Local August

Last night I had the opportunity to attend a lecture presented by Arun Gandhi, grandson of Gandhi.  This was an experience that I know will alter the path of my life.  He related stories and lessons from his formative years living with Gandhi.  It was truly fascinating.

What struck me most was right at the beginning of the lecture, when he spoke of “grandfather and grandmother.”  Before I arrived, I had it in my head that I was going to listen to Gandhi’s grandson speak about Gandhi.  

But who Gandhi was didn’t really hit me until I heard him say “grandfather.”  It startled me.  Gandhi was a real person.  He had a family.  He’s no different than you or me.  He’s not a mythical character, or a god.  He didn’t have superhuman powers.  He was a man that took the opportunity to do great things with his life and inspire others.

As his grandson spoke, he told us how Gandhi was focused on climbing to be better.  Every day he tried to be a better person than he was the day before.  A wonderful message, today I am going to be better than I was yesterday, I don’t have to be the best human being, but I should strive to be better.  It’s about the climb.  Gandhi reached his level of dedication to a life of non-violence one day at a time.

As Gandhi said, and as his grandson reminded me, “Be the change you want to see in the world.”  I know I am going to try.

I hate to admit it, but I’ve been watching a lot of TV lately.  Compared to an average American, I’m probably not watching that much, but it feel like it’s a lot.  The combination of football season and having the TV on while sewing my excessively complicated Halloween costume has added what I feel is an unnecessary amount of extra TV into my life.

But I’m learning a lot.  Really – I know that Froot Loops have 3 grams of fiber and are made with whole grains.  Eating Cheerios is going to lower my cholesterol.  The fine folks at Fiber One have taught me that fiber is supposed to taste bad (unless you eat their products).

Ok – so that’s not really what I’m learning.  What I’m learning is that as a population, we are “learning“ about nutrition from commercials.  Commercials that are made by people who want us to buy their products. 

Fiber and whole grains are such a buzz words these days that of course the people at Kellogg’s are going to boast that Froot Loops have these miracle ingredients.  They are not going to bother to mention that the number one ingredient is sugar. 

Kelloggs isn’t all bad with their advertising.  They got it a little more accurate with Pop Tarts.  Their current campaign says, “Pop Tarts are made for fun.”  They certainly aren’t made for nutrition.

I have been very remiss about posting blogs lately. It makes me sad, as I was so dedicated to it, and really enjoyed the experience of putting my thoughts into words.

It’s not that I haven’t written, I’ve had a lot of ideas for posts, and I start writing them, but they either feel like I’ve got a half baked idea, or I’ve already written about that same thing. (Maybe I don’t always have to write about wellness) I have 9 started posts. I am going to dedicate myself to finishing them… and if they’re not perfect, that’s ok to. It’s probably a good lesson for me to learn, that perfection is not important.

Another good lesson I am relearning is about habits. Missing one day writing makes it so easy to skip the next day, which makes it easy to miss a week, or two. I feel this is the same with exercise and eating healthy. Of course it’s the same when I do exercise and eat healthy. I crave more of it. I believe we are creatures of habit.

How fantastic is that? Doing something just once can put you on a whole new path. It has to start that way, it’s impossible for it not to. The scary thing is, it’s true for good habits and bad habits. And certainly my bad habit of not finishing things is creeping in. How did I let myself start 9 posts and never bother to finish them?

I can’t worry about the last few weeks. I have today. Today I am going to rededicate myself to this blog. Also I am going to give myself permission to write, and not have it be perfect.

And if you don’t see a post for a few days, a reminder from my friends to get back on track would be helpful too!

My sister reported that last night after eating two helpings of chili my 21 month old nephew refused to eat apple crisp for dessert.  Incidentally my sister and her husband both had the dessert.  And I would have too, apple crisp is delicious!  The point here is, the little guy knew he was full, and stopped eating.  Why should he cram more food into his belly? He probably realizes that will make him feel uncomfortable and tired.

To play devil’s advocate, maybe my sister and her husband ate their dinner reserving some room because they knew that apple crisp was on its way.  But then again, maybe not, I’m sure the chili was delicious too.

I think we can learn a lot from babies (I should say toddlers, he’s growing up so quickly).  Eat when you’re hungry.  I’m not claiming that it’s easy, with dessert staring you in the eye, but the apple crisp will wait.  It’s a lot easier for my nephew as he doesn’t know what he’s missing out on when he refuses dessert.  Unfortunately as he has more experiences with food, he’ll learn that desserts are fantastically delicious treats and be in the same boat as the rest of us.

It’s amazing how his instincts guide him in healthy eating habits.  Of course he doesn’t have it all figured out… he tried to eat paper on Sunday.

On Thursday last week I got sick.  It was frustrating, because I’m so focused on wellness and I became unwell.  My frustration was coupled by the fact that I had already committed to a yoga workshop for the weekend.  3 hours Friday night and 5 hours on Saturday and Sunday.  How was I going to manage that if I was sick?

Friday I woke up feeling worse, and ended up leaving work at noon because I was in desperate need of a nap.  My body ached, my head felt like it was in a vice, and I couldn’t stop coughing.  In short I was miserable.  Once home, I headed straight for bed, but couldn’t fall asleep because of the pounding headache.

