March Mindfulness Challenge: Week 2 (3/8-3/14)
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baconslave
Posts: 6,954 Member
Aha! The challenge blurb! 
baconslave wrote: »Welcome!
Life is...well....it's LIFE, isn't it? It can be good. It can also be busy, frantic, and sometimes, downright chaotic. We are pulled so many directions but so many situations and distractions. When do we have time to breathe, let alone live in the moment?
So this month, I think it would be excellent to challenge ourselves to incorporate mindfulness into our journey to health. Plus, it works with the whole alliteration thing.
Morwenna Ferrier (writer for the Guardian) defines the new fad-term "mindfulness" this way: "The whole ethos of mindfulness is to encourage people to live in the moment. The theory goes that we are so busy trying to block out past worries and anticipate future ones that we rarely concentrate on enjoying what we are doing at the precise moment we are doing it. Devotees claim mindfulness can be applied to everything from walking and running to sex and eating." http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2014/jun/23/mindful-eating-how-to-get-more-from-your-meals
But I challenge that it isn't only about enjoyment. It's about AWARENESS. That's how we diagnose the elusive issue we carry, the sneaky ones that fly under our radar, but continue to throw a wrench into our efforts. So much about success in weight loss and health is about healing our dysfunctional relationships with food and other things in our lives, so we are free from the impetus of stress and emotions that often spurs us to sabotage ourselves.
So in that vein, the challenge is to practice some form of mindfulness by pausing and observing what happens in our heads and bodies when we eat or exercise, to be aware. And maybe then we can enjoy our journey more and discover any hang-ups we've missed and lock them down.
How? I've created a list of links. Some repeat the theme but add something. There a couple that apply to mindfulness in general terms. But understanding the concept can help but aide us in applying it to our reason for being here on MFP.
Start with this, garnered from zenhabits.comhttp://zenhabits.net/mindful-eating/Benefits?
Reduced over eating. It’s been a while now since I went to bed feeling bloated and over stuffed. Which is great in itself but also means that my ‘muffin top’ is pretty much gone when I wear my favorite jeans.
Increased enjoyment of food. As a food scientist, I’ve always considered myself a big fan of eating. Now that I’m on the path to mastering the art of mindful eating, I am finding a new found respect for food and am gaining far more pleasure from meal times.
Improved digestion. Digestion begins in the mouth with the action of saliva. If food isn’t chewed properly it means that there’s more work for the rest of your digestion system. I may be imagining this, but I think I’ve also noticed I have less gas now that I’m eating mindfully.
Being satisfied with less. Linked with reduced over eating, the real benefit here is being able to trust yourself to feel satisfied after one or two squares of chocolate so there is no temptation to scoff the whole block. Suddenly there’s no need to deny yourself the occasional treat which makes for a far healthier relationship with food.
Ready to change the way you interact with food?
How to master the art of mindful eating:
1. Start small. Like all new habits, it’s best to set realistic expectations. Choose one meal or snack each day and commit to focusing on mindful eating at that time.
2. Stop multitasking at meal times. It’s really difficult to focus on eating if you’re doing other things. Set aside time for eating without other entertainment.
3. Only eat at the table. Another way to minimize mindless munching is to get into the habit of only eating when you are sitting down and able to give the food your full attention. No more snacking on the run.
4. Appreciate the appearance. While we’ve all drooled over gorgeous food porn in magazines or online, sometimes we forget about the beauty of the food we are about to eat. Taking the time to notice sets the scene for mindful eating.
5. Focus on each mouthful. Think about the flavour, texture and even the sound of the food in your mouth. Focus on how much you like, or dislike these sensations.
6. Chew. While it can be overkill to go to the monastic extreme of 100 bites per mouthful, make sure you chew your food enough so that it is well broken down before you swallow.
7.Use cutlery and put it down between mouthfuls. It’s much easier to take smaller portions when using a knife and fork. Of course if you feel like you’re having a ridiculous Seinfeld moment eating a chocolate bar with utensils, then skip this step but do put the bar down in between bites so you can focus.
8. Talk and share. One of the joys of eating is sharing a meal with loved ones. It can be challenging to incorporate mindfulness in a social situation but not impossible. Turn the focus of the conversation onto the meal while you are actually eating. Share what you are experiencing in terms of flavours and textures, likes and dislikes. At first this may seem a little weird but trust me, you’ll soon find yourself having fun with it.
9. Go for quality not quantity. By choosing smaller amounts of the best food you can afford, you will not only enjoy it more, you’re far more likely to be satisfied without having to over eat.
