
found that when those who believe in God undergo therapy, their treatment is more effective. Why? Researchers believe that faith works the same way the placebo effect does: When you believe something will work, it works!)
After your moment of grateful meditation, open your eyes, pick up your fork, and put your first bite into your mouth. Here’s where everything really slows down. First, feel the tines of the fork on your lips and tongue; feel how cold the steel or silver is against your tongue. As you place the food in your mouth, notice how your mouth starts to water in expectation of eating it. Bite down slowly, and feel your teeth going through the food and joining with the opposing teeth.
Get the idea? Super slow-mo. Go as slowly as you can, noticing every single sensation, flavor, texture. Name them in your head: Salty. Smooth. Hot. Chewy.
Eat your first few bites like this, and then give yourself a break. Finish the rest of your meal at a slightly faster pace, but still taking care to focus your full attention on your food and to notice as much as you can: How the plate changes as the food disappears. How crumbs appear on the table (how did that happen?). How the flavors seem to morph after a few bites. All the minute details of your meal—notice as many as you can.
This Reflect exercise will have more impact than you can imagine. Research has shown that when overweight people learn and use a mindful eating exercise, they tend to lose weight, feel less stressed and depressed, and have a more optimistic outlook on life, without making any other changes.
6
One study published in the
Journal of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics
found that diabetics who did a mindful eating course significantly lowered their A1C (a measure of blood sugar control).
7
Even people with a clinically diagnosed eating disorder tend to show more healthy food habits after learning mindful eating.
8
When you’re busy, mindful eating not only builds in another moment of meditation, it actively trains you to pay attention to
everything
in a more meaningful and more conscious way. You start to sink more deeply into the moment and experience all of the colors and flavors of your life, both at the dinner table and out in the world.
Also, here’s a sneaky part: When you lay out the nice china and the cloth napkins, you may find (even though you’re not supposed to change the food you’re eating this week) that your deli hoagie and Diet Coke don’t suit the environment the way they do when you scarf them down in front of the computer. As you continue on with mindful eating, you may notice yourself making selections with slightly more consideration for such aesthetics. But again, that’s not the objective during the Reflect stage. For now the objective is simply to notice, to pay attention—to reflect on—the finer points of what you’re putting into your body and how it makes you feel.
A Meal Fit for a Queen
So, you say you can’t wait: You want to make a change in your food
right now.
Okay, okay—I’ll make an exception. But only for breakfast.
Breakfast is my favorite meal of the day and helps me get off on the right foot. Surrounded by the ones I love, I eat a healthy, copious breakfast—one fit for a queen. I feel special, nourishing my body and strengthening my spirit for the day ahead.
My goal in life is to break the addiction many of my patients have to baguettes or white bread toast and coffee for breakfast. What a one-two inflammation punch! When you have white bread with coffee for breakfast, you send your endocrine system reeling: Your cortisol level shoots up alongside your blood sugar level, which prompts a major reaction from your insulin and kicks up your inflammatory response first thing in the morning—not setting the best course for the day.
A breakfast made with eggs, on the other hand, can set you up for a steady release of energy for the morning and into the early afternoon. The protein helps you stay satisfied longer, so you can concentrate better and resist temptation throughout the day.
With a belly full of energy-enhancing, nutritious food—any of the meals fit for a queen below—you can begin to do the hard work necessary to really dig into the whole picture. Bonus: Many of these anti-inflammatory foods will be incorporated into the Release stage, just in smaller quantities. Trying them now, in larger portion sizes, introduces your taste buds to their loveliness but doesn’t leave you with a sense of deprivation. All your energy should be focused on reflection this week—there will be time enough for release later.
Here are some ideas for your five-star Reflection breakfast. Try all five this week:
Smoothie:
Mix goat’s-milk yogurt with a handful of blueberries, raspberries, and some pineapple chunks; add 1 tablespoon coconut oil along with a few almonds or a handful of walnuts and some ice (if desired). Blend the mixture until you achieve the consistency you like.
Oatmeal:
Cook some steel-cut whole-grain oats with walnuts, cinnamon, 1 tablespoon coconut oil, and 1 cup almond milk; sprinkle ½ tablespoon cocoa powder and 1 tablespoon each goji berries, organic milled flaxseed, chia seeds, and sweet manuka honey (which has antibacterial properties).
Eggs:
Make a three-egg (whites only) omelet with goat’s-milk feta cheese, thyme, and tomatoes. (Goat’s milk has less lactose than cow’s milk, as well as different proteins, and thus is less inflammatory.)
Bread:
Top two slices Ezekiel bread (wheat-free and if possible yeast-free) with pure almond butter and sliced banana. Sprinkle on some goji berries.
Beverage:
Enjoy one coffee after breakfast with almond milk and a sprinkle of cinnamon. For the rest of the day, green tea or nettle tea will give you energy, purify your system, and move excess fluids toward elimination.
We’ve talked about how the Reflect component of the Positive Feedback program is really about taking stock, not making changes. The one change you’ll be making to your day-to-day schedule, as noted earlier in this chapter, is the addition of the Morning Glory ritual, including the Tibetan Rites of Rejuvenation exercises. If you’ve already been quite active, the Tibetan Rites should be no problem for you. But if you’ve been basically sedentary for a while, know that even this small amount of exercise could do tremendous benefit. Doctors from the Mayo Clinic claim that even as little as ten minutes a day of exercise can reduce your risk of heart disease by 50 percent.
9
As we move into weeks 2 and 3 of the program, you will add other exercise routines and challenges that help to further tone your Adaptive Response. Getting into the rhythm of the daily Morning Glory routine now, during the Reflect stage, will set you up for that expanded exercise routine.
Honest emotion is the root of all health. When we have positive emotion, we are better able to do the work that gives us positive structure, function, and motion. Being honest about our emotion, particularly that which is negative, is the core work of the Reflect stage. And among the self-care categories we’re discussing here—structure, function, motion, and emotion—emotion is typically where most of the work
needs
to be done. We hold ourselves back because of painful emotions that we’re not facing, let alone expressing.
Once you find the courage to reveal those buried emotions to yourself and the world, you can tackle any physical challenge that comes along. The work it takes to move yourself back into the positive will become a joyful challenge and exploration, as opposed to an insurmountable burden.
