Chapter One

Honesty, Awareness, Attitude, and Food

“A light supper, a good night’s sleep, and a fine
morning have often made a hero of the same man,
who, by indigestion, a restless night, and a rainy
morning, would have proved a coward.”
—Chesterfield

Health is a vast topic about which volumes could be, and have, been written. I am not a doctor and am not qualified to write prescriptions. I am, however, qualified to share my perspective and my experience. Having worked in the health and fitness industry for more than fifteen years and taken my own journey on the healing path, my perspective has its application, particularly as it relates to the specific focus of this book.

There is much about our health that we have very little control over: our genetic makeup, susceptibility and sensitivity to allergies, chemical imbalance, athleticism and coordination, and a whole host of additional factors and disorders of a physical nature. But we do have the ability to control some elements of our health—our attitude and the way we eat being primary among them—and these will be the focus of this chapter.

Generally speaking, many of us tend to take an all-or-nothing approach to self-improvement. We get “on track” for a while, and then somehow, without even understanding why it happens, we become completely derailed. We are upbeat and positive, willing and eager; we make good food choices, and then, with a kind of righteous indignation, we say forget it, and overindulge our food and our moods to the extreme. But flip-flopping back and forth like this is not conducive to feeling good. What feels good, over time, is a steady and sustainable balance.

But balance is less obvious than it seems. It is not a perfect stance where all is equal. It requires constant adjustments and continuous focus. Think of a man on a tightrope. He is never still. Even when he is not moving forward, he is shifting his arms and bending his knees and making small changes in his position at all times in order to stay upright and stay centered and stay “in balance.” I know this from my work at the gym as well. Increasing our ability to balance requires that we risk a little discomfort by making ourselves temporarily unstable. We feel shaky and unsure. We wobble back and forth as we try to stand on a round and squishy surface or on one foot or whatever the exercise might be. And we want to get back on solid ground.

The only way to improve our balance is to allow for this unsteadiness. We practice in short spurts. We wobble for ten seconds the first day, and twenty the next. We learn to become slightly more comfortable with the instability and the constant positional adjustment that is required. We slowly build new stabilizing muscles. And before long, we are able to stand comfortably for a long period of time on the unsteady surface and perform all manner of movement. And then we up the ante. We increase the challenge to the next level and the next, and our balance gets better every time. That’s the way it works at the gym, and that’s the way it works in life.

We won’t make any effort to improve our balance, however, if we have no knowledge that it needs improving in the first place, so self-honesty comes first. We have to admit that we have imbalances and dissatisfaction in life before we can start the work of making things better for ourselves. But self-honesty, like balance, is a bit tricky. Our thinking is cluttered with projection, nostalgia, and complaining, so that’s what we hear, and that’s what guides us. But if we can learn to disseminate the wheat from the chaff, so to speak, and the clutter from the facts, then everything becomes simpler, and we know exactly what we’re dealing with and exactly where to begin.

Honesty Exercise: Self-Discovery

This exercise will guide you to personal truth through a process of reduction and simplification. You will begin with a mass of thought; consider it, and pare it down until you arrive at essential self-honesty. You will need a pen or a pencil, a journal of some kind (that you may continue to use throughout the book), and a few minutes of quiet, uninterrupted time. If you prefer to do your journaling online, you can use your computer or iPad. The use of the term “journal” going forth will refer to whatever method you choose. The exercise requires that you write three statements:

Example #1

Once we have our statement reduced to this simple form, we have something we can work with. This is self-honesty! This is where we can begin!

Example #2

Ah, so simple. We can work with this. This is what we’re after. This is self-honesty.

Example #3

Again! This is a workable place to start. We can deal with this as a simple statement of fact.

The point here is that reducing our voluminous thoughts down to their essential truths helps us to know what we’re really dealing with, and then things become more manageable. Now, take a few minutes to write down your own three statements. Don’t overthink it.

  1. In your journal, write a few sentences about the way you feel challenged in regard to food, or the way you feel frustrated with life in general.
  2. Now, rewrite what you have written above, but simplify it some. Eliminate anything that seems non-essential (refer to the examples above if you’re not sure how to do this).
  3. One more time, rewrite what you have written above. But this time, reduce it to its absolute simplest form (refer to the examples above for guidance). This statement that you have written represents a “truth” in your life.

