Too Much On Our Plates…

We’ve all heard this phrase before (or the related expression “my plate is too full”). Mostly we’re referring here not to our literal plate, though it’s often the case that indeed, we do have too much to eat. I’ll come back to the food later; for now, I’d like to focus on the metaphor.

When we say we have “too much on our plates”, we really mean that we are inundated, often drowning, in our responsibilities and obligations: work, family, household, community, relationships, etc. We simply can’t handle one more thing; there is literally no more space, no more energy to spare. We’re overworked and overwhelmed, and for many of us, this leads to overeating!

I first heard this idea several years back from Hale Sofia Schatz. If you’ve not read her excellent book If the Buddha Came to Dinner: How to Nourish Your Body and Awaken Your Spirit I highly suggest you do so soon. Reading the book and participating in a cleanse with Hale was transformative for me personally and professionally. She’s one of those gentle, soft spoken powerhouse women. Check her our at http://www.heartofnourishment.com/

Anyway, recently this idea of too much on our plates came around again when I stumbled upon the website of Dr. Melissa McCreery. Dr. McCreery specializes in emotional eating and offers solutions for women “struggling with food, weight, and overwhelm”. Last week I listened to a free teleseminar entitled “3 Emotional Eating Triggers You May be Overlooking”. Wow. Powerful stuff. You can visit her site www.toomuchonherplate.com and dowload the teleseminar. Dr. McCreery specializes in emotional eating and to get access to the teleseminar and other free goodies, but I’ll summarize the 3 main points here.

According to Dr. McCreery, the three things that trigger many of us to overeat are:
1. perfectionism
2. anger
3. lack of sleep
Allow me to elaborate just a little bit on each of these three triggers.

Perfectionism
Perfectionism is seeing things in “black and white”. We’re either good enough, or we’re awful. We’re eating really well (“being good”), or we’re grabbing the leftovers off our kids’ plates and scarfing sweets late at night. When we’re in perfectionist mode, we are judging ourselves all the time, and we don’t allow ourselves to experience our innate goodness. This rigid view can keep us stuck from making lasting changes in our eating and our lives. Her solution for moving beyond perfectionism? “Acknowledge it, look for it, label it, and start reminding yourself that it is not helpful.” Perfectionism is not a virtue, and there is no such thing as a “perfect diet”!!

Anger
We’re not speaking here about rage; but rather the low-level, insiduous irritation, frustration, sense of unfairness, or anxiety that many of us experience on a daily basis. We’re often uncomfortable with these feelings, and unsure of how to process them. So, we use to food to soothe ourselves; we literally swallow our anger! If we learn to cope with and express our anger directly and with compassion and kindness, then we won’t need to turn to food.

Lack of Sleep
Wow. As someone who has been fairly consistently sleep deprived for over a decade, this one blew me away! According to Dr. McCreery, sleep deprivation (which she defines as 5 hours of sleep or less a night) contributes to us being less effective, less focused, more irritable, more stressed, more overwhelmed, more hungry and weighing more!! Simply put, lack of sleep drives hunger. When we’re tired, we often turn to unhealthy foods to give us energy, lift our mood, or simply keep us awake!

Sleep deprivation causes a decrease in levels of the hormone leptin, which tells us we are full, and increases levels of a hormone called grayling, which tells us to eat. Not only that, sleep deprivation can predispose us to gain weight by affecting our metabolism, regardless of what or how much we are eating. Startling facts, indeed. But the resolution is simple: getting 7 ½ to 8 hours of sleep a night can help us transform our relationship with food permanently.

Which one of these 3 emotional eating triggers affects you the most? I’d love to hear about your experiences, your goals, and your successes.

To close, a quote from If the Buddha Came to Dinner:

Not only are our plates to full, our bodies are too full, our houses and calendars and just about everything else in our loves are too full…This excess creates confusion. Anytime there’s excess, we can’t think straight, feel straight, or know what kind of nourishment we need to receive from moment to moment. To receive nourishment, we need to make space, and making space means perpetually letting go of that which is no longer necessary.” Hale Sofia Schatz

What can you let go of right now??

The Fascinating Practice of Mindful Eating

As a health counselor, I’m provided a window in to how people feed themselves and their families. While my clients are diverse, there are commonalities that unite them. Most are women: daughters with food histories passed down from their families (usually mothers), wives who are often responsible for most of the household cooking (minus those lucky ones whose husbands love to cook), and mothers tasked with providing food and nourishment all day, every day. So I see a lot of patterns and trends, and in general get a pretty good picture of what’s going on with people around their food. Putting the nutritional aspect of food aside for a moment here, one thing that strikes me is how many of us, myself included, have unconscious food habits. Allow me to explain.

Few things can be as challenging as trying to make changes in the way that you eat. Food is always available and it’s so easy to reach for food or to overeat without really knowing why. Most people trying to be more conscious about their food choices have experienced a disconnect between intention and reality. How many of us have started the day with good intentions (eat more veggies, smaller portions, drink more water-you name it) only to discover at the end of the day that we’ve eaten more than we wanted, binged on junk food, or picked away at the birthday cake someone brought into the office? Turning to food when we are stressed or overtired or even bored can be an automatic response that happens before we’re even fully aware that we’re doing it.

The best way to break this cycle is to eat mindfully. It amazes me how many people multitask when they eat. When is the last time that you were fully present with the food you were eating? Fully present means that the TV wasn’t on and you didn’t have a book or a computer in front of you. You weren’t working or making lists of things to do. You weren’t driving somewhere or talking on your cell phone. When is the last time that you were fully aware—with all your senses—of each bite that you put into your mouth? When you truly savored every last morsel? Probably it was a long time ago.
Mindful eating can be the key to breaking old habits with food and creating new ones. Because we eat every day, we’ve plenty of opportunities to refine this practice. And you can get started almost instantly—as soon as you sit down to your next meal.

The Fascinating Practice of Mindful Eating. Take a deep breath or two and allow yourself to notice what sensations are present for you. Really notice. You may have gone hours without paying attention. What’s on your mind? What emotions are you experiencing? How does your body feel? Are you tense or relaxed? How hungry are you? Where do you feel it in your body?
Put your food on a plate and sit down somewhere where you can enjoy your food without being distracted. Take a few more deep breaths. Give thanks and bless your food.

Eat slowly and chew thoughtfully, fully experiencing every morsel of your food. Savor it. Use all your senses. Slow down. Notice your food before you put it into your mouth. Smell it. Really taste it. Stop and consider what you taste. Put your fork down between bites and breathe some more. Take your time. Begin to recognize signs of satiety; that you’ve eaten enough. Give thanks, again, for your nourishment.

Be aware of how it feels to slow down and savor. You might be surprised at emotions that come up. Some people discover that they’ve developed a pattern of eating mindlessly in order to numb their thoughts and feelings. Ouch. You might feel bored, or even impatient and irritated by eating more slowly. What’s truly fascinating is that as you practice mindful eating, you are likely to notice things about your eating and your relationship with food that aren’t really about the food at all.

It’s not necessary (or, I fully realize, realistic) to practice mindful eating every single time you eat, but it can be a very worthwhile to engage in regularly. When we shine light on things we do unconsciously, transformation occurs. Please share your thoughts and experiences with this one. We all have a lot to learn!