Food for thought about weight

Okay -- Marc David had some bullet points about weight.  Please take some time to consider you weight from a new perspective:

*Weight is a richly complex, multi-dimensional phenomenon. Most often, there are no simple black and white solutions. It’s time to honor the depth and the psycho-physiologic complexity of weight and it’s loss.

*Excess weight is a symptom, and every symptom we experience under the sun has a divine message, a wise teaching, and has lessons that we are being asked to learn. We need to honor this sacred symptom rather than attack it.

*Extra weight can be related to an unlimited number of nutritional and metabolic factors.

*Extra weight can be caused by an unlimited number of emotional factors.

*Extra weight is fast becoming an issue of genetic inheritance.

*Extra weight can be directly connected to deeper and more profound soul lessons that we are being asked to learn. Some of these lessons might include patience, humility, getting present, embracing our sexuality, forgiving others, forgiving self, learning how to nourish ourselves, loving what is…

*Extra weight can be a mix and a swirl of any or all of the above factors.

*Extra weight, often times, doesn’t even belong fully to the person who has it. Meaning: humans often “carry” the symptoms of others, of parents, of the collective. The most obvious example – few obese children have “a problem” – it’s all about the parents, or their surroundings, their peers, the media…

*Extra weight is not a personal issue, it’s collective – meaning, if over 200 million individuals in the USA are overweight, then weight is about the entire tribe. We need to heal the culture as much as we need to change individual habits.

*Women suffer in a unique way, and in a more intense and poignant way when it comes to excess weight. We need to ask why, and to understand that men and women though equal, are rather different.

*Eating disorders have skyrocketed. Eating disorders have absolutely nothing to do with food per se. They are not food issues. They are LIFE issues, expressed via the vehicle of food. Once we listen to these sacred dis-eases more deeply, we can hear how they are calling us to grow, and how they are pointing to the ways our families and communities are failing to hold and love one another in a good way.

*Our relationship with body fat, even for those who have very little of it, is clinically bonkers. Too many of us assume that any body fat is demonic, unworthy, unnatural, unappealing, and deserving of our contempt. Body fat has a brilliant biological purpose. If you could truly suck all the fat out of your body, you’d be dead in an instant.

*We project our shadow – our unconscious judgments, our negative mind chatter, our prejudices, our hate, our moralism – onto people who carry too much weight. As a culture, we secretly love to hate fat people. Who’s issue is that?

*From the standpoint of science, we really don’t even know how much any given person truly ought to weigh at any given time. So many people walk around claiming, “I need to lose 5 pounds, 10 pounds, 20 pounds.” Says who? By what scientific criteria can anyone assess ideal weight?

*According to the sum total of all the research on weight, science cannot say with any certainty that extra weight is a symptom, a disease, a risk factor, a positive indicator of health, a genetic issue, a psychosocial one – because it can be any of these.

*The scientific community still can’t wrap its’ head around the simple fact that weight is a mind, body, heart, soul, psychological, cultural and spiritual phenomenon. How we “do” science as a nation is rather immature, and often primitive. It’s time for the scientists, doctors, dietitians, and researchers who hold the collective power to counsel others – to heal their own inner wounds and expand their vision so they can serve from a deeper and more humane place, and a truly scientific/holistic place.

Did any of these resonate with you?  It seems to me it is worth taking a look at the ones that struck a cord -- perhaps it will give you some insight into what is really going on with your weight.  Remember, with knowledge comes power!

Thought for the Day...

Science has failed us in the weight loss department:

It literally gets an “F.” The culture has failed us as well. Far too many people have intense moral judgments towards anyone with excess pounds, which contributes to the hidden epidemic of social disconnection, apathy, and plain old sadness. Let’s face it: when it comes to the subject of weight gain and weight loss, we’re clueless. And from that place of cluelessness we tend to flail around, we try our hand at the most inane weight loss strategies, we diet for decades, we consume diet foods and ingredients like synthetic fats and artificial sweeteners that are, if you care to closely study the scientific literature – toxic.

I’d suggest that if you’re not outraged at how all of us have been handling the issue of weight, than it’s time to pay more attention. -- Marc David

Don't worry!  There's more to this story coming tomorrow :)

And hat tip to Weight Maven for pointing me in Marc David's direction!

Do something Friday

Today's post is a thought from Seth Godin....and then a challenging:

Slightly rewarded (slightly punished)

For most of us, it's not the big traps that mess us up, it's the little ones.

Every time I break stride and distract myself by checking my email (a hundred times in a bad day), I get a small reward. I get the satisfaction of starting and finishing a project, on time and for free.

For a lot of people, every time they drink a Coke instead of a glass of water, they get a small punishment in exchange for their treat. One Coke never hurt anyone, but a hundred of them make you fat.

One way to change behavior is to keep track of how often these little events occur, because seeing them lined up on the windowsill might be enough to change your mind. The other way is to make those events louder. I'm pretty sure that if I got an electric shock every time I stopped to check my email, I'd only do it daily...

So your challenge is this -- line up your eating events this weekend.  Just until Sunday -- you can do that.  It's not even a holiday weekend.

