Happy
Monday, assuming there is such a thing as a happy Monday that is. I hope the week has started off well at your
place. As always I wish it were still
the weekend, but I am trying to make the best of it. While it has warmed up here it has been
raining and/or dreary all day. There is
nothing like a yucky grey day to keep me inside where it is warm and dry. ;-) On
the bright side I have gotten a lot done because I wasn’t able to spend as much
time outside as I would like. As I
always say there is an upside to everything in life if you just look for it.
Don’t you
just love that the days are getting longer?
*woo hoo* It will be spring and then summer before we know it. *happy dance*
I am seriously looking forward to spending spring, summer and fall on
the boat. There is nothing more relaxing
to me than hanging out on the boat. I
can feel the boat gently bobbing now.
;-) Come on spring! I would rather be looking at the scenery in the picture above then at the cold, dreary rain that is outside now.
I am happy
that you guys are starting to speak up a little even though most of the
comments and questions are coming by email.
Thanks to everyone who wrote. It
is much easier for me to know what to write each day when I know a little about
what you are interested in, what you are trying to accomplish and where you are
in making healthy changes. For those of
you who are just joining us here is the recap of what we have accomplished so
far to remind us all of how much we have covered during the first 22 days of
January:
Day 1 – Defined
Success and What is/was Holding Us Back
Day 2 –
Determined our Purpose and Looked at Passion
Day 3 –
Listed Our Goals for January
Day 4 –
Listed the Things We Have Needed to Work on for a While
Day 5 – Looked
at Optimism vs. Pessimism and Fear vs. Intuition
Day 6 – Practiced
Conscious Eating
Day 7 – Hara
Hachi Bu
Day 8 –
Taking the Stress Out of Meal Time
Day 9 –
Acknowledgments
Day 10 – No
Excuses, Do it Anyway
Day 11 – Is
it True?
Day 12 –
Have You Really Connected With Someone Today?
Day 13 –
Motivation is a Decision
Day 14 -
Successfully Navigating Dinner at an Unfamiliar Restaurant
Day 15 -
What Do You Want, Have You Asked?
Day 16 –
Treating Others as You Wish to be Treated
Day 17 –
Food as a Budget
Day 18 –
Silence Your Inner Critic
Day 19 –
Replace I Have to With I Want to
Day 20 –
Identifying Your Rituals
Day 21 –
Face Your Fears
Day 22 –
Give Up the Diet Mentality
What did you
think of yesterday’s post about ditching the diet mentality? Do you think that there is any validity to my
comments? Was there something in that post which you are going to try to apply
to your life? I really would like to
hear your thoughts if you aren’t too shy to comment.
The Meaning
and/or Purpose of Food:
It came to
me this morning that what food means to any of us is the crux of what happens
in terms of health. What does food to
mean to you? Why do you eat? What need are you trying to satisfy with food? Sounds like simple questions right? However I can almost guarantee that there are
many answers to this question because I would have answered this differently at
various stages of my life.
What do you
think, what does food mean to you? At
this stage in my life food is the fuel that I use to nourish my body. Food is what I use to provide my body with
all the macro and micronutrients that it needs to be as healthy as possible
given my life conditions. I know that
the food which I eat is broken down into the building blocks that become me. Literally this means I believe that I am what
I eat. This is why I am able to decide
to eat savory oatmeal, green smoothies or seaweed. It is also why I reach for green tea instead
of coffee, or fresh vegetable juice instead of a V8. I know that my body needs as much nutrition as
I can possibly cram into it to hopefully eventually offset the horrible ways I
treated my body in the past.
In the past
food had many different meanings, none of which were good (healthy) and I will
share those now in case your see yourself in any of these examples.
Food can be
seen as entertainment. In the past Dan
and I loved to get together with friends and go out to dinner. We would order the wildest thing on the menu
because we wanted the experience. Some
of the things we have eaten in the past were “way out there” to say the
least. We have had things like vanilla
cotton candy wrapped smoked eel, and grilled baby octopus with bacon air. As you can see I wasn’t kidding when I said we
wanted to be entertained and experience life to the fullest. Given that we both loved fancy restaurant
food you can guess the rest I imagine. We ate too many calories and we both
carried too much weight. Viewing food as entertainment is not good for anyone’s
health and we were a testament to that. The funny thing is that we thought we
were happy, right up the crisis that is.
Food can
also be used to numb feelings. This is
something that I hear a lot when I talk to people. They tell me that they eat when they are sad,
angry or just about any other feeling.
