See What You Can Find

In the Christmas song “Soul Cake”, one of the lyrics is: “Go down into your cellar/ and see what you can find.” I was thinking of that recently not just because of Christmas, but because of an exchange I had with my niece when she spent the night a couple of days ago.

After we finished dinner, I asked if she wanted anything else, and she answered, “Not now, but I’ll probably get hungry later.” Sure enough, around 9 o’clock, she said, “I’m hungry again.”

“What would you like?” I asked.

“I’ll just look around to see what you have.” My expression must have given me away, because she added, “If that’s okay.”

It actually wasn’t okay, although I didn’t say that outright. Instead, I said, “Well, do you know what you might want? I have tortilla chips, crackers, toast, fruit, popcorn, peanuts, carrots.”

“I’ll have some tortilla chips, I guess.”

So I got out a bowl and the chips and gave them to her, then headed upstairs to get ready for bed. But even then, I felt badly about the exchange. Why was I uncomfortable with the idea of her looking through my cupboards and fridge to see what she could find? Was it a control issue, or something else?

As I pondered, I realized that it was something else. It was a holdover from my earlier days, when I didn’t want people to see what I had to eat for fear of being judged for it. These days, I don’t feel like I need to be embarrassed because of having too many sweets or junk food or anything like that, but sometimes I actually feel the opposite. At times I haven’t had anything that would qualify as “snack food” for most people – no chips, crackers, pretzels, nuts, ice cream, etc – and I always felt a bit embarrassed by that.

Then I discovered that there was one other element beneath this. I had recently gotten some goodies from friends for Christmas, which included homemade truffles, cookies, Rice Krispie treats, and homemade banana bread, and I was feeling possessive of those. I didn’t have a lot, and while I don’t eat many sweets, I enjoy them when I do, and I wanted to save those for myself. I didn’t want to share. While the desire not to share is a small concern, I think the larger issue – that I wasn’t willing to even acknowledge it – was more significant.

Once I recognized that, I wished I could go back to the earlier conversation with my niece. This time, instead of censoring what food options were available, I would say to her, “Sure, go ahead and see what you’d like. I’d just ask that you leave the items in the little jar in the fridge for me, since those were a Christmas present.”

But since the good Doctor with his TARDIS isn’t around, I’ll have to content myself with remembering this, and if the situation arises again, know that I can respond in a more open way.

Food for Thought

I recently read an article in The New York Times about the idea of an “imaginary diet”. The article suggests that people can get the satisfaction of eating a certain food if they just imagine eating it for a while, bite – by – bite. The imaginary eating must be done slowly, but studies have shown that if people focus on the imagined eating for a while, when they actually eat that food, they will eat less of it. But it has to be done separately for each type of food (for instance, imagining eating chocolate won’t stop you from eating lots of potato chips), and I’m not sure if you would have to repeat this process each time you were going to eat something, or at least periodically.

When I read this, my first thought was, “What a lot of work.” Consider – for every food that might be a weakness for you, you need to imagine eating it a tiny bit at a time before you can actually eat it. I don’t know how long it would take to get to the “satiation” point for each one, but it seems like it might be a while. And then there’s still the time to eat the actual food, when eventually you get to it. If you have to repeat the process, that just seems like an enormous amount of mental energy.

What I like about the “Am I Hungry?” program (and my own method of weight loss) is that it doesn’t require that you spend all your time thinking about food. In fact, quite the opposite. I know for myself that if I’m comfortably full, I don’t think about food. I can go about the rest of my life and focus on those areas, not worry about how much of something I might eat or might have eaten. The times that I’m focused on food are when I’m preparing or eating it or actually physically hungry for it.

I will freely admit that it takes some effort to get to this point, too, to be in tune enough with your body and emotions to recognize why you’re eating when you are, and to use physical cues of hunger to know when to eat and when to stop. But the good news is, it becomes easier over time, and ultimately, I believe it’s a healthier approach than trying to trick your mind and/or body into thinking it’s already eaten something. For me, it’s all about being mindful and attentive to what’s going on in reality, not imagination. Plus, I’ve found that the sorts of foods I want to eat have naturally changed, so that a bag of potato chips, or a plate of brownies, might be appealing but not enough to eat to excess.

Not that I want to denigrate the power of imagination, because it can certainly be extremely powerful. When you mentally practice a skill, it often applies to the skill in reality, for instance. But for me, when it comes to food, I’ll take the real thing over imaginary any day.

Sugar Cookies

I don’t remember how old I was when we started making sugar cookies for Christmas, but it quickly became a tradition. As I described it in my (yet unpublished) book:

Dad would make multiple batches of dough before retreating to the bedroom, finding the making and decorating too chaotic and messy. Jeremiah sometimes helped, but often it was me and Mom, each with our own task.

Mom started by rolling out the dough, a bit at a time, before choosing from a vast array of cookie cutters. Not all of them were strictly for Christmas – we had a Kermit one, and a bunny, and a six-pointed star, among others – but we didn’t let that stop us from using them. Some of the simple ones were easy, but some of the plastic ones had intricate details wrought into the mould: ornaments on Christmas trees, harnesses on reindeer, smiling eyes and mouth for Santa. With those, Mom carefully dipped them in our five-gallon bucket of flour before pressing them into the dough. Pulling them up, she oh-so-gently separated the dough from the plastic, sometimes using a knife to get the stubborn bits. Mostly she did well, but occasionally a tree top or reindeer nose or tail didn't make it, and the remains were added back to the dough - or sometimes popped into an eager mouth.

Once the shapes were safely on sheets or plates, it was my job to decorate, I think because Mom always felt that I was more artistic. And it's true that I could get quite elaborate, drawing the process out. That was part of my enjoyment. Using a pastry brush, I gently spread a light coat of water over the raw dough. Then I carefully dusted colored sugar over the shapes, using sprinkles for accents like eyes or ornaments. I mostly tried to be elegant and realistic, though in some cases I had fun being a bit sillier, such as making a blue moon. It was one of the few real bonding times Mom and I shared, particularly since by then I was a somewhat typical adolescent and didn't necessarily want to spent time with my parents. But cookie-making remained an inviolate tradition.

And of course, once the cookies were baked and out of the oven, still warm and puffy and soft with the crunch from the glaze of sugar, everyone wanted a taste. We ate damaged ones first, those that didn't survive being lifted from the cookie sheets, or ones that were too thin and crispy (Dad's favorite), making sure we kept enough to package up for friends.

When my niece was 2, we started to include her. It was important enough to me that I continued it with her and the rest of the family after my mom’s death, finding in it a connection to my mom and all those past Christmases. It’s not quite the same – I’m the one who makes the dough and cuts it out now – but we all share in the decorating, which is the most fun.

The hard part was when I was heavy and often had conflicted feelings about the cookies. As I wrote:

By 1988, with my weight an unpleasant presence, this tradition had a different feel, at least for me. It was frustrating to pour so much time and energy into food that I knew I shouldn't eat. The colorful cookies were almost taunting, and while I didn't resent them, I did resent the people who could eat them with impunity. Why should they get to enjoy the cookies when I couldn't? If they were bad for me to eat, surely they must also be bad for others. It left a bitter aftertaste in my mouth, despite the sweetness of the cookies and the supposed joy of the holiday season.

It makes me all the more glad that I have moved past that. As I plan to go to my brother’s today to continue the tradition, I do so without any feelings of shame or guilt, or the idea that if I have a sugar cookie (or a bit of dough), I’m being “bad”. Instead, I can now participate with joy and the warmth of memory, and for me, that’s what it should be all about.

Sugared Out

When I got back from my week in Paris, I was telling my neighbor a little about the experience. She asked, “And did you try all kinds of pastries?”

I paused for a moment, not because I had to think about it but because I was surprised by my answer. “No.”

What surprised me about this was that when we were in Paris, it didn’t even occur to me to go try a lot of pastries. It simply wasn’t something that was appealing to me at the time. Don’t get me wrong – the dessert that I had at our Thanksgiving lunch was amazing, and I definitely enjoyed the Taste of Paris tour we took, where I got to sample spicebread, various cheeses, chocolates, and hot chocolate. It was more that since we were walking a lot, I was craving more substantial foods that would hold me for longer.

In fact, my niece and I had the following conversation on our way back to the apartment Thanksgiving evening. As background, a friend of mine had recommended a particular chain that sold Italian gelato, and we all thought that might be fun to try at some point. We found one of the places on Monday, but at that point we were too chilled to think about something cold and instead had hot chocolate. (Side note – hot chocolate in France is the real thing, not the pale imitation we have here. It’s actual chocolate that’s heated to the point of being liquid, and oh so tasty.)

Since by Thursday our stay was coming to a close, I asked my niece and brother, “Do you want to stop for gelato?”

My brother was noncommittal, but my niece replied, “I’m not really in the mood for it. I feel like I’ve had enough sweet things right now.” (This was after our big lunch with the tasty desserts.)

I considered if I wanted some and realized that I had to agree with her. “Yeah, I’m fairly sugared out, too.” Instead, we stopped and got some salad with tuna and bread.

When I think about my younger self, I’m not sure I ever got to that point of being “sugared out”, except perhaps on Easter or Halloween after gorging on candy. Certainly not after just one sweet hours beforehand. It still surprises me to think that I’ve come to this point, where I don’t want something just because it’s there, or it may be the only chance I’ll have to try it. If I’m hungry for it, I’ll have it, but at that time and place I wasn’t, and I’m okay with that. Besides, having things yet untasted just gives me another excuse to go back to Paris someday.

Walking and Eating

Walking and Eating
11-23-10

It’s amazing how much I can eat when I walk a lot.

I realize that what I define as “a lot” likely differs from the average American, who may often only walk from house to car to office, and vice versa. I will often walk 2-3 miles per day, but this was far more than that. This is the marathon walking that I only do once a year on my annual Thanksgiving trip. The record is still the 14 miles we walked in DC in 2007, but this year in Paris we came a close second, walking an estimated 12 miles on our second day.