What we learn from this exercise is something about the nature of self-honesty and the nature of self-deception as well. It’s easy and natural to fog ourselves in with convoluted thinking. More often than not, this thinking is riddled with fear about the future—all the things that could go wrong and all the reasons that something won’t work out for us. And that’s what we come to believe about the way things are. But once we clearly understand what’s actually at play—that kernel of truth is in the mass of our thinking—we realize that we have the power to change our thinking, change our behavior, and consequently experience the results of better choices in our lives.

Keeping an Open Mind

Our mental outlook plays no small role in the state of our health. It contributes greatly to our sense of well-being, or lack thereof. We are all familiar with concepts of optimism and negativity, and perhaps we identify ourselves with one camp more than the other. But I would argue that they both have their limitations—they are both “skewed” in one direction or the other—tilted east and west.

The healthiest mental approach to life may well be found in neutrality, which allows for the appreciation of things “as they are,” unaffected by our wanting them or expecting them to be good or bad. We readily become psychologically fixed on projections of the future in a kind of advanced certainty. We expect things to be either positive or disastrous, and we worry about and prepare for situations that never actually come to pass. We spend endless hours thinking and thinking and thinking. Our thoughts spiral and flip.

We wake up and our minds go straight to work, solving the potential problems of the day, wondering and worrying about the people we may encounter, the things we have to do, and all that could go wrong, or right. We fret and scheme and ponder and figure. We calculate and delegate. We create mock conversations and arguments and have speeches prepared in advance should we need them for any reason. And all the while, life is happening, and we are missing it, lost in our heads.

Learning the nature of our minds is important spiritual work. It is spiritual as well as mental; it consists of both thinking and letting go of thinking. Our minds will control us, and not necessarily in a beneficial way, unless we learn to control them. And we learn to control our minds through the practice of self-honesty as demonstrated in the exercise above, by clearing away excess mental clutter, and through meditation, which can be understood simply as thoughtless awareness. In meditation, we learn to watch our thoughts instead of getting hooked on them, and, consequently, we become the agent of our mental capacity instead of its victim.

But the very concept of “meditation” is likely surrounded by all kinds of pre-established thoughts that we might have. We are either drawn to the idea or repelled by it. We may think that to meditate we have to sit on a cushion in a lotus position and say “Om” in a very serious way for a certain period of time on a regular basis. But meditation isn’t as complicated as we might want to make it. It is simply becoming conscious of wherever we are.

Awareness Exercise: Learning to Tune In

This exercise is designed as an introduction to meditation. It will give you an opportunity to experience the quieting of your mind. Sit where you are, but adjust your posture and uncross your legs and ankles so that you are in a comfortable yet well-balanced position with your feet flat on the floor, your spine as straight as possible, and one hand on each thigh (palms up or down, whichever feels more natural to you). You will need a few uninterrupted minutes.

  1. Close your eyes and listen to all of the sounds that you can hear. Focus all of your attention on listening. If you catch yourself thinking about what you hear, just observe your thoughts and return to listening. If the space you are in is so quiet that there is not much to listen to, then breathe deeply and focus on listening to your breath as it travels in and out. The exercise is to simply sit quietly with your eyes closed and listen to whatever sounds there may be.
  2. After a few minutes, open your eyes and check in with yourself. Chances are that you feel a little bit peaceful. This is the result of quieting your mind. And in this quiet and neutral mind-space, it’s possible to become aware of more than just the sounds in the room. We can learn to feel our internal state as well. Are we restless? Tired? Relaxed? Afraid?
  3. Close your eyes again, maintain the same good sitting posture, and observe the way you feel on the inside. This is not about thinking about how you feel, but about tuning in to your internal state—your energy field, your nerves, and your gut. You are “taking a reading.” And if you feel agitated, or out of sorts in any way, just breathe deeply, the whole length of your spine. Carry your breath like a wave down your vertebrae to the sacral bone, hold it there for a moment, and then release it like a wave back up your spine and out into space. Breathe deeply several times, and just focus on the traveling breath. Observe your energy change.

In this way, you can always restore yourself to neutrality, to an internal balance where you then have access to the flow of external energy as well. Internal awareness raises external awareness. We are then able to feel and sense the currents of things as they want to go, so that we needn’t push against them. So much of our suffering comes from resisting life as it is. This state of being “in the flow” as described above, and hopefully experienced by you in the exercise, we will call spiritual fitness.

