The Thyroid Diet Revolution

I speak two languages, Body and English.

—MAE WEST

One key challenge to weight loss is the fact that stress, and your own thought patterns, can get in the way on so many levels. Part of a successful weight-loss effort means that you need to address stress on many different levels.

Jena la Flamme, weight-loss coach and cofounder of the Weight Loss Pleasure Camp, explains:

No matter how sensible it appears to the mind, any weight-loss strategies that are stressful to implement—for example, portion control, dieting, punishing exercise regimes—are counterproductive by nature. Simply put, stressful weight-loss strategies trigger the body’s self-protection instinct, inhibiting the very thing they set out to accomplish—lasting weight loss.

MIND-BODY COMMUNICATION

We often hear about the “mind-body connection”—but that’s an overused phrase in many ways. The mind and body are always connected. But the real issue, and the one that has a very definite impact on your ability to have success in reaching a healthier weight, is whether your mind and body are effectively communicating with each other.

To that end, one of the most important things I hope you can take away from this book is how crucial it is for you to facilitate clear and open communication between your mind and body regarding the issue of getting to a healthy weight. I realize that for some readers this may sound rather far out, but bear with me while I explain.

It’s easy to forget that while they are always together, mind and body can operate at times as two competing entities, speaking very different languages. The conscious mind speaks in the language of words and thoughts. But the body speaks in the language of feelings, symptoms, hormones—and in some cases, health conditions.

Dr. Steven Gurgevich is one of the nation’s leading experts on mind-body medicine, and author of the bestselling book and CD The Self-Hypnosis Diet. He explains a bit more about this concept:

Body and mind are always connected—they are inseparable. I use the term functional dualism, meaning that one doesn’t function without the other. But the message each one is holding—the intention each one is holding—become different. They are always connected, and always talking. Neither misses what’s going on with the other—everything that happens with the body has a parallel with the nervous system and brain. And everything with the brain has a parallel in the body. What derails people from weight loss and healing is that the intention held in the mind is different from the intention held in the body. For example, the mind may be saying, “I want to lose weight, I want to be thin, I want to exercise.” But the body is saying, “I need to protect you,” or “You don’t love me. You’ve been telling me how fat I am—how can I be told every day I’m too fat, and now you expect me to become thin? I just follow orders.”

One challenge is that many people who are overweight go around berating themselves, thinking, “I’m fat, I’m unattractive, I have a terrible metabolism, I’m never going to lose weight, I hate exercise.” How we think and what we tell ourselves has a very real effect on our stress level and our body’s ability to lose weight. According to Marc David, nutritional psychologist, author of The Slow Down Diet, and cofounder of the Weight Loss Pleasure Camp:

Any guilt about food, shame about the body, or judgment about health are considered stressors by the brain and are immediately transduced into their electrochemical equivalents in the body. . . . Our thoughts also directly impact some of the most powerful metabolic chemicals we know of—hormones.

In some cases, the negative self-talk also turns into anger, which is stressful and counterproductive. Dr. Gurgevich explains:

When we are angry with our body we are doing more harm than we can see. If you had a child who wasn’t behaving, the more angry you get and the more you punish them, the less results you get. It’s the same with the body. A starting point for recovery and weight loss is to acknowledge the anger, move through it, and then start taking positive steps to start turning around to love your body.

Jena la Flamme has a metaphor for this relationship. She says that we need to realize that the body is an animal.

By forgetting to take into consideration that the body is a “living, breathing, feeling, decision-making animal,” the overweight body assumes the status of “lesser than” beside the mind, and something tragic occurs—listening stops. When listening stops, even if your body is speaking out loud and clear (which it usually does), you can’t hear what’s being said! True listening only happens in the company of equals, and unless the mind holds the body as its equal, listening is out of the question. If you brand your body as unlovable as it is right now, deem it “not good enough,” or call it an overweight loser that needs to be “fixed,” then all messages your body communicates to you will necessarily fall on deaf ears. Your mind will miss out on your body’s wisdom. This invaluable natural resource—the body’s instinctive know-how for natural weight loss—will be left untapped. When it puffs itself up as “better than,” the mind squanders its intimate access to the cues and guidance that your body, your beloved animal, is trying to give you all day long.

FACILITATING BETTER MIND-BODY COMMUNICATION

There are a number of ways to help facilitate better mind-body communication.

