The reason eating healthier could help you be more productive is because you’re supplying the body and mind with important nutrients.  You feel more awake and alert when you eat healthy, leaving you feeling energized for all the work you need to accomplish.

So, how can you eat healthier at work?  First of all, think about the culture of food at your workplace.  People bring in all kinds of unhealthy food to share with one another (think cookies, cakes, candy, etc.).  I know that this has turned into “thing we do” at work and I talk to people who look to cookies, cakes, and candy to provide comfort and pleasure.  While that may work temporarily, this kind of eating  then leads to feeling bad about yourself and a lack of energy for the work you have to do.  This behavior ultimately culminates in difficulties meeting the demands of your job and that’s when your stress level increases.  As the stress level increases, you produce cortisol in the body which is associated with the storage of fat around your middle.  Look down at your waistline and see if that’s true for you.

Isn’t it time we started thinking about how we can change our mind-set about what to eat at work?  Here are some suggestions for eating healthier at work.

1. Start a fruit bowl in your office (to replace the old candy bowl)
2. Bring in healthy snacks so you won’t be tempted by the cookies, cakes, and candy.
3. Healthy snacks to bring to work include whole grain crackers, peanut or almond butter, dried fruit, nuts, trail mix, fresh vegetables, hummus, and yogurt cups.
4. Suggest healthier food at meetings (forget the donuts and bring on the fresh fruit)
5. Have healthy potlucks with your co-workers to get people thinking about how to cook healthy.
6. Don’t bring in the food you want to get rid of at home (so you don’t eat it).  Throw it away!
7. Post this blog in an area where everyone can read it.

Tell me some things that you do at work to make the food culture healthier and if you are a University of Missouri employee you’ll be entered into a drawing for a Healthy for Life lunch bag!!  Last week’s winner was Nancy Johnson, who won a new yoga mat.

If you’d like to know more about how to eat healthier all the time, think about enrolling in my next Eat for Life class starting at the end of May.  Contact me at RossyL@umsystem.edu for more information.

1. Take 5 deep, long breaths and feel the sensations of your body from head to toe (Remember to breathe out for twice as long as you breathe in because that way you will have room for a big inhale—very important!)

2. Take a short walk (down the hall, around the building, up and down the stairs)

3. Put a smile on your face and visualize something that makes you feel good.

I do these three steps a lot and find in a very short time I feel much better.  You can even do all three steps at once.   Breathe deep, smile, and think about something you feel good about while taking a walk and in a minute or two you can’t help but feel better.

Bringing yourself back into the present moment by focusing on the breath and body has been shown to help you engage your mind in a way that promotes problem solving and creativity (just what you need when you’re stressed).

Add the pleasant memory of something you feel good about and you’ll be even more ready to go back to whatever you were doing with greater calm and ease. The brain needs to be trained to be aware of the pleasant and wonderful things in our lives.  Otherwise, it tends to be focused on the negative.

What are you doing today to de-stress at work?  Share your comments about your favorite de-stressing technique and, if you’re a University of Missouri employee, you’ll be entered into drawing for a new yoga mat!

Do you snack without noticing that you’re eating?

Do you have trouble not eating certain foods if they’re around the house?

Do you have a hard time not overeating? (e.g. eating until you’re too full)

Are you easily enticed to eat, even when you’re not hungry?

Are you tired of the endless diets that don’t work?

Well, of course, you answered “yes” to some of these questions.  And, if you’d like to be more mindful about how, what, and why you eat, consider taking the Eat for Life program.  This program is non-diet approach to rediscovering a healthy and joyful relationship with food and your body.  This summer it’s available on-line so you can take it from the comfort of your own home (or by your pool lying in your hammock!).  Class starts May 31.

Some of the things you will learn include:

• BASICS  of mindful eating (simple mindful guidelines for eating)
• The  Three Food Wisdoms – no forbidden food, eating the “right” amount and knowing and respecting your patterns and triggers with food
• How  to stop using food as the way to handle your emotions
• How to savor your food and respect your body at the same time

Research on this program has demonstrated that after 10 weeks participants become more intuitive eaters, they have more appreciation for their bodies, they decrease problematic eating, and they increase in their ability to be mindful.  To register or to get more information, contact Craig Deken csdk89@mail.missouri.edu.  Click here to hear some testimonials about the program.

First, research is conflicting.  Depending on which expert you believe, you will hear widely diverse recommendations on how to eat.  Should you eat a Mediterranean diet or the low-fat (or no fat) diet?  This question will probably be debated for as long as I’m alive.

