The One You Feed - The Well-Nourished Life: Tips for Mindful Eating and Living with Andrea Lieberstein

Episode Date: January 16, 2024

In this episode, Andrea Lieberstein explores what it means to have a well nourished life and learning to eat and live mindfully. Discover the transformative power in healing our relationship with food and learn to understand the difference between emotional and physical hunger. Andrea shares practical strategies to reduce emotional eating and foster a healthier approach to nourishment and also explains various triggers and patterns that contribute to unhealthy eating habits. In this episode, you’ll be able to: Embrace mindful eating for a healthier relationship with food Discover the power of self-compassion to tackle the challenges of emotional eating Cultivate awareness and mindfulness for a more fulfilling life Learn to develop a balanced and positive connection with food Explore creative outlets for overall holistic well-being To learn more, click here!See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Again, that's oneufeed.net slash habits. I hope to see you there. Through mindful eating, one can learn to still include the foods that someone wishes to include, but not feel guilty and enjoy it and celebrate it and be able to have the stop button. And these practices do help. 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, or you are what you think, ring true. And yet, for many of us, our 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. I'm Jason Alexander.

And I'm Peter Tilden. And together, our mission on the Really Know Really podcast is to get the true answers to life's baffling questions like why the bathroom door doesn't go all the way to the floor, what's in the museum of failure, and does your dog truly love you? We have the answer. Go to reallyknowreally.com and register to win $500, a guest spot on our podcast or a limited edition signed Jason bobblehead. The really no really podcast. Follow us on the

iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Thanks for joining us. Our guest on this episode is Andrea Lieberstein, the founder and director of the Mindful Eating Training Institute and bestselling author of the book, Well Nourished. She's a mindful eating expert, certified ecotherapist, certified mindfulness meditation teacher, internationally recognized teacher, trainer, mindfulness-based dietitian, nutritionist, and dedicated Dharma practitioner. In her private practice, Andrea works with individuals to have more peace, balance, and dedicated Dharma practitioner. In her private practice, Andrea works with

individuals to have more peace, balance, and joy in their relationship with food, nutrition, body image, and stress-related issues and health concerns, or who simply want to bring their lives back into balance and vibrancy through mindful eating and living. Hi, Andrea. Welcome to the show. Thank you, Eric. Good to be here. Yeah, I'm happy to have you back on. You were a guest a number of years ago. The topic that you talk about is one that I hear from listeners on a regular basis that is something they could use help with, which is really eating, how we eat, why we eat, you know, being more mindful in our choices, you know, reducing what we would think of perhaps as emotional eating. So we'll get into all of that in a second and into your book, which is called

Well-Nourished Mindful Practices to Heal Your Relationship with Food, Feed Your Whole Self, and End Overeating. But before we do, we'll start with the parable like we always do. In the parable, there's a grandparent who's talking with their grandchild. They say, 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. And the grandchild stops, and they think about it for a second, and they look up at their grandparent, and they say, well, which one wins?

And the grandparent 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. Yes, thank you. So relevant and such a great question. I would say that my work and my life is all about feeding that good wolf. And the book that we're talking about here, too, is really, it's all about how do we feed that good wolf, the thoughts, the feelings, and also how do we work? How do we skillfully navigate the bad wolf when it arises? Because that's part of being human. It will be there. And so there's a way to work with the bad wolf so that it doesn't take any hold, doesn't

get any nutriment, or gets very little nutriment or soil to grow on. That's part of the work, too. There's always some, we're human, but what's so wonderful is there's so much ancient wisdom and contemporary wisdom ways to work on nourishing that good wolf and having a more beautiful, well-nourished life inside and out. And your general premise is that there are multiple parts of us that need to be nourished. And when we're not nourishing these other parts of ourselves, we tend to rely on food to substitute for that nourishment. And that if we do nourish

all these different parts of ourselves that we'll get into in a minute, then our relationship with food can change. But if all we're trying to do is change our relationship to food without changing any of those other things, it's often not going to work. Is that a fairly good summary? Some of it is. I'm going to just fine- that. Thank you. Thank you for that. First of all, focus on food as nourishment and comfort to the point of it being an issue and out of balance is not it's not an issue for everyone or to varying degrees, people might focus on something else to help cope with the challenges of life and emotional discomfort. So it's not that everybody Yeah, you're right, that is somewhat of the premise. But what's nice about the book is an actually the original title that I had been interested in when I was working with a publisher, was A Guide to Mindful Eating and Living, because it's so much more than just about food. But food is a very easy, accessible, foremost place to find nourishment and soothe and comfort uncomfortable feelings. The problem is that

that can get out of balance and lead to a lot of overeating and just an imbalanced, disordered relationship with food. So what I found in my work is that, yes, for people that are struggling with relationship to food and wanting to heal that, we could spend all of our sessions or all of our time on that. And it's really helpful. But we are complex and amazing and multidimensional human beings. And there are many other aspects of ourselves that need nourishment to thrive and yeah, be fulfilled. So it's not that there's an exact order. Oh, if we work on fulfilling all the other parts of ourselves, then we're going to heal relationship with food, but it all comes together.