In the past when I was sad or upset I would also reach for “comfort
food” which in my case was anything made with flour like pasta, warm bread out
of the oven, pizza, etc. I equated
Italian carbs with love and when I felt sad or upset I instinctively reached
for those foods. I still do this but now
I recognize what is happening so that I can stop myself before I eat too much
whole wheat pasta, vegan pizza or hot warm bread. It isn’t that my cravings for these foods
disappeared but rather that now I understand why I am craving them and that makes
it much easier to not over do.
Food can be
used to celebrate. When I was growing up
we went out to dinner to celebrate birthdays, holidays, graduations, etc. Food
was the way that we communicated as a family.
I am not sure if this is an Italian thing but all festivities revolved
around food. We had the feast of the seven fishes for Christmas Eve, cassata
cake on New Years, panettone for Christmas and Easter, you get the idea. If
there was a holiday we had a food (or more than one food) that we used to
celebrate it. Everyone got to choose
where we went out to dinner to celebrate their birthday. Food was an integral
part of our family life, mind you most of this food was eaten out of the house,
but food was how we connected as a family.
Food can
also be seen as love. I separated this
from the emotions above because I think it is a little different and I didn’t
want it to get lost when you were reading. You can see food as love in two
ways: either preparing food as a way of
showing love to others, or as a way to give yourself love that you don’t feel
you are getting enough. I grew up in a
home where my mother did not cook. My mom still hates to cook to this day so
she doesn’t do it. We ate out a lot, my
father picked up food on his way home (lots of reheated restaurant meals), and
sometimes my dad would cook. I always
felt that my mom didn’t “love me enough” to cook dinner and this was probably
because my grandmother was an amazing cook. I loved spending my summers with
her and we would shop for food and cook together every day. That always felt like the way the world
should be to me. When I was about 10 I
started cooked at home. My father loved
having real food in the house and my mother enjoyed not having to think about
food. Cooking became the way that I
showed people that I loved them. However
giving food this meaning can be healthy or not healthy depending on how you do
it. If you prepare the unhealthy foods
that your family wants are you really giving them love? I would contend that while they are happy now
they won’t be later when they suffer from cancer, heart disease or diabetes. I still equate food with love but I use
healthy food to show love now.
Food can
also be seen as a necessity. This
description may sound similar to food as fuel but it was different for me. In the past when my career was my priority
food during the week was required but I didn’t give much more thought to it
than that. I would grab anything that satisfied my hunger, it could have been
Chinese carry out (too much sodium and fat), pizza (bad on so many levels), or
burgers. Literally the only function
food served during this stage of my life was to stop my stomach from growling
and I didn’t think about it any further than that. In retrospect I can’t believe that I ever
thought this way about food, but I did.
I am sure
there are other meanings for food; these are just the ones that it has had for
me in the past. Now I am going to ask
you to think about what food means to you.
I have designed a series of questions to help you to figure it out in
case you don’t know immediately.
Today’s
exercises are:
1.
Do you think you know what food means to
you? If you do write it down in the
journal. We will come back to this later after you have done the exercises.
2.
For today write down everything that you eat. This includes things like coffee (even black),
candy from the office candy bowl, if you consume right it down. You
don’t need to measure or weigh the food that doesn’t matter. But I want you to
write down the following information:
·
What time you got out of bed
·
What were you thinking or feeling before you
ate?
·
Time of day you ate
·
How hungry were you before you ate (0-neutral
neither hungry nor full, 1-a little hungry, 2-very hungry, 3-starved)
·
What you ate (describe the food)
·
Who was with you when you ate (were you alone or
with friends)
·
Where were you (at home, at work, at the
restaurant, etc.)
·
What were you thinking as you were eating?
·
What were you thinking of feeling immediately
after you finished eating?
·
How full were you after you ate (0-netural
neither hungry nor full, 1-satisfied, 2-uncomfortably full,3-Thanksgiving full
miserable)
·
What time did you get into bed
3.
Look at the list you complied in item two above. Does anything stand out for you? Did you eat immediately upon waking up or was
lunch your first meal? Do you wait until
you are hungry to eat? It is common for
people to feel sad, angry, frustrated, lonely, bored, happy or tired before
eating. Does this describe you or was
there another emotion that was coming up for you? Did you eat all day long, or did you eat most
of your calories at the end of the day?
Eating a lot at night often leads to not eating breakfast which then sets
up the cycle to eat a lot at night the next day. Just write down anything you notice by
looking at your list. Maybe you were
frustrated at work and grabbed some chips.
People who are angry do tend to reach for crunchy food. The benefit of keeping a log for a few days
is that you will start to see the patterns around your eating. Remember we
can’t change what we don’t identify!
4.