Learning to be simply observant of what is while remaining mentally neutral is a vital aspect of our good health and our well-being. Such a position allows for flexibility and curiosity and welcomes the unexpected. It sustains us and supports us as we explore the world and as we experience what life has to offer us on a daily basis. Another way to think of this is to have and maintain an open mind.

How We Feel about
Ourselves and the Way We Eat

Our diet, as well as our thinking, is a direct reflection of our state of being. If we are not calm, balanced, and content, the way we eat will reveal our inner turmoil, as will the way we think. Our nourishment is our support. It promotes growth and sustains us over time. If we are reckless with our food choices by being overly permissive, drastically disciplined, or unconscious and unaware, that is a reflection of our internal state and our spiritual situation. So by better understanding how we feel on the inside, we can actually improve our relationship with food.

But it goes both ways, much like the chicken and the egg. The way we eat reflects our state of being, but our state of being is also reflected by the way we eat. They are both causes, and they are both effects. Sometimes, being hungry can instigate feelings of agitation and irritability, and sometimes, eating too much, or too much of the wrong thing, can make us feel sick, out-of-control, or upset. Food can either calm us or distress us, depending on what we eat and how we eat it. It’s both a go-to place for the solution to our emotional imbalance and the potential cause of our internal unrest.

The goal must be to bring the internal and the external into alignment so that the one supports the other and we become able to maintain our best health and well-being. By simply raising our awareness to the food-emotion connection, we begin the process. It starts from wherever we are.

For my part, my relationship with food and with my body has been a long and harrowing journey. For many years, I was at war with portions, sweets, clothes, and the bathroom scale. Over time, I have come to understand that I was actually at war with myself. And I have had to change my habits and surrender to reality on multiple levels in order to feel safe and okay about who I am and how I look.

I used to eat out of boredom, compulsion, and emotional despair. I ate to celebrate and to numb my feelings. I always tried to maintain a perfect balance in order to have the right-size body, but I always missed the mark because I was never happy with myself the way I was. My thighs were too big and my stomach rolled over the top of my jeans when I sat down. I was relatively fit, and somewhat muscular, but I felt thick and fat—not feminine enough. And then I would have to eat in order to deal with my perceived lack of femininity, which contributed to greater thickness. It was a vicious cycle I was stuck in for years. My dysfunctional relationship with eating ruled me.

And yet, to look at me from the outside, I don’t think it was at all obvious that I had “food issues.” I was not particularly overweight by cultural standards, but on the inside, I felt horrible and huge. I understand now that it was a spiritual state as much as it was a physical one.

And then one year in late December, at the end of two months of holiday feasting and excess, I was sick to my soul of the food insanity and made an honest decision to address my issues. I stopped eating desserts entirely and almost passed out on day three from the change in my blood sugar. I had headaches and restlessness and felt like I was crawling out of my skin.

I wrote a daily journal to release emotional pressure and to keep track of my progress. I discovered that I habitually turned to food in general and sugar specifically when I was bored, tired, upset, overwhelmed, and afraid. Food was the place that I went for relief from the uncomfortable feeling of the moment, whatever that might be.

By monitoring myself over the course of a year, I realized that if I went too long without eating I became hostile and touchy. I also found that certain foods made me feel energized and jazzy and other foods made me feel grounded. I saw a connection between drinking coffee and irritability, between eating too much and feeling sickly full, and between not eating enough and feeling starved and weepy. It was quite a year of revelation.

I read books, talked to people, and shared my experience with others who understood and some who did not. I lost weight and gained weight. I did a weeklong steamed vegetable and sauna cleanse and briefly felt lean and beautiful. And after three months, I slowly reintroduced desserts into my life and observed that a bit of sugar made me crave more.

I learned about myself through this process. I learned that I had a belief system all around eating that was rooted in my childhood, and that I was programmed from a young age to be a dedicated member of the “clean plate club,” no matter how much was on my plate. And I came to understand that this was true in relation to my life as well as to food. I wanted no loose ends and no unfinished business.

But over time, I learned that it was possible to be reasonable about what I ate and that I could eat anything, but that I didn’t really want to. I learned that a few bites of something could actually be more satisfying than an endless and massive amount—in life as well as in my stomach—and I learned all about the insidious connection within me between nourishment and guilt.