Since this is only a once-a-year event, I’d forgotten how all this impacts my hunger and eating. This year was also different because just 1 ½ months before I’d gone on a new medication that had a negative impact on my metabolism. Without quite being aware of it, I gained five pounds because instead of instinctual eating, where I focused on my body’s hunger and fullness cues, I was in habitual eating mode, planning meals based on what I could normally eat.

But finally, a week before Paris, I got tired of feeling lethargic and low-energy. I resigned myself to the fact that I simply couldn’t eat as much, although it took me a couple of days to be okay with that. When I started to feel better in general, lighter and clearer and more focused, I remembered why it was good to eat only what I needed. I did feel a pang, though, at the thought of going to Paris and not being able to sample all of its culinary delights. I had forgotten about the walking.

I noticed it first on our second day. In the morning, I had a relatively light breakfast of two scrambled eggs, ¼ of a baguette still crusty and warm from the oven of the boulangerie and spread with raspberry jam, a small apple, and tea. I felt good at that and headed out at 9:30 with my brother and niece.

We walked from the Latin Quarter to the Place de la Concorde and began down the Champs Elysees. This was two hours of pretty solid walking, and by then my stomach was starting to gurgle. I was assuming we’d find a restaurant with a fixed-price menu for lunch as we had the day before, but I didn’t realize that the first part of the Cmaps Elysees only had food vendor carts. Most of those sold baguette sandwiches and crepes, or the occasional hot dog. We held out until 12:15, by which point we were starving. We got sandwiches, and mine was huge: a circular loaf of bread with a diameter the size of my head, moistened with the French favorite of mayonnaise, filled with lettuce, tomato (from Sabine’s cheeseburger, since she doesn’t like them), onions, ham, and cheese. We also shared some tasty frites (not called French fries in France), then rounded out our meal with crepes – huge, platter-sized wheels slathered with Nutella, folded in a triangle, and dusted with powdered sugar.

We ate outside, and despite the cold, it was heavenly. Everything tasted wonderful, and after all that, I felt only comfortably full, not stuffed. Plus, I knew we’d be walking more. I was right.

The afternoon took us down to l’Arc de Triomphe, to le Tour Eiffel, past les Hotel des Invalides, and eventually back to the Latin Quarter (we got a bit turned around). By the time we returned to the apartment it was 5, we had walked somewhere around 12 miles – and I wasn’t hungry.

I felt like I should have been after all that, but by now I know enough to ignore the “should” voice in my head. Instead I focused on my true need of hydration; I’d been deliberately dehydrating because I was tired of paying to pee. After some gorgeous loose-leaf tea we’d bought, and a lot of water, by 6:45 I was feeling a bit peckish, so I had some salad, a slice of ham, a piece of bread, and two clementines. I anted to wait before eating more, since my body wasn’t really hungry, so I went to pick up a few staples at the store: eggs, cheese, bananas, peanut butter, and coffee (the latter for my brother).

That was when I started to get truly hungry. In the Am I Hungry? program, the suggestion is that you ask yourself what do you want, what do you need, and what do you have. Well, I must have subconsciously thought “what do I want” because I found myself staring at large bars of dark chocolate. I added one to my basket and went to check out. While waiting (it was packed), my body’s demands increased and I realized that my items were actually what I needed: carbs (chocolate and banana), and fat and protein (peanut butter). I grew impatient, wanting to add those to my “what do I have” list.

As soon as I got bak, my brother and I had the same impulse. We broke off pieces of chocolate, slathered them with peanut butter, and ate with relish. I immediately felt better. I added a banana with peanut butter as well as half of a peanut butter and jam sandwich, with a carrot thrown in for balance. Finally, I felt satisfied. Then I realized how much I had eaten and was amazed.

When people talk about why French women don’t get fat, despite all the bread and cheese and chocolate and wine, I hope they factor in walking. We did see one heavy woman (in McDonald’s appropriately enough), but by and large the Parisians seem quite trim, I suspect for the same reasons as discussed in last year’s Thanksgiving blog about NY being the thinnest city in America: you have to walk everywhere.

Personally, I’m happy to walk. I enjoy the exercise and learning my way around a new place. And, of course, it means that I could eat croissants and baguettes and chocolate without worry, because I truly was hungry for it. It was, for me, the perfect holiday experience.

The Possibility of Change

Not long ago I read an article that essentially stated that once people reach adulthood, their weight is set, and that we need to focus primarily on children if we want to curb the obesity epidemic. As evidence, the author cited the statistic that only a few (5-10%) people successfully keep weight off in adulthood. He also used himself as an example, saying that he had gone on and off diets for years without any appreciable weight change.

I was horrified. I won’t argue against encouraging kids to be more active and developing habits that will help them lead long, healthy lives. I’m all for that. But how awful and defeatist is it to say that once you’re at a certain age, there’s no going back, you might as well not even bother to try because so few succeed? (Of course, it’s also a very easy out, allowing people to accept their weight without question and not affect larger changes in their lives.)

As one of the successful minority, I offer a different perspective. It’s not that people can’t achieve lasting weight loss, but it’s a matter of how they go about it. For instance, recognizing that a quick fix doesn’t work. I actually have a hard time, now, wrapping my brain around the concept that I used to think I could go on a diet, lose weight, and then go back to my old eating habits – but without gaining back the old weight. I admit it’s seductive, but I have to agree with the article’s author on this: diets don’t work.

That’s why I was so excited to discover Am I Hungry?®, which placed a name to my own method of weight loss. A no-diet approach. I hadn’t realized that others advocated this, or that it was considered valid enough to actually share with others. I wonder what the author of the article would make of that?

I know it’s hard to come to this point. For me, it took a life-changing event to shift my perspective, to come to understand that lasting change can only be achieved by making lasting changes. I only that I can help others shift their view in a gentler manner, so they, too, can lead a no-diet, healthy, and enjoyable life.

Food Ministry

I recently participated in a lay-led worship service at my church, one of many in the past few years. During coffee hour, a woman told me something I’d heard before, which is that I have a very ministerial presence. I’m sure she meant it as a compliment, yet in thinking about it, I had a moment of internal crisis.

The crisis came because I spent quite a bit of time earlier this year working with a career counselor to determine what I actually want to be doing with my life. I knew without doubt that I did not want to work with software forever, but beyond that I had no clear direction. I was interested in too many things: ministry, environmental work, grief counseling, dietetics, and more.

What I eventually settled on was becoming a weight loss coach, but that casual remark at church made me question my decision. I cannot deny that ministry is still a draw for me, and I suspect that I will always seek out way to occasionally appear behind a pulpit. But what I realized once I got through my moment of doubt was this: helping people lose weight, at least the way I want to approach it, is ministry.

What else can it be when I consider that my goal is not to tell people what to eat but rather to help them redefine their relationship with food and their bodies, and in doing so reclaim their lives? How else to consider it when my work with them might lead them to reevaluate their impact on the earth based on what they eat, as I have? My own life has changed dramatically, and for the better, as a result of my own journey, and I want so much to help others find that change.

In the end, I’m grateful for that brief moment of panic because now, on the other side of it, I can say with confidence that this truly is my calling. I embark on this path now with a full and grateful heart, looking forward to my ministry.

Time to Eat

Growing up, I never had a lot of flexibility around when I was going to have a meal. I don’t remember the specifics from when I was little, but I know that by the time I was in high school, my eating had to fit in around school. I ate breakfast around 5:30 in the morning, lunch around 10:30 or 11 (they had shifts for the lunch period, and this earliest one was the only one that worked if I wanted to be in band), and I had a snack when I got home around 3:15. This meant that I often wasn’t hungry for supper, since we always ate at 5:30 p.m., which was when Mom got home from her school day and before the news started. But I ate supper anyway, because it was a mealtime, and it was important to Mom (and the rest of us) that we eat as a family.

I’ve gotten away from that in the past few years, eating when I’m hungry even if it’s not a mealtime, and not eating at a mealtime if I’m not hungry. Mostly I do try to plan things so that I’m hungry around traditional mealtimes, because it’s convenient, but I know I’m not tied to it.

Which makes this month interesting, as this past week I traveled to the Pacific coast, returned home just in time for the end to daylight savings, and am now preparing to go to Paris in a couple of weeks. After all my travel experiences, I know that one of the best ways for me to adjust to a new time is to start eating at “mealtimes” according to that new time, and that means eating at some pretty bizarre hours.

For instance, on Friday, I woke up at 3:15 a.m. and had breakfast. This sounds crazy on the surface of it, except that I was preparing to head back to Maine and knew that I would be losing 3 hours of time, so it was really like 6:15. But I wasn’t eating then just because it was more of a normal breakfast-time back home; I had deliberately eaten a light supper, and by 3:15 I was actually hungry. Then I had another meal around 9 (knowing it was really more like noon, and also because I was hungry), and had a couple of lighter snacks through the rest of the day as I needed them.

Similarly, in preparation for going to Paris, I already know that I’m going to adjust how much I eat so that the day I head out, I’ll be hungry mid-afternoon (since Paris is six hours ahead), and then I won’t eat again until morning in Europe; I’ll skip the dinner option provided by the plane in favor of sleep.

I realize this is probably more trouble than most people take, and I do wonder if I go a bit overboard. Then again, when I think about how jet-lagged I was my first trip to Europe, and some of my earlier travels, I think it’s worth it. The key is once I’m wherever I am, to get back to eating when I’m hungry, and thoroughly enjoying what I’m eating – and that’s something I fully intend to do in Paris.

Halloween

Ah, Halloween. It’s a rather strange holiday when you think about it, and for me, at least, a conflicted one as well.

When I was little, it was very exciting to dress up and go around the neighborhood collecting candy and other goodies – in those days, we even sometimes go homemade treats like popcorn balls or candied apples. Of course I also loved coming home and emptying my bag on the living room floor to see what I’d gotten for loot: Kit Kats, candy corn, Charleston Chews, Smartees (one of my favorites), M&M’s, etc. And back then, I didn’t really worry about eating it.