Right, right. And yeah, so that's all. I just wanted to say it's not, let's go focus on everything else, and then we're just going to magically heal it. There's a lot that we do, that we work with in that area of healing relationship with food. And what starts to happen is without all that focus on your show, and your listeners have many times probably heard the term negativity bias, that we tend to focus on what isn't working, where our struggle is. So as we learn to have the skills to begin to come more into balance and not over focus, there is much more energy that opens up in the mind, in the heart, in perspective and view, and in our lives physically to bring in and cultivate other sources of nourishment

to come more into balance, resilience, more joy in one's life be more fulfilled so it's kind of like we're working on them when clients come to me specifically or readers come to the book specifically for looking for working with food that's a really good place to start but at the same time or a little bit later starting to bring in all these other ways and I call it inner nourishment or deep nourishment to nourish the self. So one of those foundational ways is mindfulness, and that falls under psychological nourishment. We'll get into talking about it, but there's eight different aspects of ourselves in this model that have identified that need nourishment to really thrive. But to different degrees, we are all so individual. So I use the metaphor of we're the master chefs of our own life, and our recipes will look different.

They'll be unique in each of these areas and then the whole of our life. So some people may need more nourishment in some areas than others. Some may not need very much in some of them. And I know I'm speaking in generalities right now, but we'll dig down just in a little bit. So yeah, I hope that's a clarification that it all goes together. And, you know, working with people for so many years with eating issues, it's so much more beyond that. So once the focus through beginning to heal is softened and opened up, there's so much more in our lives to begin to realize is actually already there that we could focus on through mindfulness and really enjoy and savor,

and then also maybe cultivate and bringing in some more of those nourishing aspects of our lives that we've been neglecting. So what is the overall approach for the well-nourished approach when it comes to dealing with mindful eating and living? Can you offer the broad framework? Yes. Yes. Well, there are several ways to approach the broad framework. And one of them is just kind of picking out the five steps to mindful eating and living and being well nourished. And again, a broad overview, but that is first awareness, awareness that there is an issue that things are out of balance. into intention setting getting clear on setting and energizing positive intention and vision for oneself that is motivating for healing and then after that is skills and tools learning all the skills and tools to support that and then cultivating inner resources, which include a lot of the skills and

tools, but inner resources. And then the fifth is outer support. So there's a lot. As I was getting ready for this podcast today, I was thinking of just kind of an old cliche about, what is it? It's an inside job. It's just an old cliche, but there's so much the way that our view, the way we view the world, our thoughts, really the strong determinant of how we experience the world ourselves, our choices, and also how we feel. And a lot of the practices, skills, and tools help work with cultivating what we call sometimes in the Buddhist world is wholesome, wholesome thoughts, feelings, intentions, qualities. So a deep form of inner nourishment. And so let's assume that we have a listener who's listening and has enough of an internal awareness of themselves and their eating patterns to have recognized that they often eat in ways that have nothing to do with the actual hunger they have, right?

They're eating more than they want. They're eating foods they don't want to eat. And they've been able to sort of connect it to emotion. So let's say they're that far along in the process. Really, where is the next place for that person to sort of start to look at? What do they do now if they've got that level of awareness? That's emotional eating and they're not hungry. So that's great. And working with cultivating non-judgmental, kind awareness and compassion through mindfulness practice. There's different ways to work with emotional eating. My approach is through mindfulness,

through mindfulness-based approach, what I find really powerful and life-changing. what I find really powerful and life-changing. So cultivating through simple practice of mindfulness meditation, working with the breath awareness or body, some people really find movement more helpful, walking, doing some walking practice, and also working with amounts of time that work for each person. And choice is really important, you know, working with this. But starting to develop that kind, nonjudgmental way of paying attention and learning to tune in, it's still really helpful. But this working with mindful eating is to get very clear on hunger signals, physical hunger signals, and the subtleties of that and the different levels and the subtleties of fullness and the subtleties of taste. with emotional eating. All these things help people to become more present and aware. Because what happens, people that are listening to this that are emotional eaters, to varying degrees,