10. Make time to prepare your own meals, preferably from fresh ingredients. The cooking process can be as relaxing and enjoyable as eating if you let it. For me, the peace of mind that comes from knowing exactly what has gone into my food makes any hassle worthwhile.
The links that follow might be helpful. I can't speak as to the helpfulness of the podcasts. Yet. I'm going to carve the time to investigate them and will nix them if they aren't really relevant. Please do share any links you personally come across, and I'll add them to the running list.
http://zenhabits.net/mindful-eating/
http://stress.about.com/od/dietandsuppliments/a/mindful_eating.htm
http://stress.about.com/od/tensiontamers/a/mindfulness.htm
http://jamesclear.com/stay-focused
http://jamesclear.com/zanshin
http://fourhourworkweek.com/2015/11/29/magic-of-mindfulness/
https://www.bulletproofexec.com/rick-hanson-forgetfulness-mindfulness-techniques-hardwiring-happiness-243/
I'd like to give a shout-out to @KnitOrMiss for helping me gather some links.
The weekly thread links will be also added to the challenge sticky at the top of the group for easy reference should it get buried.
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I like that.
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Happy Women's Day March 8
I will make the most of today!
BW: LCHF 189 (5.1.2015)
SW: 147 (March 1st)
CW: 146.2
GW: for March 142
Exercise - Yes 1 hr. Whoot.
Sleep - Just ok.
Calories - Over
Carbs - Over
I did great all day and even had a great workout - and then blew it at night/dinner. Ug. You can't exercise your way out of a bad diet. I was pretty mindless last night. Silly me. Oh well. Today is a new day and I will make it Matter!
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Great post. Thank you!0
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Two of my favorite quotes to keep me from losing sanity lately:
1. "Not my circus, not my monkeys."
2. On worrying/stressing about xxxxx: "Would it make a difference?" (as in, would worrying make a difference in the outcome of something?) --- I picked this up from a movie I recently watched. It had Tom Hanks, he was a lawyer defending a German spy. The spy would reply with that question throughout the movie. It struck me as a brilliant outlook 0 -
Goals for this week:
*Starting tonight (3/8) - Eat at the table.
*Run 3 times this week
*Make my breakfasts the night before for the next 2 days, so it's all ready to go
Feeling a bit defeated, but I've failed to prepare and plan and I'm reaping poor results. Wanting to see results again, not just wishing for results.0 -
I almost non-committed to this challenge, deciding only to hold myself accountable for reading the post, and here I am getting swept up in it anyway.
I declared this week "No Snacking Week", and this is the middle of Day 2. I'm finding that it's forcing me to be more mindful about what I eat. If I know it's going to be several hours before I eat again, I really want to enjoy the heck out of whatever I do eat.
In this vein, I was looking for something to jazz up a couple of hard boiled eggs, and settled on a big tablespoon of cream cheese and a generous sprinkle of caraway seeds. OMG, delicious. My tastes are a little out there sometimes, but I thought I'd share just in case anyone else has done similar food combo experiments and would like to share theirs. :-)
Happy Mindfulness!
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Deena_Bean wrote: »Two of my favorite quotes to keep me from losing sanity lately:
1. "Not my circus, not my monkeys."
2. On worrying/stressing about xxxxx: "Would it make a difference?" (as in, would worrying make a difference in the outcome of something?) --- I picked this up from a movie I recently watched. It had Tom Hanks, he was a lawyer defending a German spy. The spy would reply with that question throughout the movie. It struck me as a brilliant outlook
Love this! I know the first one but the second, brillant.0 -
Mar 8
SW: 247 (12/12, started keto)
SW: 214.2 (Mar 1)
CW: 208.8
GW for March: 206
GW for 12/31: 180
Be Mindful of:
Staying under 30 carbs daily -- Yes
Logging at least 1 day ahead -- Yes
Exercising 4 days per week -- 1 of 70 -
SW: 153.4
CW: 131.8
GW: 130
I am trying not to get frustrated that the scale has gone up 2 lbs since Friday, around the time I shifted to maintenance mode. That might sound silly but it took me a good 6 weeks to lose those last 2 lbs. I know there will be some fluctuations, especially as I've been experimenting a bit already with increased calories and increased (but still low) carbs.
Exercise: 30 min walk with a friend. I was mindful during it, taking the time to enjoy the sensation of walking, the beautiful weather and scenery.
Sleep: Not enough.
