Self-Awareness and Mindfulness Meditation

One of the healthy habits we encourage at the Duke Diet & Fitness Center (DFC) is self-awareness or mindfulness — the act of paying attention to what you experience in the moment. Mindfulness can contribute to your overall sense of well-being in many ways, one of the most significant being that it can help to reduce stress.

As part of our self-awareness programming at the DFC, we teach our clients a technique called mindfulness meditation. Developed by Dr. Jon Kabat-Zinn of the University of Massachusetts Medical Center's Stress Reduction Clinic, mindfulness meditation is a method of paying attention to the present moment, without letting your mind drift to the past or future or judging your every thought and feeling.

You can practice mindfulness meditation by carving some time out of your day, finding a quiet place where you can be alone, and then turning your attention to your breath or to some other sensation in your body. As thoughts, emotions, or other sensations arise and compete for your attention, you simply observe and acknowledge them without judging, analyzing, or trying to suppress them. Just give the thought or feeling a little bit of space, and eventually it will pass.

This very simple process can prove quite challenging. Most of us have never tried to train our minds to gain mastery over where our attention is from moment to moment. The solution is to practice.

This week, set aside some time to practice mindful meditation. Make a point to focus on what you are experiencing. Let the feelings flow. See what emerges. After a period of regular meditation practice, you may find that it's easier to be mindful in other situations in your daily life. Next week, we'll show you how to be mindful when you are eating.

Courtesy of: Duke Diet and Fitness

Tame the Emotional Eating Beast for Good

When weight loss professionals discuss emotional eating, you hear a lot of talk about stimulus control, stress management techniques, and cognitive reframing. This is all well and good (and you’ll be hearing some of that here), but it doesn’t quite capture the actual experience of being caught up in an episode of emotional eating.

This really is what it feels like, at least in my experience. You’re doing OK, cruising along, when suddenly something happens that stirs up a bunch of feelings, and all of a sudden the Beast is awake and eating everything it can get its hands on. Or maybe it isn’t always that dramatic—maybe you just get bored, or start feeling a little anxious because there is nothing going on to distract you from that vague sense of impending doom that always seems to be lurking just under the surface. Even that little bit of free-floating anxiety can be enough to wake the Beast up and set it on the prowl for something to eat. Or it might be as simple as getting home from work or school, or finding yourself alone for a little while, after a hard day. Whatever the trigger might be, the Beast isn’t about to go back to sleep without doing some serious eating first. Or so the story normally goes.

There are two basic and complimentary approaches you can use to tame the Beast before it trashes your food plan, and you’ll need both for long-term success. The difference between them is the same as the difference between emergency medicine and preventive medicine. The main focus here will be on coping with the immediate emergency. You’ll find more information about the preventive approach, aimed at putting an end to the problem for good, in the links at the end of this article.

When the Beast is Loose: Getting It Back in Its Cage

The bad news here is that will power has little effect on controlling emotional eating. From a psychological perspective, the shift into emotional eating mode is usually a “state-dependent” event, which is a fancy way of saying that it involves shifting into a different state of consciousness (or persona) with its own independent set of emotions and related thinking patterns. For a little while, you literally aren’t your normal self, and the normal tricks you use to manage your behavior and thinking may not work.

The good news is that your Emotional Eating Beast is a pretty dim-witted critter, and you can trick it into going back where it came from without too much effort, if you know how to do it. Here are some tricks that usually work:

1. Play the Stalling Game. Your Beast has a very short attention span, and if you can manage to stall it for just a few minutes on its way to the kitchen, it will often forget why it woke up in the first place, and happily go back where it came from. So, instead of trying to fight it and tell it that it can’t have what it wants, just tell it to hang on for five minutes and wait until you’re done doing what you’re doing. If necessary, you can usually get away with stalling like this 2-3 times before things start to get ugly, and most of the time, that 10-15 minutes will be plenty long enough for your Beast to forget the whole business and go back to sleep.