will have experiences where they just completely numb out once they start eating. They don't even know what happens. They're just eating. And there's others that will actually what we find with this program and it is based on there's a lot of research out there nih funded research which is awesome on programs such as mbeat which this is partially based on mindfulness based eating awareness training and others that when people learn to pause and tune in before eating and even during eating. So if an emotional eating episode has already started, it's not too late to tune in. And with practice, it gets easier. So it's not like, okay, this is what you do first session, or just read the book, and then it's going to stop. But it's not like, okay, this is what you do first session or just read the book and then it's going to stop. But it's actually a practice of learning to be present and learning

to be present with discomfort with that bad wolf in a way where we don't get lost in it and follow those really uncomfortable feelings right into the cookie jar. But to develop that pause, that mindful pause with kindness, and then make a different choice. And part of this too is this approach, which is nice. It's not an all or nothing. Just kind of jumping to this doesn't mean you can never, to be free of emotional eating, never learn to be able to enjoy some yummy food for that joy and comfort, that positive, kind of positive emotion, but very mindfully, very consciously aware that you're doing this, learning to enjoy it with a smaller amount, but really present

for the flavor. And so some people might keep that enjoying eating less in their toolbox, but it's much more expanded to many other choices that one can make to help manage emotions. That's where Well Nourished comes in because it's not just like, oh, let's create that nourishing list of activities, which a lot of people are working with emotional eating will develop. It's kind of a traditional way. Okay, let's make that list. This is a little bit more comprehensive, looking at these eight different parts of ourselves that need nourishment and really focusing on opening up the door to lots of other ways to make choices. be in the realm of physical nourishment or drinking water or calling a friend, texting, getting up and talking to a coworker, telling jokes. That would be under the realm of social nourishment. For example, emotional nourishment is both inner and outer. So it might be working

with a skill called self-compassion and kindness. It might be bringing in, certainly using mindfulness, which is in the realm of psychological nourishment, but bringing in kindness, soothing, loving kindness. A lot of times just meeting oneself with kindness and loving kindness helps take care of that hunger that is not about food, but wanting connection, whether to oneself or just connecting with someone else. And there's lots of other, there's creative nourishment and spiritual nourishment and intellectual nourishment. It's kind of like a design for one's whole life. I sometimes give talks called a well-nourished life. But it opens the door for what else? What is it in this moment of mindful pause?

What is it that I truly need right now? What are my true needs? What is it that I'm truly hungry for? So it's a process of strengthening that ability to pause and notice and to be able to be present with discomfort and not act on it, right? Urges, cravings are uncomfortable. They certainly are. So you talk about these eight different bodies, you've sort of alluded to some of them here, and we can get into that a little bit, exactly what each of them are a little bit more, but is understanding what each of the eight different bodies that need nourishment,

is that really helpful so that when I start to ask myself what it is I need right now, I have some different places to kind of go look in a sense to almost like, because if I ask myself, well, what is it I need right now? Oftentimes, I may not have a real good answer to that, right? But if I think, do I need social connection? Do I need emotional connection? Do I need physical movement? Is by understanding each of the eight, again, sort of gives us a way of sort of looking around and getting some ideas. Yeah, it's very helpful. Yes. It's kind of adding in more precision. So one can actually go through a checklist or it might just arise very clearly or kind of going through that checklist. And in the book, each chapter, when it goes into each body has an assessment

of questions where you can assess how much, how am I doing in this area? Is this an area that I need to really focus on and expand? And so going through the book, there's lots of practices, suggestions. So by starting to invite these different areas in, it also will be more readily accessible in that moment. But yes, I find it really helpful. You can use it as a checklist. I actually use an image. It's called the Wellnourished Bowl. And it's a circle with eight petals. Looks a little like a flower of life, but there's eight petals. And they're all overlapping because all of these things are connected. And the outer rim of the bowl is mindfulness and self-compassion and kindness and non-judgment, loving kindness, all that. So that way that we learn to rest in

awareness and hold our experience in this way. Mindfulness offers us that. So I'm going back to our imaginary listener here who I've described so far. And let's say that person already does have a mindfulness practice. They spend some amount of time each day or most days, you know, doing some sort of meditation practice or mindfulness practice. I mean, I know people like this, right? I'm not completely making these people up from whole cloth, right? They've got a mindfulness practice, but it hasn't really translated into the realm of food. So what are sort of the connecting steps there? You know, I've got a mindfulness practice. I've got an awareness of what's happening with me in food, but I don't seem to quite

be able to bring mindfulness to food. Is it really just a matter of, as you said earlier, really sort of making yourself pause before, during, and after you eat each time and just very consciously bringing mindfulness into that arena? Is it that simple? That's the first step. Yeah. And then that's what we call mindful check-in or a mini meditation.