Mindfulness while eating is getting a bit better. Like I've mentioned, the mental shift in moving to maintenance has been interesting; lots of pitfalls I'm trying to recognize and walk around rather than fall into. I know how easy it can be to think "Well, a little of this won't matter"; "I should reward myself for making it to goal," "I can afford to eat X; I lost the weight," etc. and I know it can easily snowball from there. Working on getting back into an LCHF-happy zone and trying to understand and deal with the deprived feelings that have popped up just in the past several weeks.0 -
March 9th
BW: LCHF 189 (5.1.2015)
SW: 147 (March 1st)
CW: 149! Hmm.. paying for the splurge 2 days ago.
GW: for March 142
Exercise - No
Sleep - Very good.
Calories - 1662 Too high
Carbs - 80g Egads.
Carbs begets carbs. Faux water weight this morning, but still recorded it. Says I'm up nearly 3 pounds from yesterday. LOL. I should really stick to my weekly weigh in on Monday. Two days in a row I've had higher than usual carbs and calories. Today is important to keep things in check, I always do better when I think back to basics for the day. There are no planned events to upset my progress today. The last two days had a monkey wrench with family things I needed to sort out. Today, I can and will.
@Deena_Bean On worrying/stressing about xxxxx: "Would it make a difference?" Thanks for the reminder, very timely for me this week.0 -
@slimzandra & @dasher602014 -- glad they helped you guys. "Would it make a difference?" --- The first time this was said in the movie was when Tom Hanks said, "You know that they could execute you, right?" German: "Yes." Tom Hanks, "You don't seem to be very concerned about that." German: "Would it make a difference?" --- I figured if he could see the reason in that statement when his life was on the line, I can certainly put it to use over much smaller and far less threatening situations. It was so eye opening to me that I had to share! (note: the quotes are not perfect, but you get the idea)0
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Deena_Bean wrote: »@slimzandra & @dasher602014 -- glad they helped you guys. "Would it make a difference?" --- The first time this was said in the movie was when Tom Hanks said, "You know that they could execute you, right?" German: "Yes." Tom Hanks, "You don't seem to be very concerned about that." German: "Would it make a difference?" --- I figured if he could see the reason in that statement when his life was on the line, I can certainly put it to use over much smaller and far less threatening situations. It was so eye opening to me that I had to share! (note: the quotes are not perfect, but you get the idea)
I had a high school teacher tell me "Just ask yourself, 'Is this going to matter in 5 years? 1 year? 1 month? If not, let it go." I have always remembered that, but it's just been in the past few years that I've been able to embrace it.
Update with me. A couple of you will notice this is a repost from a Keto group thread and I apologise. But I felt this is important to share. Or I'm just excited and want to share it.
So my eye-nonsense still did not improve much with the expensive prescrip. It's $405/month WITH a discount from the company. NICE, no? Funny thing though, I've been having a suspicion for awhile about AS and how it affects me. I was looking back at dates and the fatigue came back once I stated using Torani in my coffee and drinking diet sodas. It was a big coincidence, maybe. That's when my dry-eye started off and on coincidently. It went apocalyptic in January when I started trying to cut again and was using A LOT. Like I mentioned in last week's thread. Chewing lots of gum, eating jello every night, eating low-cal/low-carb yogurt, and sweetening nightly flavored herbal tea with it. I had other symptoms, too, of hot flashes at night and of irritation of the UT/kidneys...I'm not going into that further, but ladies with multiple births under their belt know what I mean.
That's not funny. Here's the funny part. I have been AS free for 2 days. And for 2 nights my eyes are only mildly a PITA. I only woke twice to use eyedrops, and there have been no close calls on the ripping. I had been waking 6 times a night and having at least 1 close call up until the first day I stopped the AS. And for 2 days, the other symptoms are going away. I have dropped 2lb of the extra weight that has been hanging around. That could be due to a decrease in cortisol from the stress of the pain at night and the not-sleeping though. Anyway, I'LL TAKE IT!
I'm getting the keto buzz back after my morning keto coffee. And I haven't carb-binged in 11 days.
It's not magic. I'm still tired, and I still have dry mouth/dry eye pretty bad. I have an appt on the 21st to have a check-up and to browbeat the dr into ordering a bunch of bloodwork. There is a MARKED difference though. I don't think there is any coincidence about it. It's the AS making everything worse. If this keeps up, I will try weaning myself off the expensive prescrip. I do think I still have an issue like Sjogren's syndrome or a hormone imbalance. We'll get to the bottom of that. In a couple weeks. I'm so thirsty all the time. I drink about a gallon of water a day and my mouth and nose get so dry. Ugh.
I've been using stevia once daily in my coffee. I find it disgusting, so I'm thinking of getting rid of it.
Maybe tea would work better with it. Anyway....what else? Lazy keto is going great. I'm still eating too much but carbs are on-point. I'm slowly learning to not stuff myself to death.
