Speaker 1: Favor the food that we eat so that we're really present,
Speaker 1: not just eating on automatic pilot. Welcome to the one
Speaker 1: you feed throughout time. Great thinkers have recognized the importance
Speaker 1: of the thoughts we have. Quotes like garbage in, garbage out,
Speaker 1: or you are what you think ring true, and yet
Speaker 1: for many of us, our thoughts don't strengthen or empower us.
Speaker 1: We tend toward negativity, self pity, jealousy, or fear. We
Speaker 1: see what we don't have instead of what we do.
Speaker 1: We think things that hold us back and dampen our spirit.
Speaker 1: But it's not just about thinking. Our actions matter. It
Speaker 1: takes conscious, consistent, and creative effort to make a life
Speaker 1: worth living. This podcast is about how other people keep
Speaker 1: themselves moving in the right direction, how they feed their
Speaker 1: good wolf m Thanks for joining us. Our guest on
Speaker 1: this episode is Andrea Lieberstein, an author, speaker, trainer, and
Speaker 1: mindfulness meditation expert. Andrea is a mindfulness based registered dietitian, nutritionist,
Speaker 1: mindful eating and mindfulness based stress reduction instructor and coach.
Speaker 1: Andrea leads well Nourished, mindful eating and living retreats and
Speaker 1: workshops internationally. She was a leader in developing and implementing
Speaker 1: mindfulness and mind body programs at Kaiser Permanente, Northern California
Speaker 1: for over twenty years and is a contributing author to
Speaker 1: resources for teaching mindfulness and international handbook. Her new book
Speaker 1: is Well Nourished Mindful Practices to Heal Your Relationship with Food,
Speaker 1: Feed your Whole self, and end over Eating. And here's
Speaker 1: the interview with Andrea Lieberstein. Hi, Andrea, welcome to the show.
Speaker 1: Thank you so glad to be here today. Your book
Speaker 1: is called Well Nourished Mindful Practices to Heal your Relationship
Speaker 1: with food, Feed your whole self, and end over eating.
Speaker 1: So we will move into all of that in just
Speaker 1: a moment. But let's start like we always do with
Speaker 1: the parable where there's a grandmother who's talking with her
Speaker 1: granddaughter and she says, in life, there are two wolves
Speaker 1: inside of us that are always at battle. One is
Speaker 1: a good wolf, which represents things like kindness and bravery
Speaker 1: and love, and the other is a bad wolf, which
Speaker 1: represents things like greed and hatred and fear. The granddaughter
Speaker 1: stops and she thinks about it for a second. He says, well, grandmother,
Speaker 1: which one wins? And the grandmother says the one you feed.
Speaker 1: So I'd like to start off by asking you what
Speaker 1: that parable means to you in your life and in
Speaker 1: the work that you do. It's such a great parable,
Speaker 1: and it's so directly ties into the work that I
Speaker 1: choo and my life. Where we put our attention is
Speaker 1: really everything that creates our life, our experience of our life,
Speaker 1: and we do have we know who through neuroscience, through psychologies,
Speaker 1: the mindfulness that we we have, these tendencies of habit
Speaker 1: of mind that come in even even with all the
Speaker 1: work that we've done, we could have thoughts, feelings arise
Speaker 1: that we may not particularly want to to follow. So
Speaker 1: mindfulness is so important that that mindful plods, that mindful
Speaker 1: awareness to see what's arising and then be able to
Speaker 1: that moment is actively choosing Am I going to put
Speaker 1: my attention there? Am I going to follow and engage
Speaker 1: in that thought? What would be most helpfulness, energizing, most positive,
Speaker 1: most healthy for me? Where should I put my attention now?
Speaker 1: And you could fill in the blank there. And then
Speaker 1: also there are so many in terms of working with
Speaker 1: human emotions, seeing human and the emotions that come and go,
Speaker 1: we can nourish our emotions, nourish the quality of our emotions,
Speaker 1: the feelings, the feeling tones with mindfulness, with attention. So
Speaker 1: what that means for me is that I feel that
Speaker 1: I'm pretty vigilant in practicing mindfulness after all these years.