But then within that, there are other awarenesses to cultivate. Two, I often use the expression, what am I bringing to the table right now? Okay. I do want to agree with you. I live near a major meditation center, and I've taught mindful eating there actually many years. And I've had many clients come that were practicing mindfulness for years with emotional eating issues, binge eating, and it didn't translate. emotional eating issues, binge eating, and it didn't translate. But once they learned these more, I like to use the word precision because it offers more insight and precision into our experience, what's happening, and then more insight, and then that ability to make different

choices. So I was mentioning earlier, we do a training, the training happens over time. So getting really in touch with physical hunger, just physical hunger, and then what other triggers, what other kinds of hunger is there emotional, psychological, just other triggers that are happening. And that mindful pause helps us to see what are we bringing to the table right now? So getting back to that, what am I bringing here? And noticing frustration or stress or anger, just that noticing creates a space where we're already out of it, a little bit noticing that. where we're already out of it, a little bit noticing that. So that offers a possibility not to eat from the middle of that. And I find intention, bringing in that kind intention for oneself. And in the book, there's a lot on working with your intention, bringing it in. It's like a signpost calling you forward into the future,

reminding you, letting that inform your present and the steps that you take to remember why are you doing this? So intention is one of the keys that is lost or just not there for a lot of people. So, I mean, it can be as simple as I had a client, she simplified her intention to, I want to feel good. And it wasn't the kind of good when people overeat, the very first bites right in the beginning, they might feel good, but it doesn't last very long. All the feelings, both physical being overstuffed, and then the judgment and the shame and blame and all of that. So So it's a very teeny little short-term solution that quickly dissipates. So her feeling good was well-being, balanced. I encourage people to bring in positive, energizing words to their intentions. So hers

was simplified, but it was very powerful for her. Right. And it could be a little more complex. Are making nourishing choices to support my joyful, well-nourished life? I really like asking ourselves, what is the nourishing choice? Pausing. What is the nourishing choice right now? 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.

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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 following your five steps, we've got the awareness. So we're bringing mindfulness to the moment, right?

What am I bringing to the table? You know, what am I feeling? I've learned to bring a little bit of mindfulness to my eating, how it feels. You know, I've just, I brought more mindfulness to the whole thing. Then I'm aligning on intention. You know, why is this matter? Why do I want to make this choice versus that choice? Which is always, I think, important for anything we want to do in life, right? If we don't, if we're not clear about why, it's difficult to stick to it in the challenging moments. And then you talk about, you know, step three being skills and tools. Can you give me an

example of some of the skills and tools that we might bring in in this step? Yes. The mindful check-in is definitely a skills and tool. Okay. And it falls in awareness of hunger and fullness and taste, triggers all of those things are skills and tools. Actually, intention is part of skills and tools as well. Self-compassion is a really beautiful and big one. That pause, bringing in kindness, when one notices the judging thoughts arising about the choices, when we judge ourselves, what we eat. And I know many listeners will relate to this. If they've had

something that wasn't what they considered okay to eat on their plan, a lot of judgment can kick in and the thoughts of, oh, I've blown it. I shouldn't have had this. And then kind of a helpless, whatever feeling, I may as well have that whole box of cookies or I'm off my plan. So first of all, bringing a lot of kindness and recognizing these thoughts that are not helpful. Another aspect of this work is being able to be flexible and throwing away the diet rules and diet mentality and diet culture that you're on again or off again. You're on a plan, you're not on a plan. You're yo-yoing and never knowing really how to eat. So it's also using good, sound, evidence-based nutrition and the model that I have in my book, understanding that when we call that outer wisdom in MBE, which is, and I do professional

trainings actually for health professionals in MBE and well-nourished coaching, they go together really beautifully. But each person looking at what is my healthy and wise relationship to the evidence-based nutrition information that's out there, taking into account personal preferences, needs, health needs. People are at different stages of life, activity. Everybody's individual. There's no one size course diet or one way of eating that works. Whole foods, plant-based diets, we have a lot of great research that that is a really healthy way to eat as a base. But a lot of people don't know that plant-based can mean that there is some animal products in plant-based. So there's vegan, that's a form of plant-based where there's absolutely no animal products. And then there's

different levels of plant-based that include animal products as well. So someone can still have their meat and their yogurt and, but be eating predominantly plant-based. Yeah. But recognizing that everybody's different and it's not about, oh, am I paleo or am I eating carbs or no carbs? Actually, plant-based does include naturally a lot of carbs and healthy whole grain, whole foods type. But everybody's different. Some will do better with a little less. Some will do better with more. Some will do better with more protein. So a lot of it is also putting on, I sometimes call it your mindful observer hat and knowing what the good evidence-based information is. which is based on the latest research that we know that doesn't have different influences in it. Like, you know, the dairy board, you have to include milk in it. You have to include it meat.

