Eat What You Love, Love What You Eat

Get Out of the Box! Buy local produce and invent a new recipe

My husband (Chef Owen) and I signed up to pick up a box of fresh, local produce from the farmer's market. Since we get whatever comes in the box, it challenges us to get out of our box and try new recipes! (Check out our first delicious recipe at the bottom of this post.)

Owen picked up our first box from Ahwatukee Farmers' Market. He was gone more than an hour and came back with our box PLUS three loaves of fresh bread, turnips, radishes, and some yummy yulu seeds. (Note To Self: Don't send a chef to a farmer's market alone.)

Our box held a generous supply of seasonal vegetables. Here's what we received in our first box:

• 8 assorted citrus
• Head of purple and speckled leaf romaine lettuce
• 2 baby fennel
• 3 bulbs of spring garlic
• Bunch of bright lights swiss chard
• 2 small sweet potatoes 
• Tuscano kale
• Spaghetti squash

We've had a lot of fun creating new recipes using some items we don't typically buy and many that we do - with the added benefit of buying local. Our first recipe, Winter Veg Korma (below) was unusual, delicious, and loaded with healthy ingredients.

Get out of your box and give it a try - I'd love to hear what you think!

Recipe: Winter Veg Korma

By Chef Owen May and Dr. Michelle May

This flavorful Indian dish is a great way to serve up nutrient rich sweet potatoes, butternut squash, and kale over brown rice. Sound too healthy to be delicious? SURPRISE! We loved it. Just try it and let us know what you think!

Korma is a dish with meat or vegetables braised in water, stock, and yogurt or cream. Garam masala is a fragrant mixture of spices with numerous variations which may contain up to 12 spices such as black pepper, cinnamon, cloves, coriander, cumin, cardamom, dried chiles, fennel, ginger, mace, or nutmeg.

Tip: Keep fresh ginger root in the freezer. Just peel it and store it in an airtight plastic bag in the freezer. Cut off pieces as needed.

Sauce:

1/2 onion, diced
1 small tomato, diced
1 inch of fresh ginger, finely diced
1/4 cup water
1 1/2 teaspoons of garam masala 
1/2 teaspoon salt

Winter Veg:

1 1/2 tablespoons of vegetable oil
2 small sweet potatoes (1 pound)
1/2 small butternut squash (3/4 pound)
1/2 red onion, thinly sliced
1 1/2 cups of water
1/2 bunch of kale; remove leaves from stem and chop
1 can garbanzo beans (chickpeas), drained 
1/2 cup of light coconut milk 

Directions

1. Combine first six sauce ingredients (onion, tomato, ginger, water, garam masala, salt) in a small food processor or blender and puree until smooth. Set aside.
2. Heat large sauté pan then add 1 tablespoon of the oil. When oil is hot, add diced sweet potato and butternut squash. Cook until vegetables start to soften then move them to the edge of the pan.
3. Add another tablespoon of oil to the center of the pan, and when hot, add sliced red onion and sauté, combining vegetables when onion is soft. 
4. Remove vegetables to a plate.
5. Add 1/2 tablespoon of oil to pan; add sauce and cook until thickened, approximately 5 to 6 minutes.
6. Return vegetables to the pan and add 1 1/2 cups of water.
7. When mixture is simmering, stir in kale and chickpeas.
8. Cook until sauce is thickened then add cocunut milk and heat through.
9. Serve over brown rice.

Happy MLK Day to the dedicated minority!

Almost always, the creative dedicated minority has made the world better. –Martin Luther King, Jr.

Dr. King's words and actions have inspired the world. Indeed, he was the epitome of the "dedicated minority" just decades ago. Today, on Martin Luther King Day, just log in to twitter.com (speaking of a creative minority that changed the world!), and put #mlk in the search box. You'll see a beautiful stream of quotes and ideas that inspired these individuals--ironically, shared in a medium that has given them a voice (well a 140 character sound bite anyway!). Indeed, Dr. King made the world better and his words echo still.