2. Play the Distraction/Substitution Game. If your Beast doesn’t fall for the Stalling Game, you can still use your superior mental capacities to keep the upper hand. The key here is to keep in mind that what your Beast really wants isn’t food, but emotional comfort. If you can find ways to comfort yourself that don’t involve food, the need to eat will go away very quickly. Find something you enjoy doing that’s simple and easy to do right away. Listen to soothing or inspirational music, take a hot bath or a nice walk around the block, logon to SparkPeople, grab the phone and chat with a friend, or do some inspirational reading—you get the idea. Think of the Beast as a young child who just woke up from a nightmare, and of yourself as the parent looking for a way to help your child calm down and realize that it was all just a bad dream.

3. Play the Good Beast/ Bad Beast Game. Even though the Beast may seem powerful and overwhelming, it is just as afraid of you as you are of it. It knows full well that you can and, someday, probably will just tell it to go take a hike, and that will be the end of the game. To postpone this unhappy day for as along as possible, the Beast is always willing to negotiate with you if you can muster up enough nerve to stare it in the eye and demand some sort of compromise you can live with. If you keep your kitchen stocked with healthy snacks that won’t kill your diet and your self-respect, and you let the Beast get its hands on them, then you can both stay relatively happy—until that day when you’re ready to finally toss the Beast out and change the locks.

Once you have the immediate situation under control, you can start working on ways to prevent this problem from happening in the first place, by learning how to handle stress and powerful feelings without relying on food.

Courtesy of: SparkPeople.com

The Key to Building Calorie-Burning Muscle

For many women, the word "testosterone" conjures the image of a muscle-bound sports player or a knuckle-dragging Neanderthal. But it turns out that testosterone is not just for guys — it and another androgenic hormone, dehydroepiandrosterone (DHEA), are forces of good in women's metabolic war too. They can help us boost our energy, motivate us to hit the gym, and help us build calorie-burning muscle. That's why we have to do everything we can to protect our levels of these hormones, because as we get older, they start to head south.

Androgens like testosterone and DHEA are anabolic hormones — by definition, they build rather than destroy. And what they build, thank goodness, is mostly muscle. In both men and women, testosterone helps increase lean muscle mass and strength, boosts libido, and improves energy.

Unfortunately, as we age, our production of testosterone and DHEA trends downward. Our libidos slip, our muscles lose mass, we gain abdominal fat, and our bones weaken. Motivation to exercise decreases, which is absolutely tragic because exercise helps boost testosterone. To make matters worse, as people gain weight, their bodies start to convert more of their testosterone to estrogen. This estrogen can then start to overshadow the effects of testosterone in a vicious cycle: more estrogen, more fat; more fat, more estrogen. The testosterone gets crowded out of the equation.

Eating right, exercising, and managing stress are all crucial to keeping testosterone and DHEA levels high.

Stretch Safely!

You may have heard that it's good to stretch before and after your workouts, but do you know why it's so important? Stretching helps prime your muscles for action, keeping them supple and preventing injuries! However, it is possible to stretch yourself the wrong way, say the experts at Montana State University. To avoid this, they advise the following:

• Make sure you aren't stretching cold muscles. Get ready for the challenge with a gentle five-minute walk or jog, or even a warm bath.
• Think slow and smooth! Aim for what is called a static stretch. Reach until you feel tension but not pain, and hold that position for 20 seconds to one minute. Be sure to never bounce while stretching!
• Remember to breathe deeply and naturally throughout each move. Don't hold your breath! Ease into stretching, rather than trying to touch your nose to the floor the first time around. It will take time for your body to gain maximum flexibility — so don't rush it!

Yoga and You

The practice of yoga was developed in India roughly 5,000 years ago to encourage emotional, physical, and spiritual wellness. While it's an ancient art, the popularity of this form of exercise continues to this day. It's easy to see why — yoga not only improves balance, flexibility, and muscle strength, but it also can help to relieve stress.

