Turning Honesty
into Health as a Habit
“One half of knowing what you want is
knowing what you must give up to get it.”
—Sidney Howard
At old-fashioned mills, the grinding wheel operates by the power of water falling. Momentum builds over time, making it turn faster and faster, and as long as the water falls, the wheel turns. If the water stops for some reason, the wheel keeps turning for a period of time because, as Newton stated, “a force in motion tends to stay in motion.” The only way to stop it quickly is to engage some kind of counter-force. Much like placing a finger on a spinning top or coin, a sudden, jarring cross-friction is the only thing that can arrest the movement.
Our habits of thought and self-talk, our behaviors, desires, fears, and compulsions are like the water on the wheel. They will continue to turn us round and round in cycles forever unless we use a certain power and counterforce to stop the momentum. That counterforce is our intention, our willingness, and our belief that things in our lives can be better than they are and that we can feel better than we currently feel.
Food habits are particularly tricky in this regard. It’s not like cigarettes or alcohol where we can just quit cold turkey. We cannot stop eating. But what we can do is stop the specific eating habit that is causing us the most trouble. If we are late-night snackers, then we can STOP late-night snacking. If we are fast food fanatics, then we can STOP eating fast food, maybe not forever, but at least at the beginning. If yo-yo dieting is creating dysfunction in our lives then we can STOP yo-yo dieting. From everything I know and have experienced, it’s a lost cause to believe we can somehow “modify” out-of-control behavior. We may be able to eventually, but at first we have to STOP the momentum. We have to engage the powerful counterforce. If we only slow down the dripping water, the wheel is still pulling us around and around.
Using the results from the “Where to Begin” exercise from the last chapter (page 28), and any relevant findings to date from your food journal, determine your biggest source of food dysfunction—the thing regarding your eating habits that causes you more angst and discomfort than anything else—and make the decision to STOP doing it. And then, using the affirmation that you chose or created and believing that change is possible, simply STOP, and commit to staying stopped. That’s more than enough. Making this kind of dramatic change is generally excruciating, especially for the first week or so. We are habituated to our routine. We plop in front of the television with our bowl of ice cream. So if we don’t have it, we feel at a loss. That is to be expected. Change is not easy.
I believe that all of our dysfunctional food habits are like the turning waterwheel, and if we want to stop them, we have to STOP. But it’s the biggest and baddest one first—the one that makes us cringe every time we think of it. We have to prioritize which habits to change. Like putting a tourniquet on an open wound to control the bleeding, the most urgent need has to be addressed first, and once that’s under control, then the additional damage can be assessed.
The body will rebel and so will our psyche. Our strong desire and physical urge is to return to the equilibrium that we know. If we are in the habit of treating ourselves to a handful of cookies every night after dinner, there is a vacancy in our world—an electrical socket that has been unplugged. And it’s far easier to plug something else in than to leave the socket empty. In fact, it’s necessary if we want to succeed. We have to reprogram our minds and our bodies to a new routine of behavior to fill the gap and the space and the time. Maybe something completely different, like taking a moonlight walk around the block or drinking herbal tea could work for us. Or maybe playing with a straw, chewing gum, or busying our hands with a project. These suggestions may seem like a far cry from our favorite cookies, but they will fill the void and distract us.
Bringing about lasting change is a long process, not a quick fix, and it necessarily starts with a certain amount of discomfort. Getting through a whole week with a new habit is hard to do. The second week is easier, and the third week easier still. And if we can stick with it, after only a few months, we hardly even miss the old pattern. This is the path and the way to enlightened living. It takes initial discomfort, but it does get easier over time.
It’s like turning an enormous cruise ship. It’s so big that it turns by only slight angles at a time and hardly even seems to be moving at all, and yet, it is moving and it does turn, and eventually it is heading straight in an entirely new direction. We are like that cruise ship. We have to change by degree.
Diets often fail before they begin because they are set up as a short-term solution to a set of well-established lifetime habits. When they are over, the old patterns return, and the weight that has been lost is recovered again. Diets can turn a day-sailor or a kayak, but not a cruise ship.
If we want peace with food and don’t have it, then we need a long-term sustainable solution, and not a quick fix. But in order to achieve that, we have to be willing to experience discomfort in our lives. As Antoine de Saint-Exupery said in The Little Prince, “(We) must be willing to endure the presence of a few caterpillars if (we) wish to become acquainted with the butterflies.”