Speaker 1: And I absolutely love the practices that we we have
Speaker 1: being given that we know, you know that some of
Speaker 1: us we just know from our own life experience. We
Speaker 1: just bring in or we've been taught, kind of a
Speaker 1: combination of both. For me, but bringing in gratitude practice,
Speaker 1: bringing in mindful self compassion, focusing and noticing beauty in
Speaker 1: my life. I will intend sly pause and notice beauty
Speaker 1: and really nourished my attention with that, and then I'm
Speaker 1: feeding these really beautiful qualities that interviewty, really soaking and
Speaker 1: nourishing in it. Brings in that sense of beauty common
Speaker 1: piece inside helps me be more calm, talent, happy, you know,
Speaker 1: better person. So nourishing through beauty, nourishing through gratitude practice
Speaker 1: by notice that I'm focusing on things that are making
Speaker 1: me feel stressed or unhappy. And as we know, there's
Speaker 1: a lot in the world these days, a lot going on.
Speaker 1: It's easy just to go down that track and stay there.
Speaker 1: So bringing myself that nourishing with positive qualities, loving kindness,
Speaker 1: practices another really wonderful quality which maybe we'll get into
Speaker 1: talking about. But it's but right, but not just just
Speaker 1: to feel good. But then then coming from this place
Speaker 1: in our lives, our accidents, our interactions with others, it
Speaker 1: helps to nourish our relationship, the the ways that we
Speaker 1: contribute to the world. So nourished is a word that
Speaker 1: you use a lot. And one of the things that
Speaker 1: you talk about is you say, it's very easy to
Speaker 1: focus on diets and eating is the answer to all
Speaker 1: our problems, but that that is only part of the solution,
Speaker 1: and that this nourishment you you talk about lots of
Speaker 1: different You talk about eight bodies that we can nourish,
Speaker 1: and we'll we'll get to that in a second, but
Speaker 1: I want to go back to the title of the
Speaker 1: book and talk about feed your whole self and end
Speaker 1: over eating. And the last part of that, the end
Speaker 1: over eating, is one that grabs a lot of people's attention. Right.
Speaker 1: Diet books are one of the best selling books of
Speaker 1: all time. If I had any sense, I'd start a
Speaker 1: diet podcast and we'd probably be huge. But that's not
Speaker 1: your message here, So talk to me about the relationship
Speaker 1: of mindfulness, this nourishing and how this interacts with over eating.
Speaker 1: So food is so much the easy go to place
Speaker 1: for so many people to to comfort, to soothe when
Speaker 1: one is feeling stressed or um. You know, there's many
Speaker 1: people that just use it as the very first soother
Speaker 1: when feeling angry, frustrated, or bored or sad. As a
Speaker 1: coping mechanism really, which can be learned from early childhood.
Speaker 1: So many of us have were given food to be
Speaker 1: comforted by when we were feeling sad or when we
Speaker 1: had an alley and kind of a combination of many things.
Speaker 1: Those that developed eating as food is more of a
Speaker 1: as a major coping mechanism than others that don't. But
Speaker 1: everybody has some of that. And food is also so
Speaker 1: ubiquitous in our environment. I mean the food get when
Speaker 1: we're at the checkstands, it's just staring at us. And
Speaker 1: if we're hungry, it's so easy to want to go
Speaker 1: for those high sugar or higher fat foods, but quick
Speaker 1: energy foods. So my book is really it's about nourishing
Speaker 1: the whole cellf and and resilient becoming really fully nourished
Speaker 1: from the inside out and from the outside in. I
Speaker 1: also like to use the word resourcing. When we're fully resourced,
Speaker 1: then we don't need to turn into food for that
Speaker 1: quick fix or quick feeling better. That is, anybody that
Speaker 1: really looks at what happens when you leave that, you know,
Speaker 1: kind of ice cream for three more cookies than you
Speaker 1: really wanted. Usually you feel bad after right pretty quickly.
Speaker 1: Maybe you get a stomach ache, or if it's not physical,
Speaker 1: then it might be feeling guilty, beating oneself up. Why
Speaker 1: did I do that? Or I shouldn't have had that.
Speaker 1: There's this whole relationship that we have with food that
Speaker 1: we carry with us. It's not very peaceful, right for
Speaker 1: most people? And so where do we start with this?
Speaker 1: So if let's just say that I'm looking at this
Speaker 1: and I think, well, you know what, I do have
Speaker 1: an issue with overeating. I have the regret cycle that
Speaker 1: you talked about. Sometimes I want to do this differently.
