The One You Feed - Andrea Lieberstein on Mindful Eating to Nourish our Whole Selves

Episode Date: December 20, 2017

Please Support The Show with a DonationAndrea Lieberstein can teach you how to nourish your whole self so that you can have a healthier relationship with food. What does that mean? Well, often, we turn to food to nourish parts of our lives that it is not equipped to nourish. Have you ever turned to food to soothe anxiety or stress? This is a really common way that we ask food to do something that it's not meant to do. In this episode, Andrea teaches specific strategies for how to bring mindfulness into the act of eating. These practical, multi-pronged approaches are ones that you can bring to your very next encounter with food.Andrea Lieberstein is a mindfulness-based registered dietitian nutritionist, mindful eating (MB-EAT) and mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR) instructor and coach, trainer, and registered yoga instructor has specialized in helping people transform their lives for over 25 years. She leads mindfulness meditation and mindful eating trainings and retreats at retreat centers across the country and internationally. Her individual coaching sessions are accessible to anyone through phone or a virtual video office. She utilizes Mindfulness-Based Eating Awareness Training (MB-EAT), MBSR, MSC (Mindful Self-Compassion) and other mindfulness-based and mindful eating practices in her private practice working with individuals on a wide range of disordered eating, healthy weight management, body image and stress-related issues and health concerns.Her latest book is called: Well Nourished: Mindful Practices to Heal Your Relationship with Food Feed Your Whole Self, and End OvereatingIn This Interview, Andrea Lieberstein and I Discuss...The Wolf ParableHer book, Well Nourished: Mindful Practices to Heal Your Relationship with Food Feed Your Whole Self, and End OvereatingThe importance of what we pay attention toThe 8 bodies that we can nourishBeing "fully resourced"Identifying your intention to have a better relationship with foodBringing mindful awareness to our eating triggers and our own bodiesLearning to tune into hunger, fullness, cravingsMaking conscious, informed choices when it comes to foodHonoring ourselves and appreciating others at holiday mealtimesSavoring our food so that we're really present and not on autopilotA mindful check-in: Pause, Deep Breaths, Ask "What is Present?"/"What's Going on Here?", Ask, "What do I really need right now?", Take a moment to reflect on your foodHighly processed foodThe myth of needing to wait 20 minutes to know whether or not we're fullSatisfaction at mealtimeMaking one meal or snack a day a silent oneThe 8 Bodies we need to Nourish: Physical, Emotional, Psychological, Social, Intellectual, Creative, Spiritual, and Worldly NourishmentHow to deal with emotions in other ways than turning to food"Surfing the urge"Loving-kindness and cravings Please Support The Show with a DonationSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

savor the food that we eat so that we're really present, not just eating on automatic pilot. Welcome to The One You Feed. Throughout time, great thinkers have recognized the importance of the thoughts we have. Quotes like, garbage in, garbage out out or you are what you think ring true. And yet for many of us, our thoughts don't strengthen or empower us. We tend toward negativity, self-pity, jealousy, or fear. We see what we don't have instead of what we do. We think things that hold us back and dampen our spirit, but it's not just about thinking. Our actions matter.

It takes conscious, consistent, and creative effort to make a life worth living. This podcast is about how other people keep themselves moving in the right direction, how they feed their good wolf. Thanks for joining us. Our guest on this episode is Andrea Lieberstein, an author, speaker, trainer, and mindfulness meditation expert. Andrea is a mindfulness-based registered dietitian, nutritionist, mindful eating, and mindfulness-based stress reduction instructor and coach. Andrea leads well-nourished mindful

eating and living retreats and workshops internationally. She was a leader in developing and implementing mindfulness and mind-body programs at Kaiser Permanente Northern California for over 20 years and is a contributing author to Resources for Teaching Mindfulness, an international handbook. Her new book is Well-Nourished, Mindful Practices to Heal Your Relationship with Food, Feed Your Whole Self, and End Overeating. And here's the interview with Andrea Lieberstein. Hi, Andrea. Welcome to the show. Thank you. So glad to be here today. Yeah, your book is called Well-Nourished Mindful Practices to Heal Your Relationship with Food,

Feed Your Whole Self, and End Overeating. So we will move into all of that in just a moment, but let's start like we always do with the parable where there's a grandmother who's talking with her granddaughter, and she says, in life there are two wolves inside of us that are always at battle. One is a good wolf, which represents things like kindness and bravery and love, and the other is a bad wolf, which represents things like greed and hatred and fear. The granddaughter stops and she thinks about it for a second. She says, well, grandmother, which one wins? And the grandmother says, the one you feed. So I'd like to start off by asking you what that parable means to you in your life and in the work that you do. It's such a great parable.

