Omit Needless Foods

A while ago, I was thinking about how to simplify the Eating Coach message to make it more accessible for students of Mindful Eating to understand what I was asking of them.

Omit Needless Foods was what I came up with.

In that sentence, which part jumps out at you? Where does the emphasis go? If you are like most of my clients, the emphasis goes straight to the "Omit" part. The focus has been "give up the good stuff" -- stop eating.

But what if you put the emphasis on the Needless part? What if you were working through the process of finding what foods are needless in your life?

We aren't talking about broad categories here. Although there are very few redeeming traits found in a Fountain Coke from a nutrition perspective, sometimes a Coke is the perfect thing -- and therefore can't be written off as needless in the grand scheme.

On any given day -- where are the bites that are needless -- the ones that don't take care of your physical hunger AND you don't enjoy them -- the ones that add no value to your life.

Find those. Omit those. If you do that, you will get where you want to be.

Again with the Magic Beans

Mindful Eating:
1. Deliberately paying attention, without judgment, to ones own experiences.
2. Cultivating openness to, and an acceptance of all experiences.
3. Mindfulness happens in the present moment.

I spoke to a group at the Crossroads Village Apartments yesterday. Great group of people. They seemed interested in the thinking behind mindful eating and had lots of questions about how it really helps you lose weight. One thing I always get, though, is the person who wants to know what foods they can eat mindfully to help them lose weight.

We have been ingrained with the belief in Magic Beans -- that all illusive food or combination of foods that will give us perfect health and a thin body to go along with it. Well....guess what?? There are no Magic Beans. Food is food -- neither inherently good (just because lima beans are a healthy vegetable doesn't mean they taste good to me!) or inherently bad (alfredo made with whipping cream and real Parmesan is definitely not "low cal" but boy is it delicious!!).

Deliberately paying attention and not pigeon holing (judging) foods is one of the cornerstones of mindful eating. Believe me -- I would lose weight if I was on a diet of lima beans (mostly because I think they are so gross I wouldn't eat them -- or perhaps I would gain weight on a diet of lima beans because I would have to cover the taste of them with so much butter or cheese that I would take in lots of extra calories) But one thing I know for sure -- my life wouldn't be more enjoyable because of the lima beans.

There are some people out there that just don't get this concept. EAT WHAT TASTES GREAT -- JUST EAT LESS OF IT.

The reason a person gains weight is just that they are eating too many calories for their activity level. Cut down the calories to the level you expend and your weight will be stable. Eat fewer calories than you expend and you will lose weight. No games, no gimmicks, no tricks -- but no Magic Beans.

The question, for me, always comes back to:

Would you rather eat foods you enjoy but eat smaller amounts?

Or do you want to slug it out on the "Diet Du Jour", eating foods that, at best are only okay and at worst taste like the cardboard box your last pair of sneakers came in?

For me: Life's too short -- I want the food that makes my heart sing! And I will be happy to eat less now so I can have some more in the future.

How much do you need to reduce your intake??

If you reduce the amount of food you eat per day by 9 bites (think about it -- that is just 3 bites per meal), you will have saved enough calories in a week to lose a 1/2-1 pound in a week.

Can you be happy eating 9 bites per day less?

10 Ways to save on Health care Costs

Jay Parkinson just published an interesting post on how to reduce health care costs. (he is the author of the prescription I posted a couple of days ago)

As his patient in Manhattan, a person can log into his site, let him know why you want to be seen, schedule an appointment, pay for the visit using PayPal, and then Dr. Parkinson shows up at your home for your appointment. Neat, huh? No more waiting the waiting room. No more being subjected to all of the germs and unfriendly, overworked office staff. But here's the thing -- he won't bill your insurance. You pay out of pocket. The upside? Lower costs of the visit.

Would you pay out of pocket if it cost you less?

What if going to the doctor was just like ordering at a restaurant -- there is a menu, a schedule of fees and you get to order a la carte.

The reason I am bringing this up (on an Eating Coach blog) is because it has direct application to EC and the mindset that clients bring to health care and weight management.