Change Your Terminology

Jena la Flamme recommends a technique that I think is a particularly effective way to learn how to better tune in to and really hear your body’s signals. She recommends that we should refer to our bodies by gender, as in “she” or “he,” but not “it.”

Linguistically, it’s a departure from conventional grammar, but we’re using it for a reason. Think about any living creature to which you’re emotionally connected . . . if you’re connected, you’ll say “she” or “he.” An example: you wouldn’t call a beloved family cat or dog “it.” By referring to our bodies as “she” or “he,” we remind ourselves that our body is a living, breathing animal that deserves to be listened to and treated with compassion, not neglect.

Be Kind to Your Animal

By recognizing that your body is an animal, you will also realize that there are times when you are not listening to him or her. La Flamme believes that weight gain, like other symptoms, is in part a sign of rebellion and anger from a body that is not being listened to.

The body is talking all day long, but it speaks in signs and symptoms: hunger, fatigue, gastrointestinal issues, weight gain. If they’re heeded early enough, they’re messages. For example, your body tells you she is thirsty. But if you say, “Tough luck, I’m busy, I’m not getting up, because I have to finish this e-mail,” that’s just cruel! We want to take a step out and really understand that the body is a being, a life, the life you’ve been given, the one and only life you’ve been given, and realize that she deserves consideration and treatment, not neglect. Any animal that is told, “No, you can’t have water, no, you can’t sleep even if you’re tired, no, you can’t eat even if you’re hungry,” well, the poor neglected creature is eventually going to rebel. And weight gain, well, it’s a red flag, saying “Hello, I’m here, and I’m changing!” It certainly gets your attention. And at some point you’re going to have to pay attention if you don’t fit in your pants.

La Flamme has also suggested that we realize that at times the body can behave like a petulant toddler or a whiny pet. In those cases, realizing that your body is an animal unto herself may also help you when she’s whining for something that simply isn’t good for her. We all know that chocolate isn’t good for dogs, and candy isn’t good for children. So imagine your dog is whining and begging for a piece of chocolate, or your three-year-old is threatening a tantrum to get her favorite candy. You have three choices. One is to give in to the whining, begging, and tantrums. But that’s not good for either a dog or a child, and so it’s clearly not a kind or caring thing to do. The second thing you do is smile, give a big sympathetic hug, and say no. And the third thing you can do is pull out a healthy treat and use a bait-and-switch approach. Think about it the same way when your body is whining inappropriately for something that not’s good for her. Will you give in? Or will you sympathetically refuse, or offer an appropriate alternative?

Embodiment and Pleasure

One mind-body approach that is very important for anyone who wants to take better care of his or her health, and in particular for thyroid dieters, is the concept of embodiment—truly feeling inside your body and allowing yourself to feel pleasure. Jena la Flamme explains:

Some people are in so much internal pain that numbing themselves—making themselves comatose with sugar, for example—actually stops them from feeling their pain. That’s where instead of numbing that pain, we need to listen, and do something to cope with the pain and emotions locked in the body.

How do you get embodied? Some common ways toward embodiment, according to Jena and other experts, include:

• Breathwork

• Yoga

• Dance

• Taking a nap

• Sex

• A hot bath

• Gardening

• Walking in nature

Whatever it is, to achieve embodiment, it must be something you enjoy and that gives you pleasure.

Pleasure is increasingly being understood as an important aspect of a successful weight-loss program. La Flamme explains:

It’s a subtle yet profound shift. How could you make weight loss as fun for your body as it will be for you? Starting from this perspective—holding curiosity and respect for your body’s likes and dislikes—uncovers all kinds of wonderful information. Paradoxically, despite fears that too much pleasure will be our downfall when it comes to weight loss, pleasure is a direct catalyst for the body’s “relaxation response,” the state in which fat burning occurs. Unlike the stress response, where weight is hoarded for protection, the relaxation response allows the body to feel safe and at peace, and therefore metabolically able to let go of the stored weight that previously was maintained as protection.

Develop Your Emotional Padding

One thing you definitely need to explore is how extra weight has served you and protected you. Says Jena la Flamme:

Although it’s easy for the mind to perceive unwanted weight on your body as a barrier and an obstacle to what you want, from the body’s perspective weight is a well-intended protection mechanism! Excess weight is literally padding. It’s a shield that insulates us from stressors, making us bigger and more resilient to danger. Extra weight can serve a “natural” or “wise” function for the body and psyche. Weight can protect us from physical harm; it can protect us sexually by keeping men away; it can protect us emotionally by keeping others distant from us. It can numb us to uncomfortable feelings and past hurts, lower expectations placed upon us, and pull our attention away from important issues at work or in our intimate relationships. So if you’re indeed carrying some extra pounds, what purpose might those extra pounds serve? How have you needed them to feel safe or comfortable?