It's flexible and meeting people where they're at. So kind of using it as a guide, but not at all like, oh, this is a plan, but we need to be working off of something. And so what better thing to work off of than good sound evidence-based nutrition? Yeah, I found that for me in general, it's helpful for me to focus on the commonalities between these different plans. If you look at them, at least for me, I've started to see exactly what you're sort of describing, which is like, okay, the bulk of your calories should come from non-processed

food that's plant-based. Not all your calories, but a significant portion of it comes that way. And from there, you're kind of dialing in. Like I've gone from vegan to vegetarian, and I recently became, I guess it's not even that recent, pescatarian because I noticed that I needed more protein than I was getting, you know, and that I felt better. It just was healthier with a little bit of fish in my diet. I'm just corroborating sort of what you said, which is like, you could start with these basic principles and then sort of fine tune to what makes sense for you and avoid the incessant fighting over what exact, you know exact diet plan is the best in the world and focus on some broad concepts that can steer us in pretty good directions.

That's a fabulous summary of that. And processed foods, pretty much we can all agree, highly processed foods, ultra-processed foods, which they're often referred to in the research industry, they may taste good. And even when we tune in, they may taste good for a short amount of time. But there's definite corroboration that does not contribute to health and well being in excess. And actually, the less we eat, the better, but we don't have to beat ourselves up about it. Through mindful eating, one can learn to still include the foods that someone wishes to include, but not feel guilty and enjoy it and celebrate it and be able to have the stop button.

And these practices do help with that, tuning in to one feel satisfied there's another practice that we do where we notice and it works so well with processed foods that when we really tune in to that potato chip or that candy or whatever it is the taste action that highly processed food where everything's stripped out but then sugar sugar and some fats and some flavorings put in, the taste actually goes down fairly quickly. And we tune in, we notice that, and we have more information and able to make more of a discerning choice. Huh, do I still want to keep eating this? The pleasure, the flavor of it is actually gone. Maybe I've had enough. Do you then notice that foods that are not processed tend to linger on in flavor a little

bit longer? You know, it sort of sounds like you're saying the processed food tastes really, really good, really strongly, and then kind of falls off a cliff. Is a more nutritious food likely to maybe not go quite to the same peak, but last longer? Is that what you notice? Yes. Great question. It lasts longer. There's a lot more complex constituents to a whole processed food. So there is more taste. So it doesn't drop off as quickly. But what does happen when we tune in, generally, when we've had enough, when we're not hungry, physically hungry anymore, food stops tasting as good. So when we have a whole meal, a plate filled with different foods, different kinds of foods, we're getting all kinds of flavors on our tongue. So we keep stimulating the taste buds with lots of different complex flavors. So it doesn't necessarily fall off as quickly as something that's more stripped of all its natural components. And it's just a,

you know, high sugar or high fat food, but it still will go down, but not as quickly. So which is nice for us when we learn this taste satisfaction or taste satiety awareness. It's another choice point. So we have choice points throughout the day and with our eating and with our self-care, just any time of the day for filling off, we can do this mini meditation or mindful check-in and check in what is the nourishing choice right now. So let's stay with this area a little bit more because I think that there's some things we could explore. So when we talk about becoming more mindful, eating more mindfully, right, it can be helpful to have some questions to sort of ask ourselves. Like I know for me, I've learned if I'm meditating on a body sensation, for example, I might ask myself questions like, where exactly is it? How big is it? Is it constant or is it

changing? You know, like I have some prompts that help me to tune my precision in. So when it comes to mindful eating, what are some of those prompts or questions that I can use to help me be more precise about what's happening? You know, it seems to me there would be right before I eat, there would be the sensations of eating. There would be a category that would be, you know, how I'm feeling after I'm eating. Like, can you give me a couple others in that area that would be helpful for people? Well, one thing that we haven't talked about is mindful eating practices that are specifically tuning in with all of our senses.

And this is really foundational. And I probably should have mentioned it right from the beginning, along with the mini meditation. But it is foundational to the practice of mindful eating, bringing our full present moment awareness. So there's the questions in the beginning, you know, how hungry am I? Am I truly physically hungry? What is it that I need?

And then there's like really enjoying and eating the food mindfully with full presence, pausing and checking in at various times, especially as one is retraining, not sure if someone has a habit of eating too much, checking in while eating. What's my hunger level? What's my fullness level? How good is the food still tasting? So those kind of questions. And then just learning to notice when one feels satisfied and good in the body. Having some outer wisdom in terms of what a plate might look like is helpful too to help with portion sizes. And that's all very flexible. But tuning in, that's something that we don't usually learn. You mentioned working with the body and looking at,

oh, there's a sensation, what size, what shape? That's a way that we might work with cravings and urges that arise. There is a craving practice that is actually called in my book, surf urges with loving kindness and awareness. So it's noticing when there's a strong urge, and this is actually often when we're not eating, or we might stop and then there's still a big urge. Right. And we've actually had enough. So taking a pause and noticing where that urge is in the body, that craving, noticing its size, its shape, what it feels like. And just that, again, begins to take us out of it. We now have a bigger perspective.