When I got older, we also had Halloween parties with all of my friends and my brother’s friends. We’d listen to silly music like “Monster Mash”, play games, and go through our somewhat bizarre piñata ritual. This involved sitting in a circle and taking turns shaking the piñata for candy (three shakes each turn), not hitting it. This was because the piñata, a donkey, was homemade, and the process was laborious enough that Mom wanted to get the maximal life span out of it – which we did, even if the piñata got rather sad-looking.

Those are my good, happy memories of Halloween. The not-so-good, of course, revolved around the candy. On the one hand, it was great to be able to legitimately ask for and get candy – it was actually expected and somewhat encouraged. But once I turned eleven, I began to be very self-conscious about it. Did those giving out the candy judge me for my weight? Did they give me less than others, or did they think they should?

And then when I had the candy, I didn’t know how to go about eating it. Since I had acquired it by legitimate means, could I eat it openly, or would that still draw disapproval? Should I horde it to make it last? Should I gorge on it to make room for the other holiday foods? It all proved much more emotionally draining to decipher than I would have liked. Also difficult was that by then I couldn’t easily find costumes that fit. Halloween stopped being fun.

Older still, since I could no longer go trick or treating, if I wanted to have some of my favorite Halloween candy (particularly candy corn, which was unavailable other times of year), I had to buy a whole bag – and eat all of it myself. In secret, feeling ashamed and guilty at every piece.

When I started losing weight, particularly the second year in, I was a bit shocked to discover that the candy had lost its hold over me. I ate some of what a co-worker brought in, more out of habit than real desire, but after a piece or two I discovered I didn’t want any more. Similarly, when I bought candy in preparation for trick-or-treaters who never materialized, I didn’t feel secretly glad, knowing that now I could keep all that candy to myself. Instead, I stared at the mass of sugar, wondering what I was going to do with it. (Bring it to work, it turns out.)

Then five years ago, I went to my first Halloween party in well over a decade, and I had no idea what to wear. I hadn’t been able to attend my friend’s mask-making party (a pity, since then I could have seen her first meeting with the man who is now her husband), and I didn’t have time or inclination to buy a costume I might never wear again. In the end I made a Zorro-like mask and wore my sleeveless red bridesmaid’s dress from a recent wedding. It was as much a costume as anything else, because at the time I still felt a bit of a stranger to myself when I considered that I could wear a size 6 (!) sleeveless fitted dress, and look good in it.

These days, Halloween and I have a truce and don’t disturb each other. I’ve largely forgotten about it this year and certainly haven’t felt tempted to buy candy. I prefer to focus on the older meaning of the holiday, and finding other ways to feed the ghosts of my beloved dead.

Who Are You Losing it For?

There’s a line in Alanis Morissette’s song “Mary Jane” that goes: “I hear you’re losing weight again Mary Jane / Do you ever wonder who you’re losing it for?”

I’ve always been struck by this question, because it’s so important. I know for myself, when I was an adolescent, I was trying to lose weight for so many other people – my mom, my dad, my grandparents, society as a whole, guys I liked, etc. I didn’t really have my own reasons, except to make them happy. But it wasn’t until I got past all of that and started losing weight for myself that it actually worked.

I was reminded of this the other day when I was talking to a weight-loss coach. She was amazed that I had managed to lose so much weight on my own, and I credit that both to my stubbornness but also the fact that I was losing it for the right reasons – i.e., my reasons, not someone else’s. Because as both she and I know, trying to lose it for someone else usually backfires. She told me how her mother had tried to pay her to lose weight (which meant that she just binged in secret), and someone she’s working with whose parents won’t pay for college until the young woman loses weight.

But this is exactly the wrong thing to do, and it still baffles me how parents think this will work. Even though my parents didn’t do anything like that (the most Mom did was offer to buy me a paperback book for every 5 pounds I lost, but that was framed much more as a reward/incentive than a bribe), the simple fact of all the pressure and focus on it made me want to eat even more. I was an adolescent, after all – rebelliousness is part of the package. If someone, especially a parent, tries to tie all your self-worth to your weight, it will very rarely work. And even if it does while the girl or boy is at home, as soon as they get to college, all bets are off, same as with any other rigid rules and restrictions.

To me, the working with childhood obesity is not just looking at the causes, but also helping the children find their own reasons for wanting to be healthy. Telling them they’ll get sick when they get older is pointless – to kids, being an adult is ages away, and they think they’ll live forever anyway. The reason, I expect, will be different for each child, but the key is that it’s their reason, and not their parents’.

Yoga Bodies

I’ve recently started doing a little yoga, both to get something different into my exercise routine, and also hoping that it will help with stress reduction. I’ve been using videos for this, since I can get them from Netflix (or even better, stream some!), and also because it gives me much more flexibility as to when I do it.

And speaking of flexibility, I always thought that being physically flexible was all I’d need to do yoga. My mom thought so, too, which is why she invited me to a free yoga class with her at the Cancer Community Center (wonderful resource, by the way) over ten years ago. She started going while she was undergoing chemo, to try to keep some of her strength up, and I agreed to join her.

I only attended one session, though. Partly that was due to time constraints (I was on Christmas break so headed back to Boston shortly after), but an embarrassment factor also crept in. Here I was, still very flexible, but I literally could not put my body in some of the positions asked because of the size of my body parts. Primarily my legs – they had so much bulk that I could only do so much with them. The embarrassment was enough of a deterrent that I didn’t try yoga again until the past year.

I was reminded of this recently in using a “Long and Lean” yoga video by a man named Baron Baptiste. It seems like a good video, but I was a little annoyed by his introduction. He said that the two women modeling the poses for him – both very lean, long, and sculpted – had “yoga bodies”, meaning that they had gotten to that place only by doing yoga.

That may be the case, but I do think there’s some inherent pre-disposition to having those sorts of bodies. For instance, I will never be lean, unless I go on a starvation diet. My legs are still the primary source of this, being far too thick. Additionally, I will never be long; if anything, I will become less long as I grow older. Finally, I’m not quite proportionate. I have a short torso, and so when I’m asked to do things like go from downward dog to a lunge by jumping lightly (hah!) or stepping between my arms, I simply can’t. There’s not enough room between my chest and the floor to easily move into that position.

My point is simply this. When doing any exercise, we all need to be aware of our particular body type and capabilities, and not get so embarrassed by what we think we should be able to do but can’t that we don’t do the exercise at all anymore. For myself, even though I can’t perform some of the actions the way they’re modeled, and I know I’ll never have a body like the pretty people on my screen, no matter how much yoga I do, I won’t let that stop me. I’m going to keep up with the parts I can do and not worry about the rest. After all, I’d say that anyone who does yoga has a “yoga body” – it just so happens that they’re not all the same.

Too Much of a Good Thing

I have a confession to make: I’m a compulsive produce shopper. Most items that people like to buy – clothes, jewelry, cars, computers, video games, etc. – leave me cold. But get me to a good Farmer’s Market, and I have a hard time stopping.

When picking out apples, for instance, I want to get some of each variety, and this time of year, those are in abundance: Red Delicious, Golden Delicious, Granny Smith, Macoun, Macintosh, Cortland, Empire, Honey Crisp, Jona Gold. This also applies to other items when I find new heirloom varieties, be it with tomatoes, carrots, beets, zucchini, or others.

As new items come into season, I wander among the stands, recipes darting through my head as I fantasize about what delectable treats I could make, savory and sweet: soups, stews, casseroles, stir-frys, salads, fritters, breads, muffins, jams, and pies. Or, in the case of items like cucumbers, the delight may simply be in eating them raw, or as with broccoli, I may simply steam it or lightly sauté it. Then as the season ends, I worry that this will be the last week a certain item is available, but I don’t want to let it go just yet. Which is why, by the time I’m done, I’m practically waddling back to my car, laden with cloth bags brimming with produce.

The problem is this. I’m only one person, and while I can eat a somewhat ridiculous amount of vegetables, even I can consume only so much. After all, as I learned the hard way, overeating healthy foods may be more difficult to do than with less healthy options, but it’s still overeating. That’s why I occasionally find items in my fridge that were once fresh but are now sad remnants of their former glory: withered potatoes, blackish sludge that was once lettuce, peppers that turn to mush when I pick them up, brown and wilted tops of fennel.

Until today, I hadn’t actually given much thought to this. But this morning, after another trip to the Farmer’s Market, I was in my favorite local shop for a few additional items, and I saw that they had put up a sign with some suggested rules on how to treat food. Things like buy local and organic when you can, eat less meat and wheat, prepare food with care, serve only as much as you need, and use the rest.

It was the last rule that struck me. I try to use as much of the parts of what I buy as I can, such as making chicken broth from bones, or using beet tops for salads. I realized, though, that as I’m on my buying frenzy at the market, it’s disrespectful to the farmers and the food to buy so much that some of it goes to waste. And so in the future, I will try to remember to buy only what I need, knowing that (most of the time) I can get more later, and that there truly can be too much of a good thing.

Investing My Energy

One of the wonderful things about the “Am I Hungry?” program is that you are asked to consider where you will put all the new energy you have. This energy might come from no longer fretting about diets, counting calories, or beating yourself up for being “bad”, but it might also come from simply being healthier.

The funny thing is that when I started losing weight, I definitely had more energy, but I didn’t realize it at first because it happened so gradually. Then one day my dad said, “Your social calendar seems to have increased in inverse correlation with your weight loss.” When I sat down to consider it, I realized he was right.

After changing my relationship to food and exercise, so many things changed, and not just socially, although that was a part of it. I became more involved in my church, in many ways: I discovered a passion for leading worship as a lay member of the congregation, which has led me to being co-chair of the Worship Committee; I organized and participated in young adult activities; I was on the search committee for our new minister, and once we found her, I joined other committees; I have greeted and ushered, made food for various functions, and joined a small group ministry.

