SAVOR.
Mindful Eating, Mindful Life.
by Thich Nhat Hanh and Lilian Cheung D.Sc., R.D.
FOREWORD
Most books about nutrition and diet stress the calorie content of foods, saturated fats, trans fats, carbohydrates, portion size, and the balance between energy intake and energy expended. This book is different. This book is not only about what what to eat. This book also teaches to eat. This book also teaches how how to eat. to eat.If you are someone who is concerned about your weight, perhaps you have tried dieting in the past. Maybe you have gone from cutting calories, to excluding fats, to avoiding "carbs," to taking a chance on the grapefruit diet or some other fad. Perhaps you have even lost weight-only to gain it right back within a few months. You know something is wrong and you feel not in control of your own body. You are convinced that something has to change, but where do you begin?The answer, provided in this book, is not to begin with what you put on your plate. Rather, you begin with what is already inside you, with your awareness and experience of every moment you live-what the authors call mindfulness. mindfulness. While the concept of mindfulness derives from Buddhist teaching, anyone can become more mindful in nourishing our bodies. Many distractions in daily life reinforce the mindless ingestion of food, and mindless eating is a strong driver of weight gain and obesity. With awareness and practice, it is possible to become more mindful in our eating-and in our lives. This book tells you how to do it. While the concept of mindfulness derives from Buddhist teaching, anyone can become more mindful in nourishing our bodies. Many distractions in daily life reinforce the mindless ingestion of food, and mindless eating is a strong driver of weight gain and obesity. With awareness and practice, it is possible to become more mindful in our eating-and in our lives. This book tells you how to do it.Authored by an eminent spiritual leader and a renowned nutritionist, this work infuses science into wisdom and wisdom into science. It is a practical guide to eating mindfully and points the way to attain a healthier weight and a more satisfying life.Harvey V. Fineberg, M.D., Ph.D.
President Institute of Medicine The National Academies Washington, D.C.
INTRODUCTION
IF YOU HAVE PICKED up Savor Savor because you want more peace and happiness in everyday life, then you are in the right place. If you have picked up because you want more peace and happiness in everyday life, then you are in the right place. If you have picked up Savor Savor because you or someone you love is struggling with weight and in need of practical solutions, then this book is for you also. because you or someone you love is struggling with weight and in need of practical solutions, then this book is for you also.Learning to eat and live mindfully is the key to experiencing health and peace. This vision brought us, a Zen Buddhist Master and a nutritionist, together to take a fresh look at mindfulness and the problem of obesity that is spreading across the globe. It is clear that standard approaches are not working to stem the tide of weight gain and the burden it creates for people and communities. More than a billion people worldwide are overweight-so many, in fact, that scientists call it an obesity epidemic. And while this is certainly an apt description of the outcome of eating too much and not moving enough, it does not fully describe what is going on. It is also a worldwide crisis largely brought on by social trends that distract and prevent us from doing the things that keep us in balance, healthy, and connected with our inner selves and our place in the world. Savor Savor is a guide to help us all reconnect with these different aspects of our lives that together can improve our weight, our well-being, and the well-being of our world. is a guide to help us all reconnect with these different aspects of our lives that together can improve our weight, our well-being, and the well-being of our world.Common sense tells us that to lose weight, we must eat less and exercise more. That is easier said than done, however. Many of us know that we need to eat less, and we need to be more active. But somehow we get stuck. We start on a weight-loss program with only good intentions, but when we cannot stay on track, we feel disappointed and discouraged. We become pessimistic, more and more unhappy with our weight. We spend hours worrying about our future, blaming ourselves for what we've eaten or how inactive we've been in the past, and completely missing the present moment-the moment in which we actually have the power to make real change in our lives.To end our struggle, we must learn to not let regret, worry, or fear dominate our life in the present moment. Each minute we spend worrying about the future and regretting the past is a minute we miss in our appointment with life-a missed opportunity to engage life and to see that each moment gives us the chance to change for the better, to experience peace and joy. The practice of being fully present in each moment is called mindfulness. mindfulness. It is an ancient Buddhist approach to living that helps us to be in the here and now-and to end our struggle with weight. It is an ancient Buddhist approach to living that helps us to be in the here and now-and to end our struggle with weight.To be mindful is to be completely aware of what is happening in the present, to be fully aware of all that is going on within ourselves and all that is happening around us, from moment to moment, without judgment or preconceived notions. Although mindfulness has been taught in Eastern meditation trainings, it is not some mystical or esoteric practice that is hard to learn. People in all walks of life have followed this set of age-old practices on their path to health, well-being, peace, and happiness for over twenty-five hundred years.When we walk and our mind is aware of each step that we plant firmly on the ground, we are already practicing mindfulness. When we eat and our mind is aware of each bite, savoring the taste and the nourishment it gives us, we are already practicing mindfulness. To be mindful of something, we need to learn to be fully present for an instant and look deeply into that something. We must first stop our wandering mind in order to begin to engage it in what is there in the present moment. When we are mindful of what we are doing, we learn to keep our appointment with life. This awareness of the present moment gives us the opportunity and the tools to touch peace and joy, to see the true nature of who we are and how we are related to everything else, and to end our struggle with weight.In Savor Savor we share with you how to live mindfully, and in particular how living mindfully can help you take care of your weight problem in a peaceful and sustainable way. Throughout the book, we show you how to easily adopt the practice of mindfulness and integrate it into eating, physical activity, and all other facets of your daily life so that mindful-ness gradually becomes a core part of your being. we share with you how to live mindfully, and in particular how living mindfully can help you take care of your weight problem in a peaceful and sustainable way. Throughout the book, we show you how to easily adopt the practice of mindfulness and integrate it into eating, physical activity, and all other facets of your daily life so that mindful-ness gradually becomes a core part of your being.Dealing with our overweight-or with any of our life's difficulties, for that matter-is not a battle to be fought. Instead, we must learn how to make friends with our hardships and challenges. They are there to help us; they are natural opportunities for deeper understanding and transformation, bringing us more joy and peace as we learn to work with them. With mindfulness practice, we gain insight into the roots of our difficulties.You will learn to observe and be more aware of your motivations for and obstacles to staying healthy. Why do you eat what you eat? How do you eat, and how do you feel after you eat? What attitudes do you have toward physical activity? What are the barriers-physical, psychological, cultural, and environmental-that prevent you from eating well and staying active? As you become more aware of your body and of the feelings, thoughts, and realities that prevent you from taking health-enhancing actions, you will realize what you need to do individually and what types of community and social support you need in order to change your behavior. With these insights, you will be better equipped to break through your barriers to a healthy lifestyle and weight control. You can start to make changes step-by-step, establishing healthier habits and instilling more and more peace within yourself.With the hectic pace of modern living, we recognize that it is very challenging for people to add more tasks to their "to do" list. As you will see, mindfulness practice does not need to be another "add-on." Its beauty lies in the fact that it can be fully and easily integrated into every act of our daily living, reminding us to live the present moment fully.With mindfulness, we can choose how how to live our lives now. We can seize any moment and begin anew. It is as simple as taking a few in-breaths and out-breaths here and there throughout the day-while answering e-mails, waiting in line, or sitting in traffic. It is absolutely within anyone's reach. Take small steps every day, and be persistent. Small steps will add up over time. With the constant practice of mindfulness, you will feel more alive and in the flow of life. You will find more stillness amid the chaos. You will have a better understanding of yourself and all that is around you. The fog that veils your well-being will gradually dissipate, allowing you to touch the joy and peace that have always been inside you. The Buddha did not foresee many of the modern-day problems that we face, including the obesity epidemic, but his teachings are timeless. They are foundations for understanding and processes for gaining insight. As people have found over many generations, solidity, freedom, calm, and joy are the fruits of mindful living. to live our lives now. We can seize any moment and begin anew. It is as simple as taking a few in-breaths and out-breaths here and there throughout the day-while answering e-mails, waiting in line, or sitting in traffic. It is absolutely within anyone's reach. Take small steps every day, and be persistent. Small steps will add up over time. With the constant practice of mindfulness, you will feel more alive and in the flow of life. You will find more stillness amid the chaos. You will have a better understanding of yourself and all that is around you. The fog that veils your well-being will gradually dissipate, allowing you to touch the joy and peace that have always been inside you. The Buddha did not foresee many of the modern-day problems that we face, including the obesity epidemic, but his teachings are timeless. They are foundations for understanding and processes for gaining insight. As people have found over many generations, solidity, freedom, calm, and joy are the fruits of mindful living.By combining the sage Buddhist philosophy with the science of nutrition, we can contribute to a better understanding of our bodies and minds. We invite you to embark on this mindfulness journey, just as others have over many generations, to help you end your struggle with weight and improve your health, the health of those around you, and the well-being of the world in which we live.
About This BookThe first part of Savor Savor (chapters 1 through 4) provides a Buddhist perspective on weight control and well-being. We begin the book by offering you a new way of looking at your weight problem-through the lens of the Four Noble Truths, the most fundamental Buddhist teaching. You first need to acknowledge that you have a weight problem and reflect on whether or not you are ready to make changes and are committed to making them. If you are, you need to know what has led to your being overweight. Through a series of questions for self-inquiry, you will gain a better understanding of the reasons that you are overweight. You will realize that you do have the power to stop the unhealthy, mindless routines that led you to become overweight, if you so choose. And you will realize that mindfulness practice is an effective path toward a healthier way of living and a healthier weight. (chapters 1 through 4) provides a Buddhist perspective on weight control and well-being. We begin the book by offering you a new way of looking at your weight problem-through the lens of the Four Noble Truths, the most fundamental Buddhist teaching. You first need to acknowledge that you have a weight problem and reflect on whether or not you are ready to make changes and are committed to making them. If you are, you need to know what has led to your being overweight. Through a series of questions for self-inquiry, you will gain a better understanding of the reasons that you are overweight. You will realize that you do have the power to stop the unhealthy, mindless routines that led you to become overweight, if you so choose. And you will realize that mindfulness practice is an effective path toward a healthier way of living and a healthier weight.Next, we offer you a taste of mindfulness-a meditation on eating an apple. With mindfulness, the simple act of eating an apple becomes a profound experience. It opens up our awareness that the apple is a manifestation of our world and that it cannot come into being in isolation. The apple is dependent on everything else for its existence, reminding us that we, too, are constantly supported by the effort of many beings so that we can enjoy the apple.We then invite you to look at your personal makeup. We explore how everything you see, taste, smell, hear, touch, and think affects your weight and all other aspects of your daily life. Diet books typically focus only on how foods immediately benefit the body and rarely address the psychosocial, cultural, and environmental factors that affect our habits of eating and physical activity. It is clear that we are not only what we eat; we are what we consume through all our senses. What we eat and how we eat are influenced by our ancestors, parents, and culture, the food businesses, the media, and societal forces. To maintain a healthy weight and lifestyle, we must look carefully at the interrelationships of our body, our mind, and society at large.As you begin to understand your difficulty with weight, an important step is to learn to empower yourself to transform this difficulty. The Buddha's Discourse on the Four Foundations of Mindfulness elaborates on exercises that can lead to transformation and healing. We take you through the salient points of the four foundations of mindfulness practice for effective transformation, showing how to instill joy and peace in yourself as well as overcome your destructive habits. We describe a process and practice that will enhance your awareness of your body, feelings, mind, and all perceptions, and how they are intimately related to changing your eating and physical activity habits. You will learn basic breathing techniques to calm your body, feelings, and mind, and you will learn how to see yourself in relation to everything that is around you. With continuous practice, you will build up the confidence to recognize the nature and cause of your suffering and then transform it at its base, to uproot long-held negative beliefs, habits, and feelings.The second part of Savor Savor (chapters 5 through 7) brings mindfulness practice to your daily life. All of us eat and drink numerous times a day. These are wonderful opportunities for us to practice mindfulness. Paying attention to what we eat and drink as well as to how we eat and drink brings us nourishment, sustaining not only our own body and mind but also the well-being of our world for future generations. We provide you with a scientific primer on healthy eating and drinking, to help you decide what to eat and drink, and to offer concrete ways for you to eat and drink more mindfully. Through a series of questions, you begin to establish your own mindful-eating goals and personalized mindful-eating plan so that you can savor your foods and drinks while maintaining health and well-being. (chapters 5 through 7) brings mindfulness practice to your daily life. All of us eat and drink numerous times a day. These are wonderful opportunities for us to practice mindfulness. Paying attention to what we eat and drink as well as to how we eat and drink brings us nourishment, sustaining not only our own body and mind but also the well-being of our world for future generations. We provide you with a scientific primer on healthy eating and drinking, to help you decide what to eat and drink, and to offer concrete ways for you to eat and drink more mindfully. Through a series of questions, you begin to establish your own mindful-eating goals and personalized mindful-eating plan so that you can savor your foods and drinks while maintaining health and well-being.We move our bodies every day, though our twenty-first-century lifestyle has rendered us much more sedentary. Moving mindfully not only helps us burn more calories and maintain our health but also is a valuable opportunity to practice mindfulness in action. In chapter 6, we offer mindful ways to help you maintain the level of physical activity that you need to improve your weight and health. Included are reflections to help you create your personalized mindful-moving plan.Mindful eating and moving are both held in a larger net of general everyday, moment-to-moment mindfulness. To enhance your rhythm of mindful living, we propose simple tools to increase your practice of mindfulness throughout your waking hours. By creating a strategic mindfulness living plan, you can turn even the most mundane chore into an opportunity to practice mindfulness and nourish yourself.As you steadily progress in your journey toward a healthy weight, you will realize that your ability to make wholesome choices and follow a healthier lifestyle depends not only on you, but also on all that is around you. We are all connected and interdependent. What one does will affect everything and everyone else, and what everything and everyone else does will have an effect on each individual. Mindful living and weight control are not just an individual matter. We must also take collective action to make our environment less toxic and more supportive of healthy eating and active living. In the third part of the book (chapter 8), we explore ways we can help improve the environment and the community-for ourselves, our family, our friends, and future generations. By cultivating mindfulness energy, we will gain insight and understanding leading to greater compassion for all beings. It is this compassion that motivates us to take individual and collective action, creating profound change in our communities and societies to improve our well-being and the well-being of our world.We have a finite amount of energy to spend every day before becoming exhausted. Mindfulness helps you use your energy wisely, spending it on situations, people, and causes that bring you the most joy, meaning, and peace. Mindfulness is the guiding light that already exists inside every one of us. Discover it. We beckon you to use it and let it illuminate your life in every moment. Living like this, you will find yourself savoring your life deeply. Not only will this help you achieve the healthy weight and well-being that you seek; it will bring to the surface life's rich abundance that is so often invisible to us.