I realized that for me, food had become a moral issue. I was “good” or “bad” depending on how successfully I was depriving myself of things that I wanted to eat and how much I weighed. I used food as reward and punishment both, which resulted in self-loathing and self-satisfaction over the same five pounds for decades. If I was up five I was miserable and felt fat and unattractive, and if I was down five I was happy. I came to realize that “weight” for me was an emotional and spiritual issue. Heavy or light was about my life as much as my body. My health with food was directly proportional to my health with everything.

As I became a better eater—not so much in terms of what I ate, but in how I ate—then my relationships, self-image, ability to be honest in other areas of my life, and feelings about my body all got better. And so did my courage to try new things. I became willing to speak up for myself and set boundaries.

In addition, I learned that many of us have the same kind of inner angst and turmoil over a few pounds, the latest diet, the second helping, and the lurching pendulum from permissiveness to deprivation. It’s a torturous way to live, and it seems unstoppable. But we can stop. We can all find our way to make peace with food. Ultimately, it’s an inside job, but it starts by changing external habits. I know that it works because I have done it. Although it may not be easy, it’s entirely worth it. Life is simpler and supremely satisfying when we are not mentally obsessed with what we are eating or not eating and when we realize that we can be trusted to properly nourish ourselves.

Honesty Exercise: Where to Begin

Completing the checklist below will help identify issues surrounding your body image and the way you eat. You will need a pen or a pencil and a few minutes of quiet, uninterrupted time. Consider the statements below and put a check mark beside each one that rings “true.” If the statement does not resonate, just leave it blank. Remember to be honest.

I am comfortable with my body just the way it is.

I am too tall.

I am too short.

I am too stocky.

I have body parts that I don’t like.

I am overweight.

I am too thin.

I have a healthy, balanced diet and I rarely overeat.

I overeat on a regular basis.

I overeat desserts.

I overeat starches.

I overeat fried food.

I overeat fast food.

I rarely/sometimes/often (circle one) eat to the point of sickness.

I sometimes feel guilty after eating.

I am a binge eater.

I am a late-night snacker.

I sometimes sneak food.

I rarely/sometimes/often (circle one) skip meals.

I do not drink enough water.

I drink too much coffee.

I drink too much soda.

I am always on a diet or thinking about dieting.

I feel good about myself when I am on a diet and bad about myself when I am not.

I feel deprived when I am dieting.

I have a hard time sticking to a diet.

I flip-flop between being a disciplined eater to being out of control.

I overregulate my food intake.

I have no discipline. I eat whatever I want.

I eat too fast.

I don’t enjoy eating.

I do not stop eating when I am full.

I eat standing up or on the run.

I always clean my plate no matter what.

I eat when I’m bored.

I eat when I am stressed out or worried.

I can’t trust myself with food.

Other:

Now, go back and write the number 1 beside the statement in this list that resonates the most strongly with you, and then do the same with numbers 2 and 3. Through this exercise, you have raised your awareness in some way regarding your habituated thoughts and behaviors surrounding food and your body. Consider this as information gathered, and keep it at the forefront of your mind as we proceed. We will refer back to this list in the next chapter.

What We Know: The Practical Facts

I am not a certified nutritionist and am not espousing any particular dietary path. But nonetheless, there are commonsense things that we all know in relation to food and our diets whether we admit them or not. We know that what we eat affects the way we feel. And we also know that what we eat can (and does) affect our overall health and our weight, which in turn affects our internal state, or “spiritual fitness.” So there is a connection between what we choose to consume and the way we experience our lives and our bodies. This connection is a guarantee.

Another guarantee is that being overweight affects our mobility and, barring some medical condition or particular medication, it’s possible for us to change the way our body feels and functions by eating less and moving more. We tend to overcomplicate this simple fact, though for the majority of us, it is a bottom line truth. If we burn more energy than we take in, our bodies have to use stored reserves to keep us going, and those stored reserves come in the form of fat, which is essentially unused, or blocked, energy. If we set this energy free by losing excess weight, then we are likely to feel better all over.