La Flamme recommends journaling or writing about what role weight may be serving and what it may be protecting you from.

Once you’ve written down some brief words or thought about this, then ask yourself, “Am I ready to let go of using weight for protection, or comfort, or security, or numbing out? And how else can I protect myself in life—in a positive way—without needing extra weight?”

Fill the Real Voids

Life, health, and wellness coach Rebecca Elia, MD, says that we need to look closely at what role food and weight are serving in our life, and find other ways to fill the void.

The emotional component of food is often about unfulfilled needs. If you are not getting what you need, then there’s a void, an empty space. If you are not conscious about how you are going to get these needs met, if you don’t have a plan, then you’re going to use the first convenient thing that comes along to fill the void—and it may be food. When you reach for food, ask, “Am I hungry?” If the answer is no, then ask, “What am I feeling?” and “What do I need, in this moment, that I am not getting?” This is a clue about what needs you are trying to meet through the act of eating. Many women in particular place their own needs last, so a multitude of needs go unfulfilled, and we end up searching for a quick and easy way to get these needs met. Enter addictive behaviors. If we can come up with healthy ways to get our needs met and give ourselves permission to fulfill our needs, then we have come a long way in combating unconscious behavior and addictions. Everyone has needs. We deserve to have our needs met in healthy, conscious ways. Food is one of the wonderful ways in which we nurture our bodies. Respect your body by feeding it consciously and joyfully.

Jena la Flamme has similar advice:

Every time you eat something, stop and say to yourself, “How is what I’m eating now going to make me feel in a few minutes? How will I feel in an hour? How will I feel in a few hours? How will I feel in a day? A few days? A month? Is this what she or he truly wants and needs?”

THE STRESS CONNECTION

It’s important to understand that we have two different aspects to our nervous system. The sympathetic nervous system is the part of our nervous system that mobilizes the body’s resources under stress. The sympathetic nervous system is continually active in order to maintain balance in the body. In extreme situations, however, it generates what’s known as the “fight-or-flight response,” in which:

• Blood flow is diverted away from the digestion and toward muscles and lungs

• The heart rate increases

• Coronary arteries dilate

By contrast, the parasympathetic nervous system is the part of the nervous system that controls smooth muscle contractions, regulates your heart muscle, and stimulates or inhibits your glands. Sometimes the parasympathetic nervous system is summarized as “rest and digest.” Among many functions of the parasympathetic nervous system, it:

• Promotes calming of nerves and enhances digestion after a fight-or-flight response

• Dilates blood vessels leading to the gastrointestinal tract to increase blood flow after eating

• Stimulates your salivary gland secretions, aids in digestion, and helps with absorption of nutrients from food

• Causes the blood pressure and heart rate to decrease

Generally, the sympathetic nervous system is a stress response, and the parasympathetic nervous system is a relaxation response.

Many of us, however, are living, eating, and going about our daily lives primarily in a sympathetic mode, under chronic stress. We may not be in any imminent danger, but because we are constantly exposed to all sorts of stressors, our body doesn’t really know the difference anymore, and chronic stress becomes the norm.

When you are under chronic stress, you flood your body with cortisol—a hormone that stimulates appetite. At the same time, the increased adrenaline raises fatty acid and blood sugar levels, stimulating the body to store those extra calories primarily as fat in the deep abdominal area—from a health standpoint, the worst place to gain weight. The abdominal fat makes you more insulin-resistant and produces various inflammatory markers that increase your risk of diabetes and heart disease.

Whether it’s your own thoughts and negative perceptions, the stress of overexercising, lack of sleep, a jam-packed schedule, or poor-quality food, there is no shortage of stressors, and stress has a negative effect on your ability to lose weight.

One of the most important aspects of your own Thyroid Diet Revolution will be to determine what sort of physiologic stress reduction approaches are most effective for you, and make them a regular practice.

While we might describe many activities—such as reading or watching television—as relaxing, they are not necessary stress-reducing. When we’re talking about physiologic stress reduction, we’re talking about activities that demonstrably lower the heart rate, lower respiration, balance stress hormones, and have a physiologic effect on your body and your health.