Second, the food corporations capitalize on what they think you believe.  For instance, the preponderance of products labeled “low fat” started because there was research indicating some benefits from having a low fat diet.  The food corporations turned the findings into a low fat craze that actually contributes to weight gain for some.  Despite what you might have read elsewhere, your body does need fat and there are good fats you should be including in your diet.  I can’t tell you how many people I know that stopped eating nuts (which are good for you in moderation) because of the low fat craze.  Unfortunately when people read that a low fat diet is good for you, they throw out the good fat with the bad fat.   Also, please note that most of the low fat products are high in sugar or salt and the low sugar products are high in fat or salt.  Do check your labels.  Better yet, don’t yet food that has labels unless absolutely necessary.

Third, the headlines have to be catchy.  Journalists are taught to catch your attention with headlines that often mislead the consumer.  And, most people only read the headlines, not the entire article, and even less people read the actual research publication.  I mean, “who has time?”

So, how DO you make sense of it all?  One thing I do is subscribe to the Nutrition Action Health Letter .   They have thoughtful reports on current food issues.   I particularly liked the latest issue which discussed in detail the recently reported research findings that “a few extra pounds may cut risk of early death.”  As the health letter points out, the study had some definite limitations such as not excluding current or former smokers, not excluding sick people who tend to be thinner due to their illness, and not looking at different age groups separately.   The bottom line is, as your weight increases, so does your risk of heart disease, cancer, diabetes, stroke, and death.

This is not about nutrition, per se, but I really loved another story in the same issue about “food fears.”  One fear people have is about the cleanliness of their greens.  I know lots of people who wash their already pre-washed packaged greens.  I never have — unless someone else is looking over my shoulder who I think might be offended.  According to the Food and Drug Administration, the people who wash their already “washed and ready to eat” packaged greens are wasting their water.  Once greens are contaminated with disease-causing bacteria it is difficult to remove them by rinsing with water and you risk cross-contamination by washing them again.  I’m so relieved I can openly pop open my bag of pre-washed greens and throw them in the bowl.  There’s a time saving tip for you!

Instead of waiting on Kraft to change their product, you can make your own mac & cheese at home.  Yes, you can cook outside the box!  I did on Sunday and thought I’d blog you my results.  As you can see from the picture, it looks great!  I served it up with a spinach salad and a grilled organic chicken sausage.

Here’s the recipe, slightly changed from the one I found on Pioneer Woman’s website called Spicy Macaroni and Cheese.  The whole meal took me 45 minutes to prepare—a little longer than my desired 30 minute meals, but worth the effort.  You can even leave out all of the extras like red onion, bell pepper, jalapeno, garlic, and chilies for the kiddos if you want and it would take less time to make.

Mac & Cheese

4 cups cooked macaroni (rice or wheat)
1 tablespoon olive oil
1/4 to 1/2 finely diced red onion
Equal amount diced red bell pepper
1 finely diced jalapeno
1 4 oz can chopped green chilies
2 to 3 cloves garlic, chopped
1/2 cup half and half
1 to 1-1/2 cups grated cheese (Pepper Jack, Cheddar, or any other favorite)
2 tablespoons butter
Salt
Pepper

Boil pasta until al dente. In a large skillet, add olive oil and saute garlic and vegetables over medium heat for a couple of minutes. Add in canned chilies and stir around, then turn off heat. Drain pasta and add it to skillet. Pour on cream, add cheese, then add salt and pepper to taste and stir gently. At the end, add 2 tablespoons butter and stir again. Salt and pepper to taste and serve.

The meal I made falls into my category of “healthy fast food.” Just as a reminder “healthy fast food” has the following requirements.

1. Doesn’t take a lot of time.
2. Has to be EASY!
3. Not expensive. (this recipe was less than $5 per serving!)
4. Tasty and delicious.
5. Good for you (loosely defined on purpose)
6. When possible, it includes ingredients that can be found locally and are seasonal.

If you have healthy fast food recipes or suggestions, please send them my way.

At a recent two day workshop the facilitators made sure our energy was high so we could stay focused and attentive to the information being shared.  Besides the interactive techniques the facilitators used, they set guidelines at the very beginning that gave us permission to stand or pace instead of sit.  We have been so conditioned to sit that we often feel like we need permission to stand.   