So our first mindful action is to STOP the wheel of greatest dysfunction and then settle in for however long it takes to adapt, relatively speaking, to the new routine: probably at least a few weeks, and at most, if we’re vigilant, a few months. We may continue to have moments of discomfort that last longer than that, but they will come less and less often, and with ever less intensity as we begin to realize that we can survive, and actually be okay, without habitually indulging in our daily cookies, fast food stop, or Friday night chip-and-dip fest.
We can be okay without overeating at every meal, without skipping meals, without dieting or stringently restricting ourselves at every turn, and without cleaning our plate. We can be better than okay. We can learn to trust ourselves and allow for pleasure in the process. And as we shift away from our number-one dysfunctional habit in relation to food, we can look at what remains with courage and even a bit of confidence.
Whatever the second-biggest problem is for us, that’s the one to deal with second and in the same fashion (refer again to the “Where to Begin” exercise results and your food journaling). The answer to our food issues is not the perfect four-week diet plan, a pill, or a session of hypnosis, but ongoing self-honesty and the continued willingness to face the real truth about ourselves and make appropriate changes where they are called for.
It does need to be said here that anorexia, bulimia, morbid obesity, and other medical and psychological conditions that directly impact our food intake and our weight may require outside help to work through. And if any of these happen to be your condition, please be honest about that and get the help you need.
But for most of us, we have garden-variety food dysfunction. We starve ourselves to fit into clothes that we bought a size too small, and then reward ourselves with excessive overindulgence, which leaves us with residual guilt. We sway all over the map and wonder why we never feel steady. We can get steady. It is within our power to do so.
Planning Carefully
From our discussion in the last chapter and our journaling efforts, hopefully we are learning to understand the difference between emotional and physical hunger. Once we “get it,” then it’s important to honor our physical hunger in certain and particular ways. If we grab at anything available and gulp it down half-consciously while continuing to work, drive, or carry on other business, we are missing an important opportunity for pleasure and sustenance in our lives. We are missing out on the spiritual satisfaction of mindful eating.
We eat regularly; that is a fact of being alive. We require meals, snacks, and water, and if we pretend that we can skip these things, we are fooling ourselves. Some of us can eat less than others. Some of us require only two meals a day, or five small meals, but we all need to eat something at certain intervals as we go about living our lives. Knowing this, it is incredible to me how easily we tend to blow this fact off.
We head out into the world for a day of activity and don’t bother to consider in advance how we are going to address our hunger needs. We don’t carry snacks or water, don’t plan lunch, and cavalierly figure that we will simply “grab something” when we get hungry. But what if we’re not close to anything healthy when we get hungry? Or not close to anything period?
One thing I have learned about myself is that when I go too long without eating, I become edgy and irritable and crawly inside my skin. I get almost desperate-feeling. And I have witnessed the same effect in others to greater or lesser degrees. This is one obvious way that food intake and moods are directly related. So when we skip eating because there’s nothing convenient to “grab,” our sense of well-being deteriorates steadily the longer we hold out, and rather than feeling thin and successful, we feel hostile, and we unknowingly set in motion what I will call the “starvation syndrome.” We allow ourselves to become so hungry that when we finally do have the opportunity to eat, we do so in a kind of frenzy. We eat fast and furiously and take big bites, and we cannot get our fill until we are overstuffed. And then we likely feel frustrated because we ended up eating more than we intended to, or than we needed. There is nothing mindful or pleasurable in this kind of behavior.
The potential for this unfortunate chain of events, which I’m quite sure has happened to all of us at one time or another, is easily avoided with a little bit of forethought. Considering our day in advance can save us hours of angst. Again, though, we have to get honest—especially if we are regularly on a diet and habitually tell ourselves that we will simply skip lunch. Even if it never quite pans out that way, we continue to trust in our willpower over our nature. And while it’s possible to not eat out of sheer determination, there is a price to pay for that choice, and it generally backfires on us in the end. We skip lunch and then aggressively overeat at dinner.
So it’s a crucial step to get truthful with ourselves about the fact that we do, in fact, get hungry at regular intervals, and we do, in fact, need to eat whether we’re on a diet or not, working all day or not, shopping or not, taking care of small children, taking care of aging parents, on vacation, visiting friends, or all of the above or none of the above. No matter what, we need to eat.
So, that being the case even if we may not want it to be, then it’s worth spending a few minutes to consider where we might be in our day when we are likely to get hungry, and to get in the habit of carrying contingency supplies with us. Appropriate preparation may be one of the most important factors in our dietary success. Let’s learn to pack a healthy lunch, to have snacks available, to carry water bottles, and to never have to experience that state of urgent, desperate hunger that drives us to the fast food location down the block, to the vending machine, or to the plate of cookies in the break room. And though we object to this simple idea on so many levels—we don’t have time, we’re not that organized, or whatever our excuse might be—we can learn how to be prepared and experience a whole new level of self-confidence and control in our lives. Taking care of ourselves in this way is spirituality in action.