Typically, these therapies fall into two categories: physical therapies, such as energy work, and mental therapies, such as biofeedback. There are therapies that combine aspects of both, such as yoga or tai chi. Mind-body work also includes imagery, hypnosis, Transcendental Meditation, psychotherapy, prayer or spiritual healing, music therapy, art therapy, breathing exercises, humor therapy, and other forms of relaxation.

Sometimes the success of these therapies is written off as due to the placebo effect, but that overlooks their effectiveness. If we believe that unconscious thoughts—general stress, for example, or negative self-talk—can cause illness, why wouldn’t we think that conscious, positive thought could help ward off illness or heal the body? Rather than simply serving as a placebo, mind-body therapy also has a strong medical basis. The field of psychoneuroimmunology is showing us more every day about how the mind can communicate with the nervous system, the immune system, and our endocrine system via substances called neurotransmitters. Various chemical and hormonal releases can then affect health and physical function as a result of conscious thought.

Research shows that mind-body techniques are particularly useful in stress reduction. They are also empowering, involving you in your own health as an active participant. I would like to mention several approaches that, based on my own experience, I feel are particularly effective.

Yoga and Pranayama

Yoga is an important way to relieve stress and can be particularly helpful for thyroid patients. When you think of yoga, you may assume it means stretching or sitting in a cross-legged lotus position. But yoga is actually an ancient science that focuses on putting the whole body, mind, and intellect in harmony with the universe. Some of the many health benefits of yoga have been conventionally tested and proven, and are even discussed in Western medical journals. For example, certain forms of yoga have been found to have a strong antidepressant effect. Yoga has also been found to improve lung function and breathing.

In addition to gentle stretching and postures, yoga also includes the practice of pranayama, breathing exercises that help to cleanse and harmonize the energy pathways. The most basic technique of all is deep abdominal breathing. To try it yourself, lie flat on your back, or stand. Put your hand on your abdomen and take a deep breath, filling your belly with air so that your hand rises, then exhale. Start the basic pranayama practice by simply doing this for ten or fifteen minutes each day, and you’ll be surprised at how much more relaxed yet energetic you’ll feel.

More and more interest is also now focusing on specialized yoga breathing techniques that have the ability to change the nervous system in various ways. For example, one study looked at three different pranayamas. One group did breathing in and out of the right nostril (the other nostril is pressed closed with a finger), one group did breathing in and out of the left nostril, and a third group did alternate nostril breathing. Yoga experts believe that these types of breathing help balance the metabolism, generate increased energy, concentration, and mood, and help to balance endocrine disorders in particular. In the study, these practices were carried out as twenty-seven respiratory cycles, and repeated four times a day over the course of a month. At the end of the month-long practice, the right-nostril pranayama group showed a 37 percent increase over their baseline oxygen consumption. The left-nostril group showed a 24 percent increase, and the alternate-nostril group showed an 18 percent increase. The increase in oxygen consumption can help make the metabolism more efficient.

Here are brief guidelines on how to do nostril breathing:

• Sit on the floor in lotus position with legs comfortably crossed, or on a couch or chair, making sure your spine and head are straight.

• Rest your right hand on your right knee or in your lap.

• Place the index and middle fingers of your left hand at the center of your eyebrows.

• Keep the right nostril open and close the left nostril with the thumb.

• Inhale slowly and deeply through the right nostril to the count of four.

• Hold the breath for the count of two.

• Exhale to the count of four.

That is one cycle of nostril breathing. Repeat the cycles, starting with one to two minutes, and working up to several sessions of ten minutes a day.

There is also a specific breathing exercise that is designed to help the thyroid. Breathe in through your nose, focusing the inhalation toward the back of your throat. Your throat should feel slightly “closed” or “blocked” while you perform this breathing exercise. Mentally, you should try to feel as if you are taking in the air through the front of your throat. Do this several times a day, but not for long periods, as it might make you dizzy.

Finally, there is a specific asana or pose that is thought to be of great benefit to the thyroid. The half shoulder stand (viparit karani mudra) and shoulder stand (sarvangasan) positions both invert and stimulate the thyroid. In a shoulder stand, you lie flat on your back and, keeping your legs together, raise them up until they are at a right angle to your shoulders and neck, perpendicular to the floor, chin tucked into your chest, resting the weight of your body on your shoulders and elbows, arms supporting your hips. Work up to a daily session of a full two minutes by starting with two or three shorter sessions. If you can’t get into a shoulder stand position, simply lying on the floor with your feet elevated and propped up against a chair or the wall can also provide similar benefits.