The goal is to find one SMALL change you can make and live with.  Like: not buying store bought cookies any more because you realize they are not really delicious but you can't help eating them if they're in the house.  Very small reward for the calories invested --  totally not worth it!  I can guarantee there is something you can change this weekend that won't even seem like that big of a deal once you get in the groove.

Calorie restriction, lifespan vs. healthspan

I just read an interesting article in Slate magazine reviewing a National Institute of Health study on calorie restriction and food quality in research monkeys.  It's definitely worth the read if you like that kind of thing (which I do!).

But -- in case you don't, let me just review some of the findings for you:

Monkeys who ate a little bit less (25% less than the control group) were healthier - they experienced fewer incidence of diabetes and heart disease. And, if they did experience these conditions, the calorie restricted monkeys had a much later onset than the control monkeys (increased healthspan).

But interestingly enough, the calorie restricted monkeys in this study (as opposed to another long term calorie restricted monkey study out of Wisconsin), the calorie restricted monkeys didn't live longer (no increased lifespan) than the control monkeys.

This little situation set the researchers back on their heels a bit -- because one would assume (and this was born out by many other studies on many other species of living creatures) that if you were healthier this would translate into longer lifespan.  But nope -- not in this case.  Why???

Well, it seems when the researchers took a look at what the monkeys were eating, they found that the NIH group was eating a more whole food/natural food diet.  The Wisconsin monkeys were eating a more highly processed diet (the Slate article goes a little more in depth about why that was).

So it seems that whole food/natural food will help you live longer.  Eating less of it will make you healthier while you're alive.  (or at least that could be a preliminary interpretation of the results thus far).

Well, duh!  This makes a lot of sense, right?!  So let's start thinking about what we really want out of life:

Do you want to live longer?
Do you want to have a longer healthspan?

Do you want it all?

What are you willing to do to get it?  Can you make some changes to a few more natural foods (think old fashioned oats in the morning instead of Cheerios)?  Can you eat less total volume than you do now? 

I bet there are changes there that you could live with in both those categories!  What do you think??

Determining the Proper Dose

Journal, journal, journal!

Cell phones have made this remarkably easy!  Take a picture of everything you eat!  Notice how much food is there.  Spill the salt shaker and write the number of your hunger level on the table in salt and take a picture of your full plate next to it!  Anything!  People, please!

Seriously!  Figure out how you can journal -- paper, app, photo -- there's no wrong way.  The idea is to get some concrete evidence you can refer back to so you can start figuring out when you over-eat  (perhaps it's all the time or maybe it's only when you've a stressful late afternoon meeting).  Figure out when you leave the table feeling light and refreshed -- can you remember the last time that happened?  --You'd be able to if you journaled!

You're looking for patterns.  What drives you to eat more than the amount that makes you feel good?

What happens right before you sit down and eat the right amount of food that leaves you satisfied but not stuffed?

Don't know??  JOURNAL! Easy.  Simple.  Inexpensive.  What's the problem here???  Are you telling me your health (and your sanity) isn't worth the tiny bit of time and attention journaling requires?  Well....then there might just be the problem.

More on Dosing

A few posts ago, I talked a little bit about dosing.  About that same time, I also posted this picture on the FC Facebook page:


**The food you eat can be either the safest and most powerful form of medicine or the slowest form of poison. -- Ann Wigmore

Just to be upfront -- I'm not a huge fan of turning eating into a complex, all or nothing, can't stay on top of the current research so why bother, medicalized version of the behavior many of us enjoy.  But I think there is something beneficial about considering our food choices as having a direct correlation to our health (which, of course, they do).

Why do I not stomp my feet in frustration and lament the world isn't fair because I am allergic to aspirin?  It's just a fact -- a relatively important one -- that I need to remember to tell my doctor.  --Not a moral judgment on me.  One aspirin is too large of a dose.

Why then do we fight tooth and nail with arguments like "I only eat half of what my husband does and HE doesn't gain a pound!  It's not FAIR!"

Apparently, the dose of food you chose it too much for you (if you find yourself gaining weight).  It's not a question of morality or fairness -- it's just a fact that needs to be dealt with.

The right amount of food is of benefit to your body. Whole foods, fresh foods, and relatively unprocessed foods are better staples of a diet geared for health than are highly processed, sealed in packaging, so full of preservatives it may never go bad foods.  (but to the best of my knowledge, no one has ever died from eating a Twinkie -- even one deep fried in Fair oil)  There must be an appropriate dose to processed foods.  We can eat some of them and suffer no long term negative consequences -- we just can't eat them for every meal for years on end and suffer no negative consequences.  It appears the dose is somewhere in between.

So give it some thought?  How would the optimal dose of something leave you feeling?  If it were a medication, wouldn't you want it to leave you feeling better than before you take it?  Wouldn't that be a great way to tell what the appropriate dose of food for you?  If you walked away from the table feeling better than when you sat down -- mentally and physically -- wouldn't that be a great clue?

So how do we determine that dose?  Hmmmmm.....let's give that some thought.

Thought for the Day...

It does not matter how slow you go as long as you do not stop. --Confusious