Cult de Sac

My house in red. Cult members in blue.

I live on a corner of two streets that both dead-end. One street ends at an intersection, so you can turn and keep going, but the other is a cul-de-sac. I have a sign in my front yard that says "No Outlet", which I adopted as the name for my garden blog. All of the houses on both streets are tract houses, built at the same time in 1950. They were one story, three bedroom, small kitchen places with one or one and a half- bathrooms, partial or full basements, and about 1300 square feet on the ground floor. Even in 1950, these were small starter homes. When I moved in, 25 years ago (!) there were a lot of long-time residents aging in place. I have survived to become one of the senior folks in the 'hood, as houses have turned over, been renovated, and younger folks have moved in to start new families. The small size of the houses means no large families, and these houses are also attractive to folks like me, single or couples but without children.

The cul de sac next to me is a special place within the larger neighborhood. Most of the houses back on to the stream valley park, and one has a path down into the park everyone on the street uses. When the pandemic started, remember there was a thing about banging pots or singing? The cul de sac started with that, and over the past two years has built up the connection to where they call it the cult de sac. They have a weekly happy hour outside year round, and in (both) summers had outdoor movie nights. They have a very active and funny What's App chat group. They built a little free library, and have three basketball hoops at different levels lined up for the different sized kids.

I think it's the kids that pull the core families together. I went to happy hour on Saturday, after our first two snow storms, and there were four children six and under playing in the snow. I know of at least four other kids not there because they were quarantining (one four-year-old actually had covid). I remember the solidarity from other parents I found on the soccer sidelines, and I think it was no coincidence that most of my parents' close friends even into old age had kids roughly the same age as me and my siblings. During these pandemic times, opportunities for kids have been so limited, so the bonding must be even more intense. There are two families on the chat group that live not on the cul de sac but on the next street, but they have small kids which I think was their entree to the group.

I had been invited into the cult events from the beginning, but have only just started to try to attend. Saturday was sunny and cold, and everyone stood out in the big cul de sac circle bundled up with their own drinks, watching the kids playing in the snow. Clusters of grownup people moved around, formed and re-formed, about ten in all, chatting about nothing and everything. Parents spoke to kids - and I couldn't always tell which kid belonged to which grownup, because they know each other well enough to pick up any one of them that went sprawling on the ice, pat them and send them on their way. 

I'm looking forward to a little more sociability with my neighbors as I get deeper into the cult.

Report Card: Wrap Up of 2021

I put together my report card for all of 2021. It really is a good exercise, because it keeps me honest. How I feel about how active I am, how much I do of something, is often very different from what the actual truth in the data is. For example, I feel like I'm being pretty active. Yet, by almost every measure, I've been less active almost every month of 2021 compared to my averages from 2020 and 2019. Huh. I've got to buckle down!

I've deliberately put a single, relatively small image of the report card here, because I'm looking at trends, not the specific numbers. This won't make a lot of sense on the phone - if you turn the phone to "landscape" you should probably at least be able to scroll through the whole image. In looking at the monthly changes, darker green is better. Migraines are in red, darker is worse. The three blue columns on the right show changes for 2021, 2020, and 2019, and it's the trends here that matter. Basically, darker blue is better for the measure.

The top group is activity, and as mentioned, everything is down from previous years. In 2021, May shows as the dark green month. That was both high gardening season, and getting ready for the first big sea voyage that went in early June. The good news is that December was up by most measures compared to the previous few months (which no doubt is why my subjective guess is that activity is up overall, the well known subjective "recentcy bias"). One thing that was much better this year than last year is strength. I started doing video training in February, and am doing it twice a week now very consistently. I love my trainer, and we have a nice social chat while I work harder for her than I would for myself. That is going to continue for the forseeable future. I also did a couple of months of physical therapy for my knees, and that is basically additional strength training for my legs not captured here. But I would definitely say that I feel stronger all over now than I did last year.

"Miles walked" is when I set out the door for a walk, and record it on my Garmin. The so-much-higher numbers last year made me go look at the specific data for last year, to see what I was doing. It appears that last year, I made a point of doing the "park loop" almost every day - a mile and a half out the door and through the park and back through the neighborhood. Most were first thing in the morning, after the first cup of coffee but before the second. It was just what I did. And then last winter in the bad weather and the dark, with bad knees and migraines, and an ailing dog that couldn't come with me, I just stopped doing that. I've been out walking more, but it's not a habit or a routine, at a standard time, but something I work in around other things. Hmm.... THIS is why looking at this stuff is valuable to me. What worked before? Why did it stop working? What can I do to get back to something that will work well for me now?