I volunteered in other ways as well, with the Cancer Community Center and for a community supported kitchen. I joined a book discussion group. I started dating. I discovered a love of travel, visiting places even as far away as the Galapagos Islands. I started to cook and experiment with new foods and recipes. I did more outdoor activities. I began keeping a small patio garden.

It wasn’t just my newfound energy that allowed me to do this, but also a new self-confidence and change in attitude. I can see this clearly in the evolution of my writing. While my reflections aren’t always happy, they now have at their heart a wish to learn from whatever experiences I have, to grow from them, and to let go of old thoughts and feelings that were so harmful to me.

All of this has brought me to taking the “Am I Hungry?” facilitator training. Had I still been heavy, I honestly don’t know that I would have the courage for it. Even after losing weight, it took me years to feel able to move outside of my comfort zone and have enough self-confidence to think that I could succeed at something new. It was only by revisiting my journey through my writing that I realized how much my life has changed, and that I would love to help others experience that.

It was also interesting because a woman from church recently commented that I’ve talked a lot about my weight. It wasn’t intentional, but it makes perfect sense when I realize that every area of my life has been impacted by my weight loss. It’s been a long, unexpected, and winding road, but also exciting, and I wonder with joyful anticipation where this energy will carry me in the future.

The Beauty of Food

This weekend I finally made it to the Common Ground Fair in Unity, Maine. I’ve heard about it for years, but I didn’t quite know what to expect, although the one thing everyone assured me was that it would have lots of good food. And it did, but what struck me more than that was the beauty of the food.

I didn’t pay as much attention to the prepared foods, but I will say that the lamb shish kabobs, alternating pieces of perfectly cooked meat with tender apple, roasted onion, and sweet peppers was enough to convince me that’s what I wanted for lunch (well, that and the smell). I also loved looking at the different hues of the honey, from clover to wildflower to blueberry to raspberry, ranging from very pale to a deep amber. And of course the creaminess of ice cream (a little too evident in the hot, melting sun).

More than that, I was struck by the gorgeous beds of rainbow Swiss chard, the tiny hot red peppers that looked like Christmas ornaments against the shiny green leaves, the tables full of produce that had won prizes. I loved seeing not only the “perfect” ones but those that we don’t normally see in the supermarket, such as the braided carrots, or the butternut squash in the shape of a horseshoe. Those differences remind me that the food is real, that it comes from the ground and is grown by people, not just mechanically produced.

And I thought how wonderful it was to reward people for growing the best produce, or raising the best animals, or producing the tastiest jam. Too often we forget (or simply don’t know) the effort that goes into the food we eat, making it easy to not fully appreciate the end result.

Today, therefore, I have been enjoying not just the taste and smell of my food, but its physical beauty. My breakfast of a frittata, golden-yellow, lightened here and there by sprinkles of goat cheese, dotted with the brightness of red peppers, and the soft, light green of my perfectly-shaped pear. At lunch, the darker crust on my grilled cheese sandwich with the lighter brown of the toasted part, the brilliance of my just-tender green beans, and the variegated red and green of my Macintosh apple. For dinner, I eagerly anticipate the yellow of my heirloom tomato (I forget the variety), contrasted sharply with a fresh basil leaf and mozzarella cheese, and the darker green of spinach peeking out from my white bean and fennel soup.

More than that, as I appreciate and savor the beauty, as well as the taste, I am grateful to all those who spend their lives in service to food. I will enjoy it all the more as a result.

Mindful Eating

One of the things the “Am I Hungry?” program encourages is for people to eat mindfully, to avoid distractions of TV, work, reading, driving, etc. and instead focus on and fully appreciate the food. To do this, it’s recommended that we eat slowly, with small bites, putting the fork down between mouthfuls, and pausing to fully appreciate the sight, smell, texture, and aftertaste of the food.

In some places this is the norm, but in America, this is not something most of us are good at. We’re all about the fast food, literally and figuratively. Part of it is that we’re often pressured to multi-task and to be as efficient as possible. But I think it’s also a question of expectation and abundance.

If we always expect to have the food, it’s easy to take it for granted, to not give it full attention. But what about those who don’t have much food, who can’t assume that they can always have more, or that it will always be there?

One of my favorite examples of this is Charlie Bucket in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, when Charlie savors each small morsel of his annual birthday chocolate bar, making it last as long as he possibly could. But a more recent and real-life example is in the book I Remember Warm Rain. In the story “Ponce de Leon Walk”, Kahiye Hassan talks about adjusting to life in Portland, Maine, after coming from Kenya.

In it, he talks about going to a little grocery store on Congress Street, which was very different than stores from his home. “I had assumed that mangoes and coconuts would always be part of my life, but this store didn’t even have mango juice.” (p. 97) What the store did have was a treat from Kahiye’s youth that he never expected to find – strawberry jelly. He said, “The long-lost odor alone made me feel full.” Using his finger as a spoon, he scooped out some jelly, put it in his mouth, and let it linger. “The taste softened my tongue; the seeds did not interfere with the essence of the flavor or diminish the taste. They were the taste, providing flexibility to the tongue. For days I munched the strawberry jelly from my hidden stash… and came up with many ways to eat it.” (p. 98)

And so as I try to shut out the distractions of my daily life and focus on my food, I will remember this – to be grateful for what I have, because even in this land of abundance, I don’t know how long I will have it. Considering it that way, it becomes precious, not something I will simply stuff in my mouth while sitting at my desk or in front of the TV, or hurriedly eat on the way to something else.

That reminds me of people who disdain diets by saying things like, “Do you really want your last meal to be a salad?” But in my mind, whether it’s a salad or a four-course elegant meal, it doesn’t matter what the last meal is if it’s not something that we savor and make worth remembering.

Food in the Office Part 2 - Why?

In my last “Am I Hungry?” class, we were talking about different triggers for eating. Some are physical (thirst, fatigue, etc.), some are emotional (I think most people can guess what those are!), and some are environmental (holidays, associations with activities like popcorn with movies, etc.).

When we got to the environmental triggers, I raised my hand and talked about the ridiculous amounts of food in the office. Then the facilitator asked me a very interesting question. “Why is it that you think they provide all this food?”

I’d thought a little about that in the back of my mind over the years, but this really made me sit down and consider. What, in fact, is the point of all of this? I don’t think they really want us to have heart conditions, or develop diabetes, because then our insurance premiums would go up. So there must be something else to it, but what?

After a moment I realized what it was. “It’s their way of trying to keep morale up. If they give us all this tasty food at the office, maybe we won’t feel so badly about being there.”

This isn’t just my opinion, either; I know it for a simple fact. Our office manager (slash benefits coordinator slash receptionist slash travel manager) will occasionally make cookies in the little toaster oven, and the last time she did it, I talked to her a little about it. “I wanted to do something to give people a little pick-me-up,” she said. “I know things are really hard right now, and this seemed to help.”

Of course it helped – how can your mood not improve if you want down the hallway and smell fresh-baked cookies? But it’s terribly sad at the same time. If things are bad enough that we have to give ourselves sugar highs to get through the day, that doesn’t speak very well for the company in general.

And as with all food remedies, this one is, in the words of the Muppet Beeker, “Sadly temporary.” Eventually the cookies are eaten, and the smell fades, and we’re left back where we started, except with a sugar crash to cope with as well. So while I appreciate that our office manager genuinely cares about wanting the people in the office to feel better, there might be better ways of doing it.

"Am I Hungry?" Reflections

Going through the “Am I Hungry?” training now is a bit strange, in a way, since I went through a lot of this on my own when I was losing weight, but I had to figure it out for myself. Some of what I’d experienced was already fairly present in my mind from writing about my experience, but it’s becoming even clearer now.

I remember how much I used to eat because of stress. If anything bad or difficult happened, generally the first thing I did was reach for the food. When I was in the process of losing weight, tried to get away from that, but it wasn’t easy. I particularly remember one time when I’d had a really hard day, things were getting ugly with my dad’s ex-wife, and just generally I was feeling overwhelmed. When I got out from work, I had a wavering moment, because the bus dropped me off right in front of a little convenience store that also sold things like subs, pizza, chicken fingers, and French fries. I was craving the chicken fingers and French fries, but by then I knew that I only want those specific foods because I was stressed. I managed to walk away from it, and kept going for a short walk before feeling better and returning home for a lighter dinner, when I was actually hungry. And I remember how that felt like such an accomplishment, to recognize that moment and to change what I might have done previously.

When I was younger I also ate a lot for comfort. If I was sad or disappointed or lonely, again, I typically turned to food, often cookies or cakes or anything sweet. It took me a long time to get past that, and to figure out other ways of dealing with that need for comfort. Another moment from when I was losing weight was when I felt that urge to eat for comfort, but I didn’t go for it. Instead, I realized that the comfort I was looking for was something to connect me to my childhood. So I put in one of my favorite movies from growing up, Ghostbusters, and did cross stitch instead. I termed it “comfort viewing” instead of “comfort eating”. And I did feel better, without the added stress of gaining back some of the precious lost pounds.

In watching some of the videos and hearing Michelle talk about getting to the root of some of our eating problems, I remember that my own initial reasons for eating were probably stress and boredom and loneliness, but then it snowballed. My parents and other family members became concerned about my weight, and that quickly became the major focus. And so I discovered later on that I desperately wanted my family to accept me for who I was, regardless of the weight. All my attempts to lose weight had therefore failed, because it was to please them, and it was also because part of me felt like I shouldn’t lose weight until I had gained that acceptance. When I finally started losing weight, I realized that I couldn’t let my health and happiness be impacted by other people’s views of me. I had to accept myself, and once I started doing that, and realizing that I wanted to be healthier for me – that was when I succeeded.

Children Starving in Africa

I recently watched Dirt: The Movie!, a documentary about just that – dirt. It explores the effects of certain agricultural practices on the dirt that is our earth’s skin, and that supports us all, and cautions us that if we are not careful, we will lose so much of the topsoil that we will no longer be able to grow enough food to support our ever-burgeoning population.

