Food journals. Being honest with ourselves.

This week hasn’t been the best for me.  The weather hit us hard in Michigan with snow, blowing snow, blowing blowing snow, windchills of -30, no-place to pile up the blowing snow.  It has been crazy.  And it is difficult to keep your morale up for a healthy life when you feel overwhelmed by the freezing cosmos.

And then I got a bit sick…just a little cold and I eased it away with soup and zinc lozenges and loads of hydration.  Much better now. 

What did not go well for me this week was completely staying away from sugar.  I indulged.  Three times.  First in a decadent chocolate pie made for my friends, then in a little ice cream, then in home-made dark chocolate turtles.  Yeah.  At least it was all chocolate, so I can claim some health benefit right?  Well, needless to say, I didn’t feel so great after that and I missed two days of exercise when I was sick.

There is some serious medical debate as to whether or not it is good for you to exercise when you are sick.  Now, if you have the flu…like really have the flu, you should rest.  But if you have just a bit of a cold, it’s better for you to do some mild exercise like swimming laps or going for a light job or walk.  According to several articles in Exercise Science and the New England Journal of Medicine, it is absolutely safe for you to exercise when you have a cold and it speeds up the healing process.  Exercise acts like an expectorant and gets rid of nasty stuff.  However, you should stay away from other people, so do it where you aren’t breathing on other people.  Don’t go to hot yoga and breathe all over everyone else in the room, stay home and do yoga on your own.

So, I probably should have hauled my butt out of bed on Sunday when I felt a little under the weather and at least gone for a walk or done a little pilates or yoga.

What did go well this week was pretty much everything else.  The discipline of keeping up with my journal and meditation is wonderful.  Love it.

Sleep is going well.  At least 8 hours un-interrupted for 6 out of 7 nights this week.

I barely drink caffeine any more.  Mostly just green tea and the occasional coffee.

I’ve been eating well and cooking a ton of good whole food.  Indian cooking now being my favorite to dabble in.

It’s been fantastic and the one thing that is really hard for me, but has been going well is keeping a food journal.  Nutritionists agree, worldwide, that keeping a food journal is a very good way to stay on top of what you eat and to completely assess it.  Nutritionists estimate that people eat about 500 to 1000 calories more than they think they eat every day.  So, you don’t have to count forever, but you really do have to learn how to count and do it completely.

My favorite food journal is www.myfitnesspal.com

You can track your food there as well as your exercise and if you wish, your weight and measurements.  Really, I am just interested in the patterns I make in what I eat and this does help you to see those kinds of nutritional patterns.  There are loads of interesting articles out there about how and why we overestimate our eating.  Here’s just one called “The Dieter’s Conundrum” which looks at how health-conscious eaters are just as bad at estimating calories as unhealth-conscious eaters.

http://insight.kellogg.northwestern.edu/article/a_dieting_conundrum/

Finding your metabolic number that will maintain a healthy weight is very difficult.  I went through some testing to get to the number 1800 per day.  They looked at my body fat (20%) and my activity level (moderate) and my sleep cycles (average) and my body frame type (slight curves, fit), including all of my measurements from my neck to my shoulder circumference to my waist at three different points to my hips at three different points to my thighs to my calves.  They put all of this information into a calculator and came up with the number 1800.  I did this at a wellness nutrition clinic at my own cost, because such extensive tests are not covered by insurance.

I was surprised at the moderate activity level because I workout every day.  But I do sit or stand at a desk for a good portion of the day too and this puts me in the moderate activity level. 

I encourage you to do some real examination of the calorie counters and tools that are out there to figure out your own metabolic level.  Then see how you can be more honest with yourself about everything.

And remember what Virginia Woolf said about truth:

“If you do not tell the truth about yourself you cannot tell it about other people.” 

To supplement or not to supplement? That is the question.

Question this week:  What in the world do we do with supplements?

Hi.  So it’s been another week and here’s what went well.

First, I have continued with every good habit.  I’m not joking when I say that I have kept to my word on all 52 fronts. Hardest part is fasting, but I do an 18 hour fast just once a week and it's OK.

My top health concerns going into all of this were stress, chronic hip pain, lack of sleep, and high anxiety.  I can say that each of these has improved…dramatically.  I sleep eight hours a night.  My anxiety has decreased.  My hip pain (while still there) has gone down, probably due to decreased inflammation.  The inflammation probably has decreased because of my using yoga, green tea, and eating only fresh whole foods.  In fact, the only processed food I’ve eaten since I began this endeavor is dark chocolate (which in itself is anti-inflammatory).