Yoga is composed of a series of very specific movements, or poses, aimed at building strength and balance. Yoga moves can be done quickly, to build up heat in the body, or slowly and contemplatively to focus on flexibility. Meditation, breathing exercises, and chants may also be featured. There are many styles of yoga. Different styles emphasize different aspects of the practice, and some are more strenuous than others.

If you've never tried yoga, consider signing up for a class. You may want to start with hatha yoga, a style that tends to be slower paced and is good for beginners. Choose an introductory class where the instructor will teach you the poses involved and observe you to make sure you're doing them properly. After a few sessions with a good instructor, you can continue practicing yoga with a group, alone, or along with a yoga videotape.

You'll want to wear comfortable, breathable clothing that allows you to move easily. Yoga is done barefoot, so you don't have to worry about buying any special shoes. You'll need a mat that prevents you from slipping while you do poses, and these can be borrowed or rented at most studios or gyms that offer yoga. If you decide to continue practicing yoga, you may consider buying your own mat.

If you've never done yoga before, let the instructor know it's your first time. Remember, others in your class may have been doing yoga for years, so don't compare yourself to them. In time, you, too, will become comfortable with the poses, and you will begin to experience the benefits.

Rise to the Challenge!

Ever wonder how professional athletes are born? Sure, they have tremendous talent that lets them run faster, jump higher, or hit the ball harder than the average person. But these men and women couldn't reach their level of success if they didn't push themselves — physically and mentally. And that's really the key to accomplishing any feat!

If your workouts aren't challenging enough, you risk getting bored and then losing interest altogether. And when you perform the same routine over and over again, your body gets used to these movements and eventually starts running on cruise control — and that's when you might notice that the scale isn't budging.

Never be afraid to turn things up a notch! Switch up your routine — in every aspect of your life! Do things you've never done before. Tired of the treadmill? Get in step with salsa dancing! Sick of cooking the same meals? Experiment with different flavors by using vegetables, herbs, and spices you've never tried before!

And when you meet these challenges, you'll see that the rewards are huge! You'll improve your body, expand your mind, gain self-confidence — and you'll be living proof that anything's possible! Give it a try!

Lighten Up Family Favorites

Remember Mom's rich brownies? Or Grandpa's five-alarm chili? They're in every family — sacred recipes that get passed down through the generations. The problem is that family favorites often aren't as healthy as they could be. But with a few alterations to the recipe and cooking methods, you can still enjoy the tastes you love while cutting out excess fat and calories. Try the following tips:

Spray, don't pour: Coat pans and baking dishes with cooking-spray butter, margarine, or oil.

Go nonstick: A nonstick pan can reduce the need for fat when you sauté.

Reach for broth: Sauté vegetables in low-sodium vegetable or chicken stock for great flavor minus the fat.

Strip the skin: Cut calories by always removing the skin from poultry and trimming visible fat off meat.

Soak up the flavor: Leaner cuts of meat can be less tender. Use a low-sodium marinade to add flavor and help tenderize.

Switch tactics: Bake, boil, or broil meats and other foods you'd normally fry.

Cut back: Cut the amount of cheese and other fatty ingredients in your favorite recipes by one half, or replace them with low-fat versions.

Get saucy: Try replacing some or all of the fat in baking recipes with applesauce.

Go veggie for a day: Replace meat in dishes with beans or meat substitutes like tofu or vegetarian crumbles.

Slow cook: Use a slow cooker to turn lean meats, vegetables, and beans into delicious soups, stews, and casseroles without adding fat.

Spice things up: Add flavor but not fat to foods with dried and fresh herbs and spices. From the sweet and citrusy flavors of basil and lemongrass to the distinctive flair of cilantro to the richness of curry, a world of flavor awaits your exploration.

Get to know yogurt: Replace the sour cream on your table with low-fat plain yogurt. It makes a great topping for baked potatoes.

And remember, no matter what you're cooking or baking at home, always keep portion control in mind when you sit down to eat it. Moderation is a key to success!