This is a major concern, with many implications. For instance, one of the things that particularly struck me was in looking at one place (I believe in Africa) where there’s no food, or not enough, because of these very issues. The people there live with hunger on a daily basis. One way that they alleviate their hunger pangs, at least momentarily, is to actually make little cakes out of water and dirt.

I’ve been thinking a lot about hunger pangs myself recently, as part of my facilitator training for the “Am I Hungry?” program, but in a very different way. We talk a lot about learning to identify when we’re actually hungry, and one of the ways is if we suffer hunger pangs. What’s strange in our culture is that many of us are so disconnected from our bodies that we no longer recognize when we’re hungry or not. Some people eat so constantly that they never feel hunger pangs, or any other symptom of hunger.

One of the reasons some of us get to this point is because our parents urged us to eat everything on our plate, sometimes using guilt as a tool by telling us, “There are children starving in Africa.” (Or other country of choice.)

I think the intent behind this is to make us feel like we should take advantage of what we have and eat as much as we’re given. But how does it help those starving children if we overeat so much that we forget what it feels like to be hungry? We instead end up getting away from the rhythms of our body, eating even more food, and thereby taking up more resources that we don’t need.

I have an alternate suggestion. If you have enough money to buy more food than you will eat, perhaps you could cut back to only what you need. With any money left, put it towards ending hunger, in Africa as well as closer to home. I suspect that would make a much bigger difference towards those starving children and their parents than eating more than we actually need.

The Joy of Cooking

I’ve recently seen some commercials for the new Lean Cuisine Market Creations. I don’t have this is exactly right, but they go something like this.

A woman in the kitchen says, “I find chopping vegetables relaxing after a long day of work.”

The scene freezes and a disembodied voice says something like, “Who really finds cooking relaxing at the end of a long day?”

it then cuts to this new Lean Cuisine product, a bag that has a mixture of vegetables and possibly some protein that you can just pop in microwave. The vegetables steam in the bag, and then you just put it on a plate and voila! As their website says, it’s “a truly enjoyable dinner experience without the fuss.”

But I actually take a bit of offense to this ad because I do enjoy cooking at the end of the day. After sitting at a desk and staring at a computer screen for hours, it’s a wonderful change of pace to do something tangible and physical. Chopping vegetables can also be quite cathartic, depending on how my day has gone.

I will admit, though, that I didn’t always feel this way. In fact, I didn’t realize how much I’d come to enjoy cooking until I had my surgery four years ago and couldn’t cook for a while. I was supposed to avoid bending my arms much, and preferably to keep them propped up on pillows at least for the first few days. Makes cooking a bit difficult.

Once I recovered, I realized how much I delight in this process. I can come home, put on some music, and chop and stir and season away, taking in the beautiful colors of the food, the enticing aromas, all the while knowing that I am creating something both nourishing and delicious. Why would I want to just stick a bag in the microwave and dump it on a plate? Not for me, thanks. I’ll stick with the joy of cooking.

Food for Cattle

Yesterday when I came back from the Farmer’s Market, laden with produce, a man in the elevator asked me, “How does the corn look?”

“It looks good,” I said. “Everything does, actually.”

He shook his head. “I don’t know. I’m from New Jersey, and even though my wife says it’s different here, to me, corn is only meant for one thing – food for cattle.”

He left the elevator before I could think of how to respond. I’ve had issues with corn and the cattle industry ever since reading The Omnivore’s Dilemma, but this was the first time that I had ever actually encountered anyone who had internalized our society’s strange use of corn so deeply that he no longer considered it a food. I have to say it disturbed me deeply.

I still don’t know how we’ve come to this point, where we’ve encouraged so much growth of corn that we need to get rid of the excess by turning it into a sweetener and, perhaps worse, feeding it to animals. Cows’ stomachs aren’t meant to digest corn. Ours are. Why are the cattle eating the corn, then, instead of people? Particularly when it makes the cattle sick, so we have to give them antibiotics to keep them from dying too soon, and then we get to eat the meat from the unhealthy cows. How is this a win?

I still remember the sometimes extreme measures my mom would take in her attempt to keep our corn from being food only for the raccoons. Even though she was allergic to it and couldn’t eat much, she loved corn so much that she still grew some of it and tried all sorts of things to keep it safe. Perhaps the most memorable was putting my brother’s dirty socks out around the corn. Nothing really worked, but those few ears that we got were so precious and delicious and treasured. We wouldn’t have dreamed of giving them to an animal to eat.

I think I will stick with eating the corn myself, instead of eating the cattle that eats the corn, particularly these days when it’s fresh and sweet and delicious. I’ll let the cows eat the grass that I can’t, and we’ll both be much happier.

Hansel and Gretel

I recently saw a wonderful opera production of “Hansel and Gretel”. I was obviously familiar with the story – although this version was considerably sanitized – but I had never before quite realized that the whole plot revolves around food.

In the beginning, the absence of food is what causes much of the conflict. (And here, in the opera version, this requires some willing suspension of disbelief. The whole family is supposedly quite hungry, yet the performers looked remarkably well-fed.) They have been subsisting on bread and water, and whatever plants they can forage, having had no money to buy anything more.

This leads to Hansel’s desperate cries, “I’m so hungry!”

Hearing that, I couldn’t help contrasting it to most of us in Western society, who have so much food that we eat more than we need, and often from some motivation other than simple hunger. What would those peasant children think if they saw us? What would we or our own children think if we were placed in that situation, with true hunger such a constant companion it is expected, becoming simply a dull ache, or a certain lethargy? Would we be tempted to follow the lead of the step-mother in the more traditional versions, convincing her husband to leave his children in the forest because they can no longer afford to feel all four family members?

And what a horrible thing that must be, to see your children go hungry and waste away before your eyes, knowing you cannot provide for them. It might be easier to abandon them, imagine some better fate somehow awaiting them in the wood. This is where the sanitation came in – in the opera version, the children were sent to pick strawberries as punishment for breaking a jug with cream. In either case, the reason for them being in the forest is food-related.

It is small wonder, then, that the children so immediately start eating the witch’s confectionary house when they find it. They know they should not consume someone’s house, yet they conveniently create excuses and reasons, and start eating. When they hear the witch ask, “Who’s nibbling on my house?” they ignore it, pretend it’s the wind. Would we be any different? Gluttony is listed as one of the seven deadly sins, but is it gluttony if you’re starving? I do wonder, though, if the house might include different foods were the story written today. Perhaps French fries, potato chips, ice cream, candy bars, or pre-packaged snack cakes. And maybe something gluten-free as a nod to those with food allergies? Whatever the case, I strongly doubt that children these days would be satisfied with almonds and raisins as treats, which is what Hansel was fed.

When the witch finally emerges, we discover why she built such a house. To attract children to use in her meals! While I don’t consider other people to be viable options for assuaging hunger, it was apparently the norm for the witch. (Brief aside – the portrayal of witches in fairy tales drives me crazy, but that’s another subject altogether.) So here again, the motivation was food. What we never learn is if the witch’s hunger could be assuaged by anything else, or if for some reason only small children would nourish her. Not that it matters to the story, exactly, but it’s interesting to consider. Again, is it gluttony, or evil, if that is what you need to eat in order to live?

The resolution of the story is also food-related. The witch, distracted by her own hunger, gets careless and is pushed into the oven by children, where she herself is cooked. The children return home, the father miraculously able to support them again. We never learn what happens to the house – do they eat it, or let it rot? – or if the experience has put Hansel and Gretel off of sweets altogether. Those weren’t important details to the fairy tale.

But it does make me think how motivated we are by food. Other fairy tales show this, too. Rapunzel’s mother craved lettuce, and because of that Rapunzel was given to the witch. Snow White wanted an apple badly enough that she accepted it from an untrustworthy source and nearly died as a result. Mortals venturing into Faerie must be careful not to eat of the beautiful displays of food; if they do, they will be trapped in that realm forever.

I know that I, too, can behave irrationally when I get too hungry. My judgment is compromised; all I can think of is wanting to eat something. I’ve decided to consider that the moral of “Hansel and Gretel”. If you get too hungry, you could end up doing something that will have dire, even deadly consequences. If you’re hungry, and have the means, then eat! Maybe then you will see sugar-coated houses, or convenient lies, for what they are and can avoid them.

Government-Regulated/Forbidden Food

I read an article in the paper today about a forced change being made to some items being offered at a restaurant in downtown Portland. The change is part of a federal grant to help fight obesity, and among items being removed are whoopie pies. Other items will be reinvented with healthier ingredients – whole wheat pasta and reduced fat milk for mac and cheese, for instance – and the nutritional information for all items will be available. Other, healthier options in general will be added to the menu, and some portion sizes cut down.

Now, I’m all for providing healthy options. It drives me bonkers when I go somewhere and all I can get is junk food. Portion sizes are also important. It’s a bit daunting to see how much you get served in some places, since most of us are conditioned to eat everything in front of us. And telling me what’s actually in the food I’m eating is a big plus in my book.

That being said, I’m very, very worried about restaurants or businesses being told what they’re allowed to serve. This seems to go against free enterprise, for one, but more than that, it gets at one of the biggest problems, as I see it, with diets or weight-loss programs – creating forbidden foods.

I know from personal experience that if you can’t get something that you want one way, you’ll find some other way to get it. Removing those menu options will not stop people who want them from getting them, but it will take away that business from the café. Additionally, it starts annoyance and rebellious tendencies festering, making people feel ashamed of eating certain foods, and in general creating a very unhealthy relationship with food.

I would much prefer that they simply make smaller versions of the items, and publish the nutritional information. This allows people a choice, and doesn’t place a stigma on those foods. Plus, what these measures always seem to forget is that certain people have to eat those sorts of foods, some of them all the time because of high metabolism, others because of lots of exercise. Say you just came off a 100-mile bike ride, and went someplace that you could only get salads and low-fat mac and cheese? That would be as bad as going someplace with no healthy options.

