I'm grateful that there will always be enough food, and I'm grateful that I have access to good food, to good ingredients, and to the pleasure of cooking well.

I'm grateful that I know what food I want to eat and what I want to drink. I'm grateful that I know how to choose tasty, honest, and healthy food and drink, that I eat the most appealing food and drink the most appealing drink first.

That I chew my food until it is liquid, noticing how it feels, tastes, and smells on my tongue, lips and teeth and in my mouth and nose. I take a small enough bite that I can hold it in my mouth comfortably while I chew the food, move it around, and sense it. I notice when the liquid begins to go to the doorway at the back of my throat, waiting to do down to my stomach, and I notice when that door opens to let it down. I notice if there is still food in my mouth to chew still, and I notice its texture, heft, flavor and smell. I notice when the food passes through the door at the top of my esophagus; I notice when I swallow. I notice the food as it moves down my esophagus; I notice its temperature and thickness and I notice how fast or slowly it moves. I notice when it is at the doorway at the bottom of my esophagus and at the top of my stomach, and I feel it when that door opens to let food in.

That I notice when food is not exactly right. That I never eat anything that my body tells me has the wrong taste, texture, heft, thickness, smell, aftertaste, or any other thing that does not feel good at that moment. A dissatisfaction with the food is a sign from my body that it doesn't want that food, and so I do not force my body to eat what it does not like or want.

Sunday

Yesterday we left home about 8:30 and got home about midnight, long day for me. I remembered to take my meds yesterday at 9 a.m., 2 p.m., and then in the evening, though I was not very uncomfortable. We were out late again yesterday, though I wasn't sure that was a good idea, and in the grocery store, waiting for the time to pick up John, my back was compressed and tired and it stung, but I fell asleep on the way home, seat heater all the way up to 6, and was ok when we got here. I got up at least twice in the night but mostly didn't get pulled completely out of my sleep. One time, though, I woke up enough to take one Acetaminophen (and find the other one I had dropped). Slept through my 6 a.m. Gabapentin, took it either at 7 or 8, can't remember for sure. Back gets tired today when I stand around for long or sit without any support leaning over, but I'm ok. Also took the Naproxin at 9, as usual. Another Gabapentin coming up in half an hour.

Was hungry in the car waiting for John about 10:45 p.m., really would have preferred some milk, which I could have gotten at a nearby Subway, but had some crackers instead. It was fine, though not exactly what I wanted. And I could have asked David to get me the milk, he would have done that without a hesitation. When he opened the crackers, I decided to have some too. I didn't want fruit or anything sweet.

Got up this morning a few minutes after 8, was fine. Got hungry making tea and had bits and pieces of things, a little bit at a time, until I was satisfied, just now. David and John have gone to a Harlem Globetrotters game.

So lowest pain level yesterday, taking meds regularly, was 0; highest was about a 5. Woke up a couple of times in the night, moved once out to the living room. Right leg was a bit fussy but I could move without making anything worse if I was careful, and I was.

Found this webpage, which suggests what minerals, etc., the body might be needing if there are cravings:

www.naturopathyworks.com/pages/cravings.html

Not sure if it's "true," certainly, all the time for everybody. Not sure exactly what they mean by cravings; it looks like they are trying to redeem cravings by suggesting that there might be a good reason for them, which is good, but there's also no real sense that if you really want it, it might be because you should have it just because you really want it. Still, interesting page.

2nd day keeping track

I didn't post yesterday, but I can remember.

The pain was still very low, though I could feel that I was more fragile, more likely to hurt myself. I had a hard time getting out of bed because something got to my back and my leg was beginning to escalate, and I barely got up before it got so bad it would have been impossible to get up without making things worse. But I managed to get upright without using my right leg, and I was ok. The day was fine. My back was fussy and stung, and there was tingling and stinging in my right leg, but I was at Caribou and took a couple of phone calls out in the lobby, where I was standing up. And in all that I forgot to take my Naproxin until 1:30, about 3 1/2 hours late. We went to a Timberwolves game last night, and I could tell when I turned that my back was fragile. I turned the seat heater all the way up and slept for about an hour on the way home, but once I woke up we still had about 4o minutes, and my legs were very uncomfortable. I got out and stretched when we dropped John off and walked around the car when we changed drivers, but still it was very uncomfortable the rest of the way home.

I slept all right, though. Woke up the usual 3 times or so, but I wasn't awake long each time, there wasn't strong enough pain to keep me awake, so that's good.

As far as hunger goes, I was hungry when we got to Caribou, about 8:00, and I had a Daybreaker, warm and savory and just fine. I got hungry again midmorning and finally gave myself the potato chips that I was going to give myself that day anyhow, about 11:00. About 1:00, I went over to the mall and got a grilled chicken pita, had that when I got back to Caribou. Was hungry again when David picked me up, but not deeply so, and had some Diet Coke and orange-and-strawberry smoothie that he bought for himself but wasn't really satisfied by.

I was really hungry by the time we got to Minneapolis and JImmy John's, had a Turkey Tom sub and ate most of it. Didn't eat the final crust that didn't have any mayonnaise or turkey near enough. I ate the first several bites too quickly, and so I had to wait for it to go down into my stomach because I didn't want it to get too full in my esophagus and hurt me. So I waited, and it was fine.

Had some popcorn and water maybe an hour later, not really hungry but it tasted good and I quit while things were ok. Took Gabapentin about 8 and Naproxin about 9.

Hungry when I got home, but I didn't notice until I had finished brushing and flossing, and I was so tired I just lay down and fell asleep almost immediately. Did take 2 Acetominophen near midnight, just before I went to bed.

Last night, I woke up 3 times or so, wan't awake for long each time. And I slept an hour past the Gabapentin time, till 7:00. The second time I woke up, I had a few swallows of milk from the refrigerator, and that was good. I could feel it slowly move down into my stomach because it was so cold. It felt fine, though, the cold was not a bad thing. Had a little more milk the next time I woke up, and both times it eased he hunger just fine.

I'm not so hungry now, I'm having my tea. We're driving back to the Twin Cities today, hair appointment in St. Paul. I made a peanut-butter sandwich for when I get hungry. I'll probably drive, and so that means I'll probably eat it on the road.

We need to leave in about 40 minutes, so I should get ready now.

Sweet things are a lot more attractive to me these days, maybe because of the pain or because I'm not not moving very much or because of one of the drugs I'm taking.

I need to keep track of two things, and so I'm going to put them both here.

First on my mind is my back pain, which is much better recently, and I'd like to keep track of this so I can tell how I'm doing over time. Second, I want to focus on hunger.

Right now, it's 9:27, and I need to take some Naproxin, so I want something in my stomach first, so it won't hurt me. But also I'm hungry and I'm really looking forward to the tea that is in my thermos and a sandwich. I have my usual pb sandwich here, divided into 4ths, but today I also have a baguette-and-butter (or really, plant-sterol margerine, ugh, but it's healthier and a lot better than nothing or any of the other margerines) sandwich.

I'm hungry, and I'm really looking forward to this. I'm going to eat the b-and-b sandwich first. Two bites, noticing and thinking.

I had a good night, didn't take any Acetominophen at all, but had to take a Gabapentin at 6, about half an hour early. Not real pain, but I knew it would be easy to hurt my back and make things a lot worse, so I took it and was very careful moving, setting my abs and not pulling with my right leg. There's a very subtle tingling on the inside of my right knee, the Naproxin will help. So no pain, but the potential to make it worse is present.

Four more bites of baguette and margerine. My stomach feels ok. I'm noticing just now, on this last bite, what I don't like about the margerine, a flatness or fuzziness to the flavor that's some ingredient, an oily one, I think, that doesn't actually taste that good. The taste is covered up normally by the other ones, but at this point, I can taste it. So I'll stop for now.

Plant Sterols

A year ago or so, my doctor wanted me to try to increase the plant sterols in my diet, to reduce LDLs and increase HDLs. The nutritionist that David talked to wants him to do the same. I had tried a yogurt thing that contains plant sterols, but there was something mucilaginous about them that triggered my gag reflex. I'm not going to eat anything that makes me gag. Completely contradicts the principles of conscious eating, where we eat what we want to and don't eat something if we don't want it in any way. I had also tried plant sterols in the form of pills, a nutritional supplement. It's just a lot of pills to take in a day, and I wasn't very good at doing it.

The nutritionist David talked to wanted him to eat a butter or margarine substitute that has plant sterols in it. We decided last weekend to try that, and I have been experimenting with it this week. There are two products -- one you can cook with and one that has less saturated fat. We'll experiment with both, but for now we tried Promise Activ Light, the one you can't cook with.

I'm finding it difficult to use because I think it makes my stomach somewhat fussy, and so I'm having a little more trouble than usual deciding if I'm hungry and if I've had enough. I do go through phases when it is easier and then harder to tell these things, and so I'm not positive the problem is the margarine. I have decided not to think of it as a substitute but as a thing that can be used to spread on bread, added to broccoli or cauliflower or squash. It's not very good as butter, but it's not bad as a kind of sauce or spread. If I want butter, then I'm going to have butter and eat it consciously so that I eat it only as long as it is satisfying. But if I don't care, then I'll have Activ, at least for now, to see how things go.

The Activ package says to eat about one and a half teaspoons in the morning and in the evening, a total of a tablespoon a day, and that is a lot. My stomach doesn't want that much of it, though my mouth is all right with it. So I'm trying to pay attention to my stomach.

Today, to try to figure out what is me having trouble paying attention and what is the spread, I decided to do an eating meditation, and not do anything except eat and drink when I was eating and drinking. I made a mark on a card for every bite or swallow, so that each one was deliberate and distinct.

I noticed the food or tea, which I was drinking at that time, as it came to my mouth -- its smell and appearance. I noticed it in my mouth, in my throat as I swallowed, in my esophagus as it moved through my chest, and into my stomach. I ate less of it than I had been, and I think it is not possible to eat as much as they say by eating this way. But I felt a lot more comfortable today, and not too full, and so I was eating too much of the margarine, even though I was eating the amount they said you should eat.

It was a relief to eat so absolutely consciously today. I felt a lot more centered and happy with my body. It's hard to do, though, honestly, so I didn't keep it up all day long. I will try again tomorrow and try to go longer.

Some topics for next time:

• A friend who is reading this blog has been thinking about sweets and how we learn to eat big quantities of these things and we don't learn to pay close enough attention for a smaller amount to be satisfying.
• The same friend is thinking about how eating in a healthy way is hard for people who don't find it fun and who don't see a connection between what they eat, how they feel, and their health. And I would add how they eat.
• David is counting calories, which does not seem to make him dissatisfied with his body, which is interesting. I'm not much help for him on counting calories, since I have forgotten a lot of that kind of information.
• Hunger is the bedrock. If I wait to eat until I'm actually hungry and I pay very close attention to how my stomach feels once the hunger begins to fade, then it is so easy to know what to do.
• It is difficult to write this blog every day or even every other day because I don't feel I'm good enough at conscious eating to have new things to say each time. Also, it is challenging to speak in public like this about eating and about the times I am not perfectly or even sufficiently conscious.

Getting to be Hungry

I said in my last post that David can't have ice cream any more unless he eats the no-fat, no-sugar substitute, but honestly that's not what I believe.

For this first month after the stent, we have chosen to be extra careful about saturated fat, foods with a high glycemic index, low-quality carbs, that kind of thing, so that we can get David as far away from danger as quickly as possible. We're trying to bring his LDL number and his weight down and his HDL number up as quickly as possible, knowing that healthy weight loss does not occur quickly and it can take a lot and a long time to make major changes in the cholesterol numbers. But he's on some medications that will help, we think, and so we're spending this first month learning where we need to make modifications and modulations in our eating habits and where we have some slack.

It's been educational for me, since I really do see how close to what the cardiologist wants we normally are for meals. The challenge is in the snacks, or at least what I was thinking of as snacks. It's better if I think of the snacks as meals, as mini-meals in between the prepared, sit-down events. I see that what I thought of as David's sweet tooth or snacking is really not something peripheral or ancillary at all. He gets hungry more often than I do, and I think he gets hungrier, though there's no real way to compare, and he needs food that he can get quickly and easily and that doesn't require a lot of fussing and time. It's better to think of the snacks the same way I think of meals -- as feeding us when we are hungry.

