So, I was driving home from Aikido the other night and thinking about the dinner I had decided on for the evening. I’d decided to order take-out from Osha Thai my favorite local Thai food place. Because it had been a rough day, and I wanted spices to help with my migraine I was all about extra-spice tofu pumpkin curry over sticky rice. My favorite dish from there. As I was driving I was thinking about the impending meal (another bad habit I have with food), and wondering whether it was going to be too much food. I had a distinct visualization of being over full once I got to the actual pumpkin pieces.

Bingo! A light went off in my head. You see, that is one of the funny games i play with food: I save the “best” bits for last. For as long as I can remember I eat meals that have a part that I particularly like this way. In this specific instance my “ritual” is to put the ball of sticky rice into a bowl, scoop the solids (tofu, pumpkin, peppers, basil, and bamboo) out of the container into the bowl with the rice and then pour about half of the curry fluid over the top. I then proceed to push the pumpkin bits (my favorite!) to the far side of the sticky ride.  I eat all the other solid bits, and then the pumpkin and then the sticky rice. This pattern never alters. What that means, and this was the big light bulb, is that I force myself to eat all the parts I don’t want so that I can have the yummy bits i do want, thereby ensuring that on nights were I do not feel as hungry I stuff myself.

Well, that’s silly.  I am not suggesting always eating the tastiest bit first since (for me in particular) that would mean not having much of the healthy and nutritious parts of the meal. But, what I am suggesting, and am going to do myself, is that it’s a good idea to have some of the favored portions early in the meal so that I can stop as soon as I feel full without depriving myself of those parts I like most.

Well, there you have it, a simple seeing of one of my own unhealthy food/eating habits that i hope might be useful for someone else out there.

Cheers!

A Good Morning

Ingredients-

• Programmable Alarm Clock
• Prayer Beads
• Exercise Space
• Wife
• Meditation Cushion
• A Good Book
• Coffee

For the Programmable Alarm Clock I use my iPhone.  I set three alarms, each to go off at 5 minute intervals.  I use the Bell Tower, Robot, and Marimba sounds, in that order.  After experimentation I’ve found that I cannot be trusted with a snooze function, so setting three consecutive alarms gives me a much better chance of getting up something like on time.

I set my alarm for 90 minutes before I have to leave the house, or get Daisy (the Wife) out the door, to give me ample time for the rest of the recipe.

Once I actually rise I pray on a mandala of Prayer Beads for 10 rounds.  There are 108 beads, so that’s 1,080 prayers.  Takes about 6 minutes.  The prayer is just a mental repetition of the name of God (for me that’s Ramanama.)  I let this be an expression of gratitude for being.

Then it’s time for exercises.  At this point I usually give Daisy a pat to let her know that the waking up ritual is beginning.  A little warning goes a long way for ease-making later.

My Exercise Space is just a 3′ x 3′ space in the living room that is kept clear.  My exercises ar as follows -

1. A set of 40 Penguin Flaps
2. A set of 40 forward arm raises
3. A set of 30 torso twists
4. Another set of 40 Penguin Flaps
5. 60 Hindu Squats
6. 100 hand grips

What the heck is a Penguin Flap, and what in Buddha’s name is a Hindu Squat?!? Well, I’ll tell ya in another post.

I do this routine and then another pat to Daisy to let her know I am meditating, at which point I hit the Meditation Cushion.   I set the timer on my iPhone (an app called Meditator by SimpleTouch) for 32 minutes. I have three alerts set.  The first is at 2 minutes.  That is the time I give myself to settle in on the cushion.  Once I here the Tibetan monk drone out an, “Ooooommmmmm…” it’s time to get focused.  My main practice these days is insight style, which means noting everything that happens as it happens.  At 29 minutes after the first alert a bell sounds to let me know I’m almost done.  Then the final bell and I bow and get up for three prostrations to the Buddha.

Then I get Daisy out of bed and on her way to her day with two good cups of Coffee and some breakfast (usually cold cereal with yogurt and fruit, or Cream ‘o Wheat with fruit.)  I get my beans from Rodger’s Coffee & Tea, just down the street.

Finally a bit of reading from whichever of the several Good Books, I am currently working through.

This dish works best served warm. 

I was reflecting on what it was like to be morbidly obese. I was trying to get a feel for what it felt like to be nearly 400 pounds.  I was surprised to realize that the more I thought about how my body felt back then, the less I could recall.  It was very difficult to bring up any body-sensations from that point in my life.

Thinking more abut my routines from those days it hit me.  I pretty much lived my life from the jaw up, and disregarded the rest of my body.  My life was a routing of TV watching, eating, sleeping, eating, day dreaming, eating, being shuttled to the game store for role-playing game playing, and more eating.  I was fundamentally only aware of the sensations that occurred in my brain and on the front of my face.  My body had essentially been forgotten.  The only things that got through were aches and pains, and even those were mostly suppressed.

Even hunger was a stranger as I had become habituated to eating whenever I was bored or idle.  When friends would ask if I was hungry, I really didn’t know based on how my body felt.  I had to calculate in my mind vaguely how much time had passed since my last feeding, and pretty much always gave up in favor for saying, “Yes.”