Our preparation begins at the store and in our pantries and refrigerators. What we buy and what we keep around the house makes a difference. We have to be honest here as well. We can err on the side of not having enough to satisfy us as well as having too much that is rich and fatty and junky. So often, with the best of intentions, we buy masses of vegetables that we think will be good for us, or nothing but lettuce, and it all ends up rotting in the drawer as we scour our shelves for something with more substance. We have to learn to honor the need for balance in our lives if we want to achieve a state of emotional balance, good health, and well-being.
We need food variety in the course of each day. We need complex carbohydrates, vegetables, protein, and a bit of healthy fat, or some other combination of options that satisfies us and makes us feel great. This is a personal journey and we have to do what suits us best. Arguably, we may even need a taste of sweetness included in our daily fare, if we have a sweet tooth, in order to bypass feelings of deprivation. What we eat is our choice and we can choose what we like. And we may think that we want nothing but sweets or nothing but salad, but neither of those is realistic. To feel its best, our body craves equilibrium. External balance begets internal balance. The effects of our healthy or poor choices travel both ways.
We have a tendency to set ourselves up in opposition to our flesh and bones as if they are the enemy and somehow keep us from being able to indulge in what we think we want. And yet, what we really want, if we’re honest, is what makes us feel the best, and our bodies are on board here. But they are cooperative no matter how dysfunctional we are. They go along and reflect our choices perfectly. The error is not in our bodies, but in us. If we believe that we should be able to eat nothing but processed food, sugar, and whatever is most readily available and still have an exquisite figure and good health to show for it, perhaps we are the enemy of our bodies, and not the other way around.
If we want a lean, energized body, then we need to eat lean, energizing foods. “We are what we eat” is a true statement. And we eat better if we consider our options in advance and plan ahead when our options are limited. One way to do this is to prepare on-the-road meals for ourselves—to pack breakfast, or lunch, or whatever meal we will miss at home. There is comfort in knowing that when we are hungry, wherever we may be, we have something uniquely delicious prepared just for us waiting and ready in our cooler or the company fridge or wherever. It gives us roots of sorts in our day, and anchors us in healthy goodness.
And it needn’t be difficult or complex: a small piece of baked chicken or salmon in a Tupperware dish, hard-boiled eggs, spinach leaves, leftover vegetables from dinner the night before, carrot sticks, Wasa crackers, nuts, cheese, an apple, spaghetti squash with fresh ginger, whatever our imagination can think of and our body likes. Having satisfying meals such as these prepared in advance saves us time and angst.
It is hard, however, and maybe even impossible, to add one more thing to our already full morning routines, so it’s much easier on us and everyone around us if we pack our lunch the night before, or our breakfast for the next day, or snacks, or whatever it is.
Being Prepared at Home
Preparing meals at home requires forethought as well. Frozen dinners, cans of soup, prepackaged meals, deli meats, macaroni and cheese, and options along these lines may be easy, but they may not be our best choice if we want to feel great. We need to remember that the closer we stay to the farm and the fresher our food, the better it is for us and the better we will feel.
That being said, we can purchase about a week’s worth of meals at a time. It’s helpful to make a list and to know what we are planning to prepare in advance. This may seem overwhelming. How on earth do we know on Sunday what we want to eat for dinner on Wednesday? Or lunch on Friday?
If we take the time to properly take stock of our tastes, then we know what we like and what we don’t like, what suits us and what does not. And chances are, we eat basically the same things in a rotating fashion anyway, so it’s not nearly as complicated as we think. For me, the basics are the most satisfying: basic proteins and basic vegetables and easy on the starch. A couple of sample weekday dinners in my household might look something like this: grilled chicken, steamed asparagus, and sliced tomatoes; or, baked salmon, sautéed spinach, and steamed kale; or, poor man’s steak (marinated chuck roast on the grill), a small baked red potato, and steamed broccoli. But we all have different preferences.
The point is to consider our menu in advance. If we know that we are planning to have a particular meal for dinner, then we can anticipate it throughout the day and develop an appetite for it. I find this far more fulfilling than being like a pinball and not knowing what I am doing—whether I am going out or staying in and what I am going to eat. Meal planning in a reckless, last-minute kind of way on a daily basis can be stressful, and unnecessarily so. Making our dinner choices in advance anchors us in the same way our packed lunch does at work. At least, this has been my experience.