Now look at your feelings after you ate. Did your feelings change? Did the change last
or was the feeling back before the next meal. Did eating make you feel worse
and not better? In the past I felt good
when I was eating but after I ate I would feel guilty because I knew that I had
eaten food that I should not have
consumed. Also how full were you after
eating? If you went further than level 1 (satisfied) you should go back and reread
day 7.
5.
After reflecting on what was going on for you around
food today do you still agree with what your wrote in item one about what food
means to you? Maybe you still don’t know
what food means to you. That is okay
because this is a tough question for a lot of people. Just continue the steps
above for a few days and see if what comes up for you. I suspect that many of you will need to do
this for a while to figure it out. If
you had asked me twenty years ago what food meant to me I would have thought
that was a ridiculous question and probably would have said something like
“food is food.” Yes, I was in denial for
a long time. As I often say, if I can figure this stuff out for me I know you
can do it because I was one tough nut to crack. ;-)
Were you
able to figure out what food means to you?
Do you like your answer or do you think that you need to change your
relationship with food now. Did I
explain this in a way that makes sense?
I hope that I did. Like always if
anything that I wrote is unclear or you think that it requires clarification
please don’t hesitate to let me know either by commenting or sending me an
email.
Progress on
my goals:
1. Newsletters – Sunday I took the day off from
working on the newsletters. Sometimes we all need a little break from work.
2. Body Bugg – I continue to wear my bugg and I
have gotten back into using it the way I had intended when I purchased it. Go me!
J
3. Date with Dan – The hubby and I have spent a lot
of time together this week. With the
weather we have stayed fairly close to home but we can have fun anywhere home
or out. ;-)
4. Measuring
calorie dense food – I am making a little progress on this but I really need to
focus on it with every veggie meal to help my body absorb the fat soluble
vitamins.
5. Working on my business – Sunday I took the day
off from working on the business. The
January posts are taking me many more hours to write than usual. As much as I
love these posts I will be happy to see February arrive since I really need a
little time back to work on other things, the business being one of them.
How are you
feeling about your progress so far? I
hope you feel like you have made a few lasting changes this month. J
Random
Thoughts:
Writing this
month about the emotional side of health has definitely been a labor of love me. I believe that anyone who has ever struggled
to lose weight knows that there is more to the issue than calories in and
calories out. If the weight loss
equation were that simple very few people would struggle as they do to lose
weight. Additionally anyone who has ever
tried to give up cheese knows that there is “something” intoxicating about it. I also know that most men and many women
don’t understand that the problem of eating healthy is more mental than
anything else. When I thought about this
series I realized that there was a chance that many people would think I had
lost my mind. However I also knew that I had to stay true to what I believe
without regard to how people reacted.
The funny thing about this is that while I wasn’t sure about writing
this series now I am very glad that I did.
It feels wonderful knowing that I stayed true to what I believe in no
matter how people react to it. J
Do you take
time to smell the roses? Of course this
is a figurative question since there are no roses in bloom now but I think you
know what I mean. ;-) There were many years of my life that I was
so busy running between my home and office that I didn’t notice much of
anything that happened around me. It
wasn’t until I left healthcare that I began to actually see things. I do this by slowing down and taking in
everything that happens. I realize now
that this is the opposite of how I used to live. The funny thing about slowing down is that
you realize that there is as much joy in seeing the light spark on the ice
which formed on a branch as there ever was in getting a raise or a
promotion. There are beautiful things
around all of us every day. Please slow
down for at least 5 minutes each day and take time to “smell the roses”.
Acknowledgements:
Have you
made any progress writing acknowledgements?
I hope you are working on this exercise. I find that it helps me stay
positive and recognize the things that I do every day. Here are my acknowledgements:
·
While the house looks empty without the Christmas
stuff it was nice to get it all down and put away over the weekend. Typically I
put the stuff up and Dan takes it down but we worked as a team this time and
got it finished much more quickly.
Everything goes faster when you work together, a good thing for all of
us to remember.
·
We have gotten into the habit of going for a
walk after dinner. It reminds me of being in Italy since everyone seems to walk
after dinner; in fact it is so common there is a word for it, la passeggiata. I loved the tradition of it when we were in
Italy so I have decided to try to add it to our life at home too. For now Dan is going along with me on
this. Let’s hope he doesn’t start
working too late for this to be an option.
·
Some days things just come together and this
was one of those days. The dinner I made
was out of this world delicious. I love
it when I get just the right combination of ingredients. I have been trying to encourage all of you to
trust your instincts and to cook without a recipe which is why you haven’t been
seeing many recipes from me lately.
Anyone can follow a recipe but when you learn to cook without a recipe
then you can feed yourself no matter what you have in the house. I think this
is going to be an upcoming series on the blog. What do you think of the idea?