And it so directly ties into the work that I do and my life. Where we put our attention is really everything. That creates our life, our experience of our life. And we do have, we know through neuroscience, through psychology, through mindfulness, that we have these tendencies of habit of mind that come in. Even with all the work that we've done, we could have thoughts, feelings arise that we may not particularly want to follow. So, mindfulness is so important that the mindful pause, that mindful awareness to see what's arising and then be able to, that moment of actively choosing,

am I going to put my attention there? Am I going to follow and engage in that thought? What would be most helpful, most energizing, most positive, most healthy for me? Where should I put my attention now? And you could fill in the blank there. And then also there are so many, just in terms of working with human emotions, being human and the emotions that come and go, we can nourish our emotions, nourish the quality of our emotions, the feelings, the feeling tones with mindfulness and with attention. So what that means for me is that I feel that I'm pretty vigilant in practicing mindfulness after all these years.

And I absolutely love the practices that we have been given, that we know, you know, that some of us, we just know from our own life experience. We just bring in or we've been taught kind of a combination of both for me but bringing in gratitude practice bringing in mindful self-compassion focusing and noticing beauty in my life I will intentionally pause and notice beauty and really nourish my attention with that and then I'm feeding these really beautiful qualities that inner beauty really soaking and nourishing in it brings in that sense of beauty common peace inside helps me be more calm balanced balanced, happy, you know, better person. So nourishing through beauty, nourishing through gratitude practice. I notice that I'm focusing on things that are making me feel stressed or unhappy. And as we know, there's a lot in the world these days, a lot going on.

It's easy just to go down that track and stay there. So bringing myself back, to go down that track and stay there. So bringing myself back, nourishing with positive qualities, loving kindness practice is another really wonderful quality, which maybe we'll get into talking about. Sure. But it's, but right, but not just, just to feel good, but then, then coming from this place in our lives, our actions, our interactions with others. It helps nourish our relationships, the ways that we contribute to the world. So nourished is a word that you use a lot. And one of the things that you talk about is you say it's very easy to focus on diets and eating as the

answer to all our problems, but that that is only part of the solution and that this nourishment, you talk about lots of different, you talk about eight bodies that we can nourish. And we'll get to that in a second, but I want to go back to the title of the book and talk about feed your whole self and end overeating. And the last part of that, the end overeating is one that grabs a lot of people's attention, right? Diet books are one of the best-selling books of all time. If I had any sense, I'd start a diet podcast and we'd probably be huge. But that's not your message here. So talk to me about the relationship of mindfulness, this nourishing, and how this interacts with overeating? Sure. So food is so much the easy go-to place for so many people to comfort, to soothe

when one is feeling stressed or, you know, there's many people that just use it as the very first soother when feeling angry, frustrated, or bored, or sad as a coping mechanism, really, which can be learned from early childhood. You know, so many of us have been given food to be comforted by when we were feeling sad or when we had an alley and kind of a combination of many things. Those that develop eating as food is more of a major coping mechanism than others that don't, but everybody has some of that. And food is also so ubiquitous in our environment. I mean, the food that when we're at the check stands, it's just staring at us. And if we're hungry, it's so easy to want to go for those high sugar, higher fat foods, the quick energy foods. So my book is really, it's about nourishing the whole

self and resilience, becoming really fully nourished from the inside out and from the outside in. I also like to use the word resourcing. When we're fully resourced, then we don't need to turn to food for that quick fix, a quick feeling better. That is anybody that really looks at what happens when you eat that kind of ice cream or three more cookies than you really wanted. Usually you feel bad after, right? Pretty quickly, maybe you get a stomachache or if it's not physical, then it might be feeling guilty, beating oneself up, why did I do that? Or I shouldn't have had that. There's this whole relationship that we have with food that we carry with us. It's not very peaceful, right, for most people. And so where do we start with this? So if, let's just say that I'm looking at this and I think, well, you know what, I do have an issue with overeating. I have the regret cycle up is intention. Why do you want to do