Since so much of our discomfort in life comes from uncertainty—from all of the things that we can’t control and that can’t be controlled—in areas where we do have the control, why not assert it? It makes for a much calmer daily ride. This is practical, spiritual practice. It doesn’t have to be esoteric. Having what we need for five or six well-balanced days of meals removes an incredible amount of strain from the effort of life. We simply prepare the food in advance, and delight in the eating of it later.
This brings up another important point: the preparation of food. It makes a difference whether it is made with love and good humor, or whether it is thrown together with haste and irritability. Cooking with care, like planning with care, is spiritual practice.
One Sunday, my husband and I compulsively decided that we wanted to roast a turkey. It seemed like just the thing to do. But we couldn’t find a fresh one locally, so we bought one frozen and set about trying to thaw it in an abbreviated fashion. We soaked it in hot water and ran it under the faucet, but this achieved limited success, so we ended up poking at it and prodding it and pulling at the wings and the bag of gizzards and trying to force it to thaw by all of our power and muscle. And eventually, we did get it soft enough to cook.
Hours later, when we sat down to eat it, it was the roughest, toughest turkey either of us had ever tasted. It had taken on all of the aggression that we had turned on it. I learned then without a doubt what I had always heard and believed; that the energy we bring to preparing food really does matter and that it makes a difference whether we cook with frustration or love.
I have been to restaurants and tasted the love that the chef has invested in the preparation of my food, and I have equally tasted the rush and the frenzy of other chefs. And I have enjoyed my own meals in varying degrees depending on the state of mind that I brought to the kitchen on that particular day or evening.
Eating Mindfully
If we are conscious, or lucky, and our meal has been prepared with care, then the next place to direct our awareness is on the energy that we bring to the eating itself. Do we wolf it down or take small bites and savor it? If we consistently eat in a rush, then I would be willing to bet that we are living in a rush. The way we eat reflects the way we live and vice versa. But what’s our hurry? Why can’t we slow down? And what are we missing if we don’t? Arguably, perhaps, we are missing the whole point, which is to practice the art of good habits and, consequently, experience the benefits of good living.
Eating mindfully will change the way that we experience food, and potentially the way that we experience life as well. Mindfulness as a way-of-living concept is popular currently, and rather a “buzzword,” but the truth is that it’s been around for centuries. It originated in the East and is grounded fundamentally in Buddhism, but its application is unlimited across time and across cultures.
But what does it really mean? To be mindful? To eat mindfully? First and foremost, it means that we slow down and pay attention. It means that we say thank you before we begin and that we chew with awareness and appreciation, that we notice textures and flavors and subtleties of taste, and that we eat sitting down and pause briefly in between bites.
We miss so much enjoyment by rushing through our meals. We eat to fill a hole, to amp us up, to check off a box. We eat without care. We eat without notice. And then we leave the table hungry still. We miss the pleasure almost every time, except on special occasions, and even then we tend to make the experience more about the people and our outfits and hair than the delicacy of the food itself.
Eating mindfully means that we indulge in the goodness of good food, that we feel our bodies receive what we give them, and that we hear the response of our stomachs and inner energies to the meals we consume. It also means that we know what is soothing to us and what is not, and when we are satisfied and have had enough.
Our cultural habit of grab-and-go deprives us of sensational and spiritual delight that is meant for us on a regular basis. Our eating is meant to be restorative. It’s meant to be a break and a rejuvenation, a pleasure and a soulful satisfaction. And we miss it by simply not paying attention. I would be willing to bet that we miss it nine times out of ten.
But it doesn’t have to be that way. Slowing down doesn’t have to be complicated, and it can change everything about our experience in a positive direction. When we slow down, one bite can encompass a world. When we slow down, our food has the potential to excite our tongues and teeth and taste buds, and awaken us from the inside out.
Any guide to good health will tell us that for optimal digestion and proper consumption, we should be chewing each bite of food twenty to thirty times. I challenge us all to do that—for only a few bites each day. That will slow us down. And likely make us eat less, and appreciate the intricacies of food flavor more. It is an interesting experiment. And it may not be realistic to chew every bite for that long in our world of fast-paced nonstop action and demand, but if we can shift even slightly in that direction, we can experience a corresponding shift of energy within.
And as within so without. If we can learn to savor our meals, we may learn to savor our experiences and the people we encounter and our feelings and our lives. In this way, our food may, in fact, be a gateway to enlightenment.