We're in that bird's eye view. And then inviting a sense of kindness. And this is a training. Mindfulness training is mindful eating training. We always have the word trainings because it's something that we're always, we continue practicing. So we're training on loving kindness, how to bring in that sense of kindness and friendliness to ourselves, to others, well-wishing. And so we can actually bring in a sense of kindness to the urge. And this practice that I developed, we envelop this urge with loving kindness. And it's a pretty powerful, it tends to dissipate. It's in my book, we now have it in the MBE program. That's a 12 week mindful eating training program. So anyway, there's all kinds of insights people can have.

But one that's particularly powerful is realizing that they were looking for love from the food. And that urge was driving them and then realizing, ah, with this pause, with bringing kindness, compassion, loving kindness, I feel really full. And 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. 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

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We've given our Instagram account a new look and we're sharing content there that we don't share anywhere else. Encouraging positive posts with wisdom that support you in feeding your good wolf as well as some behind the scenes video of the show and some of Ginny and I's day-to-day life, which I'm kind of still amazed that anybody would be interested in. It's also a great place for you to give us feedback on the episodes that you like, or concepts that you've learned that you think are helpful, or any other feedback you'd like to give us. If you're on Instagram, follow us at at 1 underscore you underscore feed, and those words are all spelled out, 1 underscore you underscore feed. And those words are all spelled out one underscore you underscore feed to add some nourishing content to your daily scrolling. See you there. Talk a little bit more

about this surfing the urge with loving kindness. How do I actually do that? So I'll give you an example. This happened to me. I was out to eat. I was kind of rushing. So maybe that's problem one, but it is what it is. I was kind of in a hurry. I was at a restaurant and I was eating and I noticed that I've developed a fairly good sense of when I'm going to be full and not wanting to go beyond that. As I tuned into it, I'm like, I really don't like that feeling. So I'm feeling that I'm in that neighborhood, right? I've developed that sort of awareness and, and yet it's delicious. And so I'm noticing now all of a sudden, like one part of me going, all right, I think you've probably had enough. You've satisfied the amount of food you need to eat. And yet another part of me going, take another bite, take another bite, take another bite. So in that moment, if I recognize, okay, there's an urge here that I

don't want to fulfill. How do I surf that urge in that moment? You know, how do I bring this into that exact moment where it's just really easy to keep lifting the fork right to your mouth. So talk to me about surfing the urge in like that sort of scenario. It's all recognizing it. You have that awareness. You have to recognize that it's there, that you have a choice to help kind of settle the tension a little bit. You can take a few deep breaths, bring your attention to the breath for a moment or so. And then just bring a sense of curiosity. You know, mindfulness is a lot about exploring what's happening with a sense of curiosity and non judgment and kindness. So just noticing that urge. So that's that first step, that space that then gets created. Yeah, you can just be with it and just keep doing that. The traditional

kind of surfing the urge is staying with that for a moment with your attention. And that feeling will go down just like a wave. It will go down. But even as it just starts to go down a little, or even as you're just noticing it, you can bring in what we call your inner wisdom. What are some other options too? This is delicious. You're enjoying it. You're noticing you're fairly satisfied, full. You don't really need it. And have a few more bites and just really enjoy the taste and celebrate it and not worry about it. You know, and just really enjoy the taste and celebrate it and not worry about it. You know, we don't have any kind of calorie counting in this approach.

So you don't have to worry like, oh my gosh, that's 10 more calories. But to enjoy it. So just that's one choice. Another choice might be, I can bring this home. You know, I have enough. I can enjoy another meal. Or I can be really clear, I don't want to have more. And let's just see what happens if I just stay with this urge for another moment or so,

and even bring in a sense of kindness to it. It strikes me that it's easy to write off mindfulness sometimes as something that's become a cliche. It's easy to write it off as considered a panacea. But really in that moment, right, it is that recognition that there are choices here. And even that little bit of pause, you know, I found that it's a momentum almost that like next bite, next bite, next bite. If I can interrupt that long enough to, like you say, recognize that I have a choice and just break the momentum almost by physically just stopping, then I've got a much better chance than I do if I just kind of don't recognize that and don't bring it into actual awareness, you know, very clear awareness. Absolutely. And putting down the fork is helpful too. You know, something that is part of some diet programs, but here it's just a part of a mindful pause. You know, we just put it down, focus on this

conversation, the connection for a few moments. Satiety can take a little while to really kick in. And if we put down the fork and pause, we might notice more feelings of satisfaction, that urge can go away. So part of mindful eating is slowing it down. It doesn't mean it's always really slow. When we first learn it, we slow it down. But we can actually mindfully eat at different paces, but slowing it down. I'm often the last person to finish at a meal, and I've just been going slower, savoring it, and eating an amount that feels good to me and my body and giving time to pause and heal. But so we can slow it down, and that offers the space for that pause too and to really enjoy it.