Now, my favorite part of every single day is my contemplative meditation practice.  It helps me so much to focus and to be present.  It’s become a new addiction and it has helped with the decrease in anxiety.  Here is the mantra I speak in my head as I meditation:

-----------------

May I be peaceful and light in body and spirit.

May I be safe and free from injury.

May I learn to look at myself with the eyes of understanding and love.

May I be free from anxiety, anger, affliction, and delusion.

May I seek to nourish and touch the seeds of joy in myself.

May I learn to see and identify the sources of anger, craving, and delusion in myself.

May I know how to flourish and grow the sense of well-being in my life and the lives of those I touch.

May I be able to live fresh, solid and free.

May I be free from attachment and aversion, but not indifferent.

-----------------------

What I seek a return to is my four year old self, before I understood the meaning of suffering or sorrow.  Now, I know some four year olds in the world have and are currently experiencing such suffering, yet even when I work with four year old refugees and orphans, they have an expansive sense of presence and happiness.  This is a picture of me from that time of my life, and it is the childlike image that I want to return to.  My childhood friend Ted found this picture of me in a mountain of old slides and he sent it to me this past week.  It is the perfect image for what I want to achieve in meditation.

Yup, this little girl is where I want to be.  The practice of meditation can bring us back to the beauty of those childlike moments.

Now, my subject for this week.  SUPPLEMENTS.  Three recent studies found that supplements are useless.  Take a look here:

http://www.cnn.com/2013/12/16/health/multivitamins-studies/

The actual studies cited in the article looked, in various ways, at control groups who took supplements and those who did not, in a double-blind study.  What they found was ZERO increase in actual health for those who took multivitamins.  And, in fact, we may be dangerously over-supplementing some things like Vitamins A and E which are toxic.

There are still some supplements worth taking, especially if you need them for various illnesses or deficiencies.  I still take a probiotic, cinnamon, magnesium, calcium, and Vitamin D.

Probiotics – the enzymes help with digestion and we are lacking probiotics in the western gut because of all the anti-bacterials we use.  We need more bacteria down there to help with allergies and digestion.  It’s funny, but my dermatologist said the other day that we should “all roll around in the dirt once a day” and that this would probably end most allergies.  We need the good bacterias and they have been scrubbed from our lives.

Cinnamon – one teaspoon per day of Ceylon Cinnamon helps significantly with blood sugar regulation. 

Magnesium – I get severe muscle cramping and a daily dose of magnesium helps to bring this down.

Calcium – since I don’t drink milk, I take a good calcium supplement to make up for that.

Vitamin D3 – I live in Michigan.  We have no sun at this time of year.  Enough said!

Since I stopped taking a multivitamin, I have not felt any different and so, I am dropping this from my regimen for good…or until another study comes out to prove this one wrong!  I’m just thankful for all the extra cupboard space in my kitchen.

And in all honesty, I eat lots of fresh whole foods in great variety of color and texture every day…I’m probably getting every nutrient I need from food.

What is the Why?

Sanitas:  Meeting my goals, Week Two – What is the Why?

This week things went better than I had planned, even on my 18 hour fast, which I did while traveling from San Diego to Grand Rapids.  Airport food is terrible anyway, so why not?  I actually met every single one of my 52 health tips this week.  And I had a couple of pieces of delicious Trader Joe’s dark chocolate along the way.  Surprising that when I ate the chocolate, it really wired me.  And I was wide awake at 10 pm.

What went well this week.. 

First this week, sleep went well.  I was able, for the first time in many years, to sleep a full eight hours and not wake up.  I actually am going to give the credit for this to my practice of moving my meditation time to just before bed.  It really centers me, brings my parasympathetic nervous system into play, and just takes me down into beautiful rest.

Second, speaking of rest, my Sabbath was lovely, spent going to church and catching up with friends.  Loved it.

Third, and probably my favorite, is the slowing down and thanking moments of my week.  To reach a fuller understanding of what I needed to do to get to this point, I read Martin Selegman’s book Flourish:  A Visionary New Understanding of Happiness and Well-Being.

