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.