PART 1.
A Buddhist Perspective on Weight Control
CHAPTER 1
Ending Your Struggle with WeightI have been struggling with my weight all my life. I know I have to lose weight. I do not like the way I look. I do not like the way I feel. I have gone on diets, tried diligently to exercise, lost the weight, and had it all come back in no time. I've lost count of how many times I have gone through this yo-yo cycle of loss and gain. I am totally frustrated, ashamed of myself, anxious and overwhelmed about my weight. I am tired of carrying this extra weight around. I do not feel good. Every day is a struggle for me. Every night is a nightmare. I have diabetes now, and I am really worried. I fear that I will not be around to see my children grow up. I am here because I do not want to give up. There must be a way out of this suffering.-Participant in a mindfulness retreatTHIS WOMAN IS NOT alone. Everywhere you turn-from television, magazines, and Web sites to newspapers and radio-you see, read, or hear stories about the U.S. population's frustrating struggle to lose weight. Two out of three adults in the United States are overweight, and one out of three is obese,1 more than double the rate of obesity in the late 1970s. In scientific terms, we are in the middle of an obesity pandemic, a state of extreme weight gain that is overtaking not only the United States but also much of the globe. This steep rise in obesity over the past thirty years has no parallel in our history, and if we do not change our current trends, the numbers will continue to rise. more than double the rate of obesity in the late 1970s. In scientific terms, we are in the middle of an obesity pandemic, a state of extreme weight gain that is overtaking not only the United States but also much of the globe. This steep rise in obesity over the past thirty years has no parallel in our history, and if we do not change our current trends, the numbers will continue to rise.And this is largely because our society has become toxic in a way that experts call "obesigenic." We are surrounded by societal forces that drive us to eat more and move less. And the natural result is weight gain, obesity, and the myriad health and emotional problems that go along with them. Yes, it's ultimately a personal decision to eat more than one needs and to not exercise enough, but it's also nearly impossible to escape the pressures around us that lead to unhealthy behaviors. Bombarded day in and day out by unhealthy outside influences, we easily become dissociated from what our bodies truly need and truly want.Just think of the food court at the local shopping mall. It's a feast of choices that can overwhelm the senses. You see and smell foods that are savory as well as those that are sweet-steak sizzling in teriyaki sauce, oven-fresh pizza, hot cinnamon buns drizzled with snow-white icing, rich coffee confections infused with sugar syrup and topped with cream. The abundance of aromas, colors, and sounds awaken your palate and your urge to eat. In and of itself this isn't necessarily a bad thing-who doesn't love the look and smell of delicious food?-but it often spurs us to eat automatically whether we're actually hungry or not. Before we know it, we've eaten a supersized meal that has two-thirds of the calories we need in one day-and we weren't even hungry to begin with. When this happens day after day, week after week, what began as one enjoyable moment of eating becomes a weight problem that can affect us the rest of our lives. And this is just one of many examples of the impact our surroundings and social networks can have on our weight and health.In our food supply, there are plenty of foods and drinks that are highly seasoned with salt, sugar, and fat. According to Dr. David Kessler, former commissioner of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, the food and restaurant industries deliberately produce high-salt, high-sugar, and high-fat foods just so that people cannot resist them and want more. In his book The End of Overeating: Taking Control of the Insatiable American Appetite The End of Overeating: Taking Control of the Insatiable American Appetite, citing research done in behavioral neuroscience, nutrition, and psychology, he reports that foods high in fat, salt, and sugar alter the brain's chemistry, stimulating the release of dopamine, which in turn is associated with the feeling of pleasure.2 This is one of the reasons that we crave more of foods and drinks high in fat, sugar, and salt-because they are satisfying. This is one of the reasons that we crave more of foods and drinks high in fat, sugar, and salt-because they are satisfying.Advertising is another. It's the market economy's way to shape social norms that propel consumption and profits. And when it comes to the food industry, what they want is for consumers to truly consume consume-to eat as much food and to drink as many drinks as they can stomach, and then have some more. It is telling that in the United States, the food industry spends more on advertising than any other industry except the auto industry.3 Every day we're exposed to dozens of ads for food and beverages, each one cueing us to eat and drink. And there is no place that is off-limits for eating and drinking: we eat and drink in our cars and at our desks, as we sit in meetings and as we stroll through the shopping malls. It is no wonder that we often find ourselves eating and drinking beyond what we need to satisfy our true physiological hunger. We have created a culture of constant snacking, drinking, and eating. Every day we're exposed to dozens of ads for food and beverages, each one cueing us to eat and drink. And there is no place that is off-limits for eating and drinking: we eat and drink in our cars and at our desks, as we sit in meetings and as we stroll through the shopping malls. It is no wonder that we often find ourselves eating and drinking beyond what we need to satisfy our true physiological hunger. We have created a culture of constant snacking, drinking, and eating.Now, think of our social norms around physical activity. From the Industrial Revolution in the early 1800s up to our current information technology revolution, we have become increasingly sedentary as we rely more and more on machines, gadgets, and automobiles to do our work and get around. We have drastically diminished the amount of energy we burn every day through bodily movements and the use of our muscles. And with the average home in the United States having more television sets than people,4 we have become couch potatoes living under the spell of the television. we have become couch potatoes living under the spell of the television.Together, all these societal forces push us toward eating more calories each day than we expend, and without our being aware of it. Over time these extra calories build up, and before we even realize it we've put on a good deal of weight. And it doesn't take too much for this to happen. Over the course of one year, one hundred extra calories each day-the equivalent of eating one small cookie or of driving a mile instead of walking it-could end up packing ten pounds of extra fat on our bodies.Given the huge burden these social influences place on us, how can we get back in touch with our bodies and relieve ourselves of the burden and suffering that arise from being overweight? How can each of us reach a healthier weight?The answer almost certainly doesn't rest with the current weight-loss industry in the United States. Weight-loss programs, diet books, and diet foods, herbs, and pills represent an estimated $59-billion industry in the United States.5 Thousands of fad-diet books and weight-loss plans come and go. Yet these nearly always fail people over time. You can lose weight on any diet, but there is no scientific evidence that rigid dieting will help you achieve weight loss in the long run. On the contrary, the U.S. population is growing fatter and fatter, and growing increasingly frustrated and discouraged by its failure to lose weight. Thousands of fad-diet books and weight-loss plans come and go. Yet these nearly always fail people over time. You can lose weight on any diet, but there is no scientific evidence that rigid dieting will help you achieve weight loss in the long run. On the contrary, the U.S. population is growing fatter and fatter, and growing increasingly frustrated and discouraged by its failure to lose weight.Millions are spent on research and development by pharmaceutical companies to find an obesity fix. But there is still no magic pill or formula that can help us lose weight and maintain our lost weight without side effects. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration is cautious in the approval of these fat-fighting drugs. Yet those few drugs on the market that can help people shed a few pounds have unwanted side effects.6The difficult truth is that the basic law of thermodynamics still holds: When we eat more calories than we expend, we gain weight. When we burn more energy through physical activity or exercise than we take in from food and drinks, we lose weight. Though this sounds basic and simple, the fact that so many of us are overweight points to the complexity of the situation. For anyone who has tried many times to lose weight, the thought of trying again may feel like an overwhelming and daunting task. Is it truly possible to change one's habits of eating and moving, especially in the face of a society that pushes us so hard in the wrong direction? How can one begin to make these changes?The Buddha teaches that change requires insight, and insight cannot begin until we stop and focus our attention on what is happening right in front of us. This stopping, or shamatha shamatha, allows us to rest the body and the mind. When we have calmed ourselves, we can then go on to look deeply into our current situation. We need to step off our frantic life treadmills, to stop unconsciously doing the same things over and over again that have allowed our weight to creep up. We need to stop, rest, and reflect on a constructive way forward that will end the habits that have led to our current weight issues. We need to be fully aware of what is going on in our daily living. Only then can we begin to change.Changing Your Habit EnergyThere is a Zen story about a man and a horse.7 The horse is galloping quickly, and it appears that the rider is urgently heading somewhere important. A bystander along the road calls out, "Where are you going?" and the rider replies, "I don't know! Ask the horse!" The horse is galloping quickly, and it appears that the rider is urgently heading somewhere important. A bystander along the road calls out, "Where are you going?" and the rider replies, "I don't know! Ask the horse!"This is also our life story. Many of us are riding a horse, but we don't know where we are going, and we can't stop. The horse is our "habit energy," the relentless force of habit that pulls us along, that we are often unaware of and feel powerless to change. We are always running. It has become a habit, the norm of our everyday living. We run all the time, even during our sleep-the time that we are supposed to rest and regenerate our bodies. We are our worst enemies, in conflict with ourselves, and therefore we can easily start conflict with others.When a strong emotion arises within us like a storm, we are in great turmoil. We have no peace. Many of us try to pacify the storm by watching television or eating comfort foods. But the storm does not calm down after hours of watching. The storm does not go away after a bag of chips or a bowl of ice cream. We hate ourselves afterward for eating the chips and the ice cream. We dread stepping on the scale the next day. We vow to never do it again. But time after time, we do. Why? Because our habit energy pushes us.How can we stop this state of turmoil? How can we stop our fear, our despair, our anger, and our cravings? We have to learn to become solid and stable like an oak tree, and not be blown from side to side by the emotional storm. We have to learn the art of stopping-stopping our running so that we can be present for and embrace our habit energies of worry, blame, guilt, and fear, and calm the strong emotions that dictate us. We have to learn to live fully in the present moment. We need to practice breathing in and breathing out with all our awareness. We have to learn to become mindful.When we are mindful, touching deeply the present moment, in the here and now, we gain more understanding, more acceptance, more forgiveness and love of self and others; our aspiration to relieve suffering grows; and we have more chances to touch joy and peace.We need the energy of mindfulness to recognize and be present with our habit energy so that we may prevent it from dominating us and stop its often destructive course. Mindfulness allows us to acknowledge our habit energy every time it pops up: "Hello, my habit energy. I know you are there." If you just mindfully smile to your habit energy, it will lose much of its strength. The chips stay in the cupboard, the ice cream in the freezer. The storm passes by, and we watch, breathing in and breathing out all the while.After we become calmer, we can recognize our weight problem more clearly and acknowledge it instead of denying it. This may not be easy for you to do. You may feel angry, frustrated, or fed up about your weight. Do not suppress these feelings of anger. Instead, as the Buddha has taught us, accept and embrace these difficult feelings, like a mother cradling her crying baby. The crying baby needs the mother's loving care. In a similar manner, your negative emotions and turmoil are crying out loud, trying to get your attention. Your negative emotions also need your tender, loving care. By embracing your negative feelings whenever they arise, you can prevent yourself from being swept away by your emotional storm, and you can calm yourself. When you are calmer, you are more able to see that you already have within yourself the power and the tools to begin to change.Stopping, calming, and resting are preconditions for healing. If we cannot stop, we will continue on the course of destruction caused by unmindful consumption.The Four Noble Truths of Healthy WeightThe Buddha offered many teachings to help people end their suffering, the first and most important being the Four Noble Truths. The First Noble Truth is that all of us have suffering in our lives. None of us can escape from it. The Second Noble Truth is that we can identify the causes of our suffering. The Third Noble Truth is that we can put an end to our suffering and that healing is possible. Finally, the Fourth Noble Truth is that there are paths to free us from suffering. We can cultivate our well-being by concretely applying mindfulness to our daily living.A simple example from the field of medicine can help illustrate the Four Noble Truths. Let's say you are diagnosed with type 2 diabetes (First Noble Truth), which was likely brought on by eating a poor diet and becoming very overweight (Second Noble Truth). Your doctor tells you the situation does not need to be like that and can be controlled (confirming the Third Noble Truth). You follow the doctor's prescription-taking your medicine, eating better, and exercising more-which is your route to healing (Fourth Noble Truth). These teachings of the Buddha originate from a time when suffering was more likely to be caused by a lack of food rather than too much, or by a body overburdened with physical labor rather than one grown ill from lack of use. Yet they apply to all forms of suffering, including those related to being overweight.Now, let's reflect upon the Four Noble Truths and how they relate to achieving your healthy weight. The self-exploration that begins here and continues throughout this book will help you navigate through all the important factors in your life that affect your weight. It will help you discover what science-based paths you can follow to reach a healthier weight. And through your own awareness, you can discover and decide for yourself what is beneficial and what is not beneficial for your body and well-being.Through the process, you will realize whether your weight has affected you physically and emotionally. You can become more in touch with the way you have been eating and drinking, the amount of exercise you have been doing or not doing. You can recognize the amount and type of effort you have been spending to control your weight. You can appreciate how your work is affecting your daily lifestyle and your weight. Through all these reflections, you can gain insights from your past that can lead you to success on your path of healing.As you read the rest of this chapter and this book, read with an open mind and an open heart. Do not struggle with the concepts-the information here is not intended to simply add to your warehouse of knowledge. Be like the earth. When the rain comes, the earth simply opens up to the rain and soaks it all in. Allow the wisdom in this book to nurture the seeds that lie deep in the soil of your consciousness so that they can sprout and mature into the transformative energies of mindfulness and insight. A teacher cannot give you the truth. The truth is already in you. A teacher can only offer you the chance to awaken your true self.Enlightenment, peace, and joy will not be granted by someone else.