Breathing

Whatever you call it, a program of deep breathing exercises that is designed to take in more oxygen and release more carbon dioxide with each breath seem to help people with hypothyroidism to lose weight.

We know that hypothyroidism affects the strength of the respiratory muscles. Hypothyroidism is also known to increase reactivity of the bronchial passages, even if you don’t have asthma. Even when treated, a substantial percentage of people with hypothyroidism report shortness of breath, feeling like they’re not getting enough oxygen, or even needing to yawn to get more air as continuing symptoms.

For many of us, the ability to take in and process oxygen may be forever changed once hypothyroidism sets in. Even when we are fully treated, I suspect that most of us still don’t take in and process oxygen fully. That is why specific attention to breathing seems to help some people with hypothyroidism. And learning how to breathe is about as inexpensive as it can be. All you need is some air and a pair of lungs to start. And no one can say that learning to breathe better isn’t good for you, thyroid problem or not.

Breathing experts point to numerous health benefits of systematic breathing practice, including increased oxygen delivery to the cells, which helps provide sufficient energy to fuel metabolism, improve digestion, decrease fatigue, and create more energy.

Breathing is also an important way to help reduce our stress while we eat. Nutritional psychologist Marc David says, “The royal road to shortcut the physiologic stress response and bring you to relaxed, slow eating is conscious breathing.” He suggests that before any meal or snack, we should take five deep breaths into the midsection. And he also recommends stopping to take several deep breaths while eating.

Jena la Flamme explains further:

The apparently innocent offense—forgetting to breathe as you eat—is our number one common weight-loss downfall. Just as wood in a fire requires oxygen to burn, so our bodies literally need oxygen to “burn” the food we put in our stomachs. The simple combination of oxygen plus food is what makes up 95 percent of the energy your body generates. When you eat food without the oxygen your body needs to accompany it, digestion is sluggish and calories are stored as fat rather than burned off as energy. In other words, low oxygen intake leads to poor digestion, which leads to weight gain.

Here’s how to do it: Before you eat, stop and breathe. Without picking up the fork, breathe for as long as it takes you to reach a slow, deep breathing rhythm. If you are already relaxed, three breaths may be enough. If you are feeling highly strung, it may take a few more. Give yourself those breaths no matter what. Rest assured you deserve it. As you breathe you’ll start to smell the food, which is also good for your digestive power, giving your digestive juices a moment to prepare.

Then, as you begin to eat, continue to breathe mindfully. Breathe through your nose, as your mouth will be busy chewing your food! It’s as simple as that.

In addition to incorporating regular breathing into our daily life around our meals and snacks, I also highly recommend a particular mind-body focused breathing technique called Transformational Breathing. Created by Dr. Judith Kravitz and taught in workshops by trained facilitators, Transformational Breathing is a unique conscious breathing technique that is designed to help improve oxygenation, reduce stress, achieve balance and peace, and gain greater physical, mental, and spiritual health. Learning Transformational Breathing typically requires several sessions with a facilitator, but it quickly becomes a powerful technique that may help you not only relieve stress but also get rid of psychological blockages that are getting in the way of healthy weight loss. It’s a practice that I use regularly, several times a week, to help keep mind, body, and spirit in balance.

Meditation

An effective way to reduce stress and foster mind-body communication is meditation. According to the Center of Integrative Medicine at Thomas Jefferson University Hospital in Philadelphia, meditation training can provide an improved sense of well-being, reduce body tension, and increase clearness of thinking—all effects that help you better cope with stress. Meditation has also been able to lower blood pressure, help clear up skin problems, and increase melatonin levels. By using magnetic resonance imaging, researchers have also established that meditation actually activates certain structures in the brain that control the autonomic nervous system.

I have found a variety of meditation approaches incredibly helpful in my own efforts to foster spirituality. In particular, I like the following audio programs:

• Meditation for Beginners, by Jack Kornfield

• How to Meditate, with Pema Chodron

• Meditation in a New York Minute, by Mark Thornton

Another wonderful tool to aid in learning and practicing meditation and relaxation breathing is a fantastic product called Relaxing Rhythms, from Wild Divine. Relaxing Rhythms is an inexpensive biofeedback program and system that easily attaches to your home computer or laptop and offers interactive training on how to use your body’s own signals—heart rate, for example—to monitor physical and emotional reactions to stress. Relaxing Rhythms features three prominent mind-body experts—Deepak Chopra, Dean Ornish, and Andrew Weil—who teach you using more than thirty different breathing and meditation exercises.