this work? Why do you want to make a shift? Why is this important to you? And the more that we can connect that reason why to our values, to things that are bigger than just cultural ideas of I need to be a certain weight to be okay, or I should go on it because I should do this diet that, you know, my friends are doing, but to have something bigger, because I just, I want to feel better. I want to feel good. I want to be more at peace. I want to have energy for the rest of my life. I'm so focused on this all the time, trying to have the right body, look the right way, or, you know, whatever it whatever it is, all tied in, eat the right foods. There's so much energy that is connected to that.

So the intention, big attention tied to values that are bigger, that are really starting to bring awareness to our lives, to our eating triggers, to, and we'll talk in a little bit about the eight bodies, but also the other, what I call the eight bodies of nourishment and other realms of ourselves and our lives that really need nourishment to thrive. So we start with building mindful awareness and then mindful awareness of our own body and our own self. So I have in my book, Seven Steps to Mindful Eating in one of the first chapters. We start to learn to still our mind through a practice of mindfulness meditation and then bringing this ability to be more present more focused and that grows with practice and time and we can practice in the moment so bringing that to our eating cultivating this kind, non-judging, compassionate way of being with our experience and being present. And then paying attention to our inner experience, learning to tune in.

So using our body as our barometer, learning to tune into hunger, our true physical hunger, our fullness, the different ways we can tune into satiety and have we had enough, and also tuning into what am I truly hungry for. Being able to tune into our physical hunger first is really helpful to them to be able to differentiate all the other kinds of eating triggers that happen out there and then we can make a conscious informed choice and the more we make conscious informed choices like we might choose to have that really special brownie our mother-in-law made us um but we can do it without guilt and beating ourselves up and there's so many creative ways that we can you know have something but not have to eat the whole thing or end up feeling over full or sick

or maybe having a bite, savoring it, thanking your relatives so much. Oh, I can't wait to have more of this. I'm going to bring it home. But I'm really full from this amazing dinner. I bring that example in because there's always that often the family pressure. We're all going, this time of year now is Thanksgiving, so many of us are going to family gatherings and

different family meal dynamics come up. How do we honor ourselves, our bodies, and also appreciate others? Then learning to savor the food that we eat so that we're really present, not just eating on automatic pilot. I'm Jason Alexander. And I'm Peter Tilden. And together on the Really No Really podcast, our mission is to get the true answers to life's baffling questions like why they refuse to make the bathroom door to life's baffling questions like... Why they refuse to make the bathroom door go all the way to the floor.

We got the answer. Will space junk block your cell signal? The astronaut who almost drowned during a spacewalk gives us the answer. We talk with the scientist who figured out if your dog truly loves you and the one bringing back the woolly mammoth. Plus, does Tom Cruise really do his own stunts? His stuntman reveals the answer. And you never know who's gonna drop

by. Mr. Brian Cranston is with us today. How are you, too? Hello, my friend. Wayne Knight about Jurassic Park. Wayne Knight, welcome to Really No Really, sir. God bless you all. Hello, Newman. And you never know when Howie Mandel might just stop by to talk about judging. Really? That's the opening? Really No Really.

No Really. Go to ReallyNoReally.com? That's the opening? Really, no really. Yeah, really. No really. Go to reallynoreally.com and register to win $500, a guest spot on our podcast or a limited edition signed Jason Bobblehead. It's called Really, No Really and you can find it

on the iHeartRadio app, on Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. So it sounds like there's a couple different places that we become mindful.