I do want to say another important piece of mindful eating and that is, it has to do with the outer wisdom too, is bringing awareness to our meals, our meal patterns. Are we skipping meals? Are we eating regularly? Because part of an overeating pattern, common one, especially overeating at night, is skipping meals. And part of that is that diet mentality. I'm going to be good and I'm going to skip breakfast and I'm just going to have a little lunch. And then by the time somebody gets to late afternoon or evening, all they can think about is being hungry and food.

And so taking care of just that the body needs regular nourishment on a physical level, making sure one has those regular meals. Yeah, there's nothing that will cause me to make bad food choices more than being super hungry. Like if I let myself get to the point where I am super hungry, maybe it's a blood sugar thing partially. I'm just like, where is the snicker bar factory? But when I'm eating more regularly, I'm much more able to make good food choices. But if I get too hungry, it crosses this point and it's like the bad choice food monster has arrived. And it's like the bad choice food monster has arrived.

Exactly. And so many people beat themselves up for that. And that feeling of lack of control or poor choices. And it's really very basic physiology. It's not that anybody's a bad person. That's just what's going to happen. Learning what our hunger levels are and not letting ourselves get too hungry. Yeah. And when we're eating, actually, we enjoy our food more when we have a little bit of hunger. Yeah. Yeah. It's kind of like a natural flavor enhancer.

As we're talking, I'm reminded of a model that is in a lot of recovery programs, but it was particularly in 12-step recovery programs. And it's using an acronym called HALT, right? Don't allow yourself to get too hungry, angry, lonely, or tired. But the point there is what may be showing up to you as a craving to drink might actually be one of those four other things, right? And I think this is a real correlation to your approach, which is to say that what is showing up as a desire to eat an entire sleeve of Oreo cookies might be that I'm needing to be nourished in these other ways. And in the same way, that little acronym of HALT allows me to go, okay, I think I want to drink, but is it one of these other things,

right? Is this recognition of these eight different bodies that need to be nourished is a way of also saying the same thing. What I think is a food craving could be these other things. Absolutely. And one of the things when I work with people is to explore the long list of triggers for eating in the different categories. It's not really about being hungry. And one is what this example you gave includes physical triggers like being tired, fatigued, stressed. I put stress in there, which then leads to other emotions as well. Thirsty even, sometimes people confuse that. Yeah, just might be physical needs. It might be social needs, desires for social connection, or just actually just being with social settings and the foods there and just that kind of mindless, okay, now I'm going to

just take the food, it's here, not really thinking about it, maybe even having it be a comforting anchor. Well, but bringing awareness to this, like one could have food at a party, and maybe just be very mindful about what you put on your plate and be mindful about how much you really want to have. But yeah, there's so many triggers. So physical triggers, emotional, social, environmental, and bringing awareness to these is definitely really helpful. Give us just a few more common trigger examples that might be triggers that are something else. I mean, you gave us some categories there, but what are some specific things maybe within categories? Well, emotions for sure. A typical pattern might be somebody having a workday where there's very little break for any kind of nourishment and any kind like walking, connection, social connection.

If you're feeling frustrated, maybe having a small meal. And then for lunch, skipping food, going home and seeing a box of cookies out or the cupcakes for the kids and just thinking, oh, I deserve this. Because it's there, that's environment. And then there's the thoughts and just going ahead and having that without really kind of checking in. Well, what is it that I really need right now? Oh, I skipped lunch or I just had a little bit. But if I have actually, you know, make some good nourishing food and it's really helpful to look back over one's day to see what leads up to overeating and triggers. It may be not having any breaks, stressful day, our thoughts. So I deserve it as one big one. Or just, you know, as far as a thought goes,

there's just, yeah, so many things. Environment's a big one. Or habits, coming home, sitting down, getting a big bag of chips or a bowl of popcorn and watching TV. So our habits that we have connected with activities and eating or always having food, it just becomes mindless with a habit. So bringing awareness to all these different ways that we're eating that are mindless is very helpful. I'm sort of now drawing addiction correlations to the addictions that I've had. But yeah, I mean, one of the things that we do is a very basic exercise is recognize what are my triggers? You know, what are the things that typically make me want to have a drink or do drugs and identifying what they are and then recognizing

that you may not be able to eliminate all those things, right? But what's going to be your response in them? And it's very helpful to kind of go through and map that out and really think a little bit about it. Like, okay, yeah, it is really after I haven't eaten all day. So it's not about fighting a craving at the moment so much as it is figuring out how to eat during the day. Or, you know, I get this craving for a drink every time I drive by the bar. Well, the wise thing to do might be to take a different route home. Like it's this sort of being creative and thinking about these things. And like you said, sort of backing up and really noticing kind of what leads up to these moments. Yeah, and then emotions can be triggers, and I'll use the example. So, yes, absolutely backing up, putting in what you need in your day so it doesn't lead to this.

