Food and Comfort

This past Friday marked the end of a very stressful and sad week. On the up side, I got out of work early due to the holiday weekend, and once home, I found myself thinking about food.

This is nothing particularly unusual. I’m not one of those people who loses their appetite when depressed or emotionally stressed.  In younger years, I would eat in those situations, wanting the temporary relief that food brought, especially sugary/fatty foods.

These days, though, I’ve found another way to comfort myself with food: baking and cooking.

Friday night, for instance, I didn’t have energy to do anything that required much thought, but I also felt the need to do something that might possibly help others in my life who were struggling with difficult times. I planned to get some things while out grocery shopping to make burritos, but I didn’t want to go out to the store that night.

That’s when I decided to make chocolate chip cookies.

Unlike the burritos, I pretty much always have ingredients for these on-hand. This is also one of the few recipes I know by heart, a method of preparation learned from my dad over twenty years ago. Clearly, it therefore required little mental or emotional energy.

In fact, as I melted butter, measured sugar, stirred in chips. I started relaxing, slowly but surely. I appreciated the caramel color of the batter, the scent of chocolate and vanilla extract, the familiar ritual of scooping the dough onto the sheets.

As they baked, filling the house with that wonderful, warm aroma, I kept remembering all the good times associated with chocolate chip cookies. Having them on camping trips, munching them while gathered around a fire. Making them for people I used to work with who adored them (see my post about Boston food connections). Being amused by how astonished college roommates were with the concept of making cookies (or anything) from scratch instead of something pre-packaged.

And then, of course, I had a cookie, as soon as it was cool enough to eat, the chocolate still gooey and the cookie soft and moist. It gave me the perfect bite, and a bright note in an otherwise tough day.

Then I packaged a bunch up for family and friends, stuck some in the freezer, and kept out a few for myself to savor one – or maybe two – at a time over the coming week. Each time will bring back good memories, which I’ll enjoy, just as I enjoyed the act of making them.

Choosing Candy

“Do you eat any sugar?”

I get this question a lot, and it always surprises me. Many people seem to be under the impression that because I eat mindfully (most of the time) and am a health coach that this automatically means I think sugar is evil and to be avoided at all costs.

So to be clear, I do eat sugar, though it’s true that I don’t eat as much as I used to, particularly refined sugar.

For example, I often have oatmeal for breakfast, sweetened with maple syrup. In the summer, I often make strawberry jam and vegan ice cream, both of which include agave nectar.

But I also eat items made with refined sugar. It all depends on my hunger levels and what I want at the time.

What got me thinking about this was when someone brought a bag of salt water taffy to work last week. I don’t eat a lot of candy, but that’s one type that I enjoy. The thing is, I don’t often buy anything like that because I end up with far more than I want.

From that perspective, having the bag at work turned out to be perfect. When I got hungry, I decided to include a piece of taffy along with the snack I had brought. That one piece, with the distinctive flavor and texture, was exactly what I wanted – and all that I wanted. Having more at one time would have been too much for me, not because I think sugar is inherently bad, but because my body simply doesn’t handle large doses of it very well anymore.

I chose a different flavor each day, for the few days before the candy disappeared. Each time I savored it, and when it was gone, I enjoyed the rest of my snack.

I’m not sure that anyone saw me take those pieces, though, which perhaps is part of the reason why I give the impression of avoiding sugar. In the future, I may see if I can find opportunities of eating something sweet around other people, as a reminder that I don’t only have foods with high nutritional content. That’s the case a lot of the time, but it may help others to remember that those of us who work in mindful eating and health-related fields may still sometimes choose candy.

Eating Like a Child

Note: For information about the Am I Hungry? Mindful Eating program, visit www.AmIHungry.com or visit my website.

Do you know anyone who eats when they’re hungry, stops when they’re full, and spends the time between simply living instead of focusing on food?

This is one of the questions we like to ask in the Am I Hungry? Mindful Eating program, suggesting that participants think of children if no adults come to mind. This instinctive eating, after all, is how we all start off, although we may not remember it.

Even though I talk about this in the program, experiencing it is a different matter. That’s why I found it fascinating when a friend visited last weekend with her five-year-old daughter, and I could observe first-hand.

I noticed right off that the five-year-old didn’t necessarily eat a lot at meals. She ate some, but once she got full, she wanted to go play with the cats. And we knew she truly was full because she didn’t even want any more of some of her favorite fruits – watermelon and kiwi. (As an aside, this reminded me of seeing my two-year-old nephew recently, since my sister-in-law knew he had finished dinner once he stopped eating red grapes; he loves them enough that he keeps eating them as long as he’s at all hungry.)