Speaker 1: Where do people start? So I always like to have
Speaker 1: people start with basic mindfulness practice. Actually even before that,
Speaker 1: backing up is intention. Why do you want to do
Speaker 1: this work? Why do you want to make a shift,
Speaker 1: Why is this important to you? And the more that
Speaker 1: we can connect that reason why to our values, to
Speaker 1: things that are bigger than just cultural ideas. I need
Speaker 1: to be a certain way to be okay, or I
Speaker 1: should go on it because it should do this diet
Speaker 1: that you know all my friends are doing, but she
Speaker 1: have something bigger because I just I want to feel better.
Speaker 1: I want to feel good, I want to be more peace,
Speaker 1: I want to have energy. So the rest of my life,
Speaker 1: I'm so focused on this all the time, trying to
Speaker 1: have the right body, looks, the right way or what
Speaker 1: you know, whatever, it is all tied in eat the
Speaker 1: right foods. So there's so much energy that is connected
Speaker 1: to that. So the intention, big attention, tied to values
Speaker 1: that are bigger, that are really important to you, intrinsic values.
Speaker 1: And then mindfulness bringing awareness, starting to bring awareness to
Speaker 1: our lives too. Are eating triggers two um and all
Speaker 1: who will talk of them. Knowing a little bit about
Speaker 1: the eight bodies, but also the other what I call
Speaker 1: the bodies of nourishment, of the realms of ourselves in
Speaker 1: our lives, that we we need nourishment to thrive. So
Speaker 1: we start with building mindful awareness and then mindful awareness
Speaker 1: of our own bodies and our own selves. So I
Speaker 1: have in my book Seven Steps to Mindful Eating. In
Speaker 1: the first one of the first chapters, we've start to
Speaker 1: learn to to still our mind through a practice of
Speaker 1: mindfulness meditation, and then bringing this ability to be more present,
Speaker 1: more focused, and that grows with practice and time, and
Speaker 1: we can practice in the moment, but bringing that to
Speaker 1: our eating, cultivating this kind, non judging, compassionate way of
Speaker 1: being with our experience and being present and then paying
Speaker 1: attention to our inner experience, learning to tune in, so
Speaker 1: using our body as our barometer, learning to tune into hunger,
Speaker 1: our true physical hunger, our fullness of different ways we
Speaker 1: can tune into society and have we had enough? And
Speaker 1: also tuning into what am I truly hungry for. Being
Speaker 1: able to tune into our physical hunger first is really
Speaker 1: helpful to them to be able to differentiate all the
Speaker 1: other kinds of eating triggers that happen out there. And
Speaker 1: then we can make a conscious informed choice. And the
Speaker 1: more we make conscious informed choices, like we might choose
Speaker 1: to have that really special brownie our mother in law
Speaker 1: made us um, but we can do it without guilt
Speaker 1: and beating ourselves up. And there's so many creative ways
Speaker 1: that we can, you know, have something to not have
Speaker 1: to eat the whole thing or end up filling um
Speaker 1: over full or sick or maybe having a bite savoring it,
Speaker 1: thanking you're relative so much. Oh, I can't wait to
Speaker 1: have more of this. I'm gonna bring it home that
Speaker 1: I'm really ful from this amazing dinner. There's I bring
Speaker 1: that example in because there's always that Often the families
Speaker 1: usure we're all going this time of year now is Thanksgiving,
Speaker 1: so many of us are going to family gatherings and
Speaker 1: different family meals dynamics come up. But how do we
Speaker 1: honor ourselves our bodies and also appreciate others and then
Speaker 1: learning to savor the food that we eat so that
Speaker 1: we're really present, not just eating on automatic pilots. So
Speaker 1: it sounds like there's a couple of different places that
Speaker 1: we become mindful. One is we're mindful of, you know,
Speaker 1: how we're feeling, our moods, and then we're mindful of
Speaker 1: the actual eating itself. So do you tie all that
Speaker 1: together into when you talk about the seven steps for
Speaker 1: mindful eating? Are those all tied in there? That I
Speaker 1: go through in the book, and this is really only
Speaker 1: in one of the first chapters, and it is foundational,
Speaker 1: But then there's so much more that we begin to
Speaker 1: look at the rest of our lives where we're missing nourishment,
Speaker 1: and what are the ingredients that that we can bring
Speaker 1: in to make a full, well nourished life. So we
Speaker 1: don't need to turn to food for that extra soothing,
Speaker 1: but to start with just start eating and tuning into
Speaker 1: our eating. We we do a mindful check in, sometimes
Speaker 1: called a mindful pause. You can think of it as
Speaker 1: a mindful moment where you're so the seven tips pause,
Speaker 1: maybe taking a few deep broths to bring yourself or present,
Speaker 1: begin to relax the mind and the body and check
Speaker 1: into what is present, what thoughts, what feelings, motions, particularly
Speaker 1: related to the foods that you're about to eat. So
Speaker 1: we can do this when we're feeling that birge to eat,
Speaker 1: or we're walking by the staff room and they're donuts
Speaker 1: out and other items. You may not even really be hungry,
Speaker 1: or maybe you're walking by you're actually very stressed by
Speaker 1: an interaction that just happened, and that stress is an
Speaker 1: automatic trigger for you to want to go reach for
Speaker 1: that food, but by stopping and doing their pausing and
Speaker 1: doing that mindful check and you can see, but what's
Speaker 1: really going on here? What do I really need? Do
Speaker 1: you notice that you're stressed and not hungry and learning
Speaker 1: to tune into hunger at different levels of something that
Speaker 1: I work a lot with clients on because many people
Speaker 1: aren't a wear at their hunger, and then many of
Speaker 1: us might just sort of work through our hunger or
Speaker 1: skip the mail thinking that, oh, I'm you know, I'm
Speaker 1: decreasing my calorie intake for the day by getting killed.