The well is within us,And if we dig deeply in the present moment, The water will spring forth8The First Noble Truth: Being Overweight or Obese Is SufferingWhen we are overweight, every part of the body may feel the burden. Our knees may ache, carrying too much weight, becoming swollen and stiff with arthritis.9 Our heart may labor harder, our blood pressure may rise, and harmful plaque may build up inside the lining of the arteries, heightening the risk of heart attack and stroke. Our breathing itself may become a problem around the clock as the risk of asthma, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, and sleep apnea increases. Our heart may labor harder, our blood pressure may rise, and harmful plaque may build up inside the lining of the arteries, heightening the risk of heart attack and stroke. Our breathing itself may become a problem around the clock as the risk of asthma, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, and sleep apnea increases.10Many of these increased health risks exist in people who are merely overweight, not just among those who are obese. Diabetes, an insidious disease with disabling and deadly complications, is two to four times more likely to strike someone who is overweight than someone who is at a healthy weight, and it is five to twelve times more likely to strike someone who is obese.11 The risk of cancer in several parts of the body-breast, colon, esophagus, kidney, pancreas, and uterus-is higher in people who carry excess body fat than in people who do not. The risk of cancer in several parts of the body-breast, colon, esophagus, kidney, pancreas, and uterus-is higher in people who carry excess body fat than in people who do not.12 So is the risk of having gallstones that require the gallbladder to be removed. So is the risk of having gallstones that require the gallbladder to be removed.13 The risk of infertility, The risk of infertility,14 cataracts, cataracts,15 and perhaps even dementia may be higher in people who are obese than in those who are at a healthy weight. and perhaps even dementia may be higher in people who are obese than in those who are at a healthy weight.16 Given the toll that excess weight takes on all areas of the body, it is no surprise that being overweight or obese in midlife increases the chances of dying early. Given the toll that excess weight takes on all areas of the body, it is no surprise that being overweight or obese in midlife increases the chances of dying early.17 Even people who are not overweight but have gained more than twenty pounds since the start of college have an increased risk of dying early. Even people who are not overweight but have gained more than twenty pounds since the start of college have an increased risk of dying early.18Those who are overweight and obese suffer in countless other ways as well, due to the pervasive stigma associated with weight.19 As children they may, owing to their weight, become the target of teasing and bullying from their peers. As adults, they may be less likely to win a job or a promotion, or they may be stereotyped as lazy or less disciplined. Even in the doctor's office, they may face prejudice because of their weight. As children they may, owing to their weight, become the target of teasing and bullying from their peers. As adults, they may be less likely to win a job or a promotion, or they may be stereotyped as lazy or less disciplined. Even in the doctor's office, they may face prejudice because of their weight.What type of suffering have you endured because of your weight? Physical pain? Emotional pain? A feeling of shame, insecurity, regret, anger? Identifying and acknowledging the nature and depth of your suffering may be difficult. You may want to suppress it and not deal with it. However, our first step toward healing and transformation is to recognize the existence of our suffering and not run away from it.The Second Noble Truth: You Can Identify the Roots of Your Weight ProblemBefore you can change your weight, you must have a better understanding of the reasons that you are overweight. Fundamentally, weight gain or loss results from changing the balance of energy coming in (the calories we eat and drink) and going out (the calories we burn off through our everyday activities). Yet science has found that many factors can lead us to get out of balance and gain weight-our ancestry, our lifestyle choices, and our surroundings.Take the time to reflect on the numerous factors that we describe here. Look deeply to see whether they apply to you so that you may understand the true nature of your problem with weight. Looking deeply requires courage. The causes are knowable, and with diligent effort you can get to the bottom of them. With greater insight into the reasons that you are overweight, you can begin to determine what course of action you can take to achieve a healthier weight.Know that the attachment to pleasurable desires can cause us to suffer. As we crave insatiably for delightful and pleasurable experience through our consumption of foods and drinks and our sedentary way of life, we are well on our way to gaining weight. Do these desires really satisfy you in the long run and bring you happiness? Not likely, since all these are temporary fixes that get us to gain more weight. When you succumb to these cravings, you are perpetuating the cycle of frustration, anxiety, and suffering.Buddhism describes creatures known as pretas pretas, or Hungry Ghosts, who have insatiable appetites for food, drinks, and other cravings. They are desperate beings who are always hungry, with tiny mouths; long, narrow necks; and distended bellies. Though they are constantly ravenous, driven by the desire to eat, their tiny mouths and necks prevent them from swallowing the food they ingest. The act of eating does not help them overcome negative emotions and cravings. Eating more only causes them to have more pain and agony. Are you consuming like a Hungry Ghost?As you begin to look deeply into the roots of your weight problem, take care not to be harsh on yourself. The "judge" inside your head often makes you feel bad about all the "shoulds"-you should not have eaten that cheesecake, you should have spent more time at the gym. You may also be daunted by your past failures and struggles with weight. It is time to stop blaming yourself for these failures. Perhaps you were following the wrong advice. Perhaps you were able to lose some weight initially on one diet or another, but the diets were too restrictive, your cravings took hold, and you eventually gave up and gained the weight back. You are not separate from your family and environment. In the past you did not have enough of the right conditions supporting you to maintain a healthy weight.Do you understand why you did not succeed? What were your obstacles? Do not get lost in regret about your past mistakes. The past is the past. It is not the present. You can seize the present moment-any present moment-to begin anew. Just as you embrace your negative feelings, embrace your weight problem like a mother cradling her crying baby, so that you can transform your fear, despair, anger, frustration, and self-criticism. Mindfulness practice can help you become calmer, so that you can look at your situation in a more detached way, without self-condemnation. This frees you to focus on the solutions rather than dwell on the past or your problems. The Buddha said that if we know how to look deeply into our suffering and recognize what feeds it, we are already on the path of emancipation.Do Your Parents Have Weight Problems?What you have inherited from your ancestors' gene pool can affect your weight. Studies have shown that when one of a child's parents is overweight, the child is more than twice as likely to become an overweight adult, regardless of whether the child herself is at a normal weight.20 Having two overweight parents further increases the chance that the child will become overweight. Having two overweight parents further increases the chance that the child will become overweight.21 Nevertheless, parental influences on our weight could be due to nature, nurture, or a combination of both. When we were young, parents also controlled what and how much we ate as well as how active we were. If your mother breast-fed you, it may have lowered your risk of becoming overweight. Nevertheless, parental influences on our weight could be due to nature, nurture, or a combination of both. When we were young, parents also controlled what and how much we ate as well as how active we were. If your mother breast-fed you, it may have lowered your risk of becoming overweight.22 If your father encouraged you to "clean up your plate" as a habit, you may find it really hard to stop eating today's supersize portions even though you are full. Did your parents spend their free time playing with you in the yard, or did you spend much of your family time slouched together in front of the television set? As you consider the role of parental influences on your weight, keep in mind that your genetics are not your destiny-and genetics alone cannot explain the rapid rise in obesity we have seen over the past thirty years. Even if your parents were overweight, you can still achieve a healthy weight by following a healthy lifestyle. It just means that you may have to pay more attention to what you eat and how much you move than someone who does not have a genetic tendency to be overweight. If your father encouraged you to "clean up your plate" as a habit, you may find it really hard to stop eating today's supersize portions even though you are full. Did your parents spend their free time playing with you in the yard, or did you spend much of your family time slouched together in front of the television set? As you consider the role of parental influences on your weight, keep in mind that your genetics are not your destiny-and genetics alone cannot explain the rapid rise in obesity we have seen over the past thirty years. Even if your parents were overweight, you can still achieve a healthy weight by following a healthy lifestyle. It just means that you may have to pay more attention to what you eat and how much you move than someone who does not have a genetic tendency to be overweight.Do You Drink Too Much Sugary Soda?Drinking sugar-sweetened beverages can contribute to weight gain. A study in teens found that for every additional can of soda they drank a day, their chances of becoming obese increased by 60 percent.23 The Nurses' Health Study found that women who increased their consumption of sugary drinks from one or fewer drinks per week to one or more drinks per day gained more weight over a four-year period than women who cut back on sugary drinks. The Nurses' Health Study found that women who increased their consumption of sugary drinks from one or fewer drinks per week to one or more drinks per day gained more weight over a four-year period than women who cut back on sugary drinks.24Scientists believe there are several reasons that drinking sugary drinks contributes to weight gain. The calories from soda are often "invisible." When you drink your calories rather than eat them, you may not cut back on other foods to compensate for the liquid calories. With a twelve-ounce can of sugary soda containing nearly ten teaspoons, or about 150 calories, of sugar, it's easy to stack up extra calories during the day, especially if you're drinking sugary soda to quench your thirst. Soft drinks may also increase your sense of hunger or decrease your sense of satiety or fullness.25As you consider the role of sweetened drinks on your weight, notice whether you feel hungrier after you drink a sugary soda. If you have already cut back on sugary drinks and substituted diet ones, notice whether drinking the intensely sweet sugar substitutes has conditioned your palate to expect, crave, and seek supersweet foods.Do You Get Less Than a Half Hour of Exercise or Physical Activity Each Day?For weight control, the "energy out" side of the energy-balance equation is just as important as the "energy in." There's strong evidence that getting enough physical activity can help prevent weight gain and, when combined with a lower-calorie eating plan, can help promote weight loss. What is enough? It depends on how fit you are. For some people, taking a brisk half-hour walk five days a week would be enough. For others, taking a high-intensity spinning class for seventy-five minutes a week would be enough. For people who are very inactive, just getting moving is a start. We discuss physical activity for weight control and for general good health in chapter 6, "Mindful Moving." For now, reflect on whether you get enough physical activity. If not, why not?Do You Watch More Than One Hour of Television a Day?Many studies in adults and children have shown that watching too much television increases one's risk of becoming overweight. The Nurses' Health Study, for example, found that for every additional two hours of television that women watched per day, their risk of becoming obese increased by 23 percent. Even getting a lot of physical activity did not fully protect these women from the effects of TV watching on weight: among the most active women, those who watched more than twenty hours of television per week had a higher risk of becoming obese than those who watched less than six hours of television per week.26Researchers believe there are several possible ways that watching too much television could lead to weight gain. Sitting around and watching television may take the place of more physically demanding activities, so the "energy out" side of the energy balance equation goes down. TV watching may also affect the "energy in" side of the equation: people tend to eat while while they watch television and also tend to eat they watch television and also tend to eat what what they watch on television-fast food, sugary drinks, and other high-calorie snacks. This adds up to extra calories in, fewer calories out, and, ultimately, to weight gain. As you reflect on your TV-watching habits, think about why you spend as much time as you do watching television. Do you watch a lot of television to avoid boredom? To avoid communicating with your family members? Or to cope with stress? What other activities might you do instead? (See a list of suggestions in appendix D for ideas.) they watch on television-fast food, sugary drinks, and other high-calorie snacks. This adds up to extra calories in, fewer calories out, and, ultimately, to weight gain. As you reflect on your TV-watching habits, think about why you spend as much time as you do watching television. Do you watch a lot of television to avoid boredom? To avoid communicating with your family members? Or to cope with stress? What other activities might you do instead? (See a list of suggestions in appendix D for ideas.)Do You Get Enough Sleep?A good night's sleep is essential for good health. New research suggests that a good night's sleep may also be essential to controlling your weight.27 The Nurses' Health Study, for example, followed seventy thousand women for sixteen years. Women who skimped on sleep-getting five hours or less each night-were 15 percent more likely to become obese than women who got seven hours of sleep per night. The Nurses' Health Study, for example, followed seventy thousand women for sixteen years. Women who skimped on sleep-getting five hours or less each night-were 15 percent more likely to become obese than women who got seven hours of sleep per night.28 Scientists are still teasing out why lack of sleep may lead people to pack on the pounds. People who don't get enough sleep may be more fatigued than people who get a healthy night's sleep, Scientists are still teasing out why lack of sleep may lead people to pack on the pounds. People who don't get enough sleep may be more fatigued than people who get a healthy night's sleep,29 decreasing the "energy out" side of the energy-balance equation. Or staying awake for a longer period of time may simply give people more opportunities to eat, increasing the "energy in" side of the energy-balance equation. decreasing the "energy out" side of the energy-balance equation. Or