You can stand instead of sit at meetings, while you’re talking on the phone, while you’re talking to your office mate, and even when you’re typing.  You can get a standing work station or be creative and stack a bunch of books on a table and put your laptop on it.  Of course, if you want to get really fancy you can buy a walking workstation.  Granted, this option is a little more pricey, but well worth the money in terms of your health and well-being. 

Research is demonstrating that “sitting is the new smoking” and that sitting 6 hours or more a day has serious health consequences.  So stand instead of sit whenever you get the chance and take breaks throughout the day to walk for 5- 10 minutes or stretch and breathe.  These small changes can bring new energy to your work and lift your mood.

What you feed your body also makes a tremendous difference in your energy level throughout the day.  In my Eat for Life class this week we talked about the difference between “power” foods and “junk” foods.  Power foods are foods that help you feel energized and keep your blood sugar leveled out.  Junk foods are what the name implies.  (It just occurred to me… why would anyone want to eat something called “junk?”).  Anyway, junk foods drain your energy because you have a quick burst and then you’re down for the count.  At the same workshop I talked about earlier, people commented how everyone became brain dead after eating the large cookies set out mid-afternoon.  A snack like nuts, veggies and hummus, cheese with wholegrain crackers or an apple would be a better idea.  Or you could choose to take a quick walk around the block and you might find that urge you had for a cookie disappears.   Since this type of food is not always readily available at the workplace, bring in your own.  Start a “food bowl” instead of a candy bowl.

For more tips for being mindful about your body at work, read the 22 ideas to lift your post-lunch spirits and energy in the workplace!  It only takes a moment to incorporate some of these interesting ideas and change the way you feel. 

These are all terms widely used in the food industry to describe how food is scientifically constructed  to bring the “greatest eating pleasure” (in other words, the strongest craving).   Mr. Moss’s interviews with food industry insiders tell a story that appalls as much as the food addicts.  Yes, the food industry spends billions of dollars developing food that addicts you, designing psychologically-appealing products, and creating advertising that catches your attention—all in the ongoing campaign to keep you coming back for more.  That “coming back for more” has resulted in the alarming rates of obesity and the associated health problems such as diabetes and hypertension.  Basically, if you are eating processed food you should take note and beware.  This is not “real food” but a “food like substance” (as Michael Pollan would say,) and it is designed to set up cravings in your body. The limbic brain loves sugar, fat, and salt and the food industry knows it.  It isn’t your fault you crave their carefully constructed food.  It’s just the way we are designed. 

In my estimation there are two solutions to this problem.  Number One: Don’t eat the stuff.  But, if you do, you can use mindfulness to fight the cravings. One of the exercises I have people in my mindful eating classes do is notice how long it takes a craving to stop.  See my blog post about taking the craving challenge. Eventually, according to research in Moss’s article, your taste buds will return to a normal level of sensitivity and a salt (or sugar or fat) habit can be broken. Number Two: if you must eat the stuff, please eat it mindfully.  You will begin to notice how nasty all the chemicals taste and eventually stop consuming it once and for all.

 Another thing the food industry is banking on (literally) is everyone’s lack of time to fix their own food.  We have tremendously busy lives.  Busyness is as much of an epidemic as obesity.  While I can’t give you more time (sorry, we will never get more than 24 hours each day), I would like to suggest you search for ways of making time to do the most important things in life.  Eating REAL FOOD is one of the most important things you can do for your health and the health of your family. 

I recently conducted a survey of people who receive my blog, and I was surprised to discover what people wanted most was “healthy recipes.”  Ask and you shall receive.  Once a month I have decided to dedicate a blog piece on a “healthy fast food” so you will have more ideas about how to eat REAL FOOD with less time.  It’s my antidote to the fast food industry.  Stay tuned.

Our minds are often scattered and unruly, which is why the practice of mindfulness can be so important in meaningful, attentive conversation.  You have to be present in order to listen and take in what is being said.  You also have to be listening without your own agenda and without being busy formulating what you will say next. 

Try this simple Mindful Listening Practice:  Mindfulness—the act of being fully present in each moment with kindness and without judgment—is a wonderful skill to practice when you are in any situation that requires listening.  In any conversation, you can use the person that’s speaking as your “object of mindfulness.”  Pay full attention to what he or she is saying.  When your mind wanders away from what is being said, immediately and without judgment bring yourself back to the words of the person speaking.  Repeat those instructions as many times as necessary.  You will eventually strengthen your mental musculature to stay more focused and aware.  