Moving on...

My weight is relatively stable across the year, and for the past three years. I am tracking my food more often than in previous years, and I'll have more to say about that in another post.

The really good news is that my migraines remain at a relatively low level, down from earlier this year and last year. (2019 migraine data is not reliable.) I'm meditating less than prior years - in formal meditations, at least. I think that reflects two things: I tend to go to formal meditations when I'm highly stressed or in pain, and those things are better. The other aspect is I do informal mindful check-ins, a few breaths, a body scan, a gut check, much more often. I don't capture those, of course. They are just part of how I go about my day, like scratching my nose or getting a drink of water. But I may try to work some longer formal sits into my days - I think it has benefits in several ways.

My entertainment aspects continue to cruise along nicely. I read about the same number of books this year as last, and blogged about as often. Sadly, I saw fewer movies, and I'd like to do better with that. None were in theaters, so almost all were alone. (I watched a lot of TV in 2021, but I haven't found an easy way to log that.)  As things loosened up last summer, I got into town a few times, I actually went on four trips away from home, and I got more sailing in, pretty consistently every couple of weeks starting in March right through November.

Going into this new year, I really want to be more active. I'm scheduled to go on another hiking retreat in Utah in March, and so that will be my kedge for the winter. I know it's gotten me out in the cold and the grey a few times I would have passed on otherwise. Freezing rain is supposed to come in the afternoon tomorrow, maybe I'll try the "after the first cup" timing tomorrow!

Intuitive Eating

 

It turns out Intuitive Eating is a Thing. It's even known as IE to its adherents. Forthwith, my exploration of IE with my thoughts.

I found IE (the Thing) from a podcast I follow, Ten Percent Happier. The interview was with Evelyn Tribole, one of the authors of Intuitive Eating, the book which is now in its fourth edition, and several other related books. And founder of a nutrition practice that trains Registered Dieticians and nutritionists to be Anti-Diet Dieticians. The focus of the podcast series is mindfulness, and in this episode Tribole gave her distinction between mindful eating and IE: mindful eating is a specific practice engaged when eating, while IE is a set of principles for living your life with a healthy relationship with food. One could engage in mindful eating while still having an unhealthy relationship with food. 

As is my wont, I plunged into this thing. I got the basic book from Audible where it was included in my membership and I listened to all 13+ hours in three days. I bought in hardcopy paperback the associated workbook, and joined a Facebook group that gave a quiz before they let you in, and an essay exam before allowing you to post. 

So quick warnings before going further:  This is the Anti-Diet, and will go against most of what we think we know about how to eat to accomplish our goals. And, it forbids having certain goals. And it denies what we think we know about how our bodies work. It denies there can be such a thing as a Food Addict. And, it comes across to this skeptical cynic a bit like a religion, because if it does not "work" it is because you, the failed practitioner, don't believe in the principles enough. This is one of the symptoms of a cult. 

So I am an IE skeptic. I am not all in. I think there is a lot of value here, and much of what they say about dealing with food is very healing. And a lot of it is very compatible with what I have come to believe about food and dieting overall. But the way it is written seems to be aimed at an audience that is in a much different place than I am. And some of it rings false with my own experience and evidence, not just beliefs.

So here are the ten principles that compose IE, the Thing:

1. Reject the Diet Mentality
2. Honor Your Hunger
3. Make Peace with Food
4. Challenge the Food Police
5. Feel Your Fullness
6. Discover the Satisfaction Factor
7. Cope with Your Feelings Without Food
8. Respect Your Body
9. Exercise: Feel the Difference
10. Honor Your Health: Gentle Nutrition
    

The first is the big one. Reject the diet mentality, reject everything about diet culture, and here's a big point: do not try to lose weight. As long as you are trying to manage your food with the intention of losing weight, you will never make peace with food. A large part of the thinking is based on the psychological principle that restricting something leads to future rebound - the forbidden fruit tastes sweeter.