This is what I have found:

1. Many (if not most) people coming to my fitness facility feel they are paying enough per month already and will not spend more on a series of Eating Coach classes. **Side note: a large percentage of members list losing weight as their primary driver for joining the facility.**

2. The mindset, for many people, is: if insurance is not paying for a service, they will not pay out-of-pocket for it either. People have told me that if a program costs $350 and the insurance company will pay $200 (leaving them with $150 out of pocket) they would pay for the program. But because a program costs $150 and insurance doesn't cover it, they will not pay for it. --Why is that?

We are paying, indiviudally and collectively, in many different directions for our weight gain. We (as a nation) spent $45 billion on diet stuff (books, diet pills, diet food, programs, etc) last year!! This is not counting all of the medical expenses related to weight gain (diabetic medications, joint replacements, physical therapy, surgeries, blood pressure meds, etc). And I won't even get into lost productivity!

With the healthcare insurance debates going on in the House and Senate, with the current state of the ecomony, and with the cost of medical goods and services, I think it behooves us to reconsider our long-held beliefs about the purpose of health insurance and how we are spending our healthcare dollars.

If you spend $300 out-of-pocket today and it saves you that much in co-pays for your blood pressure med over the next 12 months -- would that be a worthwhile Return on Investment?

Now, if you factored in the improvements to your health and sense of well being, wouldn't that sweeten the pot?

So much of the cultural focus on weight has to do with aethstetic. Unless you are a professional model (or want to be), an actor, a spokesperson, Vanna White, etc., from a financial prospective, aethstetics is a secondary concern. Of primary concern should be the ability to maximize your quality of your life, the extra physical energy you will get because you are not carrying extra physical weight around all day, and the extra emotional energy you get from not WORRYING/FEELING GUILTY/STRESSING/FEELING DEPRESSED, etc. from weighing more than you feel you should.

Think about the AMAZING things you could accomplish with increased health, energy and sense of well-being. And all because you have shifted your thinking on what healthcare is, who should pay for it, and what the goal of healthcare should be (one of these days I will rant on Why We Should be Actively Maintaining our Health! -- but not today).

Give it some thought: What are you really worth? How do you really want to live? Are you willing to pay to optimize your life or do you want to let someone else make those decisions for you?

Carpe Diem, my friends.

A Fly causing a Car Crash

My Eating Coach class at Flowserve got the rough draft of this the other day but here goes...

I was driving to class the other day (60ish mph on a busy road)when a fly flew into my line of vision. Being a warmer day, I had some of the windows down and I was hoping (to no avail, it turned out) that the fly would make it out the window. With the driver's window all the way down, I was batting at the fly until I had the realization I was so focused on the fly that I was not paying attention to my driving.

How stupid is that??

Is it worth wrecking my car and potentially injuring myself to get a fly out of the car? What was I thinking???

Let's use this as an analogy for eating and let the fly any of the little irritations of life. The nasty comment made by a coworker, a fight you had with your son (over something trivial) that morning, the way you felt your pants fit that morning when you put them on, any of the emotional irritants we face every day that send us off in search of comfort food and solace.

On your deathbed, with your family gathered around you, can you imagine these irritants even popping into your head? Probably not -- that is how unimportant they ultimately are. So why do you allow them to control your behavior? Why do you let those flies allow you to risk getting in an eating wreck?

If you wreck your car, you are going to have a hard time getting to where you want to go and you will not be better off for the experience. If you wreck your positive eating patterns, you will not get to your goal weight and you will not be better off for the experience.

Wouldn't it be a more productive choice just to roll down the windows and let the fly find it's way out on its own time and safely continue your journey to your goal destination???

Is Mindful Eating a Free Pass?

I have talked in the past about diet rules and how they provide structure to a program. They provide a box for you to stay inside of. Sometimes, that is a nice, safe feeling -- for a while anyway.

So where is the box when you are trying to eat mindfully? Clients, in the past, have sometimes mistaken me when I say "Eat what sounds great!" for "Eat as much as you want of whatever you want and you will still lose weight". This is not the case.

The box with mindful eating is that you are reconnecting with your sensations of hunger and fullness. And learning to differentiate between physical hunger and trigger eating. Saying no to yourself when you feel the urge to trigger eat (in response to stress, let's say) can be a very empowering thing. It is your higher self taking action and moving you in the direction you want to go.