It is also the case that as adult individuals, we can eat anything we choose to eat. We have free will and a world full of grocery stores and restaurants to pick from. Anything that we do not eat, we choose not to eat. Sometimes the decision is pretty clear-cut—a shellfish allergy would compel us to avoid eating shrimp no matter what, because we don’t want to go into anaphylactic shock and die. But the only thing that actually stands between ourselves and a shrimp cocktail is our clear decision not to eat it—our choice. We could eat it if we made the decision to do so, and we would suffer the consequences. The only thing stopping us is us, and our understanding of cause and effect. We choose not to eat shellfish because we don’t want to get sick. The shellfish example demonstrates how easy it is to make a good choice when the stakes are high, but the consequences of most food choices are not as dramatic. Nonetheless, I would argue that the cause and effect relationships are often clearer than we think.

If we get acid indigestion every time after we eat pizza, then it’s probably safe to say that pizza causes this effect on our system. Or if a basket of chips and salsa make us feel greasy, then that’s the effect of chips and salsa. If we feel fat and guilty every time we eat a certain dessert, then fat and guilty are the effects of that dessert. The specific list of causes and effects are different for each individual, and it’s your choice (and I would argue, your responsibility) to pay attention enough to be able to clearly know what your list is.

And we also know from experience that what we eat has a next-day effect as well. An overindulgence of rich foods and heavy sauces or an excess of sugar can give us a kind of food hangover the morning after. We might have a headache, or nausea, or feel clammy or crampy, or simply off our game. Certain foods disagree with us every time we eat them but we keep on eating them because for whatever reason we like the idea of them, or fail to connect the dots between the cause and effect. This can become particularly challenging if we have a delayed sensitivity.

The point is that the way specific foods act and react with our specific metabolisms is a topic that requires our self-honesty. Being realistic can give us a sense of power and control over the way that we feel, our health, and our happiness. When we eat this, we feel terrible. When we have that for dinner, we gain four pounds on the scale. When we prepare this food in this way we feel energized and healthy. When we eat too much of that food, we feel heavy and tired. Our bodies and our spirits will guide us to the best choices if we will only pay attention. (There is a “voice within” that speaks if we will listen: a point we address further in the next chapter.)

Something else that we all know about food whether we admit it or not is that fresh food or fresh-frozen food is better for us than processed food; the closer we can stay to the garden or the farm, the more “natural” the state of our food, the better. An apple is a better choice for our health and weight than an apple fritter. A piece of baked chicken is a better choice than chicken nuggets. A raw almond is better than one that is salted and roasted. And certain foods, although delicious in theory, have very little nutritional benefit at all, so eating them as anything more than an occasional tasty treat will not serve us in any kind of way. As a sweet they may satisfy our taste buds, but if we eat them as “food” we may be missing the point of what our “food” is supposed to be. This category might include frosted donuts, hot fudge sundaes and extreme desserts, a whole gamut of chips and packaged foods, nachos and cheese, and a litany of choices from fast food restaurant menus. The idea of them may be tempting, but the actual feeling we get from eating them is not completely satisfactory. Again, we know which foods are good for us in a healthy kind of way and which foods are less than beneficial. We know without a doubt.

More Practicality: Fats, Carbs, and Sugar

Continuing the discussion from a commonsense, layman’s point of view, we can assert that “fats” in general get a bad rap in our culture. Some fats—like nuts, seeds, avocados, olive oil—are healthy and necessary, and if we eliminate too much of these from our diets, our bodies revolt and resist. The fat produced from these type of foods protects our internal organs, and if we are not providing it, the body will hold on to what it has in storage and not let go. If, however, we consume these healthy fats in balanced portions, our bodies engage in a trusting kind of give and take.

Carbohydrates, or “carbs,” get a lot of negative press because in excess, more than other food groups, they contribute to unwanted weight gain. They are a ready source of body energy. Brown rice, a baked potato, or a tangerine are healthy carbohydrate choices. Within a reasonable number of hours after eating these types of foods, our body can use them to move muscles and to energize physical labor. They act like gas in a car. They power the engine.

But if we do not burn carbohydrates through physical motion, our bodies transform them into fat for backup energy at some point in the future. Consequently, we develop excess fat stores when we overeat carbohydrates. The key is to appropriately balance our complex carbohydrate intake with our physical output if we want to maintain a certain weight. If we want to lose weight and lose fat, then we need to have a higher energy output than we do carbohydrate intake.

It works like this: if we need energy to get moving or to stay moving, but don’t have carbs ready and available to use, then our body will draw upon fat stores and transform the fat into energy, which is exactly what we want to have happen if we want to shrink our size. If we need to gain weight, eating complex carbohydrates like whole grains, beans, and other root vegetables is a good place to begin.