Speaker 1: But that's not's not doing good right, but then ending
Speaker 1: up eating more later because the body says, uh, I'm
Speaker 1: gonna make you really hungry later, and you're gonna want
Speaker 1: to eat everything and eat into the night. That's the
Speaker 1: one that does me. And if I skip meals or
Speaker 1: or I let too far go and I get too hungry,
Speaker 1: all of a sudden, all bets are off on me
Speaker 1: eating anything decent. It's like, all of a sudden, I'm like,
Speaker 1: I am starving and I'm going to eat whatever is present,
Speaker 1: which usually isn't great. Exactly that's exactly what happens. And
Speaker 1: yet so many people think that skipping the meal is
Speaker 1: kind of a good thing. But yeah, when we're really hungry,
Speaker 1: we reach for those foods that aren't helpful. We call
Speaker 1: them the highly palatable foods in research are the highly
Speaker 1: processed foods which might make us just want more of
Speaker 1: the high cards. That sugar, so really important to be
Speaker 1: aware of our hundreds of tune in and eat at
Speaker 1: the regular intervals for us that most nourish us and
Speaker 1: keep our bodies and our blood sugar at a good
Speaker 1: even level where we can be at our best. That
Speaker 1: was mind cognitively, mood wise, all of that. So learning
Speaker 1: to tune in see what we really need is importance.
Speaker 1: So maybe you're not hungry, but going back to that
Speaker 1: example of walking by the table of food, donuts and
Speaker 1: other things that work, so you notice that you're very
Speaker 1: stressed and agitated, but by pausing, taking a few deep breaths,
Speaker 1: really checking that out feeling. And by the way, this
Speaker 1: checking can be as as short as you know, and
Speaker 1: the better we get at it, the less time we need.
Speaker 1: And sometimes we might just want to take a little
Speaker 1: more time because we're actually using it as a way
Speaker 1: to calm and come present. And then we can say Okay,
Speaker 1: what do I truly need right now? What would what
Speaker 1: would help me on feeling stressed? Me? I just want
Speaker 1: to go out and walk in the hallway, or get
Speaker 1: a drink of water, talk to a co worker, share
Speaker 1: a few jokes, right journal, whatever, whatever it is, whatever
Speaker 1: help man is stressed. There's so many different ways and
Speaker 1: the next and that can help break that cycle. Just
Speaker 1: eating for the sake of eating because of emotion anyway,
Speaker 1: that mindful check in, deciding seeing what's really happening, and
Speaker 1: then deciding to eat, deciding what you want to eat,
Speaker 1: checking in and checking in with your hunger and fullness.
Speaker 1: We just mentioned checking in with hunger. You can also
Speaker 1: check into socidy levels, and then when you choose your food,
Speaker 1: take a moment to reflect upon it. Just really helps
Speaker 1: deep in the experience of eating. Be taking a moment
Speaker 1: to appreciate the food, where it came from, the sunshine,
Speaker 1: the earth, water carrying hands that were involved in preparing it.