This part is new to all.
I listened to the Ferris podcast I linked above and have a rubberband around my left wrist. It gets to stay there until I goof on the carbs. So like I said above, I'm 11 days out from a carb-binge. If I screw up, then it moves to the other wrist and I restart the count. He used it to retrain about complaining, but me seeing it reminds me how far I've come in 11 days and that I can make my streak longer and longer if I'm vigilant.
I'm trying to eat mindfully and enjoying the taste of my food and trying to keep it slow. I still have times of the day where I'm rushed. So things to work on, but I'm getting better.
Now that you've read a novel, go rest your eyes a bit.
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@baconslave You might be interested in this >: http://www.i-see.org/dry_aspar.html
I stopped drinking diet soda completely, also nothing labeled "sugar free" or AS - and immediately noticed huge improvements in dry eye, dry mouth, dry skin, and weight loss.0 -
@baconslave, wow, I'm glad you have seen such an improvement!
I like your rubber band idea, too. I might do something similar but with a bracelet. I need to add things to my toolbox to be healthy and disciplined at maintenance.0 -
after my food choices for this week's days off, i have determined that my mindfulness issues may be rooted in the fact that i need a new mind.. checking amazon now...0
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baconslave wrote: »Update with me.
This is such good news, it's my favorite update ever!
I really think artificial sweeteners do us NO favors. The mental wean is something I personally just do NOT agree with. Rip that band-aid off, I say. Push through the withdrawal and be done with it!
I am never reaching my goals when I'm adding 'sweets' back into the mix. The truth is I'm a far happier person eating meat with a small side of greens, my black coffee, and butter. Hard boiled eggs to be grabbed for a quick snack. Cheese slices. Macadamia nuts. Dark chocolate.
But I've got a jenga pile of cake and sweet recipes I want to try. And I just ask myself, why do I do this? I know what it'll lead to. I didn't call it a jenga pile for nothing. Life doesn't need sugar. I'm sweet enough. :P
So yeah, that statement above. Butter. Cheese. Did you catch that?
My mindfulness experiment in dairy elimination is surprising me. I thought I was going to suddenly have a whoosh, lose the bulging lower tummy, and have to accept that dairy just doesn't do me any favors.
Well? No whoosh. Same old loss/gain pattern as before. Belly's as swollen as ever. Still in the larger pant size again.
I'm starting to consider coconut oil as an issue. Salicylates, or coconut allergy, whatever. I have noticed my lips get all red and spotty after I have Coconut Oil or the buried treasure MCT.
If nothing changes before day 14, I'm adding dairy back in. Butter only for a week (3/15 - 3/21). See what happens. Then cheeses and cream (3/22 - 3/28). If nothing happens, then I'll cut out the coconut oil (3/29 - 4/12). So that's the plan. One suspect at a time.
After that, once I know what to think about dairy and coconut oil, I want to return to what I've started calling my Disney Diet. I set my fitbit step goal to 20,000 steps per day. Omelets (small amounts of veggies, plus cheese) with bacon and a creamed/oiled coffee for my breakfast. Some snack or coffee mid-day. NY strip with garlic herb butter and green beans for dinner. Coffee for dessert.
(I've totally found a treadmill that could go under my desk at work, it's $699. Who loves me that much? My birthday is in April. Just sayin'. OMG I want to work in a hamster wheel.)0 -
MARCH 9
Today was so much better. I was in the LCHF-happy zone again ... I think the mindfulness and posting about it yesterday helped?
SW: 153.4
CW: 131.4
GW: ~130 + any muscle gained
Calories: Just under goal
Carbs: 30 net
Exercise: Did YAYOG (plus a lot of cleaning!)
Sleep: Not nearly enough. About to head to bed in an attempt to get 8 hrs tonight. DH needs to stop all that coughing though.
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Yesterday I had crazy boredom hunger, and a super short temper. I wanted something with chocolate, something with cream, something hot (even though it was over 60ºF in the evening!). I had a pickle and macadamia nuts and some water. Somehow, I survived!0
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Don't you hate "boredom hunger". I find that that I don't get physically hungry, but now and then I catch myself routing around looking for something to eat. I think it's the salt I crave. I go for almond butter with a little sprinkle of salt or some macadamias. Maybe I should just try water with some salt in it.
Anyway- My breakfast today was my fatty hot chocolate concoction.
Lunch, prepared, but won't eat till probably 2:30.
Dinner: already prepared, all I have to do is reheat when I get home.
Got in a little exercise this morning, too. Feeling good.
Weight? Don't ask. I'm certain my hormones or something is causing this weight gain, I'm not sure what labs to ask for.0