The biggest problem for many of us has to do with refined carbohydrates: candy bars, potato chips, crackers, pretzels, white bread, soda and energy drinks, many fruit juices, and anything made with white or all-purpose flour. These are the “less than beneficial” food family described in the section above. Processed and often loaded down with sugar, these foods set a physical craving in motion that makes us want more of them. I have found that I cannot consume refined carbohydrates except in minimal portions if I want to relate in a healthy way to the food I eat, and I believe that this is true for most of us. Refined carbohydrates and sugar are the primary saboteurs of a lean and healthy body.

Sugar, as well as being sweet and tasty, is addictive. It does not have any nutritional benefit, and it takes our whole energy system on a wild ride every time we eat it, especially in excess. Consider for a moment what a piece of cake or a candy bar will do to a young child. In adults it may be less obvious, but it does the same thing.

Eating sweets spikes our blood sugar to an abnormally high level, which then triggers our body to release insulin in order to regulate the system. Too much sugar equals too much insulin, which then crashes our blood sugar, depleting us of energy. And then we tend to turn right back to sugar again because we crave the initial “high” that we experienced. Eating sugar makes us crave more sugar. This is how an addictive cycle begins. And the cycle can continue ad infinitum.

It’s worth mentioning that sugar highs do burn energy, a fact that we can readily observe in children who are “bouncing off the walls” after eating too much of it, but burning energy this way is not efficient. The sugar that remains in the system once our insulin rush has come to lower the blood levels is stored, for future use, as fat.

So our best bet is to eat sugar in small bits, as a true-to-form, once-in-a-while “treat,” eat the bulk of our healthy carbs early in the day so that we have the ready ability to burn them as we move about through our activities, and eat minimal carbs for dinner. And if we want to lose weight, we should eat as little sugar and as few carbs as possible at all times, while continuing to eat a reasonable amount of healthy fats and drink plenty of water.

We have to be a bit cautious when it comes to fruit because fruits are carbs—good carbs, but carbs, nonetheless—and fruit is also high in sugar, which is natural sugar, but sugar nonetheless, and still affects the blood and insulin levels. To maintain a lean and healthy body, it has been my experience that lean protein, lots of veggies, and a small portion of healthy fat, with occasional complex carbohydrates, and even-more-occasional sweets, makes for the ultimate diet.

Even if we exercise regularly, this balanced diet makes sense. While it’s true that athletes require more carbs than average because of their intense physical demands and energetic output, most of us, even if we’re fit, do not fall into this category. Much as we may want it to be the case, or want to talk ourselves into it, “carb loading” is not necessary for an average workout at the gym.

All of the above is general information based on my opinion and my understanding of nutrition; it does not represent absolute truth. It is what I have learned, experienced, and chosen to share with you to be helpful. But ultimately, I direct you back to yourselves. If you disagree strongly with anything that I have said, I encourage you to honor yourself. Diet and dietary opinion is a personal matter, and we all have to discover the path that is the right one for us. Some of us are all about raw foods, and some of us are all about macrobiotics; some are low-carb, some are all-fruit, some are paleo, and some are pescatarians. The point, and the purpose, is to find what works for you. If you feel great eating what you’re eating—keep eating it. But if you don’t feel great, then perhaps the guidelines and suggestions above might be helpful as you journey forth. That is my hope.

Understanding Hunger and
the Importance of Accountability

Also in my experience, and as a general rule, I have come to understand that every time we feel hungry, we assume that food will satisfy us. But sometimes, it doesn’t. Sometimes, we are hungry for something other than food; something deeper, or something different. We are beings with a whole host of sensual and spiritual needs. Perhaps when we feel hungry we are actually hungry for beauty, or light. Maybe our cramped, dark office and endless rows of computers and closed doors have depressed us, and we need to get out in the sun for a bit and see trees and people and the earth.

Or maybe we are hungry for the scent of something delicate and delicious—the aroma of rain if it’s been parched and hot, or the smells of the body and physical closeness, or wood smoke on a winter day. Maybe we’re hungry for deep breaths of fresh air, the feeling of soft cotton, a provocative movie, or a good book. Or maybe we are dehydrated and in need of water.