And then we have different emotions. One, I work with people often that maybe they're feeling lonely or disconnected. And that's where this whole well-nourished model comes in because I've worked with them to explore what do they really love and what would be activities or ways to bring in more social connection. So it might be joining some kind of, there's just so many things someone could do, could join a book group or join a class where there's movement. Maybe they're needing to move too, but they're also with other people or join a gym. This particular person that I'm thinking of right now lived in a big apartment building and they created some social groups. There was a need for that. And so addressing feelings such as loneliness with actually creating more social connection or reaching out to friends that you haven't been in touch with.

You know, you said this earlier on. I'm going to kind of come back to it here a little bit, which is everybody's a little bit different. You've got to find out what it is about you and how you actually respond. And I think that, you know, one of the other things that goes with mindfulness, and you said this yourself exactly, is being curious, right? Is that that curiosity about what's happening, why, you know, let's say, why do I keep engaging in this pattern? You know, that curiosity about instead of I'm such a, you know what, because I keep doing this. It's actually when we can pivot from that using some self-compassion into, huh, wonder why I keep doing that is, you know, then you can learn.

And the other thing that you said that I thought was really good was when you said, and we don't worry about being fully on or fully off or making a little mistake. We simply take it as a new piece of data and we learn and go, oh, okay, what's that? And it does speak to this getting away from expecting the answer to be out there somewhere in this diet plan, this diet program, this thing, and instead recognizes that for, at least for me, for these things to be sustainable, that there is a great deal of inner knowledge that needs to sort of happen about me and my response. Mm-hmm. Yeah. And balance is not static. Right. I think of those like two scales. is not static. I think of those like two scales. There's a movement and that completely takes away the rigidity of it's got to be this way or that way, all or nothing, or I shouldn't have that

food. It's okay to have that one. We actually remove that label of good and bad foods. It's so pervasive in diet culture, which is what we live in um and i actually like the term always foods and sometimes foods because it just it's very forgiving and is much more realistic yes yeah i really like this movement it's kind of a dance and it flows and it moves and but when learning how to be here rather let's see, can't see both my hands in there rather than like this, the swinging, but more like this. And it's a much more comfortable place to be in. Yeah.

We're near the end of our time here. Is there any last thing that you feel like is really important to this approach that we haven't hit on? Yes. Or a parting message you would like to leave with people? Well, I would like to talk about the creative body just for a moment. Okay.

Because people tend to really love that body or that aspect of ourselves that need nourishment. It's one that is a little neglected in this culture as an essential nutrient to be creative. For example, I went to school in California and was it Prop 13? Or there was some proposition that took away funding when I was younger for arts and music and creative programs because it just isn't as valued. But creativity is a great source of nourishment for people, certainly as well as spirituality. Those two pedals are next to each other on that model.

in your life. And that doesn't just mean playing music or painting, but also any kind of way that you're expressing creativity through hobbies or volunteering or creating projects or non-profit organization or whatever it is, or living life creatively, getting out of the box, getting out of this linear ways of the way our days often go, creating more novelty, which is very nourishing and actually stimulating to the brain. And it's great for anti-aging too. Could be one trigger for that. Could be if somebody is feeling frustrated in their lives without creatively expressing themselves. So starting that creative project or hobby or whatever it is, living life. What I talk about in the book, creativity is also the way we live our lives can be, or having a creative date with yourself for a day and just kind of go with the flow. And so it adds a lot of juice to life and maybe one of the missing ingredients, as well as of course, spirituality and however that is important for each person. But I do want to mention nature as an incredible resource for ourselves to spend time in nature and touch into what I call, and many of us have heard the term, true nature.

It's always there inside of ourselves. Meditation brings us there. Being in nature brings us there. The more that we nourish this place and water these seeds, the more easier it is to rest in that in the moment in our many choice points during the day. Thank you. That is a beautiful note to end on. We'll have links in the show notes to your book and your trainings that you offer. And thank you so much for coming on. It's been a pleasure to talk with you again about this really important subject. Thank you, Eric. Thank you for having me back. I enjoyed being here.

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