One is we're mindful of how we're feeling, our moods, and then we're mindful of the actual eating itself. So do you tie all that together when you talk about the seven steps for mindful eating? Are those all tied in there? That I go through in the book, and this is really only in one of the first chapters. And it is foundational, but then there's so much more that we begin to look at the rest of our life, where we're missing nourishment and what are the ingredients that we can bring in to make a full, well-nourished life so we don't need to turn to food for that extra soothing. But to start with just our eating and tuning into our eating, we do a mindful check-in,

sometimes called a mindful pause. You could think of it as a mindful moment where you're... So the seven tips, pause, maybe taking a few deep breaths to bring yourself more present, begin to relax the mind and the body and check into what is present, what thoughts, what feelings, emotions, particularly related to the foods that you're about to eat. So we can do this when we're feeling that urge to eat or we're walking by the staff room and there's donuts out and other items. You may not even really be hungry or maybe you're walking by, you're actually very stressed by an interaction that just happened and that stress is an automatic trigger for you to want to go reach for that food. But by stopping and doing or pausing and doing that mindful check-in, you can see, well, what's really going on here? What do I really need?

You notice that you're stressed and not hungry and learning to tune into hunger at different levels is something that I work a lot with clients on because many people aren't aware of their hunger and many of us might just sort of work through our hunger or skip the meal thinking that, oh, I'm, you know, I'm decreasing my calorie intake for the day by skipping meals. I'm doing good, right? But then ending up eating more later because the body says, I'm going to make you really hungry later and you're going to want to eat everything and eat into the night. That's the one that does me in. If I skip meals or I let too far go and I get too hungry, all of a sudden all bets are off on me eating anything decent. It's like all of a sudden I'm like, I'm starving and I'm going to eat whatever is present, which usually isn't great.

Exactly. That's exactly what happens. And yet so many people think that skipping the meal is a good thing. But yeah, when we're really hungry, we reach for those foods that aren't helpful. We call them the highly palatable foods in research or the highly processed foods, which might make us just want more of the high carbs, fat, sugar. So really important to be aware of our hunger to tune in and eat at the regular intervals for us that most nourish us and keep our bodies and our blood sugar at a good even level

where we can be at our best with our mind, cognitively, mood-wise, all of that. So learning to tune in to what we really need is important. So maybe you're not hungry, but going back to that example of walking by that table of food, donuts and other things at work, so you notice that you're very stressed and agitated. So by pausing, taking a few deep breaths, really checking that out, that feeling. And by the way, this checking can be as short as 20 seconds, 30 seconds. And the better we get at it, the less time we need. And sometimes we might just want to take a little more time because we're actually using it as a way to calm and come present. And then we can say, okay, what do I truly need right

now? What would help me? I'm feeling stressed. Maybe I just want to go out and walk in the hallway or get a drink of water, talk to a coworker, share a few jokes, write a journal, whatever it is, whatever helps manage stress. There's so many different ways. And then that can help break that cycle of just eating for the sake of eating because of emotion. Anyway, that mindful check-in, deciding, seeing what's really happening and then deciding to eat deciding what you want to eat checking in and checking in with your hunger and fullness we just mentioned checking in with hunger

you can also check into society levels and then when you choose your food take a moment to reflect upon it. This really helps deepen the experience of eating. Be taking a moment to appreciate the food, where it came from, the sunshine, the earth, the water, the caring hands that were involved in preparing it. But really rounding out that experience by taking a moment to reflect upon it and then enjoying it with all your senses. So when we first begin eating mindfully, we might eat lower. We're really putting on training wheels. First practice at our workshops, often we'll work with a raspberry or a raisin, and we're going very slow, and people will sometimes find that challenging. And, of course, others will can't believe how amazingly pleasurable the experience was or how satisfied they feel with just a few raspberries or raisins by being so present

for it. And so, yes, eating mindfully is eating slower, but it doesn't have to be really, really slow. I appreciate it. And even by bringing our attention more fully, in a way, it slows down the experience. We're just more present. We don't have all the other stuff going on.

So we can enjoy it more. We're more satisfied. We can check in a few times during eating to hunger and fullness. Really be aware of the taste. Sometimes the taste changes, goes down, and especially with those highly processed, highly palatable foods. But that really good taste doesn't usually last very long. Sometimes it can last as long as three bites.

One of the things I've heard is that it takes like 20 minutes for your stomach to signal to your mind that you're full. And A, is that true? And B, if it's true, what on earth takes that long? I mean, it just doesn't seem physiologically like the rest of our system moves that slowly. I mean, it just doesn't seem physiologically like the rest of our system moves that slowly. What's so wonderful about mindful eating is there's a lot, we find there's a lot of other ways to tune in. We don't have to wait 20 minutes, right? We were all brought up with that.