It’s all about choice, and what bothers me is that in this case, choice is being removed.

(see the full article in the paper at: http://www.pressherald.com/news/city-hall-says-bye-bye_2010-08-02.html)

Side Effects

Last week I had to have my bone density checked again (something I do every 2 years), and this week I got the results. They weren’t encouraging. For some reason, I hadn’t made any improvements over the past two years, and I was filled with a sense of deep frustration. I’d been doing everything I was supposed to, after all, but my aggravation really stemmed from the fact that the reason this is an issue at all is because I lost weight.

Now, I know that you’re supposed to consult a doctor before losing weight (or so all the diet commercials tell you), although I’ve always found that a bit difficult to swallow, since most overweight people I know avoid doctors like the plague. Additionally, I’ve never been completely sure what the point of this consultation is. Is it so the doctor can tell you not to go on a grapefruit or starvation diet? Or that you should exercise? Anyway, as you might have guessed, I didn’t do that. At the time, I didn’t even have a doctor in Portland; the closest I had to a doctor at all was the one I saw when I was a kid, back in Casco. I do wonder if some of my unanticipated side effects (like bone density issues) might have been prevented had I followed this suggestion.

Then again, it would likely depend on the doctor. For instance, I doubt anyone would have told me at the beginning that losing weight might give me knee problems. I’d heard the reverse plenty of times, but never this. On the face of it, after all, it makes no sense. Shouldn’t my knees be happy to be carrying less weight? Then you look deeper and realize it has a certain logic. My knees and legs were overdeveloped to handle a lot of weight; removing it threw them out of whack. My legs, especially thighs, lost a lot of muscle mass, simply because I wasn’t walking around with an extra 100+ pounds, which meant my knees weren’t as stable. Throw in the fact that I walked and sat differently, crossed my legs sometimes, and used my knees much more by being active, and it starts to all make sense. But I still don’t think a doctor would have told me that up front.

So, then, what about my hormone levels? Would any doctor have actually told me back then that it’s not abnormal for women losing that much weight to get hypothalamic amenorrhea? (I.e, a fancy way of saying they would stop menstruating?) And further, that 20% of such women (a rather high figure) never get back to their normal cycles? It’s one of those things for which there is no known cure. My acupuncturist said she had a lot of success with it, but I saw her for two years with no luck, so I’m not sure what to make of that. Another doctor told me she’d only seen women recover after being pregnant (still possible, but with assistance), as if that reset them somehow.

But maybe a doctor would share that because many women would consider it a plus. No mood swings, no cramps, no mess, no worries about going swimming or hiking or wanting a romantic evening. Sounds perfect, right?

Except, of course, it also means no estrogen in your system. No estrogen means, among other things, loss of bone density. I cannot tell you how horrifying and shocking it was to find out, when I was 30, that I had osteopenia, the stage before osteoporosis. I was 30! But I’d wanted to avoid the pill as a long-term solution because too much estrogen can increase the risk of breast cancer. That’s why I opted for the NuvaRing, which has very low doses of estrogen. Problem is, some studies have shown that if the doses of estrogen are low enough, it can prevent gains in bone density and even cause bone loss. We’re still trying to figure out if that’s what’s going on with me. It’s just frustrating, because as my doctor pointed out, I’m a “unique case”, wanting enough estrogen to protect my bones, but not enough to increase my changes of breast cancer.

Another issue with lack of estrogen is a thinning/drying of reproductive tissue. I actually got an abnormal pap result once not because I had HPV (although that was the initial diagnosis) but because my cells looked like those of a post-menopausal woman, and it threw off the people looking at the cells because I was only 32. Not having a period doesn’t seem quite as exciting when you consider all that.

It’s possible that someone might have told me that keeping a certain amount of fat in my diet is actually important, and that most women need around 20% body fat to maintain a normal cycle. Especially someone like me, who had been used to lots more than that. I don’t know if that would have helped, and I’ll never know now.

Now, I’m not going through all of this to scare women away from losing weight. (Men, I have no idea what you’d go through – sorry.) It’s more that I don’t want people to be blindsided by these things as I was. If you’re comfortable consulting your doctor, I would suggest you do that, and if they’re a good doctor, they might even listen and take you seriously. That way, if you experience any of this, they might be able to help you a little more proactively. But with any luck, you won’t go through this at all, and will just experience the joy of a thinner self.

Toxic Sugar

I always knew that sugar wasn’t a health food, but I never considered it particularly evil. I was therefore quite surprised when I first went to my most recent acupuncturist, and one of the first things she did was put me on a “sugar detox” diet.

“Sugar is a toxin,” she explained.

I didn’t quite know what to say. I knew that I had once been addicted to sugar, and that eating it to that extreme wasn’t good, but considering it toxic? Still, I did the detox diet, even though it was pretty extreme. It consisted of only eating proteins, fats, white rice, broccoli, and cauliflower. The reason I agreed was because I only had to follow it for 24 hours, after which I could go back to my normal eating. I still don’t quite know what it was supposed to accomplish. I didn’t go through withdrawal or anything, nor did I feel particularly “cleansed” in the end.

Then one of my myriad doctors recommended that I go on the Schwarzbein Diet. In general, it’s pretty reasonable, suggesting that you balance your intake of carbohydrates, proteins, fats, etc., so that you get moderate amounts at every meal but not too much at any one time. But it also doesn’t allow any sugar – even natural sugars, like maple syrup and honey, are suspect.

I actually did that for about a year, but eventually it got to be too wearing. I wanted to be able to have a piece of cake on someone’s birthday, or partake in at least some holiday sweets, or not drive my friends crazy with my eating restrictions when I was visiting.

I was reminded of all this recently when a woman from church (let’s call her Church Lady) commented about a friend of hers who definitely subscribes to the idea the “toxic sugar” idea. The friend had come to help out for a couple of weeks after Church Lady had surgery, and by the end of it Church Lady was more than ready to say goodbye. “I was afraid to bring anything with sugar in it into the house,” she said. Considering that she has two kids, ages 7 and 2, that must have been particularly trying.

Or, you could go the route of my acupuncturist and not let your children have any sugar, pretty much ever. That’ll keep them free of whatever evils are in sugar (and likely disappoint dentists by keeping their teeth exceptionally healthy), but I would worry about that. What happens when the kid goes to school, or visits friends, and eventually tries sugar and decides they like it? Will they binge on it? Will it make them sick? Will they be ostracized?

I don’t advocate eating hordes of sugar, nor do I eat much of it myself. I can get through a day without it, and I don’t crave it the way I used to. In fact, it’s taken me until now to get through all the frozen things I had, between Christmas, New Year’s, Girl Scout cookies, and a box of chocolates I got in May. It takes me this long because I limit myself to one item a day (with rare exceptions), which somehow doesn’t seem like a toxic amount. For me, it’s all about balance.

I also like thinking about it the way Indians do for their new year, Dhivali. As a friend explained it to me, they have sweets to make the new year sweet. I typically have my treat in the morning, to make my day sweet, and it seems to work quite well. May you find your own balance and sweetness.

A Time of Plenty

It’s been rather strange having an actual spring and summer in Maine, and to have them at “normal” times, as opposed to the delayed response we normally have. Everything is ahead of schedule, from a growing perspective, and it’s actually throwing me off.

Take blueberries, for instance. Normally they’re just getting towards peak in mid-July, but instead, they’ve been at peak for a couple of weeks and are on the downslide! It was quite disappointing to discover that my favorite blueberry field didn’t have the plethora of berries I’ve come to expect, but still, I’ve been able to sneak in a couple of visits to pick a few quarts. It’s not as many as I’d like, but it’s certainly better than nothing.

And then I had planned my menu a little around what I thought was going to be available at the Farmer’s Market – only to arrive and discover that I had some of it all wrong. Sugar snap peas, for instance, are just about done. But we already have corn! Zucchinis are also producing at a prodigious rate (as is their custom), tomatoes are out, green beans, green peppers, peas, cucumbers, onions, potatoes, broccoli, tons of greens, and even some eggplant! I also discovered a new type of beet that I wanted to try, and the fresh garlic was equally enticing.

The strange part about visiting the Farmer’s Market these days is that I feel like a kid in a candy store. I want to see everything, since different farmers have different foods available, and then decide what to get based on relative prices and availability. Except really, I want some of everything. I know that as one person, there’s only so much I can eat, but I had a hard time turning away from certain produce. I also had to keep reminding myself that I have some of my own food growing – the lettuce is lovely, I’ve gotten two tomatoes (!), and baby zucchini and cucumbers are on their way. Even so, when I stopped at Rosemont Market on my way home, I saw a baby sugar watermelon for just $3, which I simply couldn’t resist. The result is that my fridge is stuffed. I hope that I can eat as much as I think I can.

What’s strange to consider is that if you actually put me in candy store now, I might be interested in seeing the varieties of candy, but I wouldn’t want to try them all. Fresh fruits and vegetables, though – these will have me salivating at just the sight, the gorgeous hues of green, purple, red, yellow, orange, and more, a whole rainbow laid out as a feast for my eyes. I’m glad of it, and glad, too, that I’ve lost weight, since all that produce is quite heavy to carry around. The good news is that I can go a little crazy on eating it and not be too worried, unlike with candy. The other good news is that I live in a place where such food is easily available right now, and for that, and this time of plenty, I am deeply grateful.

Camping Food

In honor of 25 years of going to Baxter State Park, I thought I’d write a little about our camping food.