Speaker 1: Really kind of rounding out that experience by taking a
Speaker 1: moment to reflect upon it and then enjoying it with
Speaker 1: all your senses. So when we first began eating mindfully,
Speaker 1: we might beat lower we're really putting on training wheels
Speaker 1: first practice that our workshops often we'll we'll work with
Speaker 1: a raspberry or a raisin, and we're going very slow,
Speaker 1: and people will sometimes find out challenging, and of course
Speaker 1: others will can't believe how amazingly pleasurable be experience was,
Speaker 1: or how satisfied they feel was just a few crasberries
Speaker 1: or reasons by being so present for it and so yes,
Speaker 1: eating mindfully is eating slower, but it doesn't have to
Speaker 1: be really really slow excerciated, and and even by bringing
Speaker 1: our attention more fully in a way it slows down
Speaker 1: the expense. We're just more present, we don't have all
Speaker 1: the other stuff going on, so we can enjoy it more.
Speaker 1: We're more satisfied. We can check in a few times
Speaker 1: during eating to hunger and fulness it really be aware
Speaker 1: of the taste. Sometimes the taste changes goes down, and
Speaker 1: especially with those file these process highly palatable foods. But
Speaker 1: that really good takes doesn't usually last very long. Sometimes
Speaker 1: it can last a long of three bites. One of
Speaker 1: the things I've heard is that it takes like twenty
Speaker 1: minutes for your stomach to signal to your mind that
Speaker 1: you're full and a is that true? And be if
Speaker 1: it's true, what on earth takes that long? I mean,
Speaker 1: it just doesn't seem physiologically like the rest of our
Speaker 1: system moves that slowly. What's so wonderful about mindful eating
Speaker 1: is there's a lot we fund, there's a lot of
Speaker 1: other ways to tune in. We don't have to wait
Speaker 1: twenty minutes, right, we were all brought up with that,
Speaker 1: So you're not going to know for twenty minutes. Well,
Speaker 1: actually I just mentioned taste. Taste can begin to change,
Speaker 1: especially with those highly processed foods, which we don't want
Speaker 1: to eat a lot of anyway, And so that's a
Speaker 1: great indicator and you know, awareness to stop. Maybe I
Speaker 1: don't want to keep eating this, it doesn't even taste
Speaker 1: good anymore. Um. Also just fullness, stomach fulness, the pressure
Speaker 1: on our stomach as the volume of food we're eating.
Speaker 1: That can happen sooner than twenty minutes, for sure, and
Speaker 1: we can start to feel satisfied and for to notice, oh,
Speaker 1: you know, we're starting to feel full. What is moderate
Speaker 1: fullness for me? That physical fullness, and then also just
Speaker 1: tuning into hunger. After a while, our hunger is going
Speaker 1: to go down and we are going to start to
Speaker 1: feel satisfied, and it could be sooner than twenty minutes pausing,
Speaker 1: We're not sure, taking the time to pass while we're
Speaker 1: eating and eating in conversation, letting conversation nourish you while
Speaker 1: you're pausing. Hopefully that's the nursing, not always on who
Speaker 1: you're talking to. That's that's right, where we're putting our attention.
Speaker 1: As going back to that terrible what kind of conversation
Speaker 1: are we intentionally creating? I think that's important noticing if
Speaker 1: we're starting, you know, for example, talking about politics and
Speaker 1: we're starting to not feel very well, maybe we should,
Speaker 1: you know, how about changing the subject to something more
Speaker 1: nourishing while we're eating our meals. It's being really aware,
Speaker 1: you know, again where we're putting our attention while we're eating,
Speaker 1: and in this case were in the food. And then
Speaker 1: also we all eating is generally social, so we want
Speaker 1: to be able to learn that way of shifting being
Speaker 1: in tune with our eating and our bodies, but also
Speaker 1: being able to shift into conversations and being present. So
Speaker 1: so how do we know we have enough? Going back
Speaker 1: to that twenty minutes. So it's these other finers, fine
Speaker 1: tuned ways of checking in and we can pause, and
Speaker 1: then we have a lot of different society ways to
Speaker 1: check into satiety. And some of the research that I
Speaker 1: draw upon my program was done with mb eats, a
Speaker 1: lot of research on that in different satiety cues, such
Speaker 1: an tools such as tuning into taste, but also body satiety,
Speaker 1: and that's probably more related to this twenty minute. As
Speaker 1: the food starts to digect in the body, you start
Speaker 1: to feel this sense of overall satiety, and so that
Speaker 1: pausing is helpful because that can stick in more if
Speaker 1: we're not sure we're hungry or not. Yeah, one of
Speaker 1: the things I've heard and has been really helpful for
Speaker 1: me with that is just to set your fork down
Speaker 1: between bites. Is a very simple sort of at least
Speaker 1: a rule of thumb for me. That helped me to
Speaker 1: slow down a little bit. Although people always accuse me
Speaker 1: of being the slowest eater on the planet as it is,
Speaker 1: so I may not need the help as much, but
Speaker 1: I do find that to be a helpful thing. Yes,
Speaker 1: it is and right, and not only setting our fork down,
Speaker 1: but when we do that, really tuning into the taste
Speaker 1: and the pleasure of the food. If we're still eating it,
Speaker 1: you know we're still chewing it, but yeah, that's putting
Speaker 1: down the forks. What's a great behavioral thing to do.