Sunday:
Breakfast
for both of us was a cocoa, cherry, banana, kale and walnut smoothie. These
things really are like drinking dessert for breakfast. Since I typically only make them for Dan I
forget how much they are like candy. No wonder Mr. Sweet Tooth asks for them so
often. LOL
Between
breakfast and lunch we worked on packing up the end of the Christmas
decorations. Binky was a big help dismantling Christmas for anyone who is
curious. That little guy gets into everything at our house. He is a cat after all and he knows that we
have to be supervised otherwise we would never get any job done correctly. It is a good thing that we love that little
fuzzy man because he can be a handful.
Lunch today
was the end of the split pea soup with smoky ‘shrooms. Since we try to eat beans each day I asked
Dan what he wanted me to make next. He
almost never has an opinion but suggested something made with 16 beans. Perfect!
French Market Bean soup will be on the menu tomorrow. I have been
soaking my beans overnight with a little baking soda after Dr. Greger confirmed
that this does reduce the raffinose thereby reducing the gassiness. Thanks again for sharing the recipe Sue!
Dinner was
something that I whipped together and it far exceeded my expectations. Dan told
me to write it down before I forgot what I had done. Of course I didn’t measure but I will explain
the concept. I cooked some quinoa and
while that got started sliced an onion so it could stand for 10 minutes before
cooking (it enhances the nutrition which you are probably tired of hearing from
me). Then I “water sautéed the onion in
water, a splash of red wine vinegar and pinch of stevia). When the onion was soft I turned it off to
finish once the quinoa was resting.
While the quinoa finished I shredded a bunch of kale to add to the onion. The kale only cooked for about two minutes, I
only wanted it to soften slightly. The
entire meal was: quinoa topped with the
sweet and sour wilted kale and onions, smoky ‘shrooms, walnut sauce with
sriracha and finished with sesame seeds. Darn was this good! I can assure you that I will be making this
again and measuring because yes, it was that good. That walnut sauce with sriracha is delicious
on just about anything I have decided.
LOL
I also have
dried mushrooms and almonds soaking in the refrigerator. I plan to make some flavored mushrooms for
salad and some vegan mozzarella if I can find the time on Monday. *fingers crossed* Dan has asked me to make some of my whole
wheat pizza dough since we haven’t had any in probably a year. Since
he asked so sweetly I couldn’t say no.
Now I need to buy flour and yeast so Dan can have pizza at home.
Happy
thoughts:
Have you
gotten into the habit of writing your happy thoughts? I find it helpful to remind myself how often
things go well and that I shouldn’t take these things for granted. As always there are so many things to be
thankful for that I almost don’t know where to start. Here are my happy
thoughts:
·
We went for a nice walk Sunday evening. The
sidewalks were icy but the scenery was fantastic. I love to see the street lights shine on the
ice covered bare branches. I am sorry that I haven’t been able to get any decent
pictures for you. The light was dancing
on the ice and it was a bit like walking in a fairyland. What a wonderful way to end the day. I never get tired of going for a walk after
dinner. J
·
I had the epiphany today about the meaning of
food. As soon as it popped into my head I couldn’t believe that it took me so
long to look at it that way. How any of
us view food is huge in terms of what it means for our overall health. I am so glad I finally made the connection so
that I could share it with you.
·
It was great to have time to watch two episodes
of the meditation DVD from The Great Courses. I have almost finished all the
DVDS. I want to watch it twice before I
review it for you. But as you can probably guess I am really enjoying it. These DVDs definitely made me think about my
reaction to things and I love that.
·
We have bean soup in the refrigerator again. *woo hoo*
I know that this wouldn’t make many people happy but I love it. Beans are such a healthy food and I feel so
much better when I eat them every day.
If you haven’t tried eating beans daily I hope you will. They don’t agree with everyone’s
gastrointestinal system but if they agree with yours you will miss them when
you don’ teat them.
Signing Out:
Life Monday
returned to normal at our house. Dan
returned to work and I went back to my usual routine. I even managed to find time to get back to
the meditation DVDs from The Great Courses.
There was also a little time in the kitchen, though not as much as I had
hoped for. There really never seems to
be enough time in the day to get everything accomplished.
The emails
about IIN continue to come in. I
certainly had no idea so many of you had even heard about this let alone that
you were interested. If you have
specific questions email at veganepicurean@gmail.com
please don’t be shy I promise that I don’t mind answering any questions that
you have.
I hope your
week started well and that you have some nice things to look forward to this
week. At the very least take time to
enjoy the little things in life. J Talk with you again soon!
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