Well, you're not going to know for 20 minutes. Well, actually, I just mentioned taste. Taste can begin to change, especially with those highly processed foods, which we don't want to eat a lot of anyway. And so that's a great indicator and, you know, awareness to stop. Huh, maybe I don't want to keep eating this. It doesn't even taste good anymore. Also, just fullness, stomach fullness, the pressure on our stomach as the volume of food we're eating, that can happen sooner than 20 minutes for sure. And we can start to feel satisfied and to notice that, oh, you know, we're starting to feel full.

What is moderate fullness for me, that physical fullness? And then also just tuning into hunger. After a while, our hunger is going to go down and we are going to start to feel satisfied. And it could be sooner than 20 minutes. Pausing, if we're not sure, taking the time to pause while we're eating, engaging in conversation, letting conversation nourish you while you're pausing, hopefully. That can be nourishing. Not always. Depends on who you're talking to. That's right. Where we're putting our attention is

going back to that parable. What kind of conversation are we intentionally creating? I think that's important, noticing if we're starting, you know, for example, talking about politics and we're starting to not feel very well, maybe we should you know, how about changing the subject to something more nourishing while we're eating our meals?

Just being really aware, you know, again, of where we're putting our attention while we're eating. And in this case, we're into food. And then also, eating is generally social, so we want to be able to learn that way of shifting, being in tune with our eating and our bodies, but also being able to shift into conversation and being present. So how do we know we have enough? Going back to that 20 minutes, there's these other finer, fine-tuned ways of checking in, and we can pause, and then we have a lot of different satiety, ways to check into satiety. And some of the research that I draw upon, my program was done with MB-EAT. So a lot of research on that and different satiety cues and tools such as tuning into taste, satiety cues such and tools such as tuning into taste, but also body satiety. And that's probably more related to this 20 minute as the food starts to digest in the body, you start to feel this

sense of overall satiety. And so that pausing is helpful because that can kick in more if we're not sure we're hungry or not. Yeah, one of the things I've heard and has been really helpful for me with that is just to set your fork down between bites. It's a very simple sort of, at least a rule of thumb for me that helped me to slow down a little bit. Although people always accuse me of being the slowest eater on the planet as it is. So I may not need the help as much, but I do find that to be a helpful thing. Yes, it is. And right. And not only setting our fork down, but when we do that, really tuning into the taste and the pleasure of the food. If we're still eating it, you know, if we're still chewing it, but yeah, that putting down the fork, that's a great behavioral thing to do. The other thing that you recommend at one point in the book is make one meal or snack a day a silent one so that you can really practice and have a regular time to do that, which, by the way, I find really helps inform the mindful eating practice, makes it easier,

and makes it easier to remember to pause during the day, to check in. What do I really need here? What's really happening? And what do I need to nourish with? What do I need to nourish with? What, I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but we're nearing the end of it. Wish you could keep listening once the episode ends? Well, I've got some good news too. You can. The interview continues over at oneufeed.net slash support. There, if you pledge at the $10 level, you'll get access to this additional

exclusive content as well as many other bonus conversations that have been recorded with our guests. We really need and appreciate your support, so we hope you'll head over to oneufeed.net slash support and pledge to access this additional weekly content. And now, back to the interview. Let's spend a minute now and talk about some of the other bodies. So the basic idea, I think, well, I'll just read what you say and then I'll have to interpret it. When our mind, body, and spirit are fully nourished, we can enjoy and savor food for its own sake. We no longer need to rely on food to substitute for other sources of nourishment. So what are, and let's maybe not

go through all eight, but let's pick a couple of the other eight bodies, as you call them, the other parts of ourselves that we need to nourish, and that if we're doing that, we have less need to rely on food to try and cover all those areas. Yes. Emotional nourishment is definitely one that is great to go through just so the the listeners know um maybe briefly i can mention what those eight bodies are sure um yeah so the first is physical nourishment which we're all there i'm jason alexander and i'm peter tilden and together on the really no really podcast our mission is to get the true answers to life's baffling questions like why they refuse to make the bathroom door go all the way to the floor.