Speaker 1: The other thing that you recommend at one point in
Speaker 1: the book is make one meal or snack a day
Speaker 1: a silent one so that you can really practice and
Speaker 1: get better at the basic mindful eating practice. Yes, yes,
Speaker 1: so making it a practice, just like many of us
Speaker 1: will have a regular meditation practice and have a regular
Speaker 1: time to do that, which, by the way, I find
Speaker 1: it really help inform the mindful eating practice. Makes it
Speaker 1: easier and makes it easier to remember to pause during
Speaker 1: the day to check in what do I really need here?
Speaker 1: What's really happening? And what do I need to nourish with?
Speaker 1: What do I need to see? If you're enjoying this conversation,
Speaker 1: I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but
Speaker 1: we're nearing the end of it. I wish you could
Speaker 1: keep listening once the episode ends. Well, I've got some
Speaker 1: good news too, you can. The interview continues over at
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Speaker 1: the interview, Let's spend a minute now and talk about
Speaker 1: some of the other bodies. So the basic idea, I think, well,
Speaker 1: I'll just read what you say and then I don't
Speaker 1: have to interpret it. When our mind, body, and spirit
Speaker 1: are fully nourished, we can enjoy and savor food for
Speaker 1: its own sake. We no longer need to rely on
Speaker 1: food to substitute for other sources of nourishment. So what
Speaker 1: are Let's maybe not go through all eight, but let's
Speaker 1: pick a couple of the other eight bodies as you
Speaker 1: call them, the other parts of ourselves that we need
Speaker 1: to nourish, and that if we're doing that, we have
Speaker 1: less need to rely on food to try and cover
Speaker 1: all those areas. Emotional nourishment is definitely one that is
Speaker 1: great to go food, just so the the listeners know,
Speaker 1: maybe briefly I can mention what those eight bodies are. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So the first is physical nourishment, which we're all very
Speaker 1: familiar with. Food and water and sleep at movement exercise. Um,
Speaker 1: but we don't often think about necessarily other forms of
Speaker 1: nourishment that we really need to thrive and that make
Speaker 1: us uniquely human. So we've got that we have emotional nourishment,
Speaker 1: psychological nourishment, social social realm is really important, intellectual nourishment,
Speaker 1: creative nourishment, spiritual nourishment, and what I call worldly nourishment,
Speaker 1: which is being in touch with what we really love,
Speaker 1: what our passion is, our our sense of purpose, actually
Speaker 1: bring that into the world and can make a meaningful
Speaker 1: contribution that is very nourishing. And if we're not doing that,
Speaker 1: that can be source as frustration and can certainly there
Speaker 1: are many people that are frustrated and that committeed to overeating.
Speaker 1: Really any of these bodies where we're not fully nourished
Speaker 1: can create those feelings a frustration or anger, sadness, which
Speaker 1: if we're emotional leaders or stress leaders, that food may
Speaker 1: be that way of coping. So the more that we
Speaker 1: can really nourish what we need in each of those areas.
Speaker 1: So the last chapter is about getting in touch with
Speaker 1: your own unique purpose and contribution, which could be anything
Speaker 1: from no raising a beautiful, healthy family to starting a
Speaker 1: global nonprofit, or it could be both. An So emotional
Speaker 1: nourishment is a really key one, and I've mentioned some
Speaker 1: of those qualities earlier. How do we work with us
Speaker 1: challenging emotions and with mindfulness? We recognize that mindful awareness
Speaker 1: that they come and go. They can feel like they're
Speaker 1: big and huge, huge and transient and they don't change,
Speaker 1: but they actually do. How can we meet uncomfortable feelings
Speaker 1: discomfort with mindfulness, steady attention. Note there's steps just all
Speaker 1: kinds of in this book, different processes for working with emotions.