I am fully on board with the concepts of body positivity, health at every size (which is also a Thing, HAES), and the evilness of the enormous exploitative economic machine that is the weight loss industry. I fully acknowledge most attempts at long-term weight loss fail, and how much money is to be made in that fact. I've felt the effects of how denying something can lead to obsessing about it.

IE also fully recognizes that our society has a strong anti-fat bias, and that makes it difficult to give up the idea that being thinner is a good thing. And, in some cases, being fat causes economic losses and bad health care from medical professionals that can't see beyond the number on the scale. But, they counter, since almost no-one succeeds at long-term weight loss, and there is strong evidence that weight cycling is very bad for your health, there is no point to trying one diet after another, even if from time to time you are thinner. This condemns you to a life of never being happy with where you are and never being comfortable with food.

IE does not promise that if you fully embrace the process leading through all their principles and then practice them in your life, you will as if by magic end up losing weight after all. Instead, they say that you will simply lead a happier life. And be healthier, if only from stopping weight cycling. I sense a hidden footnote there, maybe it was in the earlier editions of their books, that many people do eventually end up at an equilibrium at a lower weight than where they started out. 

They state that during the earlier stages of their process, many people initially gain weight, as folks move through the first four principles in what they describe as a "re-feeding" process where all food becomes "emotionally equivalent". And they have that word "initially" in there, as if they are suggesting that as people internalize principles five through seven, where you learn how to stop eating, weight starts to come off. But they never say it. Principles eight and nine are to learn how to love your body and exercise only for the joy of it. And only at the end do they bring up the notion that while any and all foods should be emotionally equivalent, not all foods are nutritionally equivalent. 

Much of the practices are geared towards being mindful of and in your body. In my chronic pain practices we call this somatic tracking. In IE, it's called interoceptive awareness. (You've heard of proprioception? The sense of our body in space? This is the sense that goes kerflooey when vertigo strikes, and can cause sea sickness when screwed with. Well, interoception is internal sense of our body. They are real words, but spell checker doesn't acknowledge them.)  Feel and acknowledge and feed hunger, and rely on the wisdom of the body to determine what and how much to eat. As noted before in this blog, as if. This is the holy grail, and I believe it is the right way.

I think these books are geared towards people who are much more immersed in Diet Culture than I am. And I say this as a person who has for twelve years blogged on my diets! Perhaps at earlier times in my life I was much more of a true believer in The Way to lose weight. Perhaps I have demonized foods. But maybe because I have been both analytical and introspective about what I was doing, and because I've always considered myself a skeptical cynic, and because I have become much more tuned to my body through mindfulness and dealing with chronic pain, many of the exercises in their workbook don't work for me. But some do. (I wrote about my movements towards being more at peace with food just before I fell down this IE rabbit hole.)

My main caveat about IE:

I have engaged in weight cycling, but I also have not in 24 years gone back to my top weight. I am happier for not being that roly poly. And I'd like to be less fat in the future, I'm not willing to fully embrace this weight. So with that shred of doubt, I'm not a true believer and thus IE will not "work" for me.

Other bones to pick: 

•  I understand what they say about not demonizing foods, but foods will never be "emotionally equivalent" for me. There are memories and associations, and there are past somatic experiences, and there is knowledge about nutrition, and even often knowledge about the source and environmental footprint of how how food got to my plate. They do not embrace vegetarians and vegans, apparently believing most get there from a health rather than an ethical or environmentalist viewpoint, and any forbidding of food is anathema to them.
• For folks trying to make foods emotionally equivalent, to my eyes they push grain-based carbs rather hard. (Perhaps someone from a different diet history would think they are pushing fats too much.) 
• They discount fresh foods, and think fruit has no staying power (can't disagree) and think vegetables also have little staying power (I disagree) though they list fiber as distinct from vegetables and like fiber. 
• Their workbook has good exercises to do - vary your lunch, for example, while keeping other meals equivalent for a couple of days, and mark down experience with hunger and satisfaction. But the accompanying worksheets are prepopulated with examples that show their biases, which don't always correlate with my own experiences. For example, sandwich lunch versus salad - their "notes" example say salad didn't hold them the way the sandwich did, because the bread helped - but they assume a skinless chicken breast and fat free dressing on the salad, when I load my salads with things like olives and sausages and find the combination of fiber from the greens and fat and protein hold me much better than a bread heavy sandwich. (This is just one example, there are many). 
• We know the food industry works to increase palatability while delaying satiety in an effort to get us to eat more. This is not addressed. I'm not sure I'll ever be able to rely on my body to overcome the forces arrayed against it - except by eating real, whole, foods that haven't been subjected to industrial dark forces.
  

