Mindful Eating

I continue to strive for mindful eating. To me, this means paying attention to what (and how much) I'm eating, how I eat it, and trying to be fully aware of eating while I'm doing it.  I assume everyone who reads this knows about the raisin mindfulness experience.  If you don't, I strongly suggest you give it a try.  Here is a decent, 3 minute youtube version. It is ubiquitous - not just as a way into mindful eating, but mindfulness in general. Allow yourself to be fully engaged in every aspect of a single experience at a time.

I would submit that food logs, food tracking, is one aspect of mindfulness, the first one. It is so easy to eat and not think of it. I now almost always pause, either before or, too often, just after grabbing something, and saying to myself, "I am choosing to eat this." But the pause and the noting is not enough. It needs to be thought of in the context of everything else I've eaten for the day. My memory is faulty and too generous to myself. So tracking is vital.

Tracking is also incredibly tedious. I've used Weight Watchers and I've used My Fitness Pal.  The latter requires more detailed input, but gives more detailed accounting, by traditional measures of calories and macro-nutrients (carbs, fats, protein). While the apps are designed to simplify the flow (two taps to get to the screen for one swipe to say "same as yesterday") it's still simply tedious. My latest hack is not to get to detailed stats, but simply a stark and clear accounting of what I am eating. I am doing this because I am not eating well. So my hack is a picture of everything that goes in my mouth.

Even this is hard to remember to do. My first two days, and I forgot two meals and a snack. However, I'm moving forward to turn it into a habit. I'm considering posting to instagram if it doesn't make it more onerous, but not certain if I want to bollux up the feed.

To focus on the how and being fully present, I've tried, and am re-trying, a number of mindfulness support aids.  I did a week-long group "challenge" conducted by my favorite Summer Tomato.  I got a daily email, encouraging choosing in advance one solo meal to be the mindfulness meal of the day, and then suggesting a certain aspect related to eating to focus on during that meal. It was coupled with a facebook group, and I followed through for the five days of the course, and found it made me slow way down, and focus on the food, which I enjoyed more. No noticeable impact on what I chose to eat nor how much, which is probably not to be expected after five days.  The idea, of course, is to incorporate the noticing what and how you are eating into all of your eating. It has bled through to other meals, though it takes reminding myself not to gobble.

From there, I went to a course offered by my mindfulness app, 10% Happier.  This is a subscription site I am using to keep plugging away at inner peace, where I found a 12-episode course by Dr. Judson Brewer on Mindful Eating. Brewer has had a lot of success using mindfulness training to address addiction and smoking cessation, so I'm guessing he realized how much more money is to be made in the diet industry. (This cynical comment in no way is meant to disparage the scholarly expertise and usefulness behind this program, and the genuine desire to help.) The episodes consisted of video interviews between Dan Harris (the 10% happier guy) and Brewer, each one followed by a guided meditation by Brewer.  Much much focus on body scan, body awareness, in the meditations.

This led me to Brewer's own app, Eat Right Now.  This is a 30-day course, based on his successful addiction treatment course. It consists of videos of him explaining and giving exercises, daily body scan meditation, daily mindful meal approaches, a mindful approach to ride out a craving, and a couple of amusing phone tools (the Want-O-Meter and the Stress Test) to help you analyze whether you are really hungry and why you might be eating what you eat. I did this, way back in April, and wrote about it here. Now, six months later, I'm on day 4 of repeating the whole 30 days. The problems I noted back in April are still problems. But I continue to feel this is the key, this is one of the master hacks, that will make a difference.

What I Ate the Last Two Days

As I mentioned in a previous post, I'm trying just photos of everything I eat as my log. So here are the pix so far:

Apple Gouda sausage, grilled, and a gift garden tomato

Bedtime snack

Breakfast before running - forgot to take pix (for SECOND meal of this!) and so got it out of the fridge to take picture. I had about 1 1/2 ounces.

Second breakfast, out with running club. Forgot to take picture AGAIN so got off web.

Salad from Whole Foods salad bar - greens with bacon, artichoke hearts and olives.  This is the meal I ate totally mindfully - no phone, no ipad, no radio.

Dinner Saturday night - pre-made eggplant casserole from Whole Foods.

Bedtime snack. I have a habit of saving all my candy wrappers so I can look at them, count them, and be honest about what my behavior actually is. I don't know if mindfulness has allowed me to be comfortable with one-only for the last two bedtime snacks, but maybe.

So not so much on the cooking front, but not terrible sugar binges anyway, which the way things are going, is good.

Cooking: Not So Much

I've made only the tiniest bit of progress on the cooking front.

I followed my daily emails from the cooking program for a couple of weeks, and actually did some cooking on a weeknight. But work has sucked up way too much mental energy and physical time and space, so my weekday evenings are not so great.  I still, mostly, go to the gym twice a week, and I'll never do more than heat up a meal on those days - not realistic to expect otherwise.  But on days without the gym, my evenings go like this:

Come home, let the dog out of jail, change my clothes, take the dog out for very short walk. Come back, feed the dog, and grab pistachios and flop on the couch with the ipad to catch up on facebook, the 'gram, twitter, and feedly, my reader (I do not look at my personal social media during the day, though I do check my personal email.)  Besides seeing that my brother is visiting his grandchildren, I also really like the current-event oriented posts and often click through to read articles suggested by friends and folks I follow. This couch-flopping will last from 20 to 90 minutes, depending on how tired I am and how interesting the social buzz is.

