Category: Make the most of life

Mindful eating and weight loss

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A pilot study has looked at the effect of Mindful Eating on weight loss. The report of  the study was published in Complementary Therapies in Medicine in 2010  and involved ten people classified as “obese” (average age was 44) who followed a Mindful Eating program for six weeks, consisting of mindfulness meditation, group eating exercises, and group discussions.  Pairing daily meditation with eating was encouaged to enable people to identify and examine eating triggers, hunger and fullness  cues, the quality of craved foods, and emotions associated with eating. They were encouraged to engage in as much mindful eating as possible and to increase their physical activity by about 5 to 10% each week. The participants were assessed during the trial and again after three months for changes in eating behaviour, psychological functioning, and weight and inflammation markers.

It was found that all of the participants lost a significant amount of weight, almost nine pounds over 12 weeks, on average. A measure of inflammation in the body (C-reactive protein,), decreased significantly, as well. Measures of mindfulness—the ability to observe, be aware of, accept, and describe their eating patterns—saw moderate to large increases throughout the study and follow-up periods. The participants’ self control improved dramatically, and binge eating was significantly reduced. In addition, significant improvements were seen in depressive and physical symptoms (such as indigestion and headache), as well as negative affect (mood) and perceived stress. The cautious conclusions drawn by the researcher were that mindful eating programmes could result in significant changes in weight and eating behaviour.

“In contrast to a focus on cutting calories, mindfulness helps people reduce weight and improve health by restoring the individual’s ability to detect and respond to natural cues,” stated Jeanne Dalen, lead author of the study who works at the Center for Family and Adolescent Research in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

Jeanne Dalen, Bruce W Smith, Brian M Shelley, Anita Lee Sloan, Lisa Leahigh, Debbie Begay, “Pilot study: Mindful Eating and Living : weight, eating behavior, and psychological outcomes associated with a mindfulness-based intervention for people with obesity”, Complementary Therapies In Medicine (2010), Volume: 18, Issue: 6.

Not trying to get anywhere else

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They harvested the field of barley beside our house yesterday. Planted last autumn,  it has grown strongly even in the present drought. Another cycle of planting, caring and harvesting completed, each in its own rhythm. The energy in the seed comes to fruition in its own time and cannot be rushed.

If you cultivate patience, you almost can’t help cultivating mindfulness, and your meditation practice will become richer and more mature. After all if you really aren’t trying to get anywhere else in this moment,  patience  takes care of itself. It is a remembering that things unfold in their own time. The seasons cannot be hurried. Spring comes, the grass grows by itself. Being in a hurry usually doesn’t help and it can create a great deal of suffering – sometimes in us, sometimes in those who have to be around us. Patience is an ever-present alternative to the mind’s endemic restlessness and impatience. Scratch the surface of impatience and you will find lying beneath it, subtly or not so subtly is anger. It’s the strong energy of not wanting things to be the way they are and blaming someone (often yourself)  or something for it.

Jon Kabat Zinn, Wherever you go, There you are

Seeing the way takes time

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Above all, trust in the slow work of God.

We are quite naturally impatient in everything to reach the end without delay.
We should like to skip the intermediate stages. We are impatient of being on the way to something unknown, something new.
Yet it is the law of all progress that it is made by passing through some stages of  instability and that may take a very long time.

And so I think it is with you.
Your ideas mature gradually. Let them grow.
Let them shape themselves without undue haste.

Do not try to force them on as though you could be today what time –  that is to say, grace –  and circumstances,  acting on your own good will – will make you tomorrow.

Teilhard de Chardin 

The knowledge we get through experience

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Only knowledge gained through experience, the fruit of living and suffering, fills the heart with the wisdom of love, instead of crushing it with the disappointment of boredom and final oblivion. It is not the results of our own speculation, but the golden harvest of what we have lived through and suffered through, that has the power to enrich the heart and nourish the spirit. And all the knowledge we have acquired through study can do no more than give us some little help in meeting the problems of life with an alert and ready mind.

Karl Rahner

The highest point

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Most of us have learned to live, or have been encouraged to live, in a manner where we get love.

We want to be loved, and we think that being loved is the highest point.

But actually, loving is the highest point.

Stephen Levine

Downstream

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At times we need to pay attention to what is going on upstream in our lives and in the world around us,  rather than always reacting or playing catch-up.  We can find that we have constructed a lot of reactive practices – fire-fighting – rather than dealing with the issues at source, somewhat like the Downstreamers in this contemporary fable by Donald Ardell. We need to recognize what are the stressors in the way our life is structured and take proactive measures to readjust the balance, rather than dealing with the symptoms when they become overwhelming. Or sometimes we need courage to go back in our history and face the events that are still having consequences in our life today.

It was many years ago that villagers in Downstream recall spotting the first body in the river. Some old timers remember how spartan were the facilities and procedures for managing that sort of thing. Sometimes, they say, it would take hours to pull 10 people from the river, and even then only a few would survive.

Though the number of victims in the river has increased greatly in recent years, the good folks of Downstream have responded admirably to the challenge. Their rescue system is clearly second to none: most people discovered in the swirling waters are reached within 20 minutes — many in less than 10. Only a small number drown each day before help arrives — a big improvement from the way it used to be.

Talk to the people of Downstream and they’ll speak with pride about the new hospital by the edge of the waters, the flotilla of rescue boats ready for service at a moment’s notice, the comprehensive health plans for coordinating all the manpower involved, and the large number of highly trained and dedicated swimmers always ready to risk their lives to save victims from the raging currents. Sure it costs a lot but, say the Downstreamers, what else can decent people do except to provide whatever is necessary when human lives are at stake.

Oh, a few people in Downstream have raised the question now and again, but most folks show little interest in what’s happening Upstream. It seems there’s so much to do to help those in the river that nobody’s got time to check how all those bodies are getting there in the first place. That’s the way things are, sometimes.

Donald Ardell, “The Parable of the Downstreamers” in High Level Wellness: An Alternative to Doctors, Drugs and Disease