We got the answer. Will space junk block your cell signal? The astronaut who almost drowned during a spacewalk gives us the answer. We talk with the scientist who figured out if your dog truly loves you. And the one bringing back the woolly mammoth. Plus, does Tom Cruise really do his own stunts? His stuntman reveals the answer. And you never know who's going to drop by.

Mr. Bryan Cranston is with us today. How are you, too? Hello, my friend. Wayne Knight about Jurassic Park. Wayne Knight, welcome to Really No Really, sir. Bless you all. Hello, Newman. And you never know when Howie Mandel might just stop by to talk about judging.

Really? That's the opening? Really No Really. Yeah, really. No really. Go to reallyn, really. Yeah. No, really. Go to reallynoreally.com and register to win $500, a guest spot on our podcast or a limited edition signed Jason bobblehead. It's called really no, really. And you can find it on the I heart radio app on Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. It's familiar, food and water and sleep and movement, exercise, but we don't often think about

necessarily other forms of nourishment that we really need to thrive and that make us uniquely human. So we've got that we have emotional nourishment, psychological nourishment, social, the social realm is really important. Intellectual nourishment, creative nourishment, spiritual nourishment, and what I call worldly nourishment, which is being in touch with what we really love, what our passion is, our sense of purpose. Actually bring that into the world and can make a meaningful contribution, that is very nourishing. And if we're not doing that, that can be a source of frustration and can certainly, there are many people that are frustrated and that can lead to overeating. Really, any of these bodies where we're not fully nourished can create those feelings of frustration or anger or sadness, which if we're emotional eaters or stress eaters, that food may be that way of coping. So the more that we can really nourish what we need in each of those areas.

about getting in touch with your own unique purpose and contribution, which could be anything from raising a beautiful, healthy family to starting a global nonprofit, or it could be both and. So emotional nourishment is a really key one. And I've mentioned some of those qualities earlier. How do we work with those challenging emotions? And with mindfulness, we recognize that mindful awareness, that they come and go. They can feel like they're big and huge and intransient and they don't change, but they actually do. How can we meet uncomfortable feelings, discomfort, with mindfulness, steady attention, note? There's steps. There's all kinds of, in this book, different processes for working with emotions. There's something called the allows process where we can recognize, greet the emotion, meet it with kindness.

Even bring in, there's a process where we work with craving and it works with difficult emotions where we bring in loving kindness, sense of kindness and love. We can cultivate that from the inside out and surround the difficult feeling, craving with loving kindness and develop it. And it really begins to shift. We're actually being nourished by loving kindness as craving or difficult emotion shifts in a way that it's no longer has a strong hold over us. And then we can make what that nourishing choice is for us.

We can make a choice if it's a food choice, what would be nourishing in that moment. We can also, with mindfulness, we can make choices. It doesn't mean, you know, we get away from good foods and bad foods, by the way, which is a source of stress for so many. I like to use always foods and sometimes foods. So what are those really healthy, nourishing foods that you would like to include in your diet at all times? I think my always is pizza, chocolate, ice cream. No, I know what you mean.

I'm speaking for Chris. Well, listeners know who Chris is. He's got problems with his eating. I'm kidding. So let's put those in the sometimes food category. Okay, sometimes. and zest, and when you choose to eat your sometimes food, whatever they are, and yes, generally when I talk about that, those are the foods that may be less helpful, but still being able to eat them because you've consciously chosen to eat them, you're mindful, they're not something that are always part of the diet, to eat with enjoyment, with all your senses, so let it nourish you. And actually, when we're not stressed about what we're eating,

judging, getting agitated, we digest better. We can actually get more nutrients from the food. So it really serves us to be able to approach our food in this way. And overall, we have enough stress in life and having this low level stress around food and food choices. And for some people, much bigger, it's not low level. This approach can start to help to really, really calm that down and be able to make choices without guilt, feeling more free. And so choosing, I don't know who Chris is, but if he wants, going back to intention,

if he wants to bring in more of the, what is generally considered the healthful foods, you know, whole foods, more plant-based diet, and looking at what does he love, what is delicious, it's okay to bring them in here and beginning to maybe expand those again if that is his intention and that's what he wants to do. Anyway, I think most people, another approach here with this book is starting with where you're at. Where is your eating at and what do you want to make? What shifts and changes?