staying awake for a longer period of time may simply give people more opportunities to eat, increasing the "energy in" side of the energy-balance equation.30 Sleep deprivation may shift the balance of key hormones that control appetite, making sleep-deprived people hungrier than people who get enough sleep. Sleep deprivation may shift the balance of key hormones that control appetite, making sleep-deprived people hungrier than people who get enough sleep.31 One small study found that sleep-deprived volunteers reported more hunger, especially for high-carbohydrate and high-calorie comfort foods. One small study found that sleep-deprived volunteers reported more hunger, especially for high-carbohydrate and high-calorie comfort foods.32 If you are not getting enough sleep, think about why. Are you lying awake at night filled with anxiety? Do you stay up too late watching television? Do you notice that you are hungrier on days when you have not gotten as good a night's sleep? If you are not getting enough sleep, think about why. Are you lying awake at night filled with anxiety? Do you stay up too late watching television? Do you notice that you are hungrier on days when you have not gotten as good a night's sleep?Do You Eat Mindlessly?Nowadays, with all the societal pressures and the "high speed" living of our Internet age, much of our eating happens on autopilot. We do not pay attention to how much food is served or how much we have eaten, how tasty the food is or whether we're even hungry at all. Instead, how much we eat is often driven by external cues-the size of the bowl, the size of the plate, the portion size of the food itself. Given the supersizing trends over the past twenty years, it is easy to fall victim to "portion distortion" and to lose sight of how much food is an appropriate amount to eat.33 Recently, researchers have conducted scientific studies looking at how mindless eating affects our food consumption. What they found is that mindless eating can easily lead to overeating. In a classic experiment, people at a movie theater were served fresh or stale popcorn in different-size containers. Moviegoers who were given stale popcorn said the taste was "unfavorable." Yet when they were served stale popcorn in a large container, they ate 61 percent more popcorn than they did when it was served in a small container while they were watching the movie-and they underestimated the amount of popcorn they ate. Recently, researchers have conducted scientific studies looking at how mindless eating affects our food consumption. What they found is that mindless eating can easily lead to overeating. In a classic experiment, people at a movie theater were served fresh or stale popcorn in different-size containers. Moviegoers who were given stale popcorn said the taste was "unfavorable." Yet when they were served stale popcorn in a large container, they ate 61 percent more popcorn than they did when it was served in a small container while they were watching the movie-and they underestimated the amount of popcorn they ate.34 In another experiment, graduate students at a Super Bowl party who served themselves from large bowls ate 56 percent more snack food than students who served themselves from smaller bowls. In another experiment, graduate students at a Super Bowl party who served themselves from large bowls ate 56 percent more snack food than students who served themselves from smaller bowls.35 The larger the portion size, the less able we are to estimate how many calories we are eating. The larger the portion size, the less able we are to estimate how many calories we are eating.36The cues for mindless eating reach beyond the size of a plate or the size of a portion. Our whole surroundings support mindless eating, from the ads on TV to fast-food "dollar menus" to favorable placement of unhealthy foods on supermarket shelves. All these cues combined can make it very, very difficult to find what it is our bodies truly need. Are you often eating on the run, in the car, or at your desk? Do you have to dine out often because you have not had time to cook? And do you find yourself making unwise food choices when eating out?Practicing mindfulness can help us avoid the external cues that trap us, avoid mindless eating, and focus in on the practices that keep us healthy.Mindlessness is the opposite of mindfulness. Eating is not the only activity that we do mindlessly, and we are driven to mindlessness by more than just the size of a bowl or plate. We drink a cup of tea and focus more on the worries and anxieties of the day than on living the moment of enjoying the tea. We sit with someone we love, and rather than focus on the person and this moment we have with them, we're distracted by other thoughts. We walk but are more focused on reviewing the talking points for our next appointment than on the serene moment we're having as we walk. We are usually someplace else, thinking about the past or the future rather than the now. The horse of our habit energy is carrying us along, and we are its captive. We need to stop our horse and reclaim our freedom. We need to shine the light of mindfulness on everything we eat and do, so the darkness of forgetfulness will disappear.Do You Live or Work in an Environment That Makes It Difficult to Eat Healthfully and Keep Moving?Where you live and where you work can have important implications for whether you can eat well and stay active. If healthy choices are not available in your workplace or neighborhood, it makes it very difficult for you to eat well, no matter how knowledgeable or determined you are. If your neighborhood is not safe enough for you to walk, jog, or ride a bike in, it will deter you from staying active. Pay attention to your surrounding environment, and take note of the various barriers to active living and healthy eating. What prevents you from following your good intentions? Are your sincere efforts being sabotaged by family or friends? Does your job or what you do on a daily basis prevent you from staying on course with healthy eating and active living? Do you have too much work-related stress? Do you have time for yourself?As you start to clear your mind of distractions, these barriers will become clearer to you, and you will start to work on ways around them as well as ways to work with people in your community to make a healthier environment for everyone.Other Factors Feeding Your Weight ProblemScientific and public health experts are working hard to figure out what can be done to turn the obesity epidemic around. Yet, science still does not have all the answers about what leads people to gain too much weight. So it is important to consider other factors that may have caused your weight problem. It may be helpful for you to reflect on the following questions about your own attitudes, thoughts, feelings, and actions that may have led you to eat more and move less. Be honest with yourself. Write your reflections in a journal so that you can review them later and gain a better understanding of yourself. Once you are conscious of these attitudes, thoughts, feelings, and actions, you can work, step-by-step, to change them-to break the mindless forces of habit that have led you to eat more and move less.How do you feel about your current weight? Is having a healthy weight a high priority in your life that's worth your time and energy to address? Do you have enough concentration to focus on your weight problem, your poor eating habits, and your sedentary lifestyle? What is distracting you from your focus?Do you feel that you are doomed to be overweight and it does not matter how hard you try? Do you eat just to feel better, if only for short time?Are you eating before going to bed because you are tired? Are you attached to certain unhealthy foods late at night? Why? What triggers you to eat again just a little while after finishing your dinner?Are you using food to fill an emotional void, relieve loneliness, or cope with your anxiety, fears, or stress? Do you continue to eat when you are full, and how does this make you feel? Is overeating a Band-Aid to cover up another type of pain? Are you trying to feed an emotional hunger? Are you using food as a crutch? Do you use food to ward off the painful, heart-wrenching feelings that you have buried deep in your heart? Reflect mindfully about how you may use food to cope with your negative emotions; you will see that edible food is not the right nourishment for them.Where do you get your information? From a credible source? Or from magazines, TV shows, or advertisements that sensationalize results and make promises they can't fulfill? Do you find yourself being affected by food commercials on television or in magazine advertising? Have you been the victim of countless diet books that have led you to lose confidence in your ability to reach a healthy weight?Do you have a preexisting health condition that prevents you from exercising? If you do, did you seek out the advice of a professional to help you find appropriate physical activities that you can do on a daily basis?Listen to your heart. What are your inner longings? How are you going to fulfill these longings? Do your self-talk, beliefs, or interactions with others hinder you from maintaining healthy eating and active living? Are you your own worst enemy? Have you put time and effort into healthy eating and active living? If not, why not?THESE ARE ALL VERY complex questions that take time, effort, and sometimes a bit of painful soul-searching to answer, but they are very important issues to address. And tackling them head-on and resolving them is just as important to reclaiming our healthy weight as the better-studied issues, like getting more exercise and cutting back on sugary soda.As you learn to be more mindful, to better focus on what is happening in the present moment, the barriers and motivations that drive you toward unhealthy habits will become clearer, as will the path away from them toward better health.The Third Noble Truth: Reaching a Healthy Weight Is PossibleYou can put an end to your weight problem. You have already taken the first step: by spending energy to understand the roots of the problem, you have stopped running away from it. When you direct your attention to your excess weight and the suffering associated with it, you can see the potential for wellness. You also understand that it is possible to reach your goal of a healthy weight when you take the right actions. Remember, there was a time before you became overweight when your weight was normal. It is easy to forget that.Ask yourself where you are in this healthy-weight journey. Focus on whether or not you aspire to be a different person, to feel better about yourself, to be able to function better, to be happier. Ask yourself what this extra weight means to you, and ask yourself whether you are truly ready to let it go.To be successful, it is very important for you to believe that you can achieve a healthy weight. Believing in yourself, having the faith that you can change the habits that do not serve you well, and adopting science-based wisdom are important for successful transformation of our behavior. According to psychologist Albert Bandura, "perceived self-efficacy" is essential for any behavior change.37 Self-efficacy is simply the belief that one Self-efficacy is simply the belief that one can can carry out a behavior necessary to produce a desired outcome. What we believe can significantly affect what we can achieve. People who believe that they can reach a healthier weight through healthy eating and active living set relevant goals that they perceive to be important for the desired change. They believe that those goals are attainable, and they believe that they have the ability to carry them out. carry out a behavior necessary to produce a desired outcome. What we believe can significantly affect what we can achieve. People who believe that they can reach a healthier weight through healthy eating and active living set relevant goals that they perceive to be important for the desired change. They believe that those goals are attainable, and they believe that they have the ability to carry them out.What are your current beliefs? Are they real, or are they shadowed with illusions from your past experiences, failures, and disappointments? The past is the past. The past is your teacher and can offer valuable lessons on what worked and what did not work for you. But it is not your present reality. It remains your present reality only if you allow it to be. Do not let your past experiences hold you back. Your failures do not need to determine your current or future experience. Focus on the present. When you focus on the present, you do not give any power to your past actions.Recognize that losing weight is is possible and that you possible and that you can can do it. It will not be as easy as popping a pill and watching the pounds melt away, but it will be a journey-sometimes hard-that will be well worth taking. do it. It will not be as easy as popping a pill and watching the pounds melt away, but it will be a journey-sometimes hard-that will be well worth taking.Learn to listen to your body with compassion. You are more capable of helping yourself if you treat yourself with compassion and a loving heart. Your guilt and hopelessness will diminish, and you will be more accepting of yourself. Don't judge yourself harshly. Love yourself, and affirm that you can reach a healthy weight. You are losing the weight for yourself, not to please anyone else.As you start to recognize your innate capacity to be more mindful, you will become calmer, and it will be easier to find solutions to the problems you face. Allow yourself to truly feel what your life would be like if you could maintain a healthier weight. Affirm to yourself that reaching a healthier weight is possible when you pay attention to and take care of your weight. When you take care of an orchid plant, the plant needs your focused attention, to be watered and nurtured on a regular basis. Without such care, the flowers will wither and die prematurely and you cannot enjoy their beauty. You are just like the orchid plant. You need tender loving care for your ideal to be realized. When we look at all beings, including ourselves, with eyes of love and compassion, we can take care of ourselves better. With mindfulness, we can nurture ourselves with greater ease and interest, and our effort will come more naturally.Even if you have been burdened and tormented by your weight throughout the years, there are seeds of well-being inside you. But you may have lost sight of this because the discomfort of your overweight is overpowering. When you have a toothache, you call your dentist and ask for an emergency appointment to relieve your pain. You know deeply at that point that not having a toothache is happiness. Yet later, when you don't have a toothache, you forget and do not treasure your non-toothache. Practicing mindfulness helps us appreciate the well-being that is already there and realize that further well-being is possible if we take the right actions.We need to water the seeds of joy in ourselves in order to realize well-being, including the well-being that comes from being at a healthier weight. Please ask yourself, "What nourishes joy in me? What nourishes joy in others? Do I nourish the joy in myself and the joy in others enough? Do I appreciate the many reasons for joy that are already in my life? Or have I been living in forgetfulness, taking many things for granted?" If you have good eyesight, appreciate it, even though it's easy to forget what a gift this is. If you're able to sleep well, appreciate this. If your lungs are healthy, appreciate the simple fact that you can breathe in and out easily. The same goes for myriad things we can do every day but don't take note of.When you suffer, you can look deeply at your situation and find the many blessings that are already surrounding you. It is wonderful to sit with a pen and paper and write down all the conditions for happiness that are already there, already available to you right in this moment.When you do this, you have a firm foundation from which to better embrace