His words inspire me to remember that although my little voice of reason is often drowned out by the diet and weight-loss industry, creativity and dedication can change the world.

I have a dream.

Happy Birthday Dr. King!

My intention for 2012: Share my passions, lessons, and challenges with you - and hear about yours too

It is the first day of 2012 (aka the year I'll turn 50), and though I can honestly say that 2011 was a wonderful year, I am looking forward to what this next year will bring. Though I'm a bit of a control freak, the wisdom that comes with age has shown me that the only thing I can control is my intention and willingness to take appropriate action. Beyond that, I can only sit back and watch in amazement as incredible new experiences, opportunities, people, and lessons show-up and unfold in ways that I never could have planned or even imagined!

So today I have set my intention for this Eat What You Love, Love What You Eat blog for 2012. Of course I'll continue to write about my passion for mindful eating and breaking free from yoyo dieting. In addition, I will write more often about my other personal passions, experiences, challenges, and lessons. My intention for sharing these experiences with you is to show that it is possible to eat what you love and do what you love--no matter how much difficulty you've had in the past. My hope is that these posts will inspire you to share your passions, lessons, and challenges too so we can all learn from one another.

Who am I?

Let me start by telling you a little more about myself...I am Michelle May, M.D. I'm 49 and looking forward to turning 50 (though I have to admit that I was shocked when I got an AARP solicitation in the mail!).

My husband Owen and I celebrated our 25th anniversary with our dream trip to Italy last summer. Owen is a professional chef and owns Chef with Benefits Cooking Classes. We are definitely foodies so some of the passions I'll be sharing with you is our love of cooking, dining out, eating, and traveling. (This photo was taken during a hike on our recent trip to Utah.)

We have two "children" but will be empty nesters in the fall when our youngest, Elyse, 17, heads off to college. Our son Tyler, 21, is a junior in college. Yes, they both love to cook (and eat!). Elyse has been a vegetarian for about five years; she is the author of Veggie Teens Cookbook and Guide for Teenage Vegetarians. I'll share more posts about issues that families care about!

Why do I care?

For the middle half of my life, I had a conflicted, difficult love-hate relationship with food. In retrospect, I see those years as a blessing--an essential part of the journey that brought me to exactly this point. I feel privileged to share the lessons I learned (and continue to learn) about how to develop a more peaceful, joyful approach to eating and mindful living.

I look forward to connecting with you here; please let me know what you'd like to read about!

Myth: Average American Gains 7 Pounds During the Holidays

Truth: The Restrictive and Overeating Cycles May Cause You to Be More Vulnerable to Holiday Weight Gain

In my last post, Rewrite Those Ridiculous "How to Prevent Holiday Weight Gain" Articles, I mentioned that the often repeated statement that "the average American gains seven pounds during the holidays" is untrue. 

In A Prospective Study of Holiday Weight Gain, the average weight gain during the holiday period was 0.37 kg (less than a pound). This is much lower than the amount commonly quoted in the media, but an interesting difference emerged: those who had a "major" holiday weight gain (defined as a gain of at least 2.3 kg or 5 pounds), were more likely to be overweight or obese than those who did not have such a gain.  

Another study, The effect of the Thanksgiving Holiday on weight gain, also showed that overweight and obese participants gained significantly more weight over Thanksgiving than the non-overweight participants: 1.0 kg compared to 0.2 kg respectively.

While you may be saying to yourself, Well, duh!, it's important to realize that although the explanation is likely complex, these findings suggest that it's not simply the holiday environment that leads to overeating, but how individuals respond to the holiday environment. In other words, while holiday stress and the abundance of food and social events may be loaded with triggers for some, for others the triggers have little, if any, effect on their weight.

How come some people don't have to worry about what they eat?

As I pointed out in my previous post about ridiculous holiday eating advice, advising people to restrict during the holidays doesn't solve the problem but instead, leads to conflicted, calorie-focused party goers.