Speaker 1: There's something called the allowed process where we can recognize
Speaker 1: and greet the emotion, meet it with kindness, even bring
Speaker 1: in there's a process where we work with craving and
Speaker 1: it works with difficult emotions, where we bring in loving kindness,
Speaker 1: sense of kindness and love. We can caltivate that from
Speaker 1: the inside out and surround the difficult feeling craving with
Speaker 1: loving kindness and develop it and it really begins to shift.
Speaker 1: We're actually beginning the nerves wished by loving kindness of
Speaker 1: craving or difficult emotions shifts in a way that it's
Speaker 1: no longer have a strong hold over us, and then
Speaker 1: we can make what that nourishing choice is for us.
Speaker 1: We can make a choice, if it's a food choice,
Speaker 1: what would be nourishing in that moment? We can also
Speaker 1: with mindfulness we can make choice. It doesn't mean, you know,
Speaker 1: we we get away from good foods and bad foods,
Speaker 1: by the way, which is a source of stress for
Speaker 1: so many. I'd like to use all these foods and
Speaker 1: sometimes food So what are those really helping nourishing foods
Speaker 1: that you would like to include in your diet at
Speaker 1: all times? I think mine always is pizza cream. I
Speaker 1: know what you mean. I'm speaking for Chris. The listeners
Speaker 1: know who Chris is. He's he's got problems with his eating.
Speaker 1: I'm kidding. So well, let's put those in this sometimes
Speaker 1: food categories. Sometimes, but to eat them with mindful delight
Speaker 1: and zest and uh you know when when you choose
Speaker 1: to eat your sometimes food. So whatever they are, and
Speaker 1: and yes, generally when I talk about that, those are
Speaker 1: the foods that may be less helpful, but still being
Speaker 1: able to eat them because you consciously chosen to eat them,
Speaker 1: you're mindful. They're not something that are always part of
Speaker 1: the diet. Um to with enjoyment with all your senses,
Speaker 1: so let it nourish you. And actually, when we're not
Speaker 1: stressed about what we're eating, judging being agitated, we die
Speaker 1: just better, I think, can actually get more nutrients from
Speaker 1: the food. So it really serves us to be able
Speaker 1: to approach approach our food in this way. And after all,
Speaker 1: now we have enough stress in life and having this
Speaker 1: low level stress around to it and food choices and
Speaker 1: for some people much bigger it's not low levels, this
Speaker 1: approach can start to help to really really how him
Speaker 1: that down and be able to make choices without guilt,
Speaker 1: feeling more free and so choosing. So I don't know
Speaker 1: who Chris is, but if he wants going back to intention,
Speaker 1: if he wants to bring in more of the what
Speaker 1: is generally considered the health forces, no whole food, more
Speaker 1: plant based diet, and looking at what what does he love,
Speaker 1: what is delicious, it's okay to bring him in here
Speaker 1: and beginning to maybe expand those again if that is
Speaker 1: his intention and that what he wants to do. Anyway,
Speaker 1: I think most people another approach here with this book
Speaker 1: is starting with where you're at, where is your eating at,
Speaker 1: and what do you want to make what shifts and changes?
Speaker 1: What's your intention? Why do you want to do that?
Speaker 1: And everybody comes in with their different and intentions, but
Speaker 1: generally there is to be more healthy. And then it
Speaker 1: might be tied to UM cause there's individual needs of
Speaker 1: purpocens and health needs, and then tied to bigger values.
Speaker 1: Maybe used to have energy to do this big new
Speaker 1: project that I feel really passionate about and want to
Speaker 1: make a difference about, you know, in the world. And
Speaker 1: I want to be the best that I can be
Speaker 1: and I want to be around for a while. Right.
Speaker 1: One of the things you mentioned a couple of minutes
Speaker 1: ago was craving, and I wanted to talk about a
Speaker 1: concept in the book. I've seen it a couple of
Speaker 1: places now UM called surfing the urge. Can you talk
Speaker 1: through what that means and how you do it? Sure? So,
Speaker 1: surfing the urge is that recognition and that that term
Speaker 1: was first coined by Alan Marlatt, who developed mindfulness based
Speaker 1: relapse prevention, which is working with mindfulness and addictions, and
Speaker 1: that recognition that feelings, in particular cravings have their own life.