As I’ve learned more about nutrition, I’ve become convinced that we can restore our bodies naturally, and modern medicine is not always the answer.  So there I was with a raging headache, agonizing with the thought of putting chemicals in my body.  With only a few hours before the expensive workshop I wavered on what my best option was for about a half hour.  Chemicals?  No chemicals?

Finally I decided that I was never going to fall asleep if I didn’t take some medicine.  As soon as the Advil took effect I fell asleep, slept for nearly 4 hours and woke up feeling significantly better.  I was still sick, coughing and stuffed up, but the improvement over such a short time was remarkable.  I still feel a little bit like I failed myself by taking the Advil, but at the same time had I not taken it, I would have had to sacrifice the yoga workshop.

I had a great time at the workshop, I learned a lot, used muscles I’m not aware I had and improved my yoga practice.  In this case the benefits of one small dose of Advil clearly outweighed any negative side effects.

Weeks ago while discussing my breakthrough in understanding that hunger is the body’s signal for nutrients not calories, I said to my wellness coach, “I’m almost embarrassed to admit it.  It’s so obvious.  Eating fruits and vegetables, it’s so easy.”

Without missing a beat she corrected me.  “It’s simple.  It’s not easy.” 

She’s right, but I don’t like it.  I want easy.  I’m ready for easy.

I have the knowledge.  I have the desire.  Why am  I still battling myself when I have to make a food choice?  It’s not every time.  Some things are really easy.  Breakfast is easy for me, I wake up hungry and waiting to eat until after I’ve left home is not an option.  I’m much more interested in fruit for breakfast rather than sugar cereal or donut anyway.

But as soon as I walk out the door, choices are everywhere.  When I bring my lunch to work there are still coworkers that invite me to go to lunch with them.  I know what I brought for myself is better.  It’s so simple, and still I make bad choices.  Maybe I’m interested in the company.

When the afternoon cravings hit, I can eat the apple I brought, or opt for the tasteless banana mini muffins my coworker brought in.  (At least when I made that bad choice I threw it away after one bite.)

On my way home from work I start thinking about dinner, what I’m going to have for dinner, and how long it’s going to take to cook that dinner.  And quickly stopping and picking something up sounds so much faster.  So much easier.

It gets tiring some days, thinking of food choices.  And it’s scary, because I have worked really hard to get where I am, and I know if I’m not careful all my strides could go away.  I just want it to be natural.  I just want it to be second nature.   And maybe one day it will be easy.  For now, it’s an awful lot of work.

As a benefit, the company I work for provides a wellness coach who comes in once a week to give employees advice about health related issues.  The coach can help you lose weight, quit smoking, sleep better, or whatever other problem you may be dealing with. 

The wellness coaching idea really is a brilliant one.  By giving people quality advice to prevent illness, we can keep health care costs down.  Our wellness coach is highly educated, patient and has a great balance of tough love and compassion when talking to people about making changes in their life.  She has an amazing talent of finding a way people can make just one small change to help them achieve their wellness goals.

Lately I have been given a fair amount of grief about how I am utilizing our wellness coach at work.  Meaning some people feel that I monopolize her time.  This may or may not be true.  When I stop by to visit her, she’s sitting alone waiting for people to stop by.  How am I monopolizing her time if I’m there when other people aren’t utilizing her services?  How am I monopolizing her time if there are people in my office who have no interest in wellness? 

I have a lot of interest in wellness.  And I’m using the information she provides wisely.  In the time we’ve had a wellness coach at work I’ve have lost 26 pounds.  I’ve lowered my blood pressure.  I’ve rehabilitated a sprained ankle.  Not to mention I’ve completely revolutionized the way I think about food.  I’m keeping myself out of the doctor’s office and at work.  This is a good thing.

Wellness coaching is working for me.  Shouldn’t I be able to check in with her weekly and not be given a hard time about it?  But, in order to keep people (who I’m starting to think are just jealous) from complaining again I didn’t check in with her last week.  This was probably a bad choice. 

1. I was irritated all morning that I was missing out on valuable information. 
2. I let other people control me.
3. The complainers probably didn’t visit with her either.

Yesterday I was sitting at a “no right on red” light waiting impatiently to make my right hand turn.  Finally as the light changed to green, I started to lift my foot off the brake, and out of nowhere I sneezed.  Not a dainty little “achoo,” but a huge sneeze, one of those tense-up-your-whole-body sneezes which resulted in my firmly putting my foot back on the brake.  As I recovered and opened my eyes, I saw a black SUV right in front of me, clearly running its red light.

As I watched it fly by, I couldn’t help but imagine my car crumpling as the guy who couldn’t be bothered to follow traffic laws crashed into the side of my car.  The thoughts paralyzed me for a moment.  What if I had not sneezed at that perfect moment?  Had I proceeded when the light turned green, I surely would have been hit by that SUV. 