Our appetites are vast, and we intuitively seek balance. If we have been alone too long, we hunger for the noise and energy of a crowd. We hunger for touch, for comfort, for intellectual stimulation, for sleep. We hunger for appreciation. We hunger for love. We hunger for approval, mastery, physical fitness, and spiritual insight. We hunger for a whole world of sensual and emotional satisfaction, and it’s up to us to be able to identify what we’re actually hungry for at any given time, because a piece of buttered bread will not satisfy our hunger for light or beauty or conversation.

If we try to fill our hunger with food and food is not what we’re hungry for, then no amount of food will fill us up. But this doesn’t stop us, because there is a certain comfort in the numbing effect of chewing, swallowing, and filling our stomachs to the brim. But at the end of it all, when we are sick from eating too much, we are as lonely as we were before, or as disappointed, or as bored. The only difference is that we have given ourselves something to distract us from reality. And that satisfaction is limited at best.

We cannot expect to live in healthy balance with food if we are unwilling to learn the ongoing art of self-honesty and the regular practice of tuning in to our internal selves. Our relationship to what we eat does not exist in a vacuum. Everything depends upon it and it depends upon everything else: the way we think, the way we feel, the things we long for, and all of our hopes and fears. Perhaps we are deficient in a certain vitamin or mineral, or our hormones are out of whack, and we need a blood test to determine what’s going on. Honestly admitting that something is amiss begins the journey to its proper correction.

If we are angry or hurt, the agitation we feel will not be eliminated by a piece of chocolate cake smothered in whipped cream. That may suppress the upset feelings but it will not release them. We have to learn how to process our lives and the things that happen to us, and we have to know and ask for what we need—what we really need, not to escape or pretend but to deal with the reality of our lives.

Maybe that doesn’t sound like much fun. Maybe the chocolate cake seems like the better option right now, but it won’t be in the long run. Whether we stuff ourselves with food out of anxiety, boredom, or whatever, in the end, we have to face the truth of our life. That’s the spiritual reality. We may be able to put off our uncomfortable feelings and heartaches for a while in an overflowing bowl of ice cream or a pasta fest, but we cannot send them packing. We can pretend not to see them. We can throw food at them for weeks, but no matter our antics, they wait for us. They wait for us for as long as it takes. And we have to deal with them eventually.

So why not deal with them as they come up? When we feel hungry let’s learn to understand the difference between lunchtime and hurt feelings. One is an emptiness in the stomach and the other is an emptiness in the soul. To determine which is which, we can examine changes in our behavior.

If we find ourselves compulsively craving sweets or other delicacies in a manner that is unusual for us, or if we cannot eat enough to fill us up, then something deeper is likely going on. But how do we figure out what it is? And how do we fix it? And how do we not eat when everything inside of us wants to consume whatever we can reach?

It’s honesty first and foremost, and the ability to pause long enough before gorging to look within, to identify that something emotional and unidentified is, in fact, going on, and then to ask ourselves why? That’s the deeper layer. And sometimes it takes a pretty sincere effort to trace ourselves back to the incident that may have disrupted our lives. It could be rooted in something from our past, or some anxiety about the future, or something someone said or did. We have to learn ourselves. That’s the goal.

It’s easy to face facts in our minds, but in doing so, we may often miss important details that make all the difference in the end. To keep track of everything we eat everyday is asking an awful lot of ourselves and is probably unrealistic over any length of time. But to keep track of what we eat and how it makes us feel for a few days, a week, or as long as it’s useful, is doable and reasonable. And what it may teach us is well worth the effort. It’s easy to convince ourselves that we didn’t eat much, or that we feel great after wolfing down a huge dessert. But if we have to check in with ourselves and actually articulate exactly what we did eat—and exactly how we do feel—then we may learn something.

Honesty Exercise:
What We Are Actually Eating, and Why?

Keeping a food log, as this exercise suggests, will make you accountable for what you eat. You will need your journal or a downloaded app for your smartphone that allows you to track your food consumption. The app, if that’s the route you go, will need to allow you to make comments. I happen to be a great believer in the power of writing things down. The process of handwriting engages the senses in such a way that the very act of it can be transformative, so I heartily suggest the use of your journal over a cell phone. But the exact method is secondary to the willingness, so there’s no need to get hung up on it.

The point, and the exercise, is to track your food consumption for at least a few days, preferably a week or more, leaving out nothing, and incorporating commentary on how you feel both before and after you eat. Check in with yourself and take note of any sensations at any time—irritability, boredom, restlessness, self-satisfaction, or whatever you may feel. You may need to store your feelings and the details of your intake in memory until you have a chance to put them down, but the idea is to consistently track them as many times a day as you need to.