and transform your suffering. Transforming our suffering is like becoming an organic gardener, one who does not discard the unwanted scraps from the kitchen or the yard. Instead, the gardener composts these scraps so that they can nourish the flower. You can transform the unwanted garbage in you-your depression, fear, despair, or anger-into the nourishing energy of peace and joy. Don't throw away or deny your suffering. Touch your suffering. Face it directly, and transformation is within your reach.Negative habits can be changed. You can can begin anew. Try to be fully aware of your inner motivations for wanting to reach your healthy weight. Why do you want to lose weight? Allow yourself to truly feel that life would be significantly better without your weight problem, as you would feel better and become healthier. Your intention to reach a healthy weight has to come from you-and from nobody else. begin anew. Try to be fully aware of your inner motivations for wanting to reach your healthy weight. Why do you want to lose weight? Allow yourself to truly feel that life would be significantly better without your weight problem, as you would feel better and become healthier. Your intention to reach a healthy weight has to come from you-and from nobody else.You need to get back to the wisdom of balance and moderation. Think of balance and moderation as seeds that lie dormant in your consciousness. Water them so that they can grow and be strong. Attaining a healthy weight is your choice. And it is a practice, not an idea.The Fourth Noble Truth: You Can Follow a Mindful Path to a Healthy WeightThe mindful path to a healthy weight is not a diet that you go on and off. It does not rely on any pills or potions. All it takes is your belief and affirmation that you can follow a mindful path, and your willingness to commit to this path. Following a mindful path means creating your own personal goals for healthy eating and physical activity, goals that you believe you can carry out and live with, day after day. These goals must be realistic for your own life's demands. Over time, as you progress on this mindful path, it becomes your way of living, one that allows you to reach your healthier weight with great ease and confidence.Appreciate the lessons that your excess weight is offering you. Your excess weight is like a bell whose sound reminds you that your past actions, your past way of living, did not serve you well. You can liberate yourself from the imprisonment, struggle, and burden of your weight. Though you are not solely responsible for your current state, you are the only one who is able to change it. You must act for yourself. No one else can do this for you. The first step is to be aware that you you are choosing to change. are choosing to change.Bear in mind that everything is impermanent, including your extra weight. The mindful path to healthy weight is to start living with mindfulness, which will help you be more conscious of what you are thinking, seeing, hearing, feeling, eating, and doing throughout the day.Take small steps toward change. Do not aim for unrealistic goals that require a quantum leap. This usually sets you up for a vicious cycle of failure. Another experience of failure is not what you need. Chances are that your past failures in weight-loss attempts have reinforced the notion in you that you cannot do it.By accomplishing little steps, you start to have a taste of what you can do. You begin to have a taste of success. Every day, allow yourself to witness that it is possible for you to make changes in the right direction, no matter how small. Success breeds success. It is contagious.Set a realistic goal for weight loss. For most of us, this means losing one to two pounds a week. Losing weight steadily allows your new, healthy habits to be firmly rooted. When you lose weight quickly with fad diets, you usually regain the lost weight in a short time. The best approach is to establish healthy eating and physical activity habits that you can stick with.There is a National Weight Control Registry of more than five thousand women and men who have each lost more than thirty pounds and kept it off for at least a year.38 Most of them lost the weight on their own. How did they do it? They exercised and burned an average of four hundred calories a day, which is about sixty minutes of brisk walking. They ate less, keeping to about fourteen hundred calories a day. Plus, they watched less television and limited their visits to fast-food restaurants. There are other examples of success, from a fast-food chain's formerly overweight pitchman to people who participated in reality shows like Most of them lost the weight on their own. How did they do it? They exercised and burned an average of four hundred calories a day, which is about sixty minutes of brisk walking. They ate less, keeping to about fourteen hundred calories a day. Plus, they watched less television and limited their visits to fast-food restaurants. There are other examples of success, from a fast-food chain's formerly overweight pitchman to people who participated in reality shows like The Biggest Loser. The Biggest Loser. The key is to be able to stick with eating well, eating less, and moving more. The key is to be able to stick with eating well, eating less, and moving more.Learning what to do to lose weight is not difficult. Putting that knowledge effectively into practice, though, is the key challenge. Despite advances in weight management research over the past decades, people worldwide still struggle to make the lasting lifestyle changes that would help them achieve and maintain a healthier weight.So, what can help you begin to make healthy behavior changes and keep them up over time?Mindfulness.Mindfulness is a way of living that has been practiced over twenty-six hundred years by millions of people to help them transform their suffering into peace and joy. Applying mindfulness to your suffering with weight gives you a catalyst that you can draw on at will to change your behavior. Consider mindfulness as your ally to help you get out of your own way, change your habits that are counterproductive, and overcome the obstacles and difficulties that led you to be overweight.Start first with practicing mindful breathing, mindful eating, and mindful walking every day. We will explain these practices in chapters 4, 5, and 6. It may seem like a lot to start with, but it doesn't take much at this stage. We are already breathing as long as we are alive, and we are eating and walking every day. Mindfulness is simply a different way of breathing, eating, and walking.Don't be discouraged if you find yourself not being able to follow your plan 100 percent. As long as you are heading in the right direction, you are making progress. Be patient with yourself. Even if you change only one unhealthy habit a week, you will be making twenty-six changes in six months and fifty-two changes in one year. Act with determination. Practice diligently. Take one moment at a time.In addition to your personal mindfulness, you will need to look outside yourself if you're to reach a healthy weight. Besides your own will and action, you also need support at home, at work, and throughout your community to be able to eat well and stay active. If healthy choices are not available at work, it will be much more difficult for you to eat a healthy lunch. If your community does not have any food outlets besides convenience stores that do not stock many healthy choices, it will be hard for you and your family to eat well.It is extremely challenging to change on your own. Build a support community or sangha sangha (the Sanskrit word for a Buddhist community of spiritual practitioners) around you to help you stay on track. The support system can be made up of people you meet with in person or online. Think of all the people you come into contact with in your life. Which can be your potential allies, offering you support in the myriad of small daily actions? How about your family members, your friends, your coworkers, and your health-care team? How about using the Web and other tools to remind you to eat, move, and live mindfully? See appendix A to download the mindfulness bell sound to your computer to remind you to come back to the present moment. You may also want to have a digital watch or cell phone that you can program to beep at regular intervals, say, every hour. The beep can be a reminder for you to stop whatever you are doing and breathe deeply three times. In all the practice centers in the tradition of Plum Village (Thich Nhat Hanh's monastery in France), whenever the phone rings or the clock chimes in the dining hall, people stop everything they are doing and breathe consciously, releasing all thinking and any tension. (the Sanskrit word for a Buddhist community of spiritual practitioners) around you to help you stay on track. The support system can be made up of people you meet with in person or online. Think of all the people you come into contact with in your life. Which can be your potential allies, offering you support in the myriad of small daily actions? How about your family members, your friends, your coworkers, and your health-care team? How about using the Web and other tools to remind you to eat, move, and live mindfully? See appendix A to download the mindfulness bell sound to your computer to remind you to come back to the present moment. You may also want to have a digital watch or cell phone that you can program to beep at regular intervals, say, every hour. The beep can be a reminder for you to stop whatever you are doing and breathe deeply three times. In all the practice centers in the tradition of Plum Village (Thich Nhat Hanh's monastery in France), whenever the phone rings or the clock chimes in the dining hall, people stop everything they are doing and breathe consciously, releasing all thinking and any tension.Ending Your Struggle with Weight: The Path Begins HereYou have within you the wisdom, the strength, and the ability to follow through with your plan to lose weight. Through reading this book, you will learn scientific facts that will help you eat more healthfully and be more active. You will learn more about the internal and external obstacles that may have prevented you from reaching your healthy weight in the past. You will know yourself much better than before. You will see whether your thinking is working for you or against you. You will realize that what you do every day for leisure and for work affects your weight and well-being. You will be more conscious of how your level of focus, the extent of your mindfulness or mindlessness, and your commitment are all affecting how much you weigh.Make a serious pledge to yourself. Begin writing a personal healthy-weight mission statement. This mission statement is a symbol and reminder of your commitment and can help you see more clearly what you intend to achieve. As you go through this healthy-weight journey, return to your healthy-weight mission statement periodically to help you focus, get inspired, renew your ongoing commitment, and stay on track. You may also like to post it where you can read it often.Your mission statement for healthy weight and well-being should be made up of concrete, achievable goals. It should begin broadly with what you want to achieve overall and then have some more specific goals you can work toward along the way to your ultimate goal. For example:My Mission Statement for Healthy Weight and Well-BeingThrough being more mindful and paying better attention to my health and well-being, I will lose 25 pounds by __________, and keep it off over the following year and beyond.(insert date)Beginning Goals, __________ (insert date) (insert date) - I will practice some level of mindfulness every day, with a goal of increasing the amount every week.
- I will walk at least 5,000 steps (measured by a pedometer) or half an hour every day, and slowly increase this each week until I reach 10,000 steps or one hour per day.
- I will buy more fruits and vegetables.
- I will not buy any sugary sodas.
Revised Goals, __________ (insert date) (insert date) - I will work on being mindful for at least two hours a day, with a goal of increasing the amount every week.
- I will walk at least 10,000 steps every day.
- I will buy more fruits and vegetables.
- I will avoid all fast food.
- I will not buy any sugary sodas.
Mission statements are works in progress, just like ourselves. While the overall goal of your mission statement will likely stay constant over time, the smaller goals will change and be revised as you gain experience and figure out what you've been successful with and what you still need to work on.As you think about your mission statement and the commitment you've made to yourself, you can sometimes become overwhelmed by the larger goals. But remember that those are the goals to be reached much further into your journey. Right now, just stay focused on the individual steps that will get you moving toward your goals. Instead of focusing just on the scale and your weight goal, stay focused on your daily mind-set and actions moment to moment. Smile to yourself, and feel good about every change that you can make, no matter how small. It takes time and determination to transform the deeply entrenched habits that caused you to gain weight.You are not expected to be able to change overnight. Just like a woodpecker that has to keep pecking away to create a hole in the tree trunk, you need to focus and keep practicing. Stay present in the now so that you are fully aware and can take concrete steps in the direction of healthy eating and active living. To stay on this route to health and well-being, you need to wake up from your autopilot mode. You have to live deeply and with more awareness so that you can be attentive to each moment. Mindfulness practice is the key that will help you free yourself from unconsciousness and forgetfulness. Mindfulness can help you eat, move, and live more consciously.In the beginning, it maybe difficult to change your daily routines. As you bring more mindfulness into your daily living gradually and consistently, you will increase your awareness of your daily activities. Before you fully realize it, mindful living will become your new habit, part of your daily being.A bonus of practicing mindful living, as many others practicing mindfulness throughout the centuries have found, is the sense of being more centered, more joyful, more at peace with yourself. You will wonder why you have lived so much of your life in numbness and forgetfulness. This numbness prevented you from being fully conscious of what caused your suffering and undesirable states of mind and body. This forgetfulness caused you to miss your appointment with life, out of touch with all its beauty and wonders.By combining science-based advice with the practice of mindfulness, we have the tools to transform the unhealthy habits that have led to our current weight. Our mindfulness will lead us to adopt lifestyle choices that are not only good for ourselves but also good for our planet. We will realize that we cannot attain well-being all by ourselves. Our well-being is intimately dependent on the well-being of others. Our health is dependent on the health of our planet, and the health of our planet depends on us. We all need to consume and act in such a way that the health of our planet is preserved for our children, our grandchildren, and all future generations. We cannot focus just on ourselves if a future is to be possible. We need to maintain the well-being of all. Each of us can contribute by mindfully taking care of ourselves-and our home, planet Earth-for our generation and for generations to come.
CHAPTER 2.
Are You Really Appreciating the Apple?
An Apple Meditation The apple in your hand is the body of the Cosmos.Thich Nhat Hanh LET'S HAVE A TASTE of mindfulness. Take an apple out of your refrigerator. Any apple will do. Wash it. Dry it. Before taking a bite, pause for a moment. Look at the apple in your palm and ask yourself: When I eat an apple, am I really enjoying eating it? Or am I so preoccupied with other thoughts that I miss the delights that the apple offers me?