Now, I can’t say for sure, because I’ve never camped with anyone other than my family, but I think we tend to eat better than some, perhaps too well. When I was growing up, we often stuck with a certain pattern.
- Saturday lunch: packed lunch and ate in Millinocket
- Saturday night: pasta, salad, pie
- Sunday morning: eggs, homefries, bacon or sausage
- Sunday day: gorp, hard-boiled eggs, power bars, etc.
- Sunday evening: burgers, veggies, chips, cookies
- Monday morning: pancakes, juice
- Monday lunch: again brought food for sandwiches and ate in rest area

The pancakes were a bit different than what most people would have, made with apple or orange juice as a milk substitute (this was back before other milk alternatives were readily available), and sometimes with blueberries collected from the mountain. And we often had to fight with squirrels and chipmunks over our trail mix, particularly peanut M&M’s, especially one year when one chewed a hole through my mom’s backpack to get to hers. We also had an unfortunate incident once where a raccoon ate the remainder of our blueberry pie! Since then, we’ve gotten better about putting all our food in the car overnight or anytime we’re not eating.

As far as what we eat, in the years since Jeremiah and I have been involved in the food, we’ve gotten a little more elaborate. (Well, particularly Jeremiah.) For instance, the first year that he was in charge of supper Saturday night, I noted: “Jeremiah, typical of himself, hadn’t brought anything as boring as pasta. He and Janice were making stir fry with beef that had been packed in dry ice that Janice had got from work, peppers, snow peas, carrots, and rice noodles.” (Janice, incidentally, is a chemical engineer.) And for smores, we used some marshmallows that had a liquid blueberry center, courtesy of an Oriental market in the Boston area.

We took to making more ployes for breakfast for a while, since those can mixed onsite for any amount and just need water. Now, in deference to gluten issues, we’ve gotten back more to the eggs and homefries, and also parfait. Other newer favorites are chili, or sometimes taco salad, stopping at Subway on the way up for sandwiches instead of packing them, and getting breakfast at the Appalachian Trail Café on the way out. We’ve also added a little more complexity and work because we stay an extra day to our stay.

And as always, I’m amazed at how long all of this takes to prepare. For instance, I spent quite a lot of time pre-cooking chicken for stir-fry, hamburgers, bacon, a frittata, and hard-boiled eggs, plus I had previously spent time making strawberry-rhubarb pie and strawberry-rhubarb crisp. When shopping, I probably spent more time than I should have considering the different trail mix, granola, and energy bar options at Whole Foods, and I don’t even know how many e-mails Jeremiah and I exchanged figuring out who was getting what for produce, between the Farmer’s Market and his CSA share.

But there’s no doubt that once we’re there, we’ll be eating very well, and enjoying not having as much fuss or clean-up because of all the initial work. We’ll be eating:
- Saturday lunch: Subway sandwiches
- Saturday supper: rice, stir-fry (chicken, zucchini, broccoli, and peas), salad (various greens, tomatoes, scallions, garlic scapes, cilantro, Chinese cabbage, and more), strawberry-rhubarb pie and crisp
- Sunday breakfast: yogurt, granola, and berries (fresh raspberries, blueberries, and black raspberries), bacon
- Sunday lunch: trail food
- Sunday supper: hamburgers, chips, steamed broccoli, sugar snap peas (they’re amazing this year), cookies, smores
- Monday breakfast: frittata and homefries
- Monday lunch: PB sandwiches with homemade rhubarb jam, peppers, cucumbers, and whatever else we have leftover
- Monday supper: taco salad, other leftovers, hot chocolate
- Tuesday breakfast/brunch: Appalachian Trail Café

Now I just have to make sure I do enough hiking to burn it all off!

Sunscreen

It’s that time of year to be putting on lots of sunscreen, and almost every time I slather myself in the stuff, I remember something I read a few years ago. I don’t remember where it was, but someone commented, “All things being equal, fat people use more sunscreen.”

I remember how annoyed I was by that when I first read it. The fact that I still remember it, and that it still rankles, shows just how much it impacted me. I understand what the person was saying, which is that fat people have more surface area because of their larger size. That much I can’t and won’t argue with.

It was the “all things being equal” bit that still gets to me. Whoever wrote that, I thought, couldn’t have ever been fat because then they’d realize that there’s no such thing as equal in that realm. Yes, fat people have more skin, but they are far less likely to expose that skin to the sun and therefore require sunscreen.

It’s not just that they’re less apt to be doing lots of physical activity, although that’s certainly true, but they’re also less likely to be venturing outside at all. For instance, I spoke recently with a man who once weighed 642 pounds, and he commented that when he weighed that much, he never went anywhere except for work and maybe the grocery store. I don’t think for him it was even a matter of being self-conscious – it was just that physically it was exhausting for him to move around much. So he wasn’t going to be using sunscreen.

Even for those who do venture out, I suspect we’re far more likely to cover up than people with more svelt physique. I was thinking of this while watching my niece put on sunscreen before going swimming in her two-piece bathing suit. At her age (14), I never would have worn a bathing suit like that. I hardly wore bathing suits at all, or shorts, or short-sleeve shorts. As a result, I never really ran into the issue of having to use sunscreen except for on my face and maybe my lower arms, and those areas are only marginally slimmer than they used to be, if at all.

So, yes, I suppose if all things were equal – if fat people could get around as easily as thin ones, and if they exposed all that extra skin to sunlight in the same amounts as other people – then yes, they would use more sunscreen. But we’re not in that world. In this one, nothing is equal, and I think I could pretty safely say that thin people, in fact, use more sunscreen.

It’s that time of year to be putting on lots of sunscreen, and almost every time I slather myself in the stuff, I remember something I read a few years ago. I don’t remember where it was, but someone commented, “All things being equal, fat people use more sunscreen.”

I remember how annoyed I was by that when I first read it. The fact that I still remember it, and that it still rankles, shows just how much it impacted me. I understand what the person was saying, which is that fat people have more surface area because of their larger size. That much I can’t and won’t argue with.

It was the “all things being equal” bit that still gets to me. Whoever wrote that, I thought, couldn’t have ever been fat because then they’d realize that there’s no such thing as equal in that realm. Yes, fat people have more skin, but they are far less likely to expose that skin to the sun and therefore require sunscreen.

It’s not just that they’re less apt to be doing lots of physical activity, although that’s certainly true, but they’re also less likely to be venturing outside at all. For instance, I spoke recently with a man who once weighed 642 pounds, and he commented that when he weighed that much, he never went anywhere except for work and maybe the grocery store. I don’t think for him it was even a matter of being self-conscious – it was just that physically it was exhausting for him to move around much. So he wasn’t going to be using sunscreen.

Even for those who do venture out, I suspect we’re far more likely to cover up than people with more svelt physique. I was thinking of this while watching my niece put on sunscreen before going swimming in her two-piece bathing suit. At her age (14), I never would have worn a bathing suit like that. I hardly wore bathing suits at all, or shorts, or short-sleeve shorts. As a result, I never really ran into the issue of having to use sunscreen except for on my face and maybe my lower arms, and those areas are only marginally slimmer than they used to be, if at all.

So, yes, I suppose if all things were equal – if fat people could get around as easily as thin ones, and if they exposed all that extra skin to sunlight in the same amounts as other people – then yes, they would use more sunscreen. But we’re not in that world. In this one, nothing is equal, and I think I could pretty safely say that thin people, in fact, use more sunscreen.

Strawberry Musings

In the pilot episode of Firefly (one of my favorite series of all time), Shepherd Book pays for his passage on the spaceship Serenity by sharing some produce he’d grown. Among his offerings were strawberries, although we as viewers don’t know this until we see Kaylee, the engineer, in the kitchen. We first see her handling a small box as if it’s the most precious item in the world. When she opens it and pulls out a large, luscious, perfectly ripe strawberry, her expression is childlike in its wonder and delight. And when she takes a bite - ! She is transported into bliss, and we know she will savor each morsel of that delectable berry.

This image returned to me recently as I experienced my own strawberry delight. I started the morning by going berry picking with a friend, each of us picking close to ten pounds. I then spent quite a while cleaning and husking many of them for freezing, but also eating quite a few. The imperfect ones were my primary sustenance, not wanting to put something bad into the mix for storage, but a few perfect ones joined them, making my belly gurgle with contentment, my fingers and arms pinkish from the juice.

And so I thought about how we value food. For Kaylee, on a space ship, anything fresh was a welcome relief from canned or dehydrated or frozen foods. But for those of us land-bound, in a society where we’re so divorced from the origins of our food, how much do we value it? Do we truly understand how important it is to us? It’s easy enough to go to the supermarket and buy frozen strawberries any time of year, but if you do that, do you truly understanding everything that goes into the production of that food? How much do you appreciate it, when it’s always available and you have no direct connection?

I think about this a lot in general, but strawberries strike me particularly because for a long time I couldn’t eat them. When I was very little, I got hives if I ate them, and for years I avoided them assiduously because I didn’t know what my reaction would be. I don’t even remember quite when I discovered that strawberries were no longer forbidden fruit, but whenever it was, I was instantly smitten.

I probably most appreciated them first in things like strawberry-rhubarb pie, or fresh strawberry jam on homemade bread. And I would be lying if I said I didn’t still like those forms of the fruit. Like Kaylee, though, I’ve come to appreciate the individual berries as well. Part of it is taste – although blueberries still edge out as my favorite berry, it’s hard to beat the sweet, juicy burst of flavor from a strawberry, warmed by the sun, its texture firm but yielding, the slight crunch of the seeds.

But part of it is also from knowing first-hand what it’s like to pick and prepare them. I’ve still never grown them, but somehow they seem even better knowing that I took the time to seek out each berry, turning over leaves, spending an hour in the hot sun, and then another two hours sorting them.

We can’t all learn to appreciate food by being on a spaceship, or by harvesting it ourselves. But I am trying to make more of an effort to imagine what goes into my food before I eat it, in the hopes that I, too, will be able to savor each bite of all my food as much as Kaylee did her strawberry.

Short Sleeves

It was warm enough the other day that I wore a short-sleeved top to work. During one interminable conference call, I stretched my arms over my head – and for the first time in a long while I actually looked closely at them. It might have been that the scars were particularly shiny under the fluorescent lights, or that I just recently stumbled across the journal entry from 2005 when I first entertained the notion of cosmetic surgery. For whatever reason, since my brain was not immediately necessary for my call, I took a moment to admire my arms and reflect on the fact that I could go for months without noticing them.