What's your intention? Why do you want to make what shifts and changes what's your intention why do you want to do that and everybody comes in with their different intentions but generally there is that to be more healthy and then it might be tied to of course there's individual needs and preferences and health needs and then tied to bigger values maybe it's to have energy to do this big new project that I feel really passionate about and want to make a difference about in the world and I want to be the best that I can be and I want to be around for a while.

Right. One of the things you mentioned a couple minutes ago was craving and I wanted to talk about a concept in the book. I've seen it a couple places now, called surfing the urge. Can you talk through what that means and how you do it? Sure. So surfing the urge is that recognition and that that term was first coined by Alan Marlatt, who developed mindfulness-based relapse prevention, which is working with mindfulness and addiction, and that recognition that feelings, in particular cravings, have their own life. They begin to crest, they get bigger like a wave, and then they go down.

So being able to be mindfully present when that urge arises, that craving, without giving into it, without immediately reacting and having that, whatever it is, or that chocolate bar, that kind of ice cream, it could be taking a few breaths. So you're getting yourself more present. One of the first foundations, the first foundation of mindfulness is bringing attention to body and breath. It helps us get present. So breath is a great guide. And then noticing that feeling as it comes, that craving, and we can get really curious about it.

Curiosity is helpful. The shape of it, where is it in the body? What does it feel like, and just the bare sensation of it. And just that curious inquiry about it begins to lessen the intensity and the hold it has over us, our identification with it. And it starts to go down. And then we have faith, mindful faith to really choose what we want, what we're going to do. So I developed this process. I have a craving practice.

It actually came to me in one of my workshops when I was working with someone who was talking about her strong, strong cravings and how they were running her life. And I asked her, kind of guided her into a mindful space, bringing awareness to the sensation of craving. I had her visualize the food first that she craved and really feel that feeling, get that feeling of craving in. feeling, get that feeling of craving in, and then begin to imagine the sense of loving-kindness practice. And there's full practice. It's in my book, too, How Do We Elicit Loving-Kindness Practice. It's a traditional Buddhist practice. It's incorporated into so many of the mindfulness programs these days that we have in medical centers and schools and corporations, the community, the basic loving-kindness practice. This one we incorporate into the actual craving practice and envelop the craving and loving-kindness.

And I actually mentioned this a little bit earlier. This is more than just the surfing the urge, but we're actually bringing in loving kindness. And what most people discover, first of all, the craving lessens greatly. That space that is created is so welcome and new for so many people once they experience that. And then what happens is kind of really very powerful and magical for some people when they realize that what they were wanting was love. The love that they were experiencing from doing this practice, that's what they were wanting from the food. And sure, some of us, we've read about that, we've read about that we heard about that

um but to really experience it from the inside out and to be able to give yourself that love and that comfort and that love that maybe you didn't get when you were little you got a ice cream cone instead to be able to give that to yourself from the inside out is an amazing, powerful skill and tool that is transforming, life transformative. So food no longer needs to run you, but you can learn to nourish yourself with loving kindness, with gratitude, with compassion. So I mentioned these qualities again because they are so powerful, you know, in my own life, in my client's life. It's what we need more of, you know, in this world.

So emotional nourishment, going back to that chapter, it is filled with practices, mindful practices, how to nourish from the inside out and navigate the difficult terrain that can arise of emotion, but not push them away because that creates more energy. It makes them stronger. That is such a true statement. I find it more and more true in my case about resistance. Well, Andrea, thank you so much for taking the time to come on the show. I've really enjoyed this conversation. I think there's lots of great things in here for people who are looking to change their relationship to food. So again, thanks so much for coming on. The book is called Well-Nourished, Mindful Practices to Heal Your Relationship with Food,

Feed Your Whole Self, and End Overeating. And in the show notes, we will have links to Andrea's book, to her website, and her social media presences. And you can find out more about her there. So thanks so much for coming on. Thanks so much for having me. Okay, take care. Bye. If what you just heard was helpful to you, please consider making a donation to the One You Feed podcast. Head over to oneyoufeed.net slash support.