OK, enough for now. I'm continuing to figure things out, based primarily on my own insights leavened by reading. But I want to focus these first couple of months this year on getting strong more than what I weigh. That requires getting up off this couch!
 
 

Seasons of Covid

Happy New Year! Our holiday was OK, but Covid cast its shadow. (Spoiler: nobody is sick yet.) 

Christmas Eve

Peripatetic Big Boy (vaxxed and boosted) had been in San Diego at the college frisbee finals until Tuesday, because he is coach of the women's team. Then he went back to Michigan, packed furiously (because he's moving to Berkeley for the next semester, was going to fly from here), drove himself to my house and arrived on Thursday, the 23rd, with one huge and two small suitcases and his negative PCR test result from Wednesday's swab. We dined together, and he settled into the basement suite. Friday, Christmas Eve, he texted about noon from the basement: "Update: one of my players tested positive". 

So then we began a furious search for a place to do rapid and/or PCR testing in the next few hours (because I didn't plan far enough ahead to have many home tests on hand). Many unwieldy website experiences later, I secured an appointment for 4 pm about half an hour away. Text at 4:30 from the long drive-through line: "Will I run out of gas waiting in line? Only time will tell!".  He arrived back home at 6 pm - the time the family was originally planning to assemble for dinner - along with his negative test result. But he had a bad sore throat (no fever), and more and more of the frisbeers were reporting in positive. 

So then began a furious consultation about whether we believed the test result or not! Should I pack food and take it to BILs house? SO MUCH WORK! But at his point, none of the others had been with BB and so were not at risk for a secondary exposure. We ended up in a cautious middle ground: they would come over, but no BB eating in the same room, my air filter running and open windows and BB masked and somewhat distant for conversations when we weren't eating. 

Julekage! The girl comes through!

This whole thing blew up my plans. This sounds like such a shallow and vain whine - but Christmas Eve dinner is my big event of the year. I had timetables written out, of when to do what. Roast in the oven, vegetables prepped and ready for cooking, when to change the tablecloth and set the table,  cooking commences at this point, candles need to be lit, appetizers and drinks to keep people busy while making gravy... None of this went according to plan. Dinner was an hour late, food wasn't optimal, BB ate by himself in the basement - I set plates outside his room, he came out and got them when I was back upstairs. Tablecloth never got changed, candles never got lit. Almost no pictures were taken. So did it even happen?

And another tradition got booted around. We have to have the Norwegian Christmas bread on Christmas morning. It's called Julekage, for goodness sake - it has Christmas in the name! Several years ago, BB, the baker in the family, took over this tradition. But he spent the afternoon trying to get tested, and I was in a kerfluffle, so suddenly it was after dinner and the Julekage hadn't been started. No-one thought it was a good idea for BB to bake. I declared I wasn't up to staying up and doing it. We discussed making it on Christmas day to have later, but that didn't seem like it made the magic happen. So my girl stepped up and stepped forth and did it! It took her most of the night, but we had also decided that noon was actually when Christmas morning started for us, so that worked out ok.

Christmas night

Christmas morning and evening were over at my BIL's house, with the same rules of distancing. Except for brief appearances, BB stayed alone in the basement suite. He had been planning to leave on Sunday for a fabulous vacation with friends - an AirBnB right outside Yosemite. But I offered and he accepted to stay hunkered down in the basement, where he had his own bedroom, bathroom, open windows, and access to separate living room and even a home gym. I got him an appointment for a PCR test on Wednesday, the first available, and he rescheduled his flight. Sunday, I was done cooking, but it was reasonably pleasant out so I bought hot dogs and buns, set out drinks, and folks came over to hang in the backyard under blankets.

Boxing Day

As BB's last known exposure to the infected people was Tuesday night before Christmas, he decided to try for a test sooner than the (8 days after) Wednesday plan. Monday, he went to a county-run walk-in place, but they ran out of tests and shut down after half an hour. Consulting with friends, he secured an appointment for a PCR test Tuesday night in Baltimore, and combined it with an outdoor firepit visit to a close friend who lives there. Test results came in about 18 hours, negative! Yay! Out of quarantine! He visited with some friends on Wednesday. After big family confab, most of us declined to dine together in a restaurant, so BB and I got Ethiopian takeout together, BIL closed his vaccine clinic which was in a bar and became a customer, and my girl and middle boy went to a private party.