The pistachios take the edge off my hunger, but by the time I stand up again its getting late and I'm hungry again.  Cooking anything that involves more than one step (insert in microwave) is unimaginable.  If I had the energy to cook, we're still looking at eating closer to 8 than 7, even for a quick meal.  I strive to be in bed by 9:30 (up at 5:30) and so that's pretty late. 

I've tried to change up the routine, by eating a snack at work before leaving. Still, I want that down time when I first walk in the door.  So in my never-ending quest for that one gadget that will fix my life, I've bought an Instant Pot, a combination pressure cooker / slow cooker (and it even makes yogurt but I don't eat yogurt). The Instant Pot isn't as instant as the hype ("cook chicken in seven minutes!") because it takes up to 20 minutes for the pot to pressurize, less than 10 to cook the contents, then another 5-30 minutes to cool.  But my thinking is, maybe I can throw contents in the pot while the dog has his dinner, and then the pressure cooking happens totally unattended while I do the couch flop. We'll see - I've done it once so far.  The food was good, and chopping before flopping isn't so terrible.

I've also realized pistachios are a poor choice for multi-tasking - takes two hands (and a good thumbnail) to open them. So if my snack is just already-shelled nuts, or celery with almond butter, or small or cut-up fruit, some other one-hand to toss in my mouth then get back to chopping snack, I could munch while chopping.

I'm also trying to up the weekend cooking volume so I have good leftovers during the week.  I've discovered I need at least two different main dishes - plus at least cooked meat for my lunches - to convince myself to stick with my own food and not go buy something. 

This kind of micro-analysis of my routine, in order to try to build better habits, is clearly going to be a never ending hack-a-thon in quest of the better me.  I predict it will cyclically be followed by coasting, not expending the effort to think things through, but theory says whatever habits I have, that's what I'll revert to when tired, so if the habits are good, they will carry me through those times.

Scoot

One thing I love about riding the Vespa is I am out in the world. I see everything. I hear everything, in spite of the noise attenuation of the helmet.I'm not listening to the radio. I have to pay attention. I smell everything, something that surprised me when I first started riding, years ago.  I was totally aware of each of the five McDonalds to be found on my direct path to work. It is worth going around the block to avoid being behind a garbage truck in the summer. Today, I followed a food truck for a couple of blocks with incredibly enticing spicy smells until we stopped at a red light and I used my special scooter powers to zoom around it when the light turned green.  Scooting is fresh air and the illusion but not the reality of exercise. It's also an extra little fillip of adrenaline as each trip is another round of Beat the Reaper in DC traffic. I walk into the office with a smile, having cheated death again.

The little drama from the previous post haunted me all week. I was right there, sitting with them on the street, and my heart broke for the abandoned boy.  Is there a more miserable time in life than middle school? I surely don't know of it.

I've discovered I can't get away with a thing in this life. I park in the basement of my building, but enter via different doors depending whether I'm in the car or on the scooter. A guard scans my ID with a handheld electronic device, and I always say hello and chat about the weather. One day, on the scoot, the guard asked "do you ride with a bunch of guys?". He saw me go past on a Sunday morning with the scooter gang!

The gang rolls past my building - at the flagpole on the left

At Hains Point stop

Waiting at the Stoplight

Three acts in 120 seconds

Act 1. 
The light turns red as I reach it. I put my foot down on the pavement to balance. To my left on the sidewalk corner are two middle school boys, one tall and one short, who seem to be waiting. Behind me to my right, visible in my wing mirror, are three kids about the same age, two boys and a girl, also waiting. It is the second day of the school year.

Act 2.
The tall boy on the corner walks to the group of three kids, hesitatingly at first, then more confidently. He says something to them and they talk quietly. The short boy is looking at his phone, steadily, to all appearances totally absorbed.

Act 3. 
The short boy starts walking to school, staring at his phone. The four kids behind me are still waiting, for what? The light changes. I drive on.

Cooking

Today's farmer's market haul

I know how to cook, but I don't. Not during the week, at all. Hope springs eternal, I shop on weekends, but each week night I do not cook.  I often cook on weekends, and can heat up leftovers during the week. But I may have a very simple task laid out for me during the week, and still I don't do it.

I'm convinced that cooking more often is something that would be very good for me. It will be healthier. It will save me money. It will better lower impact.

I also have experienced times when I did cook.  Most notably, I did the "Whole 30" diet a year ago, and the only way to stick to that extremely restricted "no additives" diet is to cook from scratch regularly.  So it is physically possible for me to cook, duh.

I also have a history of sticking to shorter-term clear-deadlines efforts. Sometimes those efforts result in more lasting changes, sometimes not, but I can make myself focus and do things I wouldn't normally as long as there are clear rules and a deadline.

I've signed up for another short-term very clear rules with a deadline project:  The Foodist Kitchen.  It is a set of 30 emailed cooking lessons by my favorite Summer Tomato, Darya Rose.  The whole point is to walk through building a habit for a month, with the hopes the habit will stick and turn into complete routine.

Like I said, I know how to cook, but I clearly don't know everything and I need the coaching and encouragement. So, I'll let you know how it goes. One note: we're on day 7 and today is the first day she is actually expecting us to cook. So far, I've had a week of coming home from work and going into the kitchen and getting out a frying pan, cutting board and knife - and then not actually cooking.  This is meant to build a habit. We'll see.

Scoot

I love my new toy, my selfish joy!  Here is what I feel like when I ride it:

Here is what other people see when I ride it:

And here is what I maybe actually look like on it:

And how she looks surrounded by her peers at work: