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.

Another Chance

The Universe has given us another chance. David had a really close call because one of the arteries that feeds his heart was 99% blocked, and we didn't know. He had a stent put in, and so now we have another chance. We want to use this chance to be healthier, to move being healthy up in the priority list, really.

David needs to lose a little weight, though nobody who saw him would say that. But it's not about how people should look. It's about what his heart needs.

So we're going to try to be very careful for the next month, so that he can make as much progress as possible, knowing that we probably won't be able to sustain this all our lives. But we can make some fast progress and then see how much more we need to do, and do that in a sustainable way.

We're focusing on HDL, on moving more, and on reducing as far as possible, for this month, the things we've been eating that are dangerous for his heart. We're trying to move away from the symptoms of metabolic syndrome. This will be good for both of us, especially as we do it in a healthy and sustainable way. The real goal is to break the connection between HDL and metabolic syndrome. This means raising our HDL numbers first. I will not be able to go on any kind of diet that means restriction, as it is not good for me, but I will join David in every other way.

And, honestly, I never ate the desserts he did, and that's the part we'll need to modify the most.

We have been living pretty healthy lives already, and so there are no radical changes we can make that will cause huge differences in the numbers the next time he is tested. We're already really close to a heart-healthy diet. Also, he exercises in one way or another almost every day, especially during the school year. What we have been doing is not perfect from the perspective of a cardiologist, and we will be able to make some modifications without suffering or feeling a sense of deprivation.

David is willing to reduce for a while, the next month, some of the calories he has been taking in, mostly with desserts and sweets, but not enough that it causes his metabolism to slow down. We can be more strict about cholesterol in our diet, although we were already pretty healthy in our habits and our choices. And I think David is thinking about increasing the duration of his running or jogging; my change will be that I will try to do some kind of movement nearly every day. Of course we will be eating together and mostly eat the same things. Moving, just by itself, for me, will make being healthy more of a priority. I am also planning on attending a meditation session every Monday.

So our strategy looks like this.

We will use what we've been learning recently to inform our choices, so we will reduce the amount of cholesterol we eat and increase the foods that help reduce LDL. But we are not going to go into deprivation or systematic long-term restriction. These things never last, and in fact, at least for me, they set up a rebellion that is not healthy.

We will do our best to eat more consciously more often, so that what we do eat is more satisfying. We will be focusing on satisfaction in our food. That means it has to bring pleasure, and it has to be what we want. It has to be good as well as good for us. And then we have to pay attention to it while we are eating it so that it can bring us satisfaction.

I have a couple of postings I have been wanting to make about conscious eating. I'll note them here so I don't forget:

1. There is a moment when I'm eating when I notice that I feel good. That is the moment of satisfaction. It's a general feeling, just feeling good. It's easy to keep eating because that feeling of satisfaction isn't only about the food -- it's in general. In fact, you can sort of think that eating made you feel good, so if you keep eating you'll feel better. But you can tell if you're conscious once you pass the point where more food does not make you feel better, and then each bite after that makes you feel worse.
2. Sometimes I want to eat past the point of just having enough -- of satisfaction. Sometimes I need to reassure myself that I will give myself enough food, so I need to feel a little full. Sometimes I need to feel a warm weight in my stomach, especially when I am anxious. Sometimes when I have let myself get too hungry, I need to feed an emptiness that is more than just physical hunger. Maybe this is the same as the first one, of reassurance, or maybe the hunger is deeper.

That's all for now. I'm going to try to post every day as David and I work on taking advantage of this chance the universe has given us.

Keeping Track of the Food

I've been working on noticing the food as I eat it.

I'm pretty good, though not perfect, at noticing taste and texture, temperature, saltiness, sweetness, wateryness, that kind of thing. What I mean when I say I'm not perfect is that it is sometimes easy not to notice even the food (or drink) in my mouth.

It's also really easy not to notice the food as it leaves my mouth and moves down my throat. I'm better at remembering to notice it in my esophagus, just before it enters my stomach. I'm also pretty good (much better than I used to be, anyhow) about noticing it in my stomach. Occasionally, I am aware of the food in my intestines, especially if there's something wrong.

Paying attention all the way down into your stomach is what I think of as an eating meditation. It's not really normal eating -- maybe it's too difficult to ever really be normal -- but the better I am at doing an eating meditation, the more conscious my "normal" eating is.

That's all for now. I thought I would just try blogging about conscious eating to see what happens when I begin to speak about it publicly. When I was trying to find a unique name for this blog, I realized there are other people out there blogging about conscious eating. I looked around a little bit, and I'm looking forward to reading more.