Lines for testing - but with my appointment,
it took me six minutes

Thursday morning, day of BB's flight to California, new twist! My girl's two best friends, folks she and Middle Boy partied with the day before, were both positive! Oh no! (I had not seen my guys in this window, no secondary exposure from this source for me.) So girl and boy, both vaxed but boosted just this week, are hunkered down in quarantine at BIL's house, and I won't see the three of them until some clearance point is reached - not sure what that will be. I provided lots of info on available testing options, but left it to them to schedule. I did say if they are non-symptomatic I would drive them to tests (masked and with windows open). 

BB got off to California, with his plane delayed but not cancelled. Fierce headwinds across the country - just another bit of unpleasantness to add to the mix.

Cool lighting for our little dispersed party

Friday, New Year's Eve, was damp but fairly warm. Some neighbors opened their backyard to a party that started at 3 pm, with a planned small-child countdown and ball drop at 6 pm, and additional plans for adults to continue outside until it rained or midnight, whichever came first. I went over in the afternoon with a bottle of wine and it was pleasant. There are many small children in the immediate neighborhood, and I hadn't been around any for quite some time. I just observed, didn't touch. We remained mostly distant, everyone had masks near to hand, and many actually wore them. And two families on the street were isolating, wouldn't join outside. (Our host actually invited them to mask and come, and both families firmly declined. It was clear this was a relief to some of the others. Risk tolerances vary.) One of the isolating families had another milestone - it was the last day of work for the man - and we all walked over to bang on his door and serenade him (the only appropriate song we could think of was "For he's a jolly good fellow".) I lasted at the party for nearly four hours, but once again didn't make it to midnight this year. Maybe if I don't start drinking at 4?

I had made myself an appointment for PCR testing as soon as I heard of BB's exposure. The test was Thursday am; as of this writing (about 50 hours later) I don't have results.

So it feels like we're all going to get it. What I thought I knew about transmission - that outside would be mostly safe - no longer feels right. As I think my family members here will probably continue a slightly more aggressive risk stance than me, I'm planning on mostly being physically alone for a while. Luckily, this suits me fine. I picture myself walking with the dog and without the dog, working out in my gym, engaging with friends near and far virtually, gardening indoors and outside if the weather permits, reading, watching movies and TV. Basically, what I've done for two years, but with better strength and energy. Maybe, I'll try baking bread. I am so grateful for the many advantages I have in this dismal situation, and feel so strongly for those less well off than me. 

I felt the need to document this time.

UPDATE: Rapid tests should both my girl and middle boy negative, five days in. So I think they will leave the house, masking everywhere for the rest of ten days. 

Book of the Year

The book I finished yesterday was SO GOOD! This is a history book, told in stories and digressions and investigations and research, very much non-linear. Not at all my usual style. In fact, it took me a while to get into it - I kept it on my kindle for longer than the three week library checkout period, and read and listened to some other books between starting and finishing it. But it gripped me, even from the beginning. I just found it hard to sit down and read straight through - it lent itself to more piecemeal reading, partly because it is not a linear narrative. 

An object, passed down through a series of black women, inspires an exploration of what life was like for these women. But beyond a gripping and at times heartbreaking close look at black families' lives down the centuries, the book provides incredible context, from the origins of the South Carolina colonies to how pecan trees are propagated, in a few number of pages. The writing is luminous, not a word wasted. 

And that's not all! The author writes of the power of objects and story-telling, in a powerful demonstration of why these things matter.

So many levels! So much research! So much love and heartbreak! All in a non-fiction academic history book, jammed with footnotes, which was partially funded by a federal government grant to the arts. Way to go, my federal government!

Runner up, non-fiction:

This book I heartily recommend as an audiobook. True confessions, this book was written by, and the audiobook is performed by, my neighbor, friend, and storyteller teacher, Noa Baum. This is both her personal story, and the story of the heartbreak that is Israel, the land eponymously twice-promised. She does voices and accents in her performance of the audiobook. Again, I could not make it through this book quickly, but visited it periodically over several months. But it is fabulous, and heartbreaking, as there are no answers.