Another study, Holiday weight management by successful weight losers and normal weight individuals compared weight control strategies during the winter holidays among successful weight losers (SWL) in the National Weight Control Registry and normal weight individuals (NW) with no history of obesity. The SWL maintained greater exercise, greater attention to weight and eating, greater stimulus control, and greater dietary restraint, both before and during the holidays. On the other hand, over the holidays, attention to weight and eating declined in the NW individuals. More of the dieting "successful weight losers" than normal-weight individuals gained 1 kg or more over the holidays. In other words, although the SWL worked harder than NW to manage their weight, they are still more vulnerable to weight gain during the holidays (and probably the rest of the year!).

You've observed this among your own friends and family members. Some people just don't worry about about holiday weight gain or handling temptations. They simply continue to eat when they're hungry, eat what they love, stop when they're satisfied, and although they enjoy the extras, it doesn't create a problem for them.

As frustrating or confusing as that may seem, there is a logical explanation that has very little to do with willpower. The big difference is their underlying eating cycle. I explored the differences between Instinctive Eating, Overeating, and Restrictive Eating in the first chapter of Eat What You Love, Love What You Eat. During the holidays, you'll have many opportunities to observe these different eating styles in yourself and others. (You can also take this Eating Cycle Quiz to find out which eating cycle you tend to follow if you aren't sure.)

As you notice that people who eat instinctively manage their eating effortlessly, the real question becomes clear: Which eating cycle do you want to follow for the rest of your life? You have a choice, you know!

P.S. Another interesting finding from the first study: participants hadn't lost the additional weight by the next fall, suggesting that holiday weight gain is cummulative over the years. Therefore, the time to start asking Am I hungry? is now!

Rewrite Those Ridiculous "How to Prevent Holiday Weight Gain" Articles

The onslaught has begun... I'm not talking about the holiday shopping frenzy, the incessant Christmas music (Winter Wonderland is particularly annoying here in Phoenix), or even the delicious food everywhere (for that I'm grateful). I'm talking about the onslaught of "How to Prevent Holiday Weight Gain" stories. Perhaps you recognize their formula:

Cheery opening + Fear mongering + Clever strategies =
"Newsworthy" story to attract fearful/hopeful eyeballs

I’ve already seen, read, and been interviewed for dozens of these stories this year. An online search for "prevent holiday weight gain" turned up 50 million entries. If you read one article every minute, it would take you 96 years to read them all - except that the number of articles would continue to explode while you were reading them!

These stories pop up on a rotating basis: New Year's, Super Bowl Parties, Getting Ready for Swim Suit Season, etc., and most follow a similar formula. (A notable exception during the Thanksgiving onslaught was this Huffington Post article quoting my friend Evelyn Tribole, co-author of Intuitive Eating.)

These stories must sell because they are often the teasers for the news (is this really NEWs?) and displayed prominently on the cover of magazines, ironically next to "Simple Sinfully Sumptuous Sugar Cookies." The stories go something like this (I couldn't resist reading between the lines):

How to Prevent the Dreaded Holiday 7

It’s that time of year—holiday parties, family dinners, and fudge in the break room. (Lions and tigers and bears, oh my!) The average American gains seven pounds during the holidays. (When you see this stop reading; repeating this unsubstantiated statistic is a sure marker of lazy journalism. Watch my blog next week for a post about the truth!) To get a jump start on your New Year’s Resolutions (Never fear! There will be another article using the same formula on January 1st for all those who didn’t follow this holiday advice), follow these five simple rules (Did you ever notice that we often use odd numbers? Clever, isn't it?):

1. Eat before you go to a party so you won’t be tempted by all the goodies. (Really??? Do you also recommend maxing out your credit cards before you go Christmas shopping?)
2. Wear tight clothing to the party to prevent yourself from overeating. (Feeling uncomfortable and self-conscious is a small price to pay to prevent yourself from enjoying your favorite food.)
3.  Drink seltzer water with a squeeze of lime in place of eggnog with rum. (I don’t know many people who love eggnog, but for those who do, this is like recommending crunching on carrots when you love potato chips.)
4. Hold a glass and a plate so it’s impossible to eat. (You’ll look ridiculous trying to nibble off a rolling meatball or sneaking slurps from the side of your cheesecake.)
5. Schedule a session with your personal trainer the next morning to burn off any extra calories that slipped by your radar. (The punishment must fit the crime.)