Over the years as I exercised I became more aware of my body, again mostly as a consequence of aches and pains, but this time from strain due to exercise rather than couch sores.  Through the practice of T’ai Chi I was required to become more mindful of my body.  The whole process was fairly sub-conscious.  Being mindful of my body kind of snuck up on me as a result of moving it more.

Today I make a mindful body-scan a regular habit.  When the question come up of whether I am hungry (from an external source or internal) I actually take a moment to check in.  I also have a routine of 10 minutes of stretching exercises every morning to warm up before I meditate and this allows me to take stock of my physical condition and anything I need to look out for for the day.

Slowly I have grown from being a feeding tube which spoke to a whole body which speaks. 

I cannot tell how much a conscious practice of body mindfulness would have benefited me from the get go in my battle with morbid obesity, but I have a strong suspicion that it would have proven very useful, even while being emotionally challenging. (After all, there were deep core emotional reasons for why I denied the existence of my body in the first place.)  It’s somewhat poetic that the very thing that drove me to ignore my own body made it large enough that other people would have a hard time ignoring it.  In retrospect I can see that I was calling for attention to my body from the outside while denying myself that luxury.

Looking back at where I was, where I am now, and what it took in between I would not hesitate a second to recommend a simple mindfulness practice to anyone dealing with a physical ailment.

Peace!

Not good.

The cool down is how you get your body back into a reduced rhythm after a strenuous bout of exercise without a shock to the system. It’s just as important as any other portion of your routine, and deserves the same level of respect and mindfulness.

A great workout is not measured by the crescendo alone, nor by numbers on a tally sheet, but by the effectiveness of all parts of the workout.

A good cool down should leave you smiling and energized, ready to walk out into the rest of your day.

During the cool down portion of my workout I try to remain mindful of how my body is feeling.  Feeling my heart beat, checking in with the richness of my breath, listening for the blood flow in my ears.  I consciously slow down to a nice easy stop.  Just like braking a car, the goal is not to screech to a halt, but to come to a nice gentle place of rest.

When I properly manage my cool down I find myself less mentally out of it post workout, I can feel all the happiness I’ve let my body experience and I can more easily jump into the rest of my day.  Best of all, my muscles are not as tore up the next day and I can more easily stack on another workout.

What are some of your tricks for a successful cool down?

That kind of mindless consuming is obviously fraught with danger.  You may be eating healthy things in healthy portions, or you may not be.  With the current state of mass food production in this country I would guess the latter to be much more likely, and since Westernized methodology of producing and consuming food is spreading around the globe at a rapid pace, I am ever more certain that the latter is most likely true no matter where you are.  In any event, knowing what you are eating is certainly more prudent than not.

Becoming mindful of our eating is one of the best, and most powerful, steps we can take in reclaiming our bodies.

It was for me.

One of the first tools I reached for when I began to recover was keeping a journal of everything I ate, and drank.  Everything I shoved in to the tube.  Every night I sat down and wrote down everything I had eaten, and drank, that day.  Everything.

I did not at first work to modify what I was eating, either frequency or portion size.  I just noted it, with as much dispassion as possible.  The result was a radically increased awareness of what I was in fact eating.  Slowly my choices improved as I came to realize that not choosing was, in fact, a choice.

That lead to reading labels.  Scary, I know.  When I first started I had not a clue what 90% of the words on the labels were, and I’m not terribly dim as human beings go.  So, I started researching.  I did not run to the library and board myself in, but I did look up a term every once in a while.  That led to more awareness of what I was eating and a gradual changing of choices.

The tool of journaling was indispensable for the first five years of my reclaiming my vitality, and body.  The tool of educating myself about ingredients going into the food I eat continues to be a good friend along the way.

I have also heard of, and tried, a few other methods.  I offer them here as possibilities for you to consider:

1. Chewing.  Most of us don’t chew our food enough.  Chewing is a necessary part of the digestion system, and bypassing it leads to less efficient digestion which means you get less bang for your caloric buck, which means you create a deficit of calories, which leads you to be hungry more often, which leads to excess consumption.   Chew your food until it is well mulched.  As an occasional practice you can chew until the food is gone without a conscious act of swallowing.  (Don’t do that all the time. It takes a long time.)
2. Use utensils.  Any food that can be held in your hands leads to more rapid eating.  If anybody looks at you funny for eating your burrito with a fork and knife, just assume a haughty expression and stick your pinky fingers out.
3. Enjoy it.  Food is not only fuel.  If someone has gone to effort to prepare food for you and that does include you!) you should at least take a moment, or several, to enjoy it.  Taste the food.  Explore the textures.  Consider what might be changed and what that would be like.  Think about what you are eating. Savor. You deserve it.
4. Pausing.  This goes well with idea 2 & 3.  Take your time.   Slow down.  Fast food does not have to mean fast eating, doubly so with slow food.  Put your utensils and food down between bites as you chew, and enjoy what your mouth is doing.
5. Breathe.  One of the more embarrassing episodes of my early morbidly obese days happened while I was wolfing down my three sandwiches at the cafeteria table.  The girl sitting across from me made a attention getting sound.  When I looked up I saw the mildly shocked expression on her face.  She said, “Um, your lips are turning blue.”  Breathe.

Eating is an activity you will likely be engaged in more than a few more times in your life.  Give it a little consideration.  Believe me, it goes a long way.

Peace, and good eating!