Awareness Exercise: Eating Mindfully Meditation
By eating slowly and consciously and by bringing your full awareness to the act of chewing, and the sensation of tasting, you will come to experience food in a complete and satisfying way. You will need a place to sit and a table, a healthy snack of your choosing, and a few moments of quiet, uninterrupted time.
By simply raising your awareness and paying attention to the process of chewing and tasting and swallowing, you can transform the simple act of having a snack into a sensual delight. This is the art of mindful eating, and the gateway to enlightenment of which we spoke.
The Voice that Tells Us When
Also available to us as a path to potential enlightenment is a voice within that speaks to us with certainty and clarity. It is not loud, not aggressive, and consequently, easy to ignore. But it is accurate, and it guides us perfectly if we will only listen.
This voice, among other things, tells us what we need, what we should and should not do, and when we have had enough to eat. Every time we sit down to a meal, it registers our appropriate finishing point. There is a definitive satiation message that we receive. But most of us are not in the habit of listening to it. We are, on the other hand, in the habit of drowning it out in conversation, music, distraction, more food—whatever is most readily available. What we rarely do is stop eating and push our plate away.
And yet, if we were able to register the message and act upon it, we would be our ideal weight. Our body knows exactly what it wants and needs for nourishment, and does not have a desire to overeat. Nonetheless, we tend to force extras upon it every day in the form of whatever appeals to our other senses, our psyches, and our emotional upheavals: pretty presentations of sweet treats, decadent plates of overflowing pasta, extra-large portions of anything and everything, bite-sized hors d’oeuvres, warm bread, creamy dips …
The advertising market is selling to everything in us that is in the habit of ignoring our inner voice. It appeals to our longings and our desire for guilt-free indulgence. We are promised satisfaction, great taste, and emotional security for a penny and a song. But it’s all fantasy. It’s improbable at best that the skinny model in the advertisement is really enjoying the special low-fat ice cream topped with chocolate. She is more likely half-starved and eating teeny-tiny portions, only just enough to survive. Or she might not be real at all. She might be a photoshopped manipulation.
Nonetheless, we somehow think that we can look like the picture if we eat the dessert. We deceive ourselves willingly and with enthusiasm. We don’t listen to our inner guide and the still, small voice within that knows better and knows the truth.
We can learn to at least hear the voice, even if we are not yet ready to listen to it. We can take note when it speaks up. There it is, telling us we have had enough as we plunge forward with lustful abandon. There it is, saying not to eat the second helping of nachos, warning against the greasy fried chicken wings, the whole helping of cake and ice cream, the spicy peppers and onions.
We may recall its warnings later as we sit miserably with indigestion and a bloated stomach. “I knew I shouldn’t have eaten that,” we bemoan, but it is too late. Let’s learn to listen right when the message comes in and trust that it is there for a reason and comes bearing glad tidings for us and not to sabotage our good time.
We fundamentally don’t trust ourselves, that’s the problem. We trust everything else before we will pay attention to what we instinctively know. We trust advertisers, friends, hearsay, the media; we trust whatever we hear and see and want to believe. The one thing we do not trust is the one thing that can change our life, simplify everything, and improve the quality of our every minute experience. It’s the voice within. It’s wise and knows what’s best. Let’s learn to hear it, to listen to it, and to follow its lead.
Awareness Exercise:
Learning to Listen to the Voice Within
By paying attention, as suggested in this exercise, you can learn to hear and eventually listen to the voice within. Making a habit of this will improve your overall well-being. The exercise requires your cooperation and willingness.
By learning to hear our inner voice, we become tuned in to a perfect guide for our body—a guide that will direct us toward certain foods and away from others, and also tell us when we are hungry, when we are full, and when we are just right and in balance.
To Weigh or Not to Weigh
We tend to resist the idea of daily weigh-ins because we are afraid that we will fixate on the number and it will come to rule our lives. And for some of us, this is the absolute truth, and we cannot escape punishing feelings if we are not where we think we are supposed to be on the scale. And if this is the case for you, by all means, avoid daily weigh-ins and instead focus on how you feel and how your clothes fit. Feeling great, after all, is our ultimate goal. But if you are able to do it without judgment or self-condemnation, then regularly weighing yourself may be a helpful exercise. You, and you alone, determine what works best for you.