Runner up, fiction:

This book is listed under "children". It took me about three to four hours to read, and it has no actual sex, so I guess it is not YA. It tells the story of a girl left behind as everyone leaves her town, in contemporary America. Self-sufficiency, courage, resourcefulness, sorrow, it's all there. It pays explicit homage to the Island of the Blue Dolphins, one of my favorite books of all time. I loved this book, and couldn't put it down once I started it. Well worth the quick trip.

I read/ listened to more than 180 books this year, guys, but these three stand head and shoulders above the crowd. I think I'll probably browse back through the list again, and maybe offer some other recommendations.

Still Masked

These were surprisingly fiddly
and difficult to make

I ran across this, my favorite ornament, (handmade by me) from last year. Note how it says "2020"? How naive of me! What optimism we had, with vaccines on the horizon and a new, competent, president peacefully taking office after only a few days of uncertainty.

Yesterday, I read many articles about what is happening with Omicron, maybe more than is healthy. I came away with the horrible feeling that we will all get the virus. It's inevitable, we can't protect enough to avoid it. There is a very good chance we (vaxed and boosted) will end up fine after some unpleasantness, but the unpleasantness is coming and there is nothing we can do to stop it.

I also came away with useful tips on masking, to do my best to postpone the unpleasantness. Tip #1: use an N95, or a KN95. If the latter, make sure to verify the mask labelled "KN95" is truly that. Unfortunately, there doesn't seem to be a good way to verify the certification of masks. The best I can do is look for reviews or on the company website. I've bought both KN95 and surgical-style (pleated) masks from Maskc, because I really want to have my mask coordinated and stylish. They are sold as "single use" but definitely I re-use them.

Just some I've gotten from Maskc

 

If not using an N95 or KN95, double-masking is the way to go. The recommended method is to put a paper, disposable, surgical-style mask on the bottom layer (with the corners tucked together) and then a cloth mask over it. The bottom layer absorbs your moisture, and the top layer generally makes a better seal than the surgical-style. 

I was away last week, and during the week news got progressively worse, so I double-masked on the way home. It was fine, though I prefer the layer touching my face to be of cloth. The masks I made that I still wear have either silk or very soft cotton on the bottom layer. But for anything other than casual exposure, I'll either wear the KN95 or double mask.

So now, the question is, how do I make N95-style ornaments? Got to think on it.

Satisfied

I'll never be satisfied!

I've been embarked on an odyssey of mindful eating attempts. One of the main goals of this is to reach a point where I know not only "what" but "how much" I want to eat, I eat just that, and then I stop. Having just one exquisite but tiny little hand-crafted chocolate, for example, carefully selected from a free display, and then walking on, satisfied. Or, more prosaically, dishing out a small portion of one of my favorite dinners at home and then not even finishing that, because I'm satisfied. I truly do not want more.

As if.

As an experienced dieter, I have encountered various descriptions of this holy grail over the years. All of them are about how to think and act around food, and only go lightly on what to actually eat. No food lists or meal plans. Just paying attention to how much and what you eat.

I think there is a lot to this notion of listening to your body and acting on it. I picked up a book years ago, The Beck Diet Solution, with a Cognitive Based Therapy approach to eating, marketed as "learn to think like a thin person"! (This book was very influential in my starting this blog back in 2010, as one of the tenets was to have a diet buddy. There is still a link to the site over on the right.) There were a lot of useful exercises - self-experiments - to do involving learning how to recognize what we actually feel in our bodies, versus all the layers of thoughts and emotions we overlay on food. For example, she instructs you to skip a meal and check in on hunger at regular intervals, to remind yourself what hunger really feels like, while also discovering that hunger is not an emergency, you won't die, people live for weeks without eating anything. Also, to eat very slowly, setting down the fork between bites, and writing down how you feel before, during, and after. Make a daily plan in advance of all meals, and assess afterwards how you did. I found all of these exercises useful. Ultimately, though, the CBT approach relies on logical self-talk ("I would rather weigh less than eat this cupcake") in a way that requires self-discipline and self-control. After a while, it just gets tiring. It's a never-ending grind. Sigh.