If It Doesn't Work, Stop Doing It

That kind of advice leads to conflicted, calorie-focused party goers. While I confess that I've used similar titles myself in the past, like 15 Tips for Holiday Eating Without Weight Gain, I follow a different formula:

Loving food more, not less = Balanced eating year round

So let’s rewrite the story using this formula:

How to Enjoy Holiday Food More and Eat Less

It’s that time of year—holiday parties, family dinners, and fudge in the break room. There are so many opportunities to enjoy the foods you love, how will you decide when, what, and how much to eat? Here are five strategies to try while there are plenty of opportunities to experiment:

1. Trust your body wisdom. Tune into your signals of hunger and satiety to guide your eating before, during, and after the party. Being either famished or already full when you arrive sets you up for being uncomfortably full when you leave.
2. Treat yourself to pleasures besides food. Choose clothing that is beautiful, flattering, and comfortable so you feel and project your best.
3. Eat (and drink) what you really love. And skip anything that isn’t fabulous! The first few bites are for flavor, the rest are for fuel. (After the first few delicious bites, the flavor begins to fade anyway so you're just eating a memory.)
4. Love what you eat. Sensuously savor one small bite at a time, appreciating the appearance, aromas, flavors, and textures of your favorite foods as you eat them.
5. Practice extreme self-care. Choose activities that are the most meaningful to you, stay active and schedule down-time to relax and enjoy the holidays! (For one of my favorite articles on this topic, check out our new blog, DiabetesandMindfulEating.com)

And last but not least, stop reading those tired old articles and invest your time and energy in really celebrating the season, food and all!

TEDx Talk: Michelle May MD on Mindful Eating

Thankful for Food: The Great Connector

What if there was one simple act that could cultivate more happiness, peace, success, health, and love in your life?

There is! Cicero said, "Gratitude is not only the greatest of virtues, but the parent of all the others."

The gratitude holiday, Thanksgiving, stems from the tradition of holding harvest festivals to give thanks for the bounty and celebrate all the hard work with the community. While the vast majority of us are not involved in the harvest anymore, we cultivate gratitude when we love what we eat.

Food: The Great Connector

While we may be far removed from the origins of our meal, food connects us in ways that we probably take for granted. While a national holiday dedicated to thankfulness is wonderful, how would our lives change if we took a few moments to express gratitude every time we ate? The ability to experience gratitude starts with your awareness. Imagine throwing a pebble into a pond and watching the ripples spread outward, first noticing your immediate experience then expanding in ever widening circles.

Food connects you to …

… your five senses: sight, smell, touch, tastes, and hearing and your ability to fully experience the appearance, aromas, textures, flavors, and even the sounds as you eat.

… your body through physical acts like cutting with a knife, lifting your fork, opening your mouth, chewing, swallowing, then trusting your body to digest your food and absorb its nutrients without any conscious involvement on your part.

… your body wisdom, including your sensations of hunger, satiety, thirst, and fatigue. … your mind through your awareness of your thoughts, memories, opinions, comparisons, and choices. … your feelings ranging from anticipation, pleasure, and enjoyment, to disappointment, regret, or even fear.

… your past through your cultural traditions, favorite foods from places you’ve lived and visited, and cherished (or forgotten) memories of the thousands of meals before.

… your future through the immediate consequences of your choices and the long term effects on your health. … other people through conversation and the shared experience of eating together.