If you decide to weigh, I suggest getting on the scale every morning as part of your wake-up routine, before you eat anything or get dressed. And if, one morning, you are suddenly five pounds heavier than you were the day before, then you can consider what you ate, and connect the dots, thereby learning something about your body-food connection. Maybe it was sodium that you ate unknowingly, and you are retaining water (Mexican and Chinese foods are both super high in sodium), or maybe it was the second helping or the unusually rich dessert you indulged in. Or if you are down a few pounds, you can consider what you ate in the same manner.
The point is that if we are able to weigh ourselves daily without negative emotional repercussions, we can discover patterns and learn what makes us heavier, and what makes us lighter. It is not the same for everyone. We all process foods differently.
Another advantage of daily weigh-ins is that they help us to maintain our weight once we are where we want to be. If we are up a few pounds, we can bring a little extra awareness and discipline to what we eat throughout the day, knowing that we are on the heavy side. And likewise, if we are down a few pounds, we can indulge a bit where we might not normally. The daily check-in tells us the story when it’s still hot off the press.
But I do understand, and understand clearly, that for some of us, it’s near impossible to not fixate on the scale in an unhealthy way. In that case, we must learn to be compassionate with ourselves above all else and to honor our individual truth. This is a spiritual journey, after all, and though the scale is not by any means a measure of our worth, I understand that it can, at times, feel that way.
Movement as a Spiritual Practice
Just as our mindful behavior surrounding food becomes a form of spiritual practice because of its intrinsic effect on our health and our feelings of well-being, so too does our behavior surrounding the movement of our bodies. Our emotional well-being can be shifted by varying degrees depending on the state of play in our muscles and our limbs, or the lack thereof. Sedentary bodies suffer for their lack of movement.
Physical equilibrium is equal to spiritual, mental, and emotional equilibrium, and as such, requires that we engage in some kind of daily physical activity beyond the journey back and forth from our cars. And this is true for all of us. Our bodies are meant to move! Done correctly, exercise can change our posture, strength, stamina, and energy. It can alleviate pain. It is an endless resource for self-improvement and evolution. And I could write an entire book on the benefits of stability and core strength and all of the different strategies for reshaping our bodies, but for the purposes of this book, suffice it to say that some kind of everyday movement routine is the essential partner of good health and spiritual fitness.
As a personal trainer, I’ve witnessed how we tend to overthink the idea of exercise in every way and believe that it has to be a big production involving special clothes, expensive shoes, gyms, aerobic classes, and hours of time out of our week. And if we can afford these things and enjoy them, then all of that is money and time well spent. But if we feel like we have no extra time and minimal motivation, we can still get moving enough to feel good and get our blood circulating.
In the same way that our bodies are intuitive when it comes to food, they have an intuitive movement pattern as well. Some bodies like to jog, some to walk, and some to swim; others do yoga, power-lift, or maybe perform explosive jumps and other maneuvers. We are all a bit different. We need to learn to follow our inclinations and to do what feels good to us so that we keep on doing it. If we are walkers who force ourselves to run, that will likely be unpleasant for us, and we will be less apt to stick with it.
If we are full of excuses and resistance to exercise in general, maybe the best thing we can do for ourselves is to dance in our living rooms, put on some kind of music that we love and move around while it plays in any way that feels good to us. We can dance in hips and hops, long slow flowing moves, gyrations, bumping, grinding, rhythm, swing, country, or disco. It doesn’t matter how we move as long as we get moving enough every day to raise our heart rate a bit and get our muscles going for at least a few minutes, and longer if we have the time and the inclination.
I also happen to be a big believer in daily walks. Dogs help us keep on track in this regard, so if we have dogs, all the better. But even without them, we can walk 10 minutes, or 20, or longer as we please. It’s good for the body and good for the spirit and satisfies our need for fresh air. In this way, walks are good for the mind as well as the body. They un-stick us when we are stuck and shift our perspective. A good walk opens us to a broader view of things.
Even if we can’t walk, or dance, or make any real use of our legs, we can still exercise. We can flop our arms up and down like a bird, conduct like a conductor, extend our fists in front of our chests, rotate our torsos, shake our hands, and turn our heads. We can move whatever moves. “Exercise” can be this simple.
That said, it’s no wonder that it still seems daunting to many of us. Perusing the exercise section of any bookstore, or searching the category online, we are confronted with brawny, muscular bodies in impressive poses and postures of all kinds. Ripped, six-pack abs, perfectly toned shoulders, and bulging quadriceps adorn the covers of books and websites. Flipping through pages, we see endless photographs of strong, fit bodies performing all manner of lifts and tilts. And if we are not versed in exercise, these images are likely to intimidate rather than inspire us.