If you are like most of us, you answer yes to the second question much more often than the first. For most of our lives, we have eaten apple after apple without giving it a second thought. Yet in this mindless way of eating, we have denied ourselves the many delights present in the simple act of eating an apple. Why do that, especially when it is so easy to truly enjoy the apple?
The first thing is to give your undivided attention to eating the apple. When you eat the apple, just concentrate on eating the apple. Don't think of anything else. And most important, be still. Don't eat the apple while you are driving. Don't eat it while you are walking. Don't eat it while you are reading. Just be still. Being focused and slowing down will allow you to truly savor all the qualities the apple offers: its sweetness, aroma, freshness, juiciness, and crispness.
Next, pick up the apple from the palm of your hand and take a moment to look at it again. Breathe in and out a few times consciously to help yourself focus and become more in touch with how you feel about the apple. Most of the time, we barely look at the apple we are eating. We grab it, take a bite, chew it quickly, and then swallow. This time, take note: What kind of apple is it? What color is it? How does it feel in your hand? What does it smell like? Going through these thoughts, you will begin to realize that the apple is not simply a quick snack to quiet a grumbling stomach. It is something more complex, something part of a greater whole.
Then, give the apple a smile and, slowly, take a bite, and chew it. Be aware of your in-breath and out-breath a few times to help yourself concentrate solely on eating the apple: what it feels like in your mouth; what it tastes like; what it's like to chew and swallow it. There is nothing else filling your mind as you chew-no projects, no deadlines, no worries, no "to do" list, no fears, no sorrow, no anger, no past, and no future. There is just the apple.
When you chew, know what you are chewing. Chew slowly and completely, twenty to thirty times for each bite. Chew consciously, savoring the taste of the apple and its nourishment, immersing yourself in the experience 100 percent. This way, you really appreciate the apple as it is. And as you become fully aware of eating the apple, you also become fully aware of the present moment. You become fully engaged in the here and now. Living in the moment, you can really receive what the apple offers you, and you become more alive.
By eating the apple this way, truly savoring it, you have a taste of mindfulness mindfulness, the state of awareness that comes from being fully immersed in the present moment. Letting go for those few short minutes and living in the here and now, you can begin to sense the pleasure and freedom from anxiety that a life lived in mindfulness can offer.
In today's world, mindless eating and mindless living are all too common. We are propelled by the fast pace of high-tech living-highspeed Internet, e-mails, instant messages, and cell phones-and the expectation that we are always on call, always ready to respond instantly to any message we get. Thirty years ago, hardly anyone would have expected to receive a reply to a phone call or letter within the same day. Yet today, the pace of our lives is utterly harried and spinning out of control. We constantly have to respond to external stimuli and demands. We have less and less time to stop, stay focused, and reflect on whatever is in front of us. We have much less time to be in touch with our inner selves-our thoughts, feelings, consciousness, and how and why we have become the way we are, for better or worse. And our lives suffer because of it.
Some of us find that it is too inconvenient and difficult to eat a whole apple. So major food outlets now sell "value-added" apples-presliced apples, packed in bags and coated with an all-natural flavorless sealant so that they won't turn brown or lose their crispness for up to three weeks. These apples epitomize the new food-marketing concept of "snackability":1 There are no crumbs and no fuss, nothing to interrupt the repetitive movement of hand to bag and food to mouth. Aside from the inherent lack of freshness in these "snackable" precut apples, they also promote mindless eating-in the car, in front of the TV, at the computer, whenever and wherever. And while there are certainly much less healthy snack foods than precut apple slices, the pattern of eating is one we all experience and that food marketers promote with a vengeance. There are no crumbs and no fuss, nothing to interrupt the repetitive movement of hand to bag and food to mouth. Aside from the inherent lack of freshness in these "snackable" precut apples, they also promote mindless eating-in the car, in front of the TV, at the computer, whenever and wherever. And while there are certainly much less healthy snack foods than precut apple slices, the pattern of eating is one we all experience and that food marketers promote with a vengeance.
Most of the time, we are eating on autopilot, eating on the run, eating our worries or anxieties from the day's demands, anticipations, irritations, and "to do" lists. If we are not conscious of the food we eat, if we are not actively thinking about that apple, how can we taste it and get the pleasure of eating it?
Eating an apple mindfully is not only a pleasant experience; it is good for our health as well. The adage "An apple a day keeps the doctor away" is actually backed by solid science. Research shows that eating apples can help prevent heart disease because the fiber and antioxidants they contain can prevent cholesterol buildup in the blood vessels of the heart. The fiber in apples can also help move waste through the intestines, which can help lower the risk of problems such as irritable bowel syndrome. Eating the apple with the skin-especially when it is organic-is better than eating it without the skin, as half of the vitamin C is under the apple's skin; the skin itself is rich in phytochemicals, special plant compounds that may fight chronic disease. Apples are also packed with potassium, which can help keep blood pressure under control.
Beyond the health benefits and pleasure an apple can provide, when we view the apple on an even grander scale we can see it as a representative of our cosmos. Look deeply at the apple in your hand and you see the farmer who tended the apple tree; the blossom that became the fruit; the fertile earth, the organic material from decayed remains of prehistoric marine animals and algae, and the hydrocarbons themselves; the sunshine, the clouds, and the rain. Without the combination of these far-reaching elements and without the help of many people, the apple would simply not exist.
At its most essential, the apple you hold is a manifestation of the wonderful presence of life. It is interconnected with all that is. It contains the whole universe; it is an ambassador of the cosmos coming to nourish our existence. It feeds our body, and if we eat it mindfully, it also feeds our soul and recharges our spirit.
Eating an apple consciously is to have a new awareness of the apple, of our world, and of our own life. It celebrates nature, honoring what Mother Earth and the cosmos have offered us. Eating an apple with mindfulness is a meditation and can be deeply spiritual. With this awareness and insight, you begin to have a greater feeling of gratitude for and appreciation of the food you eat, and your connection to nature and all others in our world. As the apple becomes more real and vibrant, your life becomes more real and vibrant. Savoring the apple is mindfulness at work.
And it is mindfulness that will help you reconnect with yourself and become healthier in mind, body, and spirit now and in the future.
CHAPTER 3.
You Are More More Than What You Eat Than What You Eat When something has come to be, we have to acknowledge its presence and look deeply into its nature. When we look deeply, we will discover the kinds of nutriments that have helped it come to be and that continue to feed it.-Samyutta Nikaya 2, 47 ADVANCES IN SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH since the late twentieth century reinforce the understanding that our bodies affect our minds and our minds affect our bodies. Skipping breakfast has been shown to dull students' memories and lower their test scores.1 And physical activity has been shown to sharpen thinking, reduce anxiety, reduce depression, and enhance memory. And physical activity has been shown to sharpen thinking, reduce anxiety, reduce depression, and enhance memory.2 The mind also has a powerful effect on our bodies. In stressful situations-like being approached by a bear in a national park-our brains kick in the fight-or-flight response to help us cope with the threat. Our sympathetic nervous system is recruited, stimulating the release of glucagon and cortisol hormones to increase fuel to our muscles and our brain, helping us to make the right decision and escape danger. More recently, research has found that the risk of heart disease increases in both men and women as levels of anxiety, anger, or more general symptoms of distress increase. The mind also has a powerful effect on our bodies. In stressful situations-like being approached by a bear in a national park-our brains kick in the fight-or-flight response to help us cope with the threat. Our sympathetic nervous system is recruited, stimulating the release of glucagon and cortisol hormones to increase fuel to our muscles and our brain, helping us to make the right decision and escape danger. More recently, research has found that the risk of heart disease increases in both men and women as levels of anxiety, anger, or more general symptoms of distress increase.3 Therefore, to attain well-being, we need to take care not only of our bodies but also of our minds. Mindfulness practice is central to seeing the interdependence of mind and body. Therefore, to attain well-being, we need to take care not only of our bodies but also of our minds. Mindfulness practice is central to seeing the interdependence of mind and body.
The same applies to weight control. Getting weight under control certainly means paying attention to the body-making more healthy food choices, cutting back on the amount of food we eat, and exercising more. But none of these bodily changes can happen, or can be sustained in the long term, if our minds aren't well fed with nourishing thoughts that help us stay on track-and that address the issues that caused us to gain weight in the first place.
The four nutriments taught by the Buddha provide the path for doing just this.
When most scientists think of nutriments, they think of foods such as nuts, fruits, and vegetables; drinks such as juice or milk; and nutrients such as protein, fats, carbohydrates, vitamins, and minerals. Buddhist teaching, however, offers a more inclusive way of looking at nutriments. Besides edible food and drink-the nutrients that sustain our bodies and feed our brain-there are three other types of nutriments that enable us to preserve the health and well-being of our body and our mind. These other nutriments are the following: SENSE IMPRESSIONS: what we see, hear, taste, smell, touch, and thinkVOLITION: our inner motivations, our deepest desiresCONSCIOUSNESS: the totality of everything we have thought, said, or done throughout our lives as well as the knowledge, habits, talents, and perceptions of our ancestors. Thus consciousness is both individual and collective.
If we experience a problem in our body or a disturbance in our feelings, our mind, or our consciousness, we need to identify what types of nutriments we have been feeding ourselves that have led to our negative state. Once we have identified those nutriments, we can stop ingesting them and, in turn, heal the problem areas. For example, if we find ourselves easily getting angry, agitated, or sad, which then causes us to eat too much out of frustration, we need to look deeply to see what has brought about our anger, agitation, or sadness: What foods have we eaten? What types of sensory input have we taken in? What are the intentions that drive us, and what is the state of our consciousness, in this moment and as an accumulation of experience over the course of our life? Maybe we have read glossy magazines full of advertisements for clothes and accessories we cannot afford and do not need, and this has made us feel anxious and inadequate. Maybe we are frustrated that loved ones don't act as we wish, which fills us with anger and resentment. Once we identify what nutriments we are consuming that are harming us or others, we can work to change our actions and find healthier ways to deal with our obstacles. This will not only help with our well-being but also keep us from gulping down calories to deal with our difficult emotions.
The First Nutriment: Edible Food and Drinks The first nutriment is essential for our well-being. What we eat and drink, and the way we eat and drink, profoundly affect our physical and mental well-being. That is why it is essential to know which foods and drinks promote health and which foods and drinks harm us. Nutrition research over the past fifty years has found that maintaining a healthy eating pattern can reduce our risk of major chronic diseases including diabetes, heart disease, obesity, and cancer. This scientific nutrition advice is summarized in chapter 5.
As modern society has learned more and more about what constitutes a healthy diet, our current food industry system has become more and more complex. We no longer grow our own food, and we rarely buy our foods from local farms offering basically whole foods with minimal processing and no pesticides. Nowadays, most of us buy foods from supermarkets that have tens of thousands of items for us to choose from.4 Each year, the U.S. population spends roughly 10 percent of its income on food-roughly one trillion dollars in 2008 alone. Each year, the U.S. population spends roughly 10 percent of its income on food-roughly one trillion dollars in 2008 alone.5 And each year, thousands of new foods and drinks are introduced. Many of these products are highly processed and loaded with sugar, salt, or refined carbohydrates, which compromise our health. And each year, thousands of new foods and drinks are introduced. Many of these products are highly processed and loaded with sugar, salt, or refined carbohydrates, which compromise our health.
The choices are mind-boggling. Walking down supermarket aisles at eye level, you find many varieties of snack foods such as cookies, snack and cereal bars, chips, and drinks that have a long list of unrecognizable ingredients. Though some may make nutritional claims that they are high or low in certain nutrients and are good for you, these claims can be deceiving. For example, a cereal bar may be enriched with vitamins and minerals, but it likely contains too much sugar and refined carbohydrate to be considered a healthy choice. In this world of abundant choices that are designed to appeal to our tastes and our desire for convenience, if we are not mindful as we scan the supermarket shelves, we could end up buying and consuming foods and drinks that insidiously hurt our health without our being aware of it.
Mindfulness also helps us look beyond the packaging to see how we grow and where we get our food, so that we can eat in a way that preserves our collective well-being and the well-being of our planet. If we do not take care of our planet, we will not have the adequate sunshine, air, temperature, rain, clean water, and wholesome soil needed to grow our food. Instead we will have unwholesome and contaminated foods that harm our body, our mind, and our world. We have to know what we are eating, where our food is from, and how it affects us.
The Buddha specifically advised us to eat mindfully so that we can maintain compassion in our hearts and ensure a good future for the next generations. He taught that if we take a shortsighted and selfish approach to the food and drink we consume, we will hurt not only ourselves but also our children and our planet.
One teaching from the Buddha that addresses this issue directly is the Sutra on the Son's Flesh. This parable may sound unimaginable, cruel, and totally unacceptable. But it contains a powerful lesson about the foods we consume and the future of our planet.