Then on Sunday morning, after a light breakfast, my friends and I headed out for a lovely walk on a nearby island. All of us enjoyed the beauty of the trees and the ocean, and clearly my young friend wasn’t thinking at all about food.

Until suddenly, mid-morning, she announced, “My stomach hurts. I’m hungry.”

I had brought some almonds and grapes and offered to share them with her. She happily accepted, but she didn’t need much, just five almonds and four grapes. Then she was off and about again, investigating the world, that small snack giving her enough fuel to get through to lunch.

At lunch, she reminded me of something else we talk about in the AIH program – the fact that our bodies naturally crave some variety in our food. In this case, since she had already eaten kiwi and watermelon the day before, even though she liked them, she wanted something else to go with her lunch.

Watching her reminded me that eating doesn’t have to be as complicated and anxiety-ridden as some of us (myself included) sometimes make it. How wonderful, instead, to eat like a child, following our instinctive cues for hunger and fullness, and the rest of the time explore and play and live our lives to the fullest.

Cutting Out the Fat

After years of dietary fat being demonized, most people now know that some amount of fat in our diet is actually necessary. Unfortunately, we don’t seem to have had the same realization about body fat.

Consider this quote from Lori Gottlieb’s book Stick Figure: A Diary of My Former Self, which describes her experience with anorexia as an eleven-year-old, including being hospitalized and considering whether she might let herself die.

“I wanted to cut all the fat off my body so people like Leslie wouldn’t say I looked fat at my funeral.” (p. 191)

The tragedy of this is almost unbearable to me. Here’s a young girl, who’s interested in math and astronomy and so many other things, but believes that she needs to be super-skinny, without an ounce of fat on her body. Otherwise, why bother going on?

Nor is she alone in feeling this way. I’ve read about other women who fantasize about cutting their fat away, and many others lament about any fat on their stomach or thighs.

And why wouldn’t people feel that way? We’re always told about BMI charts and percentages of acceptable body fat. What I don’t remember is being told that a certain amount of body fat is necessary – until I had already started to suffer some of the problems associated with having too little.

For women, the biggest hit from having too little body fat is the impact to our hormones. Our bodies seem to decide that they don’t have enough to support carrying a child, so our menstrual cycle simply shuts down. (Most women would want around 20-24% body fat, although not everyone agrees.) This impacts bone density as well as fertility, resulting in the possibility of young women having osteopenia or osteoporosis.

But we don’t talk about this as a society. We focus on always cutting back, cutting the fat out, without recognizing that we need some of it. Even without those other issues, if you have almost no body fat, you get cold all the time, and have a hard time being comfortable sitting or lying down (you have no cushion, after all).

In my case, it wasn’t even just a matter of having less body fat than the “ideal” but also putting my body into a sort of trauma by having lost half of my weight. It meant that I became one of those who don’t have a normal cycle, which resulted in issues with bone density. I still don’t know what the long-term implications of that will mean.

So when people talk about having a certain amount of fat, remember that it applies to our physical selves, not just what we eat, and that as with all things, it seems to be more a matter of moderation, rather than cutting it out altogether.

Lighting a Candle

Do you ever feel like you want to slow down, become more mindful, but you don’t know how?

That’s how I felt a couple of weeks ago. In June I’d gotten a project at work with a very tight deadline, tight enough that I had to work evenings and some on the weekend. Self-care and mindfulness became casualties of the workload. I had even started getting used to it – and then it stopped.

But I didn’t.

Even though I had met the deadline, the new habits asserted themselves strongly. Who had time to sit down and enjoy a meal without multi-tasking? Why spend time stretching when you have so many other things to do?

When I found myself feeling almost panicky at the thought of free time, and racing through meals without actually tasting them, I knew something needed to change. But what? I didn’t feel like I had time or energy to commit to something big. What small change could I make that might help?

I decided to light a candle before my meal.

Before I could do that, I needed a space on the table free of books and cats and laptops to put the candle, so I cleaned it up. Then I realized I should sit at the table to enjoy it.

Striking the match, holding it to the wick, watching the flame catch – these all helped me pause, take a moment to breathe.

The gentle illumination felt soft, relaxing, inviting. It cast my meal in a warm glow, reminding me that my food was something to savor, not hurry through, as if I were in a race.

And by eating slowly, unhurriedly, I found myself able to go more slowly in the rest of my life, take time to pat the cats, go for a walk, enjoy the sunshine. My life fell back into balance.

Lighting a candle. Such a small change, but sometimes that’s all we need. What small step could you take?