This experience really made me think about how one action can prevent others.  In this case sneezing saved my life.  (OK, maybe that’s a little dramatic, but he was going very fast.)  In this case I didn’t purposefully do anything to prevent my demise, but it made me think of the choices I can make to do so.  When I make a choice to eat fruit salad versus French fries, maybe I am preventing a heart attack.  When I make a choice to go to yoga rather than watch tv, maybe I am keeping myself strong enough to remain unharmed from a slip on the ice this winter.

Do I know that these actions are preventing illness and injury?  No, but so far, just like the sneeze that saved my life, it seems to be working.

A few weeks ago I heard someone say that the human body had design flaws.  To my dismay, the conversation shifted before I got a chance to ask exactly what these flaws were.  But the concept of the human body having design flaws stuck with me, and I’ve been keeping my eyes out for them.  Not flaws like the inability to fly or x-ray vision, but something that kept us from performing optimally.

Today I identified one of these design flaws, our bodies do not communicate hunger properly.  The last few days I have been hungry, I eat and I’m still hungry.  Over the last few months I have learned (and learned again) that hunger is the body’s way of announcing it is low on nutrients, not that the stomach is empty. 

But the signal is always the same.  Every time you’re hungry it’s the same ache in your stomach.  Needing Vitamin B12 is the same hunger as needing calcium.

Wouldn’t it be nice if hunger differentiated itself?

• “Hey, I need some potassium, can you please go eat a banana?”
• “Uh, I’m getting low on iron, how about a little parsley tonight?”

Not so lucky.  Our bodies are designed with a “one signal fits all nutrient deficiencies” philosophy.  Which I think is why I can’t stop eating the last few days.  I’m trying to overcome this flaw by eating a wide variety of foods and hoping that I will magically hit the missing nutrient.  Thus far I’ve been unsuccessful which is really frustrating.

The lack of specificity of the hunger signal leads to overeating.  As I write this, I just finished eating a well proportioned dinner, but I’m still hungry, which tempts me to eat more.  I know if I look at my diet at the macronutrient level I should be satisfied, but the ache in my stomach persists.  Because I am missing a something on the micronutrient level I am still hungry and chances are good that I will eat again before the night is over. 

I’m a healthy eater, but remember this same situation is the norm in the body of a person that dines on hamburgers, French fries and soda daily.  This person is overweight and malnourished.  His body is going to continue sending out the hunger signal because the food lacks nutritional value.  And what message is this person receiving?  I’m hungry, I better put something in my stomach now.  That something will probably be another equally void of nutrients.

Why aren’t our bodies designed to tell us what we are hungry for?  What a terrible design flaw.  Left to our own devices we’re doing a terrible job.  I’m lucky that I eat well already, because while I feel like I’m in search of the buried treasure of vitamin X, at least I’m loading up on a lot of other good vitamins and minerals my body needs to operate optimally.

Like good suburbanites our parents signed my sister and me up for the community soccer league. 

I had two strategies for dominating a soccer game when I was five.  I always started with Strategy A, tell the child with the ball “Hey, it’s my turn to kick the ball.”  As we were all educated on the virtues of sharing in kindergarten, this usually worked pretty well.  In the event that Strategy A failed, I quickly turned to Strategy B which was a little blunter, “You kick that ball, I’ll bite you.”  It is amazing how well that worked considering I was a full head shorter than any other kid on my team. 

Apparently while I was making threats, the other children were learning the difference between a halfback and a fullback, and that “turns” were not applicable.  At this point I realized I was never going to be good at soccer, promptly quit and got back to my gymnastics studio as fast as possible. 

My sister, who actually knows the difference between a halfback and fullback, stuck with soccer a lot longer than I did.  I remember summer after summer of her suited up in her green and gold uniform, shin guards, and knee socks in July.  This past weekend she and I were discussing what I thought was her valiant soccer career.  I realized I was way off the mark when she told me, “every time we had to play the light blue and red team I nearly crapped my pants.” 

I still laugh when I hear those words in my head, but then it makes me sad.  I imagine that the light blue and red team had better coaches and better athletes (the kind that don’t need to make threats to score goals).  At ten I don’t think she couldn’t see that.  All she understood was that, she felt inferior.  Before the light blue and red girls stepped on the field, she (and the rest of the green and gold girls) had already lost the game.

As I listened to my sister comically relate the stories of her soccer mishaps she had me laughing so hard I cried.  I’m not so sure that it was all just from the joking, I just felt so bad that my sister has been carrying around all these negative thoughts about exercise for twenty years.  I imagine when faced with exercise today part of her is still green and gold, worried about what she won’t succeed.

Anyone who was picked last for their team in gym class is on the green and gold team.  Anyone who never tried out for the varsity sports team because they were worried they wouldn’t make the cut is on the green and gold team.  Anyone who finished the mile run last is on the green and gold team.  We have all been on the green and gold team.

A note to the Green and Gold team members:  They don’t matter anymore, put those feelings aside.  Find something you love and do it.  That thing you’ve always wanted to do.  You don’t have to run a marathon, unless you want to.  Try something new.  Play.  Play hopscotch.  Jump rope.  You don’t have to do it to be better than them.  You don’t have to do it for survival.  You have to do it because you want to.  And when you do, don’t forget to cherish yourselves for taking the time to be good to your body.