… those who contributed their time, energy, and talent to get the food from farm to table: people who planted, tended, harvested, produced, packaged, transported, and sold your food and people who selected, purchased, prepared, and served your food.

… local and world economies through the sale and purchase of raw ingredients, packaging materials, manufacturing equipment, transportation, food service, and even marketing. Think about it…the money you spend to put food on your plate puts food on the plates of families everywhere.

… nature through the soil, sun, water, air, and weather. These natural elements were transformed into the bite of food in your mouth and will soon be transformed into the energy you'll use to contribute to the world in whatever way you choose.

How's that for a ripple effect!

Table Talk

Whether dining by yourself or striking up a conversation with your dining companions, these questions are like a pebble in a pond.

• What physical sensations, thoughts, and feelings am I aware of while eating?
• What memories do I have about this particular holiday, meal, food, recipe, or table?
• Where did this food come from and how did it get here?
• What else am I grateful for?

Let Thanksgiving be the beginning; build the simple yet powerful act of gratitude into every meal you eat.

Allow yourself to fully blossom: Remove a few protective petals

For as long as I can remember, my stepfather and mother have sent me flowers on my birthday and other special occasions. The gorgeous flowers come carefully packaged in a box delivered to my door. When there are roses, there's a note inside that says, "Remove the outer 2-3 petals which were left on to protect the rose during shipping."

As I was arranging the beautiful bouquet I received this year, it was obvious that some of the outer petals were bruised or torn. However, others looked perfectly fine so it was tempting not to pull the petals off. It seems counter-intuitive to "fix" something that isn't obviously "broken."

However, I've learned through experience that if I don't remove those outer petals, the rose won't open up. It's as if those protective petals restrain the healthy petals underneath from revealing their full beauty.

I often share this metaphor when I am talking about how important (however challenging) it is to uncover the issues that drive overeating and over-dieting. My psychologist friends sometimes refer to this as "peeling the onion." I like the rose metaphor even better because it suggests the potential for beauty that awaits us.

Peeling Back the Layers

Sometimes our triggers for eating when we're not hungry (or continuing to eat when we're full) are obvious and easily dealt with. For example, when we notice that we clean our plate to avoid wasting food, we can decide to take less to begin with or save the extra for another meal (and get to enjoy it all over again!).

Sometimes we have to peel back a few layers to figure out what lies beneath the superficial stuff. A helpful way to go a little deeper is to ask, What else? For example, I might first realize that I overeat certain holiday goodies because I think of them as a special treat this time of year. What else? They remind me of my childhood. What else? They remind me of the comfort and joy of those simpler times. What else? I wish I didn't have so many adult obligations to deal with; the holidays just add more to my To Do list. Ahhh. Now we're getting somewhere. What else, in addition to enjoying some of my favorite holiday treats, could I do to experience comfort, joy, and balance in my life? With awareness comes the opportunity to open to new possibilities.

Sometimes those outer layers have served as protection during our journey. We cling to them out of fear of what might happen when our protective layers are taken away. For example, maybe we clean our plates because long ago, that's how we got dessert, earned approval, or even prevented abuse. But when those layers no longer serve their purpose, they become a limitation. Now cleaning our plate leads to undesireable consequences like feeling uncomfortable or causing a spike in blood sugar. Without awareness that the underlying reasons no longer serve us, we feel powerless to change the habit.

Other times everything looks good on the outside so it's tempting to avoid disturbing the illusion that everything is fine. Until we're willing to go a little deeper, we'll stay stuck right where we are. For example, many people are stuck in chronic dieting or their eat-repent-repeat cycle because they believe it's their only option. The idea of learning how to eat what they love and love what they eat seems too good to be true - so why risk it?

They simply don't know how beautiful and full their life would be without the restrictive and consuming rules they've been taught to follow. Fear prevents them from discovering the freedom, trust, and pleasure that comes from peeling back the next layer and allowing their life to blossom!

As for me, I choose to just enjoy and trust the process!