This is one of the best books I have read about psychology and happiness.  The book outlines and discusses a theory of well-being and how he came to this theory.  There are key exercises in the book that you can practice to actually increase a sense of well-being in your own self.

For example, there is an exercise called What Went Well (WWW) where, every single day for thirty days, you write down three things that went well in a wellness journal and then you also write down the REASON that they went well.  The reason is sometimes the most difficult part.  It does encourage you to think about not just the what, but the WHY and the why we give as our answer tells us a great deal about ourselves.  For example, when I am thankful for a great conversation with a friend, what is the because there?  What is the why?  For some it could be, “I am good at being friends.”  For others it could be, “People like to hang out with me and be my friend.”  For me, as in most things, I thank my creator for this and wrote, “Because God gave me the grace of this friendship.”

My WWW practice happens every single evening before I meditate.  It offers a gracious moment to breathe the day in and out…and then to move into mindfulness.

In Flourish, Martin Selegman also points out that there are really five aspects that create a sense of well-being, and he abbreviates these to the mnemonic acronym PERMA:

Positive emotion:  Living a pleasant, pleasurable life.

Engagement:  Being completely involved in something you love to do, to the point that you lose track of time doing it.

Relationships: Sharing our lives with others.

Meaning:  This is knowing that you serve something bigger than yourself.

Accomplishment:  Having a sense that you are successful at something.  This could also be known as achievement.

At Penn State University there is now an Institute for Positive Psychology and they have a great website where you can take happiness and well-being tests, and you can participate in their research.  It’s very interesting and inspiring and I would encourage you to not only read this book, but also to go to their site and participate in these surveys and tests.  www.authentichappiness.org.

I feel, this week, that I have become addicted to good health.  It just feels so great to have this much energy and this much sense of love of life, even in the midst of a cold cold Michigan winter.  I thought, upon returning from my Christmas vacation in California that I would have difficulty making this healthy stuff work when in the grim midwinter.  But because the habits are so easy to keep and so life-affirming, it’s been a great week back and truly enjoyable.

Week One: The Turn Around to Better Health

Sanitas – Week One of working toward total health.

So, it is one week into the new year of 2014 and I have been attempting to faithfully follow my list of 52 pieces of health advice.  Here’s what went well.

First, not eating three hours before bed is fantastic.  I should’ve been doing this my whole life.  I sleep better, I feel better in the morning.

Second, I love only drinking red wine (a single glass) and savoring it completely with my meal.  It is a beautiful experience.

Third, slowing down.  Every meal, and now it also seems every moment, lingers and I like that.  It’s like I am able to breathe into things better.  What ensues is a stronger sense of presence.  Add to this a day of total Sabbath, and it adds a sheer sense of bliss to the week.

Fourth, the sugar.  I missed it for one day.  Now that is gone.  I hope it continues to be gone.  I haven’t even had a piece of chocolate yet.

Fifth, memorizing poetry.  I did it.  I memorized Mary Oliver’s Among the Trees and I use it as part of my daily meditation.  Here’s the text, as I write it from memory here:

When I am among the trees,

especially the willows and the honey locust,

equally the beech, the oaks and the pines,

they give off such hints of gladness,

I could almost say that they save me, and daily.

I am so distant from the hope of myself

In which I know goodness and discernment,

And never hurry through the world,

   But walk slowly, and bow often.

Around me the trees stir in their leaves.

and call out, “Stay awhile.”

The light flows from their branches.

And they call again, “It’s simple,” they say,

“and you too have come

into the world to do this, to go easy, to be filled

with light, and to shine.”

I would encourage every person to memorize just one poem per week, or a section of something longer.  It does open up your mind.  Better yet, you should also recite it for someone.  Share it.

What didn’t go so well this week?  Well, I didn’t do a fast yet.  I was with family all week and so I will add that health advice in next week.  Also, I did not eat an apple a day, but I ate lots of fruits and veggies.  And in terms of cutting the “white stuff” or refined carbs, I mostly did that, with the occasional piece of homemade bread.  All in all thought, I kept to most of the 52 pieces of advice.  I don’t know yet which one will be the hardest to keep, but I look forward to finding that out.