But exercise is for everyone, and it doesn’t need to be complicated, beautiful, or driven toward physical perfection and muscular definition. It is simply designed to keep our body in good functioning order. The added benefit is that it makes us feel good: empowered, strong, flexible, and energetic. The fear surrounding exercise is that it will be unpleasant and uncomfortable, and that we will hurt ourselves. We are all familiar with the adage “no pain, no gain,” and we fear the pain.
In spite of our fear, exercise can be fun and fulfilling regardless of our fitness level. And we really can keep it as simple as dancing around our living room or taking a daily walk or flopping our arms around like jumping jacks. But if we want to take it one step further, it’s useful to understand things at a slightly deeper level.
The Basics of Exercise
If the purpose of exercise is to keep our heart, lungs, muscles, bones, joints, and tendons in good functioning order, then the purpose of daily exercise is to “work out” each of these things. Although we can go to a gym and make this as complicated as we choose to, in its most basic form, a perfectly adequate “routine” doesn’t require any large space or special clothing. We can wear our pajamas and slippers and be standing on the kitchen floor. Or we can suit up and head outside—whatever we prefer. The only requirement is that we have an open mind and enough space around us to spread our arms.
We know more about our bodies and our muscles than we think we do. We may not know the exact terminology for things, but we all have a basic, built-in understanding of what’s what. Joints allow for the movement of bones. They glide and pivot and hinge and rotate. Ligaments, which are a kind of fibrous tissue, connect bones to each other. Tendons attach muscles to bones, and muscles generate strength and momentum. We can increase the length and power of our muscles, thereby making them more functional, by extending them and contracting, or flexing, them. This, in turn, creates greater range of motion, greater balance, and greater overall physical health. Our muscles can push, pull, lift, lower, rotate, support, and hold. Using our muscles, we can move forward and backward, side to side, up and down, and in circles.
Our heart is a muscle as well, as are our lungs, but these are “involuntary” as opposed to “voluntary” muscles. They work “by default” at all times, by pumping blood, and converting oxygen, but they work out by default, and become stronger, when we use them during exercise.
Our bodies are incredible miracles of design and function. We have more than 200 bones and over 600 muscles. Our hearts beat, our eyes see, our ears hear, and our stomachs digest. But we forget the beauty of our functionality, being consumed as we so often are by the physical-perfection adulation of the culture that we live in. If we do not fit some standardized “norm” of attractiveness, we may feel inadequate. But if we could only muster a bit of genuine appreciation for the wonders of our physical being-ness, it might come easier to believe in our intrinsic value and our endless potential. And to feel better about ourselves on every level.
Exercise can help us to do that. We can learn to enjoy the feeling of our bodies moving and be empowered by the movement. We can become aware of our blood increasing its circulation as we perform simple range-of-motion activities and take pleasure in the increase of warmth and the experience of energy rising within us as we begin our daily routine.
Willingness Exercise: Movement
Performing 5 to 10 minutes of these simple, well-rounded, range-of-motion movements every day can positively affect the quality of your health. You will need a bit of privacy or a willing partner, and an area where you can stand and move your arms up and down and side to side without hitting anything. If you have a medical condition that affects your ability to exercise, be sure to clear these moves with your doctor before performing them. Begin slowly, and make use of modifications as necessary. If you’re an avid exerciser, make these moves intense and energetic enough to suit your level of fitness by creating large and expansive ranges of motion.
By performing these 10 simple movements, you have touched all of the major muscles in your body, gotten your blood pumping, and done a little bit of weight training as well. Simple, but effective. Exercise can be this easy.
Body Love
If you allowed yourself to relax as you performed the simple exercises above, and modified them as suggested so that you felt no pain and only fluid rhythm, then chances are that you felt warmer when you finished them than when you began, and perhaps even a bit tingly, or energized, as well. Even simple movements can invigorate and uplift us.
It is the vitality of the body that expresses itself through movement, and this vitality is our living energy and life force. Unattended and unappreciated, this energy can become dull and listless. But learning to activate and play with it through movement can help us to feel more alive and more vital, and consequently, more hopeful and full of joy.
Our bodies, like our meals, can become a gateway to enlightenment if we become mindful enough to appreciate them. No matter our exact size or shape, or whatever we might perceive as our physical flaws and imperfections, it’s possible to love the solid structure of our flesh and bones. And learning to love our physicality is a good habit and a form of spiritual practice.