Want Candy? Is it a Trick or a Treat?

Halloween is supposed to be fun but it can also be a little scary if you find yourself wanting candy constantly! I decided to have a little fun simplifying the decision-making when it comes to Halloween treats. (You can also download and print the I Want Candy PDF and share it with your co-workers, family, and friends for Halloween.)

As you look at the graphic below, perhaps the arrow that says "Eat anyway"seems odd if you haven't read Eat What You Love, Love What You Eat yet. That is actually a very important concept. As I explained in chapter 3, when the answer to "Am I hungry?" is "No," you have three options:

1. Eat anyway
2. Redirect your attention
3. Meet your true needs

While the option "eat anyway" may seem counter-intuitive, people who eat instinctively sometimes eat for pleasure (and other reasons). The difference is that the DON'T feel guilty so it doesn't drive their eat-repent-repeat cycle.

How Mindful Eating Helps End Yo-yo Dieting

During our anniversary trip to Italy, my husband and I sat down for a glass of wine after a long day of sightseeing. Suddenly, food appeared!

The waiter explained, "These are 'appertivos' to tide you over and help prevent intoxication when you have a drink in the afternoon." Apparently, appertivos are the Italian equivalent of Happy Hour.

Once again, I was grateful for my ability to eat fearlessly and mindfully.

How Mindful Eating Helps

In my old yoyo diet days, having food like this show up unexpectedly would have derailed me. I could have easily gone from in control to out of control.

Instead, I was in charge.

Mindful eating is not just about the appearance, taste, and aromas of food. To me, it encompasses the entire Mindful Eating Cycle: Why? When? What? How? How Much? and Where?

With awareness of each of these decisions in my eating cycle, I can respond instead of react. I have response-ability, rather than re-acting and continually playing out old patterns. (Download chapter 1 of Eat What You Love, Love What You Eat for more detail about the Mindful Eating Cycle.)

Six Steps in Mindful Eating

Let me use the appertivos above as an example of how I apply these six mindful eating decisions.

Why do I eat? Throughout this trip (and in my life), I am conscious about eating as an experience, while continuing to meet my nutritional and fuel needs. In other words, I eat with the intention of balancing eating for enjoyment with eating for nourishment.

When do I eat? A quick mind-body scan (see chapter 2 of Eat What You Love, Love What You Eat) revealed that I was not only tired, but I was somewhat hungry (a "3" for those of you who use our Hunger and Fullness Scale).

What do I eat? I noticed that I was definitely hungry for savory flavors and, as had been the case throughout the trip, I was also keenly interested in trying traditional favorites. Somehow potato chips and chips and salsa weren't going to cut it. There was no angst, guilt, or even thinking, "Oh well, it is a special occasion!" It wasn't about the calories, or good vs. bad. It was just food. The quality of the food could either enhance or detract from my experience, but otherwise had no power over me. It was simply about consciously choosing what I would find most satisfying.

How do I eat? We enjoyed relaxing at the outdoor cafe, sampling the appertivos and wine, and discussing our day. We agreed that we wanted more of these experiences in our busy lives!

How much do I eat? Of course, Europeans generally eat much later in the evening, so when in Rome ... Well actually, we were in Bologna, but we had dinner reservations in a couple of hours so eating a little now was definitely a good idea. At the same time though, appetizers are actually de-appetizers, and I didn't want to overdo it and "ruin my dinner" (as my mother used to say).

Where do I invest my energy? Refreshed after our wine and appertivos, we walked around again and discovered that they had a film festival going on in the middle of Piazza Maggiore. Later after dinner, we returned to watch "Raging Bull" in Italian with English subtitles under the stars.

Eat Mindfully, Live Vibrantly

Learning to eat mindfully has given me the flexibility to eat what I love in any situation without worrying about blowing it, or ruining the experience by overeating or feeling guilty. More importantly, by breaking free of yoyo dieting, I have more space in my life for living.