You can boost energy, reduce stress, reduce anxiety and depression, and surprisingly, improve specific symptoms such as interrupted sleep and insomnia, urinary incontinence, headaches, and high blood pressure.

The way it works is that by providing you with physiological information—such as heart rate, or body temperature—that you might not normally be aware of, you learn which types of activities—certain breathing, relaxation and meditation patterns—can bring about specific and measurable changes in your physical response.

Guided Imagery

According to the nation’s leading guided imagery expert, therapist Belleruth Naparstek, your brain doesn’t know the difference between something you actually see and something you imagine. So your body responds as strongly to an image as to the real thing.

I am a devoted fan of Naparstek’s excellent series of guided imagery health programs. One of my favorites is her program for weight loss, which you can get on CD or online as an MP3 download. I frequently listen to it when I’m on the treadmill, and it is very relaxing and inspiring. It motivates me to keep going!

Naparstek told Prevention magazine that guided imagery helps you “get in under your mind’s radar” so that you can persuade your body to do something. “It may be to increase brain chemicals that make you feel calm and centered, decrease hormones that make you hungry, change the levels of biochemical components in your bloodstream that affect blood sugar, even build more immune system cells to fight everything from cancer to the common cold.”

Cognitive Behavioral Therapy

Cognitive behavioral therapy is not about sitting on a therapist’s couch for years exploring early childhood experiences. It is practical and solution-oriented, with the goal of helping you to rework the way you think about and therefore react to different situations. It is particularly helpful for people who are attempting to lose weight or maintain weight loss. There are a number of specific behavioral strategies you can learn and practice with the aid of a therapist or support group. These include:

• Tracking. The self-monitoring of your eating habits and physical activity in an objective way through observation and recording is an important part of cognitive behavioral therapy. You can keep track of the amount and types of food you eat, calories, and nutrient composition, as well as frequency, intensity, and type of physical activities. For even more insight, keep track of feelings and motivations to eat and exercise. Reviewing these records will help you gain insight into your own eating and exercise patterns and habits. You may also be able to identify particular situations such as boredom or frustration that trigger your worst episodes of unhealthy eating.

• Stimulus control. Identifying situations that may encourage you to eat poorly enables you to limit your exposure to high-risk situations. Examples of stimulus control strategies include learning to shop carefully for healthy foods, keeping high-calorie foods out of the house, limiting the times and places of eating, and consciously avoiding situations where you are likely to overeat.

• Problem solving. This involves looking at problem areas you have in terms of eating and physical activity, brainstorming possible solutions, and evaluating outcomes of possible changes in behavior. For example, some people who used to be inveterate snackers while watching television have taken up new habits, keeping manicure supplies, needlework, or crossword puzzles handy to replace snacking.

• Rewards. You can help change your own behavior by using rewards for specific actions, such as rewarding yourself for increased time spent exercising or for cutting consumption of particular foods. Self-rewards can be monetary (e.g., putting aside money for a special item or buying yourself something you’ve wanted) or social (e.g., going to the movies).

• Cognitive restructuring. You may have unrealistic goals or inaccurate beliefs about weight loss and body image, such as “I can lose ten pounds in two weeks,” “I’m not attractive unless I’m a size 6,” or “Women don’t think men are sexy unless they have a six-pack.” If so, you need to change the self-defeating thoughts and feelings that undermine weight-loss efforts. Cognitive behavioral therapy helps you come up with rational responses to replace negative thoughts. For example, you could replace “I blew my diet this morning by eating that doughnut; I may as well eat what I like for the rest of the day” with “Well, I ate the doughnut this morning, but I can still eat in a healthy manner at lunch and dinner.”

Healing Touch (Somatic Experiencing)

Another approach that some people find effective is energy work, and in particular, techniques such as Healing Touch. Daphne White, a thyroid patient herself, is a Kensington, Maryland–based practitioner of Healing Touch and Somatic Experiencing:

Healing Touch is a form of energy medicine: it uses a warm and gentle flow of energy from the healer’s hands to stimulate the energy flow within a client’s body. It’s like acupuncture in many ways, but without needles. Healing Touch is thought to work with the body’s electromagnetic field and helps bring balance and coherence to all the body’s systems. So, for example, when the thyroid works in a coordinated and coherent way with other glands and organs, hormonal levels are more likely to stabilize at an optimal level. Healing Touch provides an energetic tune-up to the entire body: it stimulates the spontaneous healing and relaxation response. In a culture as stress-filled as ours, energy medicine helps restore a more natural rhythm and flow to our entire body.