Now, as far as the eat whatever sounds great, the box is that you have to be paying attention and eat the smallest amount that gives you the greatest amount of pleasure. Let's be honest, how often do you eat just one Hershey's Kiss? One CAN be enough IF you are paying attention to the texture, flavor and aroma --not just popping it in, chewing like a fiend and looking for the next one before the first one is totally swallowed.

It takes real work to learn to pay attention. It doesn't just happen. If you are eating mindfully, you can eat anything you want but that freedom comes with the responsibility to pay attention through the whole process -- and not overeat!

Making it difficult to fail

Diets (when you follow the rule/program/plan/whatever) make it difficult to fail. If you stick to it -- there isn't any operator error. You have had someone tell you what will work -- your job is to execute orders -- that's it.

The upside and downside of Mindful Eating is that there is only the plan you create. The plan of listening to your body and letting it guide you. This is an upside because if you love ribs, wings, and burgers, you can eat them and still lose weight. The downside is you are going to have to figure out how to implement that plan on your own. (Unless you have an Eating Coach).

Complete freedom sometimes gets overwhelming.

So the idea for you is to create situations where it is difficult to fail. One way to do that is to tell people what you are attempting. Let people support you.

There are a million ways to do this.

Ask them to hold you accountable.

Join in with a group of others who want to lose weight and work on being more mindful together. One quick way is to have to send the group one positive eating decision per day. (It can be anything -- you didn't eat a cookie because it didn't look good. You ate a cookie because it looked fantastic but you took time to access how it was tasting half way through. You let the waitress take away the rest of your dinner even though you "had more room" because you felt you had eaten enough. -- anything that is a behavior change you feel good about).

Start your own blog about your experience being mindful. You will be amazed at how easy setting up your site is and how good you feel that people are out there supporting your success and learning from you.

Get your group together and hire a coach to facilitate your collective process. That way you will all being heading in the same direction together and learning from one another (plus, it will give you like-minded people to go out to lunch with --you might be amazed how much easier it is to eat mindfully when your lunch/dinner companions are doing the same thing).

Have a coach facilitate a Mindful Meal. (you and your companions get to eat like normal but the coach calls your attention back to your experiences at intervals so you can find the 7,8 and 9)

Last weekend, I had dinner with some family friends I haven't seen in years. The man sitting next to me turned down dessert. He didn't tell me I was bad because I wanted dessert. Maybe he doesn't like sweets (I didn't ask). But it made me more conscious (but not self-conscious) about enjoying my dessert (and ultimately leaving some uneaten -- since it was no longer tasting FANTASTIC). It was a positive reminder for me -- a reminder I wouldn't have had if he had ordered dessert.

Find the people that will help make it difficult to fail.

So you think you can't afford an Eating Coach --

I was doing research the other day and came across a report entitled:

What 10 Diet plans cost: you can spend a little or you can spend a lot, but shedding those excess pounds doesn't depend on it.

The article gives an interesting table (posted April 2004) of the 10 leading diets and there cost.

Forbes cites the average single American spends $55.44 per week on food. The average Jenny Craig member spends $137.52 (prices are just for the food portion of the plan).

The article gives a table with food costs for:
Jenny Craig
NutriSystem
Atkins Diet
Weight Watchers
Zone Diet
Ornish Diet
South Beach Diet
Slim-Fast
Sugar Busters
Subway Sandwich
No diet

Worth the read but here's the take home -- Diets work when people by into them. It is less what you are eating and more just cutting calories.

If you are spending big money on pre-packaged foods, what skills are you learning? When you "go off" that diet, have you learned how to portion the meals you serve yourself correctly? Have you learned anything besides "Eat everything that is put in front of you and when it is gone, Stop"? How will this skill fit in to eating at your favorite restaurant?

So, let's say you buy into the Eating Coach philosophy. The whole approach is to take the food that you are eating ($54.44 per week) and spend some time learning new skills to understand where your stopping point should be -- meal by meal. Learn to say "No" to the donut that doesn't look fresh or the piece of chocolate that is waxy --to enjoy the foods you are eating and learn to be satisfied (happy even) when you get up from the table feeling confident, light, content, and guilt-free.

That will bring your total for your week's spending to $104.44 (your food + your coaching)for a number of weeks. But, what you get out of it, are skills, strategies, and a common sense approach to eating that will do away with your fear and anxiety of eating and bring more peace to your life.