We denigrate ourselves and critique our bellies and hips, our balding heads, our shoulders and chins. We are too much of this and not enough of that. We are too tall, too short, too wide, and too scarred. Our hair is too red, too curly, too thin, or too thick; our feet are too long, our arches too high, our eyebrows too bushy. With this kind of thinking, we resist ourselves and miss out on the simple but powerful pleasure of being alive. I am sad for our bodies that we treat them with such loathing and disdain.
But we shouldn’t! They house our spirits! And it is our bodies that allow us to experience this incredible world in which we live: the touch of love, the scent of lavender, and the sound of rain on the roof. It is through our bodies that we laugh and cry, listen and sing, watch and learn. We are blessed with respiration, inspiration, digestion, circulation, and sight. We are blessed with the beauty of our skin and the luminescence of our eyes, with red lips and wisps of hair around our face. What gifts these are, and what a gift our body is: a miracle of design and function more complex than any computer and more magnificent than any man-made thing. We have been gifted the experience of living life on this beautiful earth, and we scoff at it. Like whiny children, we are not content.
A celebrated body is a glorious thing, and a maligned body is shrunken and unwell. Our body tells the world how we feel about ourselves. And how we feel about ourselves dictates the way that we experience the world. In the same manner that the food-mood connection travels both ways, with food choices affecting our moods and our moods affecting our food choices, so too, the body-mind-spirit connection travels both ways. If we treat our body with a bit of daily movement and loving thoughts, then we empower our spirits and feel mentally well. And if we empower our spirits by taking responsibility for the care of ourselves, our bodies feel vital and alive. It can come from the outside in or the inside out, but living in a state of wellness requires that we maintain a healthy balance from both sides.
Regarding our bodies, we can err on the side of being too precious and overly protective, afraid that our structure won’t hold up, and lacking trust in our physical capabilities. Or we can go to the other extreme and push ourselves physically beyond reason on a daily basis, treating our bodies as if they are indestructible and don’t need time for restoration and repair. Either of these positions fails us in the long run, and ultimately, we must learn to listen to the accurate cues from our body. The same voice that tells us when we need to eat, or when we have had enough to eat, also tells us when we need to move or when we need to stop moving. Increasing our appreciation for the wonders of our physical selves and becoming ever more mindful of our moving parts will help us to hear the voice that guides us, and to clearly know what our body wants.
Appreciation Exercise: Your Body, Your Friend
By meditating in the manner suggested, you will feel an increased appreciation for your body. You will need a few minutes of quiet, uninterrupted time and a thoughtful sense of where your body came from; think about who gave it to you and who you have to thank for it. Perhaps you feel that it comes simply from your mother and father, or perhaps, more profoundly, from the Universe, or from God, however, you might understand God. There is no right way to think about this. It is personal to you. But however you think about it, bring that awareness to the forefront of your mind as you perform the exercise below.
If any of your body parts are particularly painful or have caused you difficulty over the years, say thank you as suggested anyway, and send them love, recognizing how you have invested negative energy in their direction.
Learning to appreciate your body parts in this way can help you raise your level of awareness for the wonderful nature of your functioning parts, and consequently, your level of comfort in your own skin. The result of this awareness is a sense of well-being and profound gratitude that can measurably enrich the quality of your life.
The Importance of Sleep
Our main focus thus far has been in relation to food and exercise, but I want to touch briefly on sleep as well. Like meals and movement, our bodies need daily rest. It’s easy to short ourselves in this regard, especially in our fast-paced world with its demanding expectations and so much to do and keep track of. And while I am not convinced that everybody needs eight hours of sleep every night, I am convinced that we all need more than three or four.
Sleep restores and refreshes us. It is our daily healing and recuperation. Without enough of it, we become irritable and overwhelmed by even the simplest of things. So good sleep is an important habit, and it belongs in the spectrum of our well-being. We need it in just the right amount—for us—in order to live the full glory of our enlightened lives.
Review and Daily Action Plan
Good health is largely the result of good habits, and it requires our honest and willing participation on a daily basis. We must commit to the path and be consistent. In order to experience our purest potential, both physically and spiritually, we need to choose our nourishment with care and eat mindfully, savoring every bite.
We need daily movement, regular tuning in to our state of being, the willingness to make changes and adjustments where necessary, and plenty of restorative sleep. Our moods and our equilibrium are directly affected by our diligence in regard to these simple tenets of healthy living, and our skimping on any of them makes for a potentially compromised existence. But why should we settle for mediocrity when, by raising our awareness and claiming responsibility for the condition of our lives, we can enjoy so much more than that? We can experience happiness and satisfaction. We have simply to step up to reality, be sincere, and follow the steps below.