Speaker 1: They be into crests, they get bigger like a wave,
Speaker 1: and then they go down, so being able to be
Speaker 1: mindfully present when that urge arises, that craving without giving
Speaker 1: into it, without immediately reacting, and having that whatever it is,
Speaker 1: or that chocolate bar, that kind of ice cream, It
Speaker 1: could be taken a few breaths, so you're getting yourself
Speaker 1: more present. One of the first foundations of first foundation
Speaker 1: of mindfulness is bringing attention to body and breath. It
Speaker 1: helps us get present, so breath is a great guide.
Speaker 1: And and then noticing that feeling as it comes, that
Speaker 1: crazing and we can get really curious about it. Curiosity
Speaker 1: is helpful. The the shape of it, where is it
Speaker 1: in the body, does it feel like, and just a
Speaker 1: bare sensation of it, and just that curious inquiry about
Speaker 1: it begins to lessen the intensity and the whole that
Speaker 1: has overass our identification with it, and it starts to
Speaker 1: go down. And then we have Faith's mindful face to
Speaker 1: really choose what we want, what we're going to do.
Speaker 1: So I developed this process. I have a craving practice.
Speaker 1: It actually came to me in one of my workshops
Speaker 1: when I was looking with someone who had was talking
Speaker 1: about her strong, strong cravings and how they were running
Speaker 1: her life. And I asked her kind of guided her
Speaker 1: into a mindful space bringing awareness to the sensation of craving.
Speaker 1: I had her visualize the food first that she craved
Speaker 1: and really feel that feeling. Get that feeling of craving in,
Speaker 1: and then begin to imagine the sense of loving kindness practice.
Speaker 1: And there's there's full practice. That's been my book too.
Speaker 1: How do we eliicit loving kindness practice? It's a traditional
Speaker 1: Buddhist practice. It's incorporated and just so many of the
Speaker 1: mindfulness programs these days that we have in medical centers
Speaker 1: and schools and corporations um the community, the basic loving
Speaker 1: kindness practice, this one we incorporate into the actual craving
Speaker 1: practice and envelop the craving and loving kindness. And it's
Speaker 1: did I actually mentioned it a little bit earlier, So
Speaker 1: this is more than just a surfing the urge, but
Speaker 1: we're actually bringing in loving kindness. And what most people
Speaker 1: discover first of all the craving lessons greatly that space
Speaker 1: that is created is so welcome and new for so
Speaker 1: many people want to experience that. And then what happens
Speaker 1: is kind of really very powerful and magic for some
Speaker 1: people when they realized that what they were wanting was love,
Speaker 1: the love that they were experiencing from doing this practice,
Speaker 1: that's what they were wanting from the food. And sure
Speaker 1: some of this we've you know, we've read about that,
Speaker 1: we heard about that um that to really experience it
Speaker 1: from the inside out and to be able to give
Speaker 1: yourself that love and that comfort and that's love that
Speaker 1: maybe you didn't get when you were little, you got
Speaker 1: I can come instead. To be able to give that
Speaker 1: to yourself and the inside out is an amazing powerful
Speaker 1: skill and tool that is transforming life, transformative. So food
Speaker 1: no longer used to run you, but you can learn
Speaker 1: to nourish yourself with loving kindness, with with gratitude, with compassion.
Speaker 1: So I mentioned these qualities again because they are so powerful,
Speaker 1: you know, in my own life, the light and my
Speaker 1: client's life. It's so we need more, you know, this
Speaker 1: world so emotional nourishment. Going back to that chapter, it
Speaker 1: is still with practices, mindful practices, how to nourish from
Speaker 1: the inside out and navigate it's difficult terrain that can
Speaker 1: arise as emotions, but not push them away because that
Speaker 1: creates more energy, it makes them stronger. That is such
Speaker 1: a true statement. I find it more and more true
Speaker 1: in my case about resistance. Well, Andrea, thank you so
Speaker 1: much for taking the time to come on the show.
Speaker 1: I've really enjoyed this conversation. I think there's lots of
Speaker 1: great things in here for people who are looking to
Speaker 1: change their relationship to food. So again, thanks so much
Speaker 1: for coming on. The book is called Well Nourished, Mindful
Speaker 1: Practices to Heal your relationship with food, feed your whole self,
Speaker 1: and end overeating. And in the show notes we will
Speaker 1: have links to Andrea's book, to her website and her
Speaker 1: social media presences, and you can find out more about
Speaker 1: her there. So thanks so much for coming on, Thanks
Speaker 1: so much for having me. Okay, take care bye. If
Speaker 1: what you just heard was helpful to you, please consider
Speaker 1: making a donation to the One you Feed podcast. Head
Speaker 1: over to one you Feed dot net slash support