I am thankful for:
- The truth
- Diet Coke
- My brother who goes all Irish thug when I’m being threatened by a 22-year-old chicky with a potty mouth at our soccer game.
- My health and my family’s health
- Another day
- My old friendships and my new ones, too
- Eye lash extensions
- The rain, and the sunny day after
- God not sending a lightening bolt to the liar sitting across from me yesterday in a meeting.
- Being able to cross off something on my to do list
- Writers and writing
- David and his incessant camera. Because of him I have a photo history of our lives together.
- A clean house
- The heater at my feet
- A sense of humor
- A good story
- Haight-Ashbury Hippie Hemp Soap and Cedar & Sage Lotion from Angel Fire, New Mexico
- Naps
- Kelly, my 19-year-old, still borrowing my clothes. I know I’ve gotten too old when she’ll stop.
- Turquoise
What are you thankful for?
It took a while to understand; the beauty of just letting go (Let Him Fly, Patty Griffin) 
Here are the ways I know Jack is leaving me.
- Last week while I was walking him to his class, his friend Baden came up to him and said, “Have you seen the cartoon ‘Misadventures’?” Jack turned around with a roll of his eyes to look at me and said, “Yeah, that cartoon is the best. My mom doesn’t understand it. She doesn’t like it.” I watched as Jack and Baden leaned into each other laughing at the fact I didn’t get it. In that moment, I wanted to.
- Kelly told Jack today, “You’re voice is getting deeper.” Jack said, “No, duh, I’m growing up.”
- He wants to get the last word.
- His adult teeth are too big for his small mouth. He now wears a retainer making him look older than his eight years.
- He’s gotten only orange cards for his good behavior. Don’t get me wrong this is wonderful news considering the three years before where he went to the principal’s office and got yellow cards or unsmiling faces. But this means he’s maturing.
- He’s beginning to prefer his David’s company compared to mine. Sorry I don’t like war movies, belching and talking bodily functions. No, really I am.
- He wears size ten jeans.
- His wit has turned to sarcasm.
- He’s losing his jelly belly, his baby fat.
What choice do I have? I’m going to let him fly.
Last week I gave a talk at the ACE Symposium on Eating & The Stress Connection. When I told the room full of participants to stand if they had ever been an emotional eater, had an episode of emotional eating or had a “friend” that was an emotional eater, every one stood.
This doesn’t surprise me at all. I think eating is 90% emotional and 10% fuel. I have no hard data on this but I’ve been eating for 48 years now and this is my field of expertise. Besides I have enough anecdotal evidence to believe this to be true.
Also, there is the fact we are hard wired for emotional eating. Back in the caveman days, we hunted or were hunted. Fight or flight was the way of the world. When we are in this mode, our adrenalin kicked in and then cortisol was released which made us crave energy. Fast forward a million years later and we have ourselves a situation. See we’re not fighting dinosaurs anymore. We are no longer required to run away from a T-Rex or a Saber Tooth Tiger. Instead we have the dinosaurs and tigers inside our brain. How am I going to pay the mortgage? What am I going to do about Johnny? Why isn’t the traffic moving? I’m going to be late. When we are stressed over these things, guess what? Cortisol is released and we crave sugar (aka energy).
Besides cortisol cravings, there are other triggers that cause us to overeat.
- Social eating
- Nervous energy
- Childhood habits
- Mindless Eating
- Self-sabotaging thoughts
- Hunger and restriction
I have a solution.
If “stop it” doesn’t work, then I have some other solutions.
- Keep a food diary for three days. Look over what you wrote. What are those times or places where you overeat? Be mindful of these times and continue to keep track of what you eat, even writing it down before you eat it. This practice will make you more aware of what and how much you’re eating.
- Be mindful. Go Zen and turn off the TV, sit at a table and focus on your food.
- Chew and drink every bite and sip of something.
- Look at the food label before you eat it. Is it worth eating a 300 calorie candy bar when it took you three hours of exercise to burn off the last candy bar?
- Are you alone when you overeat? Don’t be. Or call someone. There’s no shame in the game. If you need help to prevent overeating, then ask for it.
- Recharge. Go for a walk. Meditate. Breathe!
- Instead of simple sugars, eat complex carbohydrates like fruits and vegetables or whole grains. These will fulfill the sugar craving and fill you up more nutritionally.
Finally, always ask yourself before you have the urge to binge. “Am I hungry?” Think of your “stomach” as a fuel tank. Starving is 1 and 10 is gorged. You want to be at a 4. Just asking yourself this question, can connect your mind with your body and stop the madness of overeating.
I suppose leadership at one time meant muscles; but today it means getting along with people. Mohandas Gandhi
I’m at an impasse. Do I choose muscles or getting along with people to lead? What would you do?
I will follow you. Will you follow me?
Monday, October 24, 2011, is National Food Day: It’s Time to Eat Real, America! Why do we need to be reminded to eat real, fresh, locally grown food? Because for the most part we’re not doing it. Don’t blame yourself. There are many reasons we don’t.
- Twinkies are cheaper than carrots.We’ve grown accustomed to buying cheap food. The food that is bad for us like high fructose corn syrup is subsidized by the government, and it’s making us sick.
2. We don’t have as much access to fresh, locally grown food as we should. Example: San Diego has the most small farms in the Country and yet the vast majority of the food grown on these farms go to L.A. only to be shipped back to us.
3. We have lost our connection to the land, to growing food. Our lives are too busy with jobs, obligations, extracurricular activities, running from here to there to plant a seed, nourish a plant, or to even find out the story of our food.
The list can go on. The bad news is our food system is broken. The good news is each and every one of us can do something to heal it. Am I talking about marching to the White House and demand the President start subsidizing carrots, oranges, spinach, etc. instead of corn, rice, soybeans, and wheat? Should you grow dreadlocks, grow out your armpit hair, move to a commune and live off the land? Of course not, unless these are the things you want to do.
I really don’t have anything against Twinkies. I have a problem with the food that nourishes us being more expensive and harder to get than said Twinkie.
Here’s a short list of things you can do to change this.
- Plant a seed or a starter. I’m not saying create a farm. But why not have a herb garden? I’ve started a container garden. It’s all I can commit to. I have tomatoes, basil, thyme, strawberries, rosemary. I’m going to plant celery, peppers, and spinach.
- Buy local. You can find local produce at your farmers’ market. Grocery stores and markets will claim some of their produce is local but this can mean up that the food was shipped up to 150 miles away.
- Go to a farm to table restaurant. These are restaurants where if you asked the owner, chef, waitstaff, “Where does the ingredients for the Chicken/Fennel Sausage Flatbread Pizza come from?” They’d be able to tell you the story.
- Vote with your fork. We have the opportunity to do this three times a day.
“Michelle, I don’t have the time to do any of these things,” you say. It’s a statement I made to one of the growers at the New Roots Urban Farm.
“Do you have time to eat?” he said. “Then you have time to plant and to find out where your food is coming from.”
“What if people don’t have the money to spend on locally grown food?” I asked. “Fast food is cheaper.”
“You’re right. I can go right now and get a taco for ninety-nine cents,” he said. “But when you’re laying sick in your bed from eating too much cheap food, when you have to pay for a whole bunch of medications, don’t you think paying more for good food today will pay off in the long run?”
I do. Don’t you?
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