The smoothness is what I most appreciate. My arms will never be small, but I doubt they would have been even had I never been heavy. Of course, my weight gain inflated them all out of proportion, and in those days, I went out of my way, even to the point of discomfort from heat, to avoid short sleeves. I didn’t want to expose anyone, including myself, to that unsightly display.

Even after I lost weight, I was frustrated by and self-conscious about my arms. I remember once at the gym, where I was wearing short sleeves, that a woman asked me, “Did you used to weigh a lot more than you do now?”

I was startled. “Yes, actually.”

She smiled at my surprise. “You know how I know? Because of this.” She lightly touched the flesh pooling around my elbow, skin loose and wrinkled and baggy. “Otherwise I’d never guess.”

I tried so hard to get rid of that evidence, on my arms, legs, and stomach, but to no avail. I finally decided in 2006 to at least have a consultation for cosmetic surgery, and I told the doctor what I’d tried to do to slim and tone.

Looking at my problem areas, she shook her head. “That’s loose skin. No matter how much you exercise, that will never go away.”

I was a bit surprised at my elation. Shouldn’t I be depressed at hearing that? But I quickly realized that my relief stemmed from knowing I hadn’t done anything wrong; it was simply that my body was a bit too stretched. It helped me decide that I didn’t want my weight history revealed so clearly by short sleeves, so I had arm lifts done. (I didn’t feel the need for leg lifts, which could have damaged nerves and wouldn’t result in what I wanted anyway, or a tummy tuck, since that was an area that would almost never be visible anyway.)

Later the surgeon told me they’d removed almost 12 centimeters of excess skin from each arm. That’s around 4 ½ inches. Once I healed and the scars faded, I was so excited by the tautness of my skin, by my arm not drastically changing shape as I lifted and lowered it. Now it’s my norm, and I’ve become so accustomed to it that I forget what it was like before, that I once worried about wearing short sleeves. Admittedly, I still don’t like wearing shorts, and bathing suits can make me cringe if I think too much about it, but at least I can appreciate and still enjoy my newer arms.

Oh, and the doctor who did the surgery? She’s the same surgeon who performed my mom’s mastectomy and reconstruction, a connection I realized only after I decided on going with her. Small world.

"One Might Be Enough"

Last night I attended a graduation party for two of my cousins on my mom’s side. It was in the evening, so the primary foods supplied were desserts: vanilla ice cream with options of different syrups and crushed Oreo double-stuff cookies; vanilla cake with vanilla frosting; oatmeal raisin cookies; fruit pizza (not as weird as it sounds, basically a sugar cookie-like base, with a spreading of yogurt/cream and topped with cut-up fruit); brownies; and little skewers of fruit. But my grandmother, Mèmere, brought a vegetable tray with red and orange peppers, broccoli, cauliflower, cucumber and celery.

Most people immediately homed in on the desserts, and I did have a piece of the fruit pizza, and some of the fruit. But I also munched on the veggies, and while I was eating I told Mèmere about my thoughts on becoming a weight-loss coach.

“Now tell me,” she said, “from your highest weight, how much did you lose?”

I know I’ve answered this question before, but given the number of grandchildren she has, and how little she sees me, I can’t be surprised she doesn’t remember. “One hundred thirty-five pounds,” I answered, crunching away on the celery hearts.

She shook her head in amazement. “If you don’t mind, I want to ask you something personal.” I nodded encouragingly, unable to imagine what sort of question she would ask me in a fairly public gathering that would make me not want to answer. “I want to know if you remember one time when we went to Sebago Lake.” I shook my head, although I had a vague memory of a family gathering there one long-ago summer.

She continued, “I was sitting next to you on the beach, and you were eating two hamburgers. You were already very heavy, and I said to you, ‘Erica, do you think maybe one might be enough?’ But you got a bit angry and just shook your head and said, ‘No, I’m here to enjoy myself, so I’m going to eat what I want.’”

“I don’t really remember,” I admitted, although it definitely sounded like something I might have said – and something she would have said.

“And then you and Jeremiah went off somewhere and had whole bags of cookies.” She smiled. “But here you are. Now you know that you really don’t have to eat that much, and you’re thinking of telling other people how to eat.”

That was when I got angry. “I want to help people if that’s what they want,” I clarified.

I don’t know if she actually heard me or not – her hearing isn’t the best of times, and other people came into the kitchen then. She just said, “That’s why I brought what I did, to make sure there are options.”

I debated pursuing the matter, but I decided it wasn’t worth it. Instead, on my way home, I considered why I was angry. Partly it was because her comment reminded me of a very difficult and unpleasant time in my life, when I certainly wouldn’t have been hovering over the vegetable tray. I might have been like one of my other cousins last night, who ate too many sweets and then ate something healthy to try to soothe my upset stomach, but even that would have been pushing it.

But it was more than that. It was the sense that she felt so vindicated, yet without acknowledging her role in why I turned to food for enjoyment at a family picnic. It certainly wasn’t fun for me to visit with my grandparents, who made me feel like I was a bad person because I weighed so much, as if I wasn’t worth anything until or unless I lost weight. The simple fact that she still tells me every time I visit how good I look continues to emphasize that, although we get along better in general now.

The other thing was the implication that I intend to tell other people what and how to eat, which is completely the opposite of what I want to do. My goal is simply to share my experience and what I’ve learned, and help people determine what works best for them. I am very willing to help people figure out eating methods and strategies, and exercise routines, etc., but I don’t ever want to be in a position of telling someone what or how much to eat.

Knowing that, I can let go of the anger. Instead, I’m left with a bit of sadness that in so many fundamental ways, I don’t think Mèmere will ever understand what I went through, and in some ways still go through. I just hope that I can help others get to the same place as me, even if it’s in a different way, and without making them feel defensive about what goes in their mouth. One might be enough, but that has to be their choice, as it has become mine.

Am I Hungry?

I’ve been considering taking a course to be a facilitator for a program called “Am I Hungry?”, based on the book Eat What You Love, Love What You Eat by Michelle May. As a first step, I’ve been reading the book, and it’s reminded me of some of the things that I learned along my own weight-loss journey, as well as giving me some new things to think about.

What’s most interesting, though, is simply the central concept of the book – that we should eat only when we’re hungry. It sounds like such a simple thing, but most of us don’t do it. Or at least, most of us who struggle with weight don’t. As I wrote about initial months of weight loss:

“Part of my task, then, was to learn to work with my body, particularly in my approach to changing my eating habits. Some diets, for instance, advocate eating small amounts on a more regular basis, so that you’re never starving and never want to eat huge amounts of food. Others advocate to only eat when you’re hungry, but even those discourage you from getting to the point of being ravenous, because then you’ll eat anything and everything in sight.

“I suspect everyone has to find what works best for them. For me, I discovered the hard way that if I ate small amounts to stave off hunger, it actually seemed to increase the amount that I could eat, because I never felt really full, either. I therefore decided on the other approach, but in doing so, I had to start understanding when I was actually hungry as opposed to when I simply wanted to eat something, or I was tricked into thinking I was hungry.

“It didn’t seem like it should be that difficult, but somehow it was. In our society, we’re so often bombarded with images and tantalizing advertisements for food that it’s easy to misconstrue a desire for a particular food with actual hunger. If you smell popcorn, or chocolate, or see a bag of Doritos open on the counter, and your stomach rumbles and your mouth waters, surely you must be hungry, right? Not necessarily, unfortunately, as I started to realize.

“I also began to learn other things about my body and hunger. In what seemed the epitome of unfairness, if I overate, I sometimes had a false sense of hunger or an increased desire to eat. It took a long time to distinguish this from true hunger, and even now it can be hard to separate the two. It's as if, once I've over-indulged once, my body thinks that I'm suddenly free of the “famine” I’ve imposed on myself. This makes me want even more food, my body trying to store up for a starvation that won't come. But I learned that if I wait a little, distract myself with a glass of water or piece of hard candy or by chewing gum, and the feeling goes away, then it’s just my body playing insidious tricks on me. On the other hand, if it does not go away, or I literally can't stop thinking about food or calculating the amount of time left until my next scheduled meal, then I haven't eaten enough.

“I have also found hunger and sleepiness to masquerade for and impact each other. If I eat too much, or too close to bedtime, I don't sleep very well, restless with the energy of all those calories. Other times overeating can make me feel sleepy during the day (anyone who's experienced the afternoon after a full Thanksgiving meal will likely be familiar with this phenomenon). The tricky part is that sometimes if I haven't eaten enough, I also feel drowsy, my body shutting down to conserve energy.

“It's hard to distinguish between the two types of sleepiness at times, although these days I'm better at diagnosing the strange empty feeling inside if it's induced by lack of food. What confused me then, and still does, is that this doesn't feel like hunger. I don't hear any rumblings or growling, or feel a gnawing pit in my stomach as I do at other times when I feel like I'm starving, just this odd lethargy and inability to focus.

“And under-eating can also make me sleep poorly. I'd never understood the concept of a midnight snack before I started losing weight; I never consumed so few calories that this was a problem. It was absolutely bizarre, the first time I woke in the middle of the night with my stomach tight and painful, and I had to eat something before I could go back to sleep. It didn’t happen often, but when it did, it made my next day extremely difficult, because I was tired and then ate more, hoping that the calories or sugar would help me stay awake, since I don't do caffeine. Eating just enough is a very fine balance, and one that is a constant struggle.”

Even now, it’s sometimes a challenge, but what I do like about May’s approach is that she doesn’t say you can never eat certain foods, or eat when you’re not hungry, or overeat. Mostly she emphasizes that we just need to be mindful of it, and make it our choice. I’ll save my comments about the difficulty of making that choice for another entry – but the key thing is that I now can recognize when I’m hungry, and that has definitely been a key to my own weight-loss. And I suspect it would have been easier if I had read her book, or gone through her program, when I first began the whole process, instead of having to figure things out for myself. Ah, well. We live and learn.