There are valuable personal rewards for practicing mindful listening.  Being listened to is so much like being loved that most people don’t know the difference.  (For the life of me I can’t find the person’s name that said this. My apologies).  I had a wife of someone whom I had taught mindful listening to years ago come up to me at a local restaurant.  She introduced herself and told me that the mindful listening exercise her husband had learned in my class had saved their marriage.  Try it for yourself and see what happens.  I have a potentially difficult conversation coming up tonight and I have determined to listen to everything the other person wants to say before I say anything.  When you give someone the opportunity to get everything out of their system, they are much more willing to listen to what you have to say.

There are valuable business rewards for practicing mindful listening.  Your colleagues will be more collaborative because everybody’s opinions get heard.  It will take less time to complete your work because you have listened to what needs to be done.  If you are anyone’s boss, listening to your employees will make them feel  appreciated.  When employees feel appreciated, research indicates they are happier and more productive at work.  When I saw clients in individual therapy, I was constantly practicing mindful listening.  I mean, really, there is nothing worse than having your therapist ask you, “what did you say?” 

Try the mindful listening practice for one day and come back and comment about what you discovered.   I would love to hear what you learned. 

The promise of listening:

We do not believe in ourselves until someone reveals that something deep inside us is valuable, worth listening to, worthy of our trust, sacred to our touch.  Once we believe in ourselves we can risk curiosity, wonder, spontaneous delight or any experience that reveals the human spirit.               ~e.e. cummings       

Mindfulness, once again, is proposed as the key for harnessing your ability to respond to your life instead of react to it.  In this book , the response you make to your life is one predicated on an increase of your emotional intelligence.  Daniel Goleman, who pioneered work on emotional intelligence, broke it down into five domains:  self-awareness, self-regulation, motivation, empathy, and social skills.   Not hard to see how competencies in these areas would be useful.

Chade-Meng Tan (more informally known as Meng) who wrote Search Inside Yourself and developed the course by the same name had the good fortune of working with and learning from Daniel Goleman (who wrote the book on Emotional Intelligence),  Philippe Goldin (a Stanford University scientist), Norman Fischer (Zen Buddhist priest and poet ), Mirabai Bush (co-founder of the Center for Contemplative Mind in Society), Marc Lesser (CEO and Zen Teacher), and Yvonne Ginsberg (meditation teacher and professional coach ).  That’s a pretty impressive line-up.  And, I have to say, the results are FANTASTIC.

Buy the book and go to the Search Inside Yourself website and listen to Meng and his colleagues as they introduce the seven weeks on video. 

I’d give you a money back guarantee (but I didn’t write the book).  Darn!

The holidays are beginning to wind down and now is the time you might start to wonder in a slightly agitated voice “how could I have eaten so much over the holidays?” or “why can’t fit into these pants anymore (did they shrink)?”   If that resonates with you or if you’re just looking to get the new year off to a good start with eating better and treating your body better,  Eat for Life might be just what you’re looking for. 

 Eat for Life is a 10 week class I developed which teaches you the skills of mindful and intuitive eating. The class is available in person (in Columbia, MO) and online (so you can take it anywhere in the world).  The online course is done from the luxury of your own home and you follow along with each week’s assignments on your own time schedule.  There is never a time you have to be “online” for a group discussion.   Plus, you’ll get little inspirational emails from me twice a week to keep you on task! 

This non-diet approach to eating uses a non-judgmental and compassionate approach to re-learning how to use your internal physical cues to guide what, when, how, and why you eat.  In other words, this is NOT an approach that shames you into losing weight fast like some reality TV shows you might have watched.  While that might work for some, it is not the recommended technique for long lasting change. 

 By the way, I’ve done some research on this program and the results indicate the class participants do learn to listen to their bodies messages about how to eat, they have a better appreciation for their bodies (which usually lends itself to treating it better), they engage in less binge eating, and they are more mindful (which is key in helping you change).    

 Here are the dates, times, and cost for the online class.  Let me know if you need any additional information or want to enroll.   If you are interested in the in-person class (in Columbia, MO) or are a faculty, staff, or retiree of the University of Missouri, please contact me for your cost information.   You get the class cheaper because it’s part of your benefit package.

 DATES FOR THE WINTER 2013 ONLINE CLASS:

Orientation – week of January 18                                                                                        10 Week Class – week of January 25 – week of April 5 (except spring break)Cost: $180 for members of the community (anywhere around the world)

Registration form must be received by January 14.   My email is RossyL@umsystem.edu