He gets to be hungry, he gets to have this hunger, and it gets to be fed. If he wants ice cream, he gets ice cream, in whatever form will satisfy that particular hunger that particular day. It is critical (because ice cream has ingredients that are not good for him, whether saturated fat or a long list of chemicals made in factories) that, when he eats that ice cream, he eats it as consciously as he possibly can, so that he eats exactly what he wants and not a molecule more. He gets to be satisfied. (We also see from the heart-healthy information sheet that got sent to us that there is enough slack that he can eat ice cream sometimes, we can eat some saturated fat every day and be just fine.)

We're not to the place yet where the snacks we are developing for him are as easy for him to eat as grabbing some cookies or some pie or some ice cream. It seems to me that there needs to be enough variety of foods that he genuinely likes that he can choose something that will satisfy his hunger.

The same is true for me. I too get my hunger, and I get to satisfy it. It is so easy for me to ignore or just not take the time and attention to notice that I actually am hungry, or that my hunger has been growing for a while. I think attention to my hunger helps me make better choices. I can choose to wait a little more, in order to get something that I will like better. I can choose to have some tiding food -- something to tide me over until I can get the food I want. I can choose to eat something now, just enough so that I will be hungry again later. If I don't pay attention to the hunger and make these choices, then I act without having consciously chosen, and I don't eat consciously then, either.

It feels like eating is a lot more work when we're really conscious. We eat less when we do eat, and we get hungrier again sooner. But the real key is the hunger. In order to eat consciously, we have to honor the hunger. We have to notice it, attend to it, and feed it, feed it what it wants and likes.

These snacks for David are also meals, they are about feeding him when he is hungry.

Having Enough to Eat

When we're eating consciously, we stop eating sooner than usual most of the time, which means we get hungry again sooner, too, sometimes. I think one challenge to this for us is having enough food around that we can snack on, that doesn't require making another meal. I think we had gotten into the habit of having sweets around as a way of handling the need for snacks.

David had been eating quite a bit of ice cream, and now he can't do that. He can either eat totally artificial ice cream (like what he got in the hospital, with no fat and no sugar), or he can't have ice cream at all. Today he got a smoothie when we were out, and it was exciting to think that this will satisfy his ice cream habit. Of course, when what he wants is ice cream, if he's "humming" for ice cream -- if the desire for it comes spontaneously from inside him -- then he should have it. It is critical that he eat consciously at that time, because it's important that he not eat any more than he actually wants. If he's paying attention and gets satisfied, then his desire for ice cream will be satisfied, and it won't dog him for days. But if a smoothie made with fruit and juice and yogurt will do, when something cold and sweet and creamy and fruity will do rather than specifically ice cream, then that really makes this choice a lot easier.

Also, I noticed last night that when we're eating consciously, it's even more important than usual that the food be really good. I made a curry last night, to make broccoli and cauliflower more appealing to him, and to use up some Copper River salmon we had had the night before, which was good but the flavor was strong. I wanted something strong to balance it. I enriched the sauce with potatoes and broccoli and cauliflower that either were left-overs from the night before or the stems. I cooked them thoroughly and then used the stick blender to make a sauce that had some body. It worked really well, but it actually was too thick. I was worried about it being too thin and tasting too strongly of kale, but it was too thick and the flavor was just fine, though it was not salty. So between the slightly too thick sauce and the strong-flavored salmon and the decision not to add salt to make it more appealing, it was easy to stop eating when we were satisfied.

I liked the warm weight of it as it went down my throat and into my stomach, it was easy to follow because it was thick. I did like that. We didn't have wine with it last night, because we had to an errand to run after dinner, and so maybe that made it easier to notice the food as well -- no wine blunting the sensations.

We were in a hurry tonight and wanted to eat with David's son, so we went to a local sandwich place. Without the mayo or cheese -- I didn't want the mayo and was willing to forego the cheese because David has to -- the sandwich was disappointing. It was very bland, and it was too big. We brought the part of the sandwiches home that we didn't eat there. Again, I think for me it was easier to give up the sandwich when I had had enough because it didn't have much interest for my mouth, either.

So that's my lesson for today, which I have learned again and again. A good time to really practice conscious eating is when the food isn't perfect. I mean, anytime is a good time to practice, but food that's not perfect is an opportunity, an easy one.