MINDFUL EATING

Finally, one of the most important things you can start doing right away as part of your own Thyroid Diet Revolution is focusing on more mindful eating. But what is mindful eating?

Have you ever sat in a darkened movie theater, totally absorbed in a film, and munched away unthinkingly at the food in your lap, only to realize after the film is over that you’ve had a huge bucket of popcorn, a giant soft drink, and other high-calorie treats—and you barely even realized that you were eating, let alone how much you ate? And on top of it all, even if you feel sort of queasy after eating all that junk food, you might still be hungry!

That’s the power of mindless eating. Eating without looking at what you’re eating, without paying attention to what you’re eating, or while distracted by something else is a recipe for overeating, for bad food choices, and for being hungry after eating. And it’s definitely a factor that will prevent weight loss.

Mindful eating means that you approach the process of eating thoughtfully and allow yourself time to look at your food and truly taste it. Along with eating slowly, mindful eating is an essential part of any weight-loss effort, and while it may sound New Age-y, it actually is rooted in practical, hormonal factors.

According to Marc David, you want to look at and smell the food you are about to eat, carefully and thoroughly. He explains:

You know how your mouth waters when you smell something delicious? Or your stomach starts to churn when you think about lunch? These signals are actually the beginning of your body’s digestive response, before the food even passes your lips. It’s called the cephalic phase digestive response (CPDR), a fancy term for the pleasures of taste, aroma, satisfaction, and the visual stimulation of a meal. In other words, it’s the “head phase” of digestion, when we engage our senses and turn on our awareness with food. The power of CPDR to catalyze nutrient assimilation, digestion, and calorie-burning ability is astounding. In fact, researchers have estimated that as much as 30 to 40 percent of the total digestive response to any meal is due to CPDR. Really smelling, seeing, and tasting our food initiates a chain of reactions to prepare our body for incoming food and metabolize it efficiently.

Unfortunately, many of us skip out on this powerful phase of digestion. Eating has become a prime multitasking opportunity in our society, and it often occurs without awareness. As a result, we could be metabolizing our meal at only 60–70 percent efficiency.

Besides looking at and smelling your food, you also want to eat it slowly. Eating slowly is an essential part of mindful eating, and an important weight-loss strategy. According to a study published in the Journal of Clinical Endocrinology and Metabolism, eating a meal quickly, as compared to slowly, curtails the release of hormones that induce feelings of being full. The decreased release of these appetite-regulating hormones can often lead to overeating.

Part of eating slowly is also chewing your food thoroughly. When you chew thoroughly, you let the digestive juices in your mouth and throat do their work to properly break down and begin digesting your food. At the same time, you extend the time you’re actually eating, giving your brain more time to receive the “I feel full” feeling, which doesn’t get generated until about ten minutes after you start eating.

Weight-loss coach Jena la Flamme says that multitasking is not conducive to mindful eating. La Flamme says that it’s a straightforward diet and weight-loss rule, and should be easy to follow—but often isn’t. When you are eating, you should not be:

• Talking on the phone

• Watching a television screen

• Texting

• Reading a computer monitor

• Driving

• Walking

• Reading—including the newspaper, a book, a magazine, or the cereal box

La Flamme also says that you should not eat while standing up. “You are not at a gas station to ‘fill up’—so no standing while you eat. Standing tells your body that she’s not even important enough for you to sit down with for a meal.”

Another way to encourage mindful eating is presentation. If you regularly eat alone, or get takeout or fast food, you may be tempted to simply eat things out of foam containers or paper wrappings, but what sort of impression are you making on your body? You are telling your body that she deserves disposable food in disposable containers. If you wouldn’t do it for an honored guest, try to make it a habit not to do it for yourself. It’s not hard to put down a placemat and use a real plate, a real glass, and regular utensils instead of disposable tableware. It’s all part of being mindful when you eat.

Some people complain that they feel lonely when they eat if they aren’t reading, talking, or otherwise busy doing something else. Says la Flamme:

Imagine if you went on a dinner date but spent the whole date reading or talking on your phone. How will you get to know your date? It’s the same with food and our body. How can you get to know your body if you can’t even pay attention to how it feels when you’re eating?

Mindfulness is also useful in evaluating how you feel—what your response is to the foods you eat. You can gauge how effectively you are eating by stopping to ask yourself the following questions around two or three hours after eating:

• Was I hungry or dissatisfied soon after eating?

• Am I having any cravings for sweets?

• Do I feel the need to snack before my next meal?

• Am I still feeling tired after I last ate?

• Is my thinking fuzzy?

• Am I feeling hyper, jittery, shaky, nervous, or speedy?

• Is my pulse racing?

• Am I feeling sleepy or spaced out?

• Am I feeling depressed or sad?

The more yes answers you have, the more likely it is that you did not eat the right foods for you and your body. If you eat a meal that’s right for you, you’ll feel full, satisfied, energetic, and free of cravings, and you won’t be hungry again until it’s time to eat your next meal.

THE POWER OF SELF-HYPNOSIS

I’ve talked about why we want to create more effective mind-body communication, reduce stress, and eat mindfully, along with various techniques that can help you achieve those objectives. But one of the most important tools to help you launch your own successful Thyroid Diet Revolution, in my experience, is self-hypnosis.

Self-hypnosis helps us understand that what we are thinking about—and what we think we may want—may not always be communicated effectively to the body.

Says Dr. Steven Gurgevich: “You can walk around all day repeating a mantra or affirmation—delivering the message multiple times—but the question is, is your subconscious accepting it? Because when the subconscious accepts an idea, it acts upon it as real and true.”

The subconscious is where we can directly communicate to our body in a language that she or he understands. We want to ensure that what we are consciously thinking—for example, “I want to eat a healthier diet”—gets through to our body as a clear, unequivocal message. And by carefully observing and listening to the body’s signals, we will be able to recognize in our conscious mind the messages our body is delivering.

I know self-hypnosis may sound a bit out there, but it’s a straightforward idea. What if you could take your thoughts and desires, translate them into a language the body truly understands, and deliver the message clearly and effectively? That’s what self-hypnosis does.

In his Self-Healing newsletter, Andrew Weil, MD, one of the nation’s leading holistic physicians, dispelled some common misunderstandings about self-hypnosis:

For some people who have never tried it, the idea of going into a hypnotic trance may seem weird or scary. But the fact is that we’ve all experienced trance states in everyday life—whether daydreaming, watching a movie, driving home on autopilot, or practicing meditation or other relaxation techniques. Essentially, trance is an altered state of consciousness marked by decreased scope and increased intensity of awareness. What distinguishes hypnotherapy is that it involves a deliberate choice to enter this state of consciousness for a goal beyond relaxation: to focus your concentration and use suggestion to promote healing. It can be done in person with a hypnotherapist or you can do it yourself, called self-hypnosis.

There are many self-hypnosis weight-loss CDs out there, and I’ve reviewed many of them. I can tell you that most of them are not worth the time or money.

But Dr. Steven Gurgevich has written a superb book, The Self-Hypnosis Diet, which has an accompanying CD that features the guided trancework, and it’s truly a powerful tool for dieters. The book explains specific techniques that help you increase willpower, change unhealthy eating patterns, and create new and lasting healthy behaviors, and the CD actually helps you put those techniques into action for yourself.

You learn in the book that we should never go around saying, for example, “I have a slow metabolism. I just look at a donut and I gain weight” because it actually delivers a message to our body to fulfill our beliefs! He refers to studies showing that people who went around saying “I have a high metabolism, I burn things up the minute I eat them” actually have a comparatively higher metabolic response to food, and when they ate more calories than usual, they would speed up metabolically (as well as with digestion and elimination) to burn them off more quickly. The Self-Hypnosis Diet helps you deliver the message to your subconscious that your thyroid, body, and metabolism actually do know how to work effectively.

In my own case, I notice that when I regularly listen to The Self-Hypnosis Diet’s guided sessions, it shuts down any negative self-talk. I find that I sleep better, have increased energy, and, surprisingly for me, crave vegetables. (I like vegetables, but I normally don’t crave them!) My appetite decreases, and it makes it much easier to eat well, get physical activity, and have a positive self-image.

One of my friends tried listening to The Self-Hypnosis Diet for a few weeks to help curb her cravings for chocolate. Four weeks later, she was definitely craving less chocolate. She told me she also had a totally unexpected side effect: she stopped smoking—something she had been thinking about doing for years! Clearly, for some people, The Self-Hypnosis Diet helps your body hear, understand and act upon your conscious mind’s best intentions.