Example: Day One: Sunday

6:00 am: I woke up feeling calm and centered, had a glass of water with lemon, took a short walk, and then sat down at my computer.

7:00 am: Agitated and nervous-feeling—almost fearful. Had a cup of tea, two pieces of toast, a few walnuts, and two dried figs. I ate all of this unconsciously while continuing to work at the computer, and drank the tea fast, almost compulsively. I felt better and more grounded, but had no sense of having appreciated the meal.

8:30 am: Agitated again—and hungry-feeling. Drank a glass of water and had another cup of tea. I noticed that I wasn’t breathing deeply so I took a few deep breaths, which helped; started to drink the tea fast again, but I caught myself and made a conscious effort to slow down.

9:30 am: Went outside—beautiful day. Felt good, hopeful, happy. Had another glass of water sitting on the porch.

10:00 am: Brunch at a local restaurant with my husband. Drank three cups of coffee and ate two poached eggs and rye toast, a pancake with butter (no syrup)—and a few bites of bacon. I felt overfull and tired after—irritable, even a little depressed. Worked outside in the garden for a few hours when we got home and felt better.

2:00 pm: Late lunch—a carrot, some leftover lamb from dinner last night, and half of a small sliced tomato from the garden. I was aware of having to really chew the carrot, so that slowed me down, and I paid attention while I was chewing the lamb as well. I usually eat way faster than my husband and I kept pace with him for a change, which felt good, as did the meal.

4:30 pm: A glass of water. Trying to stave off rising hungry feelings and make it until dinner without eating …

5:40 pm: Hungry! A bit edgy; 45 minutes to dinner; feeling amped and a bit excitable, don’t want to snack …

5:45 pm: Couldn’t stand it—had a small dried fig and a few almonds—felt immediately better.

6:30 pm: Sat down for dinner—ate a grilled chicken thigh, a mini baked sweet potato from our garden (the first of the year and the first I’ve ever grown—it was delicious!) and a serving of sautéed spinach. I was more mindful about eating more slowly than usual, but I still beat my husband. I felt like I could eat more when I was finished, but I didn’t. We sat and talked, and I realized as we sat that I was perfectly satisfied.

After dinner, I had a cup of ginger tea and three Maria cookie/crackers for dessert—ate at my computer—drank the tea too fast. Felt tired, a little fuzzy mentally, and the Sunday night back-to-work-in-the-morning feeling setting heavily in.

Through the process of doing this exercise for even one day, we are returned to the food-mood connection as articulated earlier in the chapter. The way we eat reflects our state of being, but our state of being is also reflected by the way we eat. So now that we have all of these facts, all of this information, personal honesty, and awareness, what now? How on earth are we supposed to change?

Believing We’re Worth It

It starts by believing that change is possible. This is a very important point. Belief is a strange and powerful transformational tool; without it, we are unlikely to sustain any changes that we might make. We have to believe that we are worth the effort. If spiritual fitness, good health, and well-being are our goals, they can become our reality, but we have to be willing to believe in the feasibility of the long-term process.

And perhaps, our belief will grow as we experience success making small changes in our habits, and then grow stronger still as we change further. But initially, we have to at least want something better than what we have, and be willing to believe that we can have it. Affirmations are a useful tool to help us to do that.

Willingness Exercise: Affirmations to Create Momentum

By consistently repeating an affirmation to yourself, you can effectively program your mind to cooperate with your physical and spiritual goals. You will need a pen or a pencil and a few quiet, uninterrupted moments. Underline an affirmation from the list below that feels “right” to you, or create one of your own beginning with the statement “I am willing … ” or “I believe … ” Keep it as simple as possible.

Use whichever affirmation you choose. Say it out loud or quietly to yourself every morning when you wake up and every evening before you go to sleep, and any other time throughout the day when it occurs to you. This process helps get the wheel of change turning steadily and keeps it moving forward.

One of the ways we set ourselves up for failure in changing our habits is to want too much change too quickly and to demand so much of ourselves that we cannot possibly maintain our endurance. This is the case with so many radical diets and with exercise programs that begin on January first. They are impractical for the long haul. We need to keep it simple and grow our willingness slowly over time. The affirmation that we choose can help us to do that, and prepares us for the next step.

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