The Zen of Eating

What is meditation? It is the condition of being aware.  State of awareness.  Consciousness.  Focused attention - then, detachment.

When we are upset or angry, tired or frustrated, we are experiencing emotions.  Our emotions reside in a part of the brain that is "unconscious," in the sense that our emotions are instinctive.  They originate in the amygdala, a very primitive part of the brain that houses our survival mechanisms.  Our emotions help us survive as a species, even though one might argue that they can create havoc in our daily lives.  When a therapist asks a patient "how do you feel," frequently the most immediate answer is, "I don't know."  That's understandable, because "knowing" how one feels means giving a name of the emotion, and doing so implies thinking: left brain.  Emotions are located in the right brain.  Therefore, when we feel, when we experience emotion, the part of the brain that is active is the right brain -- not the "thinking" brain; not the part of the brain that is logical and analytical.  Our emotional brain is not.  Our emotional, right brain is charged with keeping us alive, with creativity, feelings, reactions - not thinking.  Our reasoning abilities are products of our left brain.  It might be said that we have distinguished ourselves from the so-called "lower animals" by virtue of the evolution of our left brain into a thinking, analyzing, reasoning mechanism.

Meditation is the act of becoming aware.  Once you understand that your emotions originate in the amygdala, the survival center of your brain that is very primitive in terms of our evolution as a species, it might become clear that you are not thinking when you are experiencing an emotion.  The two are almost incompatible.  Thinking is a function of the left brain, while emotions and feelings are functions of the right brain.  Meditation is the act of becoming aware (left brain, logical, thinking, reasoning) of your emotions (right brain, feelings, reactions).  It takes practice to be able to put a name on a feeling.  When you are feeling, you do not have conscious awareness of the feeling: you are simply reacting.  The idea, then, is to practice identifying that feeling (logic), labeling it, and then letting it be.  Let's say you feel angry, upset, frustrated.  If you were to meditate on that, you would try to first identify how you feel.  Simply identifying it is very difficult because emotions don't have names.  Emotions reside very deeply, and are amorphous.  Sometimes the process is easy and obvious: your dog passed away last night, and you miss him terribly.  You are crying, you are sad.  But frequently, emotions are not as straight-forward.  The first step, then, is to identify your feelings.  There simple act of putting a name on the feeling forces your brain to cross over into left-brain territory, thus interrupting the flow of feeling hormones.  Once you have given a name to your emotion, say, anger, you proceed to the next step, which is to put the anger in some sort of perspective: Why am I angry? What happened? Why am I reacting so violently? Why am I upset? What is the reality here? Meditation asks you to become aware.  It does not ask you to change things; it does not ask you to stop feeling as you do.  It simply asks you to become aware.  You may choose to do something about it, but that's not the function of meditation.

What does meditation have to do with the Zen of Eating? Again, meditation asks you to become aware: of your style of eating, the time of day, your emotions, the type of food you are eating, the speed at which you are eating it.  If you are an emotional eater, you are likely to "inhale" your food, in big gulps or giant bites, practically not chewing it, swallowing it ravenously and indiscriminately, stuffing yourself, frequently to the point of sleep.  This is emotional eating.  You are actually reacting to your emotions by giving yourself some form of comfort.  You have learned to associate large quantities of a particular food (fresh bread, say) with feeling calmer, and so you repeat that behavior again and again in an effort to quell your emotions.  The Zen of Eating asks you to interrupt that habitual behavior, that reflex behavior, that behavior that originates in the primitive parts of your brain, and become aware.  As you are about to open that box of Pepperidge Farm cookies, you pay attention to the act; you focus on the cellophane; you focus on your surroundings; on the way you are dressed; where you are located; and what is your state of mind/emotions.  With time and practice, you may come to a point where you consciously choose to not react in a manner that sabotages your health.

Renewed and Energized

A colleague recently gave a speech called Diets Don't Work.  He spoke about his own struggle with food, eating junk foods indiscriminately while in college without regard to consequences, and later, as he realized that he had gained an inordinate amount of weight, endeavored to try whatever diet was popular or interesting to shed those excess pounds.  He related staying on the Atkins diet about a day and a half, and we all laughed knowingly.  He continued to tell us of his efforts, and his discovery not too much later that the secret, if there is one, is not to diet, but enjoy whatever foods you like, but in moderation.  He mentioned that he loves soda, and would drink three or four cans of it in one day, to the tune of about 800 empty calories.  He realized that such empty calories did nothing for his weight, not to mention his health, and so began a journey of acknowledgment and recognition.  With a bit of tweaking, he started diminishing his intake of sodas, or substituting water or tea.  He learned that eating whole fruit was much more satisfying than merely drinking the soda.  And thus began his journey of acquainting himself with favorite foods that he had eschewed and reintroducing sanity into his lifestyle. 

My colleague is a young man, trim and handsome.  It's hard to believe that he once carried 25 extra pounds.  But that's so easy to do in our society, with the huge portions of fried simple carbohydrates and our sedentary lifestyles.  And so, as I realized I had a like-minded friend in our midst, I introduced him to my writings on the subject.  Moreover, such affinity also reignited whatever cooling embers I may have had lately about my own diet.  Reenergized, renewed in my commitment, I have been busy chopping and cooking all kinds of salads, from a Moroccan carrot salad with raisins (one of my childhood favorites) to a simple salad of cherry tomatoes, radishes and olives.  Bliss!

"I'm only human"

[caption id="" align="alignright" width="272" caption="Vitruvian Man, Gallerie dell'Accademia, Venice Italiano: Uomo Vitruviano, Gallerie dell'Accademia, Venizia (Photo credit: Wikipedia)"][/caption]

This has become one of most often-used excuse for everything from overeating to goofing off.  And I don't want to hide behind that one.  That said, there is one area of my diet/eating style that befuddles me: If I am successful in keeping my food/eating commitments for even a single day, I assume an attitude of "Gee, that was easy!" and conclude that since it was no big deal, I can do it again at anytime, and therefore can go ahead and indulge.  That, of course, doesn't help, because it produces the logical next feeling of guilt.  There, I did it again! I'm no good, I can't stick to it, it's bigger than I am.  I wrote the book on focusing on things other than food or eating; focusing on gratitudes; on friends and relationships; on hobbies and pastimes.  And yet, here I am being "human."  I despise that excuse, because it is so final, so definitive: In effect, being human is all we can be.  We will never be anything but human.  Does that limit us?  It shouldn't.  On the contrary - being human is an inspired, evolved existence, one that should propel us to be better than simple automatons in the way we conduct ourselves in relation to our environment, in the way we behave, in our choices.  Indeed, as humans, we have choices that go beyond our baser instincts, therefore, being human elevates us, rather than condemns us to an existence of simply responding to our urges.