Several years later, I discovered the Summer Tomato, a much more joyful approach to how to eat. Created by The Foodist, the basic approach was to only eat Real Food that tastes awesome (thus fresh tomatoes only in the summer), which requires cooking for yourself. Further, eat mindfully, exercise, and listen to your body. All good stuff, and reading her book several times, reading her blog, and listening to her podcast really did start to change my relationship to food. It wasn't a fight, because if it was a fight, you couldn't win. For me, it was still a struggle to lose or maintain my weight, but I definitely upgraded my food choices and learned to appreciate my food much more. She offered a week-long video course on mindful eating that I subscribed to. The main things I got out of that were to slow way down - fork down between bites - and to chew thoroughly before swallowing. And eliminate distractions while eating - tune in fully to the physical experience of eating and how it makes you feel. She promised the magic state of knowing exactly what and how much to eat I described up top as the result of fully embracing this approach. I never reached nirvana, but I started to make peace with where I was.

Somewhere along the way I started meditating, and I subscribed to the Ten Percent Happier app, where I am still a happy customer. They have a course on Mindful Eating, with Judson Brewer, who is an addiction specialist. I took that course, which goes deeper into the mindfulness approach than the Summer Tomato course. From there, I subscribed to Brewer's own pricey app, Eat Right Now. That had an intense month-long course on mindful eating. Some approaches I've learned from Brewer (that also work for things like anxiety and pain) are breaking the habit loop, RAIN, and disenchantment. Habit loops are something I knew about, but participating in the course helped me specifically note habits and try to modify them. RAIN (recognize, acknowledge, investigate, note) is a meditation technique where you turn in towards an unpleasant sensation (cravings, in the case of mindful eating), and explore what you are feeling with kind curiosity. This is called "surfing the urge", knowing that it won't last. Disenchantment comes from exploring your body after eating whatever, and really feeling in your body whether it feels good. I had some success with these things. I recognize a habit much more readily now, and much more of my eating is a conscious choice, though not always a wise decision. I was sometimes successful at surfing my urges, but often my urge seems to be driven from deep within me and doesn't dissipate after ten minutes or so, as the technique is geared towards. Instead, I might drive to the supermarket to buy ice cream, because I have an idée fixe that just won't go away. That's where disenchantment comes in - after eating, I can explore how my body really feels. As I started to use this technique, imagine my surprise that I can eat an awful lot of ice cream before my body starts to feel bad. But, there is a point where it does actually not feel very good. Hmm...

Then I stumbled on Corinne Crabtree, and her pricey on-line No BS weightloss course. She has taken bits and pieces of all of the approaches above and put it together in a way that really speaks to me. She is profane and down-to-earth. The basic approach is eat when you are hungry and stop when you are satisfied (which is usually less than "full). We are fat because we overeat (eat when we are not hungry or have reached satisfied), and there are three reasons we overeat:

• Lack of body awareness
• Failure to feel our feelings
• Allowing our habit brain to take over

It's all about self-discovery, no shame, only data to explore. I've been through her video course, and some of her supplemental courses (eg, "Binge Better").  I listen to some of her podcasts, participate in her Facebook group, and almost daily use her planning and assessment worksheets which take about 10 minutes to do. There is definitely a cult of personality around Corinne, and I love that she reaches a population that is unlikely to follow my path of CBT and meditation and other approaches on the edge of woo-woo. She teaches habit loops, body awareness, and even how to feel your feelings, to a really wide audience that might not otherwise hear about these things. And I'm not being superior here: the way she talks about them are very useful for me as well.

For the past month, ever since I covered up the numbers on the scale for my daily weigh-in, I've been really tuning in to try to find "satisfied". I've jettisoned any goals around pounds, instead focusing on what and how much I'm eating - but in a loving and investigative way, not in a restrictive way. I've got "hungry" down pretty well, and I feel like I'm making progress towards finding satisfied. Late nights continue to be an issue for me, but it feels like progress towards being what I want to be, someone who eats what she wants, in the amounts she wants, and is at a healthy and attractive weight. 

My meditation app, Ten Percent Happier, is having a weeklong new challenge course that starts tomorrow, on intuitive eating. Short videos and a meditation for seven days. It's all part of the same approach and it's likely to help me be focused. I really liked something that came up in a teaser podcast for this course: "It's not about self-control, it's about self-care".  Yeah, baby! I've learned a lot this year about self love and self care, and I think I may be reaching a real tipping point here in my relationship to eating. I'll let you know how it goes.