Sutra on the Son's Flesh A young couple and their three-year-old son had to cross a vast desert and move to another country, where they wanted to seek asylum. They were not familiar with the terrain, nor did they know how long the journey would take, and they ran out of food while they were only halfway through the desert. They realized that without enough food, all three of them would die in the desert, with no hope of reaching the country on the other side of the desert. After agonizing reflection, the husband and wife made the decision to kill their little son for food. Each day they ate a small morsel of his flesh in order to have enough energy to move on, and they carried the rest of their son's flesh on their shoulders so that it could continue to dry in the sun. Each time when they finished eating a morsel of their son's flesh, the couple looked at each other and asked, "Where is our beloved child now?"
Having told this tragic story, the Buddha looked at the monks and asked, "Do you think that this couple was happy to eat their son's flesh?" "No, World-Honored One. The couple suffered when they had to eat their son's flesh," the monks answered. The Buddha taught the following lesson: "Dear friends, we have to practice eating in such a way that we can maintain compassion in our hearts. We have to eat in mindfulness. If not, we may be eating the flesh of our own children."
The story may be extreme, but we need to wake up so that we are not, albeit figuratively, consuming our children's flesh and experiencing the pain of the couple. In fact, much of the world's suffering comes from not eating mindfully, from not looking deeply into what and how we eat. This mindless eating can lead to the weight we gain and the diseases caused by poor nutrition, and it takes a toll on the health of the planet also. We have to learn ways to eat that preserve the health and well-being of our body, our spirit, and our planet. (Appendix B contains the sutra in its entirety, see p. 241.) Looking deeply at the way we eat from a global perspective, we can see that meat production is a huge drain on the planet. The United Nations report Livestock's Long Shadow Livestock's Long Shadow, an in-depth assessment of the damaging impact of livestock on our environment, concluded that livestock's negative effect on our environment is massive and that we need to address it with urgency. The report estimates that raising livestock uses 8 percent of our planet's water and contributes strongly to water depletion and pollution.6 Some scientists have estimated that it takes one hundred times as much water to produce a kilogram of beef as it does to produce a kilogram of protein from grain. Some scientists have estimated that it takes one hundred times as much water to produce a kilogram of beef as it does to produce a kilogram of protein from grain.7 Part of the reason that so much water is needed to produce livestock is that cattle are fattened on vast amounts of grain, which requires water to grow. In the United States, cattle consume seven times as much grain as the U.S. population as a whole. Part of the reason that so much water is needed to produce livestock is that cattle are fattened on vast amounts of grain, which requires water to grow. In the United States, cattle consume seven times as much grain as the U.S. population as a whole.8 An Environmental Protection Agency report on U.S. agricultural crop production in 2000 states that, according to the National Corn Growers Association, about 80 percent of all corn grown in the United States is consumed by domestic and overseas livestock, poultry, and fish production. An Environmental Protection Agency report on U.S. agricultural crop production in 2000 states that, according to the National Corn Growers Association, about 80 percent of all corn grown in the United States is consumed by domestic and overseas livestock, poultry, and fish production.9 Yet, ironically, more than nine thousand children die each day from causes related to hunger and undernutrition. Yet, ironically, more than nine thousand children die each day from causes related to hunger and undernutrition.10 It is a painful realization that the grain and resources we use to raise livestock could be used more directly instead to feed the starving and malnourished children in the world. It is a painful realization that the grain and resources we use to raise livestock could be used more directly instead to feed the starving and malnourished children in the world.
Furthermore, a 2008 report by the Pew Charitable Trust and the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health found that factory farming in the United States is taking a heavy toll on human health and the health of the environment-and that keeping livestock in these "concentrated animal feeding operations" constitutes inhumane treatment.11 Animal waste pollutes the water and air around the farms, causing illness among farmworkers and farm neighbors, as well as land degradation. Heavy use of antibiotics in factory farming leads to new strains of viruses and bacteria resistant to antibiotics, creating "superbugs" that may pose a public health threat to us all. In the report, the experts recommended phasing out and banning the use of antibiotics in farm animals except for the treatment of disease, instituting tighter regulation of factory farm waste, and phasing out intensive confinement systems. Animal waste pollutes the water and air around the farms, causing illness among farmworkers and farm neighbors, as well as land degradation. Heavy use of antibiotics in factory farming leads to new strains of viruses and bacteria resistant to antibiotics, creating "superbugs" that may pose a public health threat to us all. In the report, the experts recommended phasing out and banning the use of antibiotics in farm animals except for the treatment of disease, instituting tighter regulation of factory farm waste, and phasing out intensive confinement systems.12 The devastating environmental and societal impact of raising livestock goes beyond the use of water and land to grow food. Our society's hunger for meat contributes mightily to the production of climate-changing greenhouse gases. The livestock industry is responsible for 18 percent of the world's greenhouse gas emissions, a higher share than the entire transportation sector.13 Seventy percent of forests in the Amazon have been cut to provide grazing land for cattle, and when such forests are destroyed, enormous amounts of carbon dioxide stored in trees are released into the atmosphere. Seventy percent of forests in the Amazon have been cut to provide grazing land for cattle, and when such forests are destroyed, enormous amounts of carbon dioxide stored in trees are released into the atmosphere.14 The meat, dairy, and egg industries are also responsible for two-thirds of human-induced emissions of ammonia, which in turn plays a role in acid rain and the acidification of our ecosystem. The meat, dairy, and egg industries are also responsible for two-thirds of human-induced emissions of ammonia, which in turn plays a role in acid rain and the acidification of our ecosystem.15 The data suggest that one of the best ways to alleviate the stress on our environment is to consume less meat and eat more plant-based food, which results in reduction in greenhouse gas emissions. We do not need cattle to process the food for us. It is much better and more efficient for us to eat more plant-based food and process it ourselves. It may seem like a huge change for many people, but reducing the amount of meat and dairy in your diet is a great way to keep your weight in check, improve your overall health, and take steps toward improving the health of our planet. When we learn to eat more vegetables, grains, and beans mindfully, we will enjoy their taste, and we can be happy knowing that we are supporting a new kind of society in which there is enough food for everyone and no one will have to suffer from hunger.
We must take urgent action at the individual and collective levels. For individuals, going toward vegetarianism can have great weight and health benefits. Vegans and vegetarians tend to weigh less than people who consume animal products; they also tend to have lower risk of heart disease, diabetes, and some cancers.16 In chapter 5, we go into greater detail about the health benefits of plant-based diets. In chapter 5, we go into greater detail about the health benefits of plant-based diets.
Many Buddhist traditions encourage vegetarianism. Although this practice is primarily based on the wish to nourish compassion toward animals, it also offers many health benefits. Now we also know that when we eat vegetarian, we protect the earth and help reduce the greenhouse effect that is causing her serious and irreversible damage. Even if you cannot be 100 percent vegetarian, being a part-time vegetarian and consuming a more plant-based diet is already better for your own health as well as the health of our shared planet. You may want to start by eating vegetarian for a few days a month, or you can eat vegetarian only for breakfast and lunch every day. This way, you are already more than half vegetarian. If you feel that you cannot eliminate animal products from your diet for even one meal, simply reducing the portion of meat and eliminating processed meats like bacon, sausages, and ham can lower your risk of colon cancer and your risk of dying an early death from heart disease, cancer, or other causes.17 This is a good first step to adopting a more plant-based, healthful, environmentally friendly diet. This is a good first step to adopting a more plant-based, healthful, environmentally friendly diet.
Using mindfulness to look deeply at what you eat can make it much easier to make such changes, because you realize the benefits they can bring to the planet and yourself-lower weight, lower risk of colon cancer and heart disease, and more energy for doing the things you enjoy. We are "interbeings": we and our environment are interdependent. And even small changes on our part can have a large impact when combined with others. Our market economy is driven primarily by consumer demand. As a population, if a large number of people make even small moves to eat less meat and more plant-based foods, the livestock industry will shrink. Over time, farmers will find other crops to support their livelihoods. Through such collective awakening we can make a difference in our world.
Second Nutriment: Sense Impressions Sense impressions arise from the sensory activities and responses of the six sense organs, the six sense objects, and the six sense consciousnesses. The six sense organs are the eyes, ears, nose, tongue, body, and mind. The six sense objects are form, sounds, smells, tastes, tactile objects, and mental objects, or objects of mind. The six sense consciousnesses are eye consciousness (or sight), ear consciousness (or hearing), nose consciousness (or smelling), taste consciousness (or tasting), body consciousness (or touching), and mind consciousness (thinking). Objects of mind include all physiological, physical, and psychological aspects of our senses.
What we see, hear, smell, taste, touch, and think, all that we sense in our body and all that we become aware of in our mind, is food for our sense consciousnesses. Throughout our waking hours, our six sense organs are actively engaged. The nutriments we ingest through our six senses can be either healthful or harmful-especially when it comes to our attempts to reach a healthier weight. Think of a day in your life. As you get up, you turn on the radio and your favorite piece of music is playing. Because your ears are functioning well, you can hear the music, and you feel good and lighthearted. That piece of music lingers in your consciousness, and for the next few hours you find yourself humming it and smiling to yourself. During your lunchtime walk, you hear that same piece of music on your MP3 player, and it brings a lightness and energy to your step. You walk by a bus that has an ad on its side promoting a new television thriller series, and you store the information in your consciousness. After work, you stop at the supermarket, intending to buy some healthful food for dinner, and you pick up a magazine at the checkout counter. Flipping through the pages, you see an ad for fancy chocolate, and the woman who eats it looks relaxed as she enjoys this indulgence. As you wait in line, you can see and smell the chocolates that line the checkout aisle, and you decide to throw a few chocolate bars into your cart. That evening, you turn on the television to watch the thriller advertised on the bus that you noticed during your afternoon walk. As you watch the program, you become tense and edgy because there are many scary, suspenseful scenes. You then crave chocolate and decide to eat a chocolate bar before you go to bed, since somewhere in your consciousness you have the impression that chocolate can help you relax. That night, you have a vivid dream filled with suspense and fear. You wake up tense. You take another chocolate bar along with you to work to snack on at your desk during the day.
Mass media is the food for our eyes, ears, and minds. When we watch television, read a magazine, watch a film, or play a video game, we are consuming sensory impressions. Many of the images we are exposed to through the media water unwholesome seeds of craving, fear, anger, and violence in our consciousness. The images, sounds, and ideas that are toxic can rob our body and consciousness of their well-being. If you feel anxious, fearful, or depressed, it may be because you have taken in too many toxins through your senses without even knowing it. Be mindful of what you watch, read, and listen to, and protect yourself from the fear, despair, anger, craving, anxiety, or violence they promote. The material goods they promise are only quick, temporary fixes. True contentment lies within.
In the United States, consumerism dominates our culture. We are able to shop around the clock, thanks to the Internet and twenty-four-hour stores. The same is true for foods: we can buy food anywhere and at any time. And we don't really ever stop and ask ourselves: Why are we buying so much? Do we really need all this "stuff"? Why are we eating so much? Are we truly hungry?
We all really need to take a step back and take a deep look at what our true needs are. And one way to help do this is to become mindful observers of the market-driven, ad-driven world we live in. Advertising is designed to create a need where one does not exist-and it must work, because companies spend hundreds of billions of dollars a year on it.18 Often in commercials, buying a certain food or gadget is portrayed as an antidote to loneliness or insecurity. People in commercials consuming fast food or ice cream all appear to be so happy when they are eating these products, so fulfilled and vibrant. We absorb and store these perceptions and messages in our consciousness without censoring their content. Later, we find ourselves consuming these foods, even though we know they can cause us harm. And we wonder why. Often in commercials, buying a certain food or gadget is portrayed as an antidote to loneliness or insecurity. People in commercials consuming fast food or ice cream all appear to be so happy when they are eating these products, so fulfilled and vibrant. We absorb and store these perceptions and messages in our consciousness without censoring their content. Later, we find ourselves consuming these foods, even though we know they can cause us harm. And we wonder why.
We can choose to resist these messages-but it will be easier if we mindfully choose to limit our exposure to such messages. Turn off the television. Stop mindlessly reading glossy magazines. Children especially need protection from the media, since their minds simply are not mature enough to understand that advertisers are deliberately trying to influence them.19 We also need to shield ourselves and our children from unwholesome films, TV programs, and video games, in addition to advertisements, because they can fill us with anxiety, violence, and craving. They can also fill us with stress, and stress may, in turn, contribute to weight gain. We also need to shield ourselves and our children from unwholesome films, TV programs, and video games, in addition to advertisements, because they can fill us with anxiety, violence, and craving. They can also fill us with stress, and stress may, in turn, contribute to weight gain.20 When we spend a lot of time in the sun, we can wear sunscreen to protect ourselves from harmful ultraviolet rays while still being able to enjoy the warmth of the sun. In the same way, mindfulness is the shield that can protect us from these corrosive and stressful messages in our everyday environment while helping us filter and choose positive, wholesome sense impressions that water seeds of happiness and peace in our consciousness so that we are less likely to eat out of our negative emotions. When we spend a lot of time in the sun, we can wear sunscreen to protect ourselves from harmful ultraviolet rays while still being able to enjoy the warmth of the sun. In the same way, mindfulness is the shield that can protect us from these corrosive and stressful messages in our everyday environment while helping us filter and choose positive, wholesome sense impressions that water seeds of happiness and peace in our consciousness so that we are less likely to eat out of our negative emotions.
Learning to mindfully consume sensory impressions can help us reduce our craving, anger, fear, sadness, and stress. And all of this may ultimately help us in our quest to achieve healthier weight.
Third Nutriment: Volition The third kind of food is volition, or will-our deepest desire to obtain whatever it is that we want. What we want drives our daily actions. What we want also determines our personal aspirations. We have to ask ourselves: What is my deepest desire in this life? We have to look deeply into ourselves to see what kind of energy motivates us in our daily life. We all want to go somewhere or realize something. What is the purpose of our life? Our desire can take us in the direction of happiness or in the direction of suffering. Desire is a kind of food that nourishes us and gives us energy. If we have a healthy desire, such as a wish to save or protect life, care for our environment, or live a simple, balanced life with time to take care of ourselves and our loved ones, our desire will bring us happiness.
Everyone wants happiness, and there is a strong energy in us pushing us toward what we think will make us happy. But we may also suffer a lot because of this relentless pursuit. There are those of us who believe that happiness is possible only when we gain a lot of money, fame, and power. Yet these things can be suffering disguised as happiness, as they are often built on the suffering of others. For instance, the opium and slave trade inflicted tremendous human suffering around the world. Or a modern-day version of the slave trade: the global sex trade, which dehumanizes young women and children from many countries who are forced to work in foreign countries in the booming sex industry, sometimes with legal "entertainment visas," as in the case of Japan. The desire to make money, in and of itself, is not a bad thing if your pursuit of material wealth does not harm anyone along the way and if you use your money in a compassionate way. It's important to look deeply at our desires and see if they are built on positive or negative intentions. This can help us steer our desires toward those things that are beneficial to others, to the world, to our family, and also to ourselves.
In a 1999 meditation retreat for business leaders, many participants shared stories of how people with great wealth and power also suffer tremendously. A very wealthy businessman said that despite having over three hundred thousand employees, with operations in many parts of the world, he was extremely lonely. This man's loneliness, and the loneliness of many wealthy people, stems from being suspicious of others. They feel that those who want to befriend them do so because of their money and only want to take advantage of them. They feel lonely because they do not have any real friends. Children of wealthy people also suffer deeply; often their parents have no time for them because they are so preoccupied with maintaining their wealth and social status. The suffering of many wealthy people shows us that money cannot buy us true happiness.
Our deepest desire is the basis of all our actions, including our career. If you want to be a doctor and heal people, you will focus your energy and prepare yourself for many years, going through demanding training in medical school, internship, and residency to become a board-certified doctor. After you become a doctor, you forget about the hard work and many sleepless nights, and instead simply feel good about the contribution you are making to society. Unfortunately, there are many other professionals whose primary desire is just to make more money for themselves. The fund managers who advanced personal monetary gains for themselves during the 2008 housing bubble are now left with the realization that they had a major role to play in the crumbling of the world economy, causing many people around the world to become homeless and jobless. Can they be truly at peace with themselves, living with this realization?
We must look deeply into the nature of our volition to see whether it is pushing us in the direction of liberation from suffering and toward peace and compassion, or in the direction of affliction and misery. What is it that we really want deep in our heart? Is it money, fame, power? Or is it finding inner peace, being able to live life fully and enjoy the present moment? Happiness reveals itself when we are at peace with ourselves. We are not happy because we weigh more than we should. But weight by itself may not be the underlying cause of our unhappiness.
Desire is often at the root of weight problems: our desire to eat too much tasty food, our desire to avoid difficult emotions by distracting our minds with snacks and television, our desire to work long hours at the office for career advancement, leaving us little time to go to the gym or walk in nature. How do we balance all these desires or set priorities for them?
Taking a deep, mindful look at our true desire can help direct us on the right path to well-being. By observing the interdependent nature of our eating problems, and our volition to achieve well-being, we can certainly identify and change conditions that will bring about inner peace and joy.
Fourth Nutriment: Consciousness Every day our thoughts, words, and actions flow into the sea of our consciousness. Our sense perceptions are continuously feeding our consciousness. The imprints of all our experience and perceptions are stored as seeds in the deepest level of our mind, called the store consciousness. store consciousness. There are also seeds that contain the inherited habit energies of all our ancestors and affect our pattern of seeing, feeling, and thinking. As long as they are in store consciousness, they are still sleeping and lying dormant. But when watered, these seeds have the capacity to manifest in our daily lives as full-grown energies. When you plant a flower seed in the spring, by summer a plant will mature and bear flowers; from these flowers new seeds are born, and the cycle continues. Similarly, seeds of compassion, joy, and hope, as well as seeds of sorrow, fear, and despair, can grow in the field of our mind. The germinating seeds grow into the upper level of the mind, called the There are also seeds that contain the inherited habit energies of all our ancestors and affect our pattern of seeing, feeling, and thinking. As long as they are in store consciousness, they are still sleeping and lying dormant. But when watered, these seeds have the capacity to manifest in our daily lives as full-grown energies. When you plant a flower seed in the spring, by summer a plant will mature and bear flowers; from these flowers new seeds are born, and the cycle continues. Similarly, seeds of compassion, joy, and hope, as well as seeds of sorrow, fear, and despair, can grow in the field of our mind. The germinating seeds grow into the upper level of the mind, called the mind consciousness. mind consciousness. Mind consciousness-our everyday, waking state of consciousness-should be like a gardener, mindfully attending to the garden, the store consciousness. The gardener has only to cultivate the earth and water the seeds, and the garden will nourish the seeds to bring forth the fruit. Mind consciousness-our everyday, waking state of consciousness-should be like a gardener, mindfully attending to the garden, the store consciousness. The gardener has only to cultivate the earth and water the seeds, and the garden will nourish the seeds to bring forth the fruit.
Our mind is the foundation of all our actions, whether they are actions of body, speech, or mind, i.e., thinking. Whatever we think, say, or do arises from our mind. What our consciousness consumes becomes the substance of our life, so we have to be very careful which nutriments we ingest. In describing the second nutriment, we talked about sensory impressions and the need to guard our senses. Our senses are sometimes referred to as gates gates because all the objects of our perception enter our consciousness through sensory contact with them. The mind consciousness, the gardener, has to be an attentive guard at these gates of our senses and carefully choose which sense impressions to allow in. Mind consciousness must also recognize and identify the wholesome seeds in store consciousness, practice day and night to care for and water those wholesome seeds and help them grow, as well as prevent any negative seeds from being watered. The way we do this is through mindfulness. because all the objects of our perception enter our consciousness through sensory contact with them. The mind consciousness, the gardener, has to be an attentive guard at these gates of our senses and carefully choose which sense impressions to allow in. Mind consciousness must also recognize and identify the wholesome seeds in store consciousness, practice day and night to care for and water those wholesome seeds and help them grow, as well as prevent any negative seeds from being watered. The way we do this is through mindfulness.
According to Buddhist psychology, when a seed rises up from store consciousness into our mind consciousness it becomes a mental formation. Formation Formation is a technical term meaning something that manifests itself based on conditions-a composite of different elements or attributes joining together when the conditions are ripe. A flower is a physical formation of several elements: seed, rain, sunshine, earth, air, space, time, and so on. When these elements come together under the right conditions, a flower manifests itself. is a technical term meaning something that manifests itself based on conditions-a composite of different elements or attributes joining together when the conditions are ripe. A flower is a physical formation of several elements: seed, rain, sunshine, earth, air, space, time, and so on. When these elements come together under the right conditions, a flower manifests itself.
Regarding the fourth nutriment, we are speaking not about physical formations that make up the food of our consciousness but about mental formations. Fear is a mental formation. It is composed of several mental and emotional elements: anxiety, doubts, insecurity, misperceptions, and ignorance. Despair, anger, love, and mindfulness are other examples of mental formations. These are merely symbols or names that we use to describe the experience resulting from the interactions between our sense organs and their sense objects, which give rise to all kinds of mind states, including responses to thoughts, feelings, perceptions, mental trauma, and memories.
Lying deep down at the bottom of the store consciousness are all kinds of seeds. All mental formations are buried in the form of seeds in the soil of our store consciousness and can manifest themselves on the upper level of consciousness, the mind consciousness. There are many different kinds of seeds living in store consciousness, both wholesome and unwholesome. Wholesome seeds include seeds of love, gratitude, forgiveness, generosity, happiness, and joy. Unwholesome seeds include hatred, discrimination, jealousy, anger, and craving. For example, our hatred is a mental formation. When it is not manifesting itself, we do not feel hate. However, that does not mean that the seed of hate is not in us. All of us have the seed of hate in our store consciousness. We can be very openhearted and loving and not feel any hate at all. However, if we encounter an unjust, oppressive, or humiliating situation that waters the seed of hatred in our store consciousness, hate will begin to sprout and grow into a zone of energy in our mind consciousness. Previously hate was just a seed, but once it has been watered, it develops and becomes the mental formation of hate. We then become angry and full of ill will, experiencing hateful thoughts and physical tension.
Whenever a seed manifests itself in our mind consciousness, we absorb it as food for our consciousness, the fourth nutriment. If we allow anger to come up into our mind consciousness and stay for a whole hour, for that whole hour we are eating anger. The more we eat anger, the more the seed of anger in our store consciousness grows. If you have a friend who understands you well and offers you words of comfort and kindness, the seed of loving-kindness will arise in your mind consciousness. If you are in the company of that kind friend for one hour, then during that time you are consuming a whole hour of loving-kindness. Any seed, wholesome or unwholesome, that has an opportunity to manifest itself as a mental formation at the level of the mind is strengthened at its root in store consciousness. Therefore, we must learn to nurture wholesome seeds and to tame unwholesome ones with mindfulness, because when they return to the store consciousness, they become stronger regardless of their nature.
We can take care not to water our unwholesome seeds-such as anger, despair, and hopelessness-by being mindful of situations that can elicit them. These situations may be from images we see in the mass media or conversations we hear-either in our interactions with others or over the airwaves. Furthermore, we can help each other water the wholesome seeds in our store consciousness by being kind, thoughtful, and understanding of others. When we water seeds of forgiveness, acceptance, and happiness in the people we love, we are giving them very healthy food for their consciousness. But if we constantly water the seeds of hatred, craving, and anger in our loved ones, we are poisoning them.
Only by looking deeply into the nature of our suffering can we discover its causes and identify the nutriments that have brought it into being. After we have practiced for some time, we will see that transformation always takes place in the depths of our consciousness; our store consciousness is the support, the base for our consciousness. If we know how to acknowledge and recognize the presence of the mental formation, embrace it, calm it, and look deeply into it, we will gain insight. This insight can liberate us and transform our afflictions in their form as seeds, so that they no longer arise in mind consciousness.
How does this relate to our difficulty with weight? We must find the source of our desire to eat too much of the wrong foods. Perhaps we eat out of sadness; perhaps we eat out of our fears for the future. If we cut the sources of nutriment for our sadness and fear, sadness and fear will wither and weaken, and with them the urge to overeat. The Buddha said that if we know how to look deeply into our suffering and recognize its source of food, we are already on the path of emancipation. The way out of our suffering is through mindfulness of consumption-all forms of consumption, and not just edible foods and drinks.
When fear, despair, anger, or pain is active in our consciousness, we can draw on mindfulness to bring us relief. If anger, fear, and despair are dormant, they will not be perceptible in our consciousness, and our life will be much more pleasant. Yet we ingest the toxins of violence, fear, and anger every day from our environment, including the media. We also ingest unwholesome interactions with others or painful memories from the past. So the negative seeds are frequently watered and become stronger and stronger. These negative emotions of anger, fear, and violence then become an integral part of our everyday lives, blinding us from seeing things clearly and keeping us in ignorance, which is the cause of suffering. However, if by cutting off their food or nutriments we do not allow these seeds of negative emotions to grow, we will not be overcome by violence, fear, or anger. And we will not be driven to overeat. (See figure 3.1.) In our store consciousness, we also have the seed of mindfulness. If we water the seed of mindfulness often, it will grow stronger. Because all the seeds are interdependent in nature-the state of one seed can influence the state of all others-a strong mindfulness energy can help us transform our negative emotions. This mindfulness energy is like a torch helping us to see clearly the true nature of our suffering. It also provides energy to manifest our seeds of wisdom, forgiveness, and compassion so that ultimately we can free ourