Mindfulness for Dieting

Yesterday, as I was taking my daily walk, I had to stop on the sidewalk on the south side of a driveway onto a busy street.  I stopped and just stood there for a few minutes because the women driving; poised to pull out into that busy street was busily eating and watching towards the north.  I could not walk in front of her vehicle because she just was not seeing anything to the south.  What she was seeing was her food and the street to the north of her.  I did not mind waiting, but I felt sorry for her.  What has been cropping up in my life lately are heavy-set women who swear that there is no way that they can lose weight.  They spend many minutes explaining to me or anyone else who will listen why they are heavy and why they ‘cannot’ lose weight.  I’ve heard so many justifications for being heavy: my mother-in-law’s favorite “I have a slow metabolism because of the thyroid.”  Other favorites for maintaining heaviness: “since menopause, I just can’t get it off” or “I’ve never had enough money to eat right, we only have enough money for pasta instead of whole wheat.”  My own excuse has been that I hate exercise.  I actually went to the gym for several years of my life and loved it.  I eventually quit because the pool and whirlpool were important parts of the gym experience – but I kept getting infections from sitting in the whirlpool – yucky!

One of the most successful tactics that I have seen for weight loss is the practice of what Eastern religion practitioners might call “mindfulness”.  I want you to be conscious for your life.  Even the boring, day to day, drudgery is for you.  I want you to be center stage for your life.  That means that you must be present for all that is possible and all that you do.  Eat at mealtime and dedicate mealtime to eating. 

Don’t eat food while you are sitting at your desk, driving or watching TV.  Research has proven over and over again that when you do this, you will eat more and therefore consume more calories.  Many people divert themselves by eating and do not realize that eating = calories = weight.  There is no diversion from this fact about our bodies.

My husband tells me about someone he works with who eats snacks all day, will inevitably rush out of the office to go and get lunch at 2:00 in the afternoon.  She speaks as if she is so busy that she just could not get to lunch earlier.  My husband believes that she eats unconsciously and is therefore not aware that by eating all day, she cannot get hungry, but pretends instead that she is busy.  We were talking about this because my friend at work eats from a box of ‘wheat thins’ almost all day.  I am sure that manufacturers congratulate themselves on how they name their products in order to trick the human brain.  It works.  People inherently believe what they read and continue from there.  Reading a package that says lo-fat and looks delicious is everybody’s dream of reality.  Unfortunately, particularly when it comes to nutrition, reality is reality and dreams are dreams.  Remember: eating = calories = weight.

I have one other observation about those of us who are currently hanging on to a lot of extra weight – what you drink matters, it matters very much.  Here is what I mean about that.  I am constantly speaking with dieters who do not understand why they do not lose weight, while they clutch their bottle of 210 calorie juice desperately to their breast.  Many dieters believe that if they stop drinking soda they will soon drop excess pounds.  Nothing could be further from the truth if you are just adding a high calorie juice.  The other fable is that diet soda will resolve the issue.  It will not.  Diet soda is nothing more than poison and it expresses disrespect for your body.  That kind of disrespect can get your body into trouble in so many ways.