Now, this week, I finished Robert Lustig’s book Fat Chance:  Beating the Odds Against Sugar, Processed Food, Obesity and Disease.  And I can safely say, wholeheartedly, that I believe in what he says here about the cause of what we face in the obesity epidemic.  I was walking through a Ralph’s grocery store, buying food to make a whole foods dinner of chicken chili, salad, and whole grain corn bread – and I was looking for Bobs Red Mill cornmeal – and all of a sudden I found myself just overwhelmed by the boxes and boxes, aisles and aisles of processed foods.  The frightening thing is that all of this processed stuff that contains so many different types of sugars, is causing fatty liver disease in millions of people who may not even think they’re at risk.  And the only way to reverse this trend is to stop. 

Simply stop eating anything processed.  Simple.  Stop eating sugar. 

If I can do it, it has to be possible.

It is not easy.  It is simple.  Big difference.

This difference between ease and simplicity is worth exploring.  We do want this all to be easy, but it took us a long time to get unhealthy, so it will take just as much, if not more time to reverse it.  That is difficult and yet the reversal is just simply turning around and making another way.  Here’s an easy way to start.  Just eat dessert once a week and every other time eat fruit if you crave something sweet.  That’s a turn around that anyone can make.

Another aspect I love about Lustig’s writing is that he is not working for anyone.  He’s not promoting any product.  He is just giving his advice as a scientist and a physician who is dealing with obesity, compiling all the research on it, and offering some sound advice for those who would like to heal from metabolic syndrome.  And how do you know if you are suffering from metabolic syndrome?  Well…if more than 20% of your daily calories are coming from sugar or refined carbs, it’s likely you have at least a mild form of it.  Even if you are skinny, you could have it.  The danger is the fatty liver that this syndrome creates because eventually this will lead to liver disease.  Basically, if you’ve been eating as much sugar as I was eating, you have the liver of an alcoholic.  Good news is that you can heal this by stopping.  At least cut back to not more than 20% of your calories coming from sugar sources.

Here are Lustig’s key pieces of advice, although I would recommend reading the book.   This is a global health crisis.  People talk about Americans being fat, but now that Americans have successfully exported the Western processed industrialized food diet to the farthest reaches of the planet, we’ve colonized the world with metabolic syndrome. 

Advice to reverse metabolic syndrome:

1)    You have to get your insulin down and keep it down.  So, to do this you have to exercise, you have to eat less sugar, and you have to eat fiber (at least 24 grams per day)

2)    You have to get your grehlin down.  (This is the hunger hormone…I remember it because it resembles the word growling.)  To accomplish this you have to eat breakfast with protein (think eggs) and you have to stop eating at night and you have to sleep much more. 

3)    There’s something called PYY (Peptide YY) which is the switch in your brain for feeling full.  You have got to get these PYY’s up and the way to do that is to eat the appropriate sized portions, eat a diet filled with fiber, and always make sure you wait a while to take seconds.  It’s about a 20 minute cycle for PYY to kick in, so eat slow.  Slow down. 

4)    One hormone that blows your metabolism out of proportion is cortisol…the stress hormone.  You have to get this down.  It’s going to be there, but you have to get it down and the only way we know of doing this is by a) exercising b) meditating.  Both have to happen because when you exercise you excite the nervous system and make cortisol and then your levels are down all day long.  Meditating brings your nervous system under control, focusing on long deep breaths and allowing yourself to just stay put and allow the moment to be.  Cortisol goes way down in people who are meditating and exercising.

If you think you may be a victim of metabolic syndrome, you can reset the clock on that by taking these four pieces of advice.  There’s a lot out there that can be confusing on the science of diet and exercise, so I think if you can just take these four into consideration, it’s a great way to start.  Really, so much of this is about hormones and our hormones are way out of control on the Western industrialized diet.  This is because of added sugars to foods.  In his book he covers about fifty names for sugar on dietary food labels.  Here are just a few of the more confusing ones:  diastatic malt, dextran, ethyl maltol, panocha and sorghum syrup.  These are all sugar, plain and simple. 

Lustig is straightforward and many are taken aback by his approach.  And believe me, I know that for many people cutting sugar seems like it’s impossible because they are on a low income and processed food is so much cheaper.  We have many problems to solve here, and I am interested in how a true health shift could take place.  What I am trying to do is have an influence on those I love and care about through taking care of my own health.  How many people can I help by just being healthy myself?

Think about it.  Try it out and stick to it.  If you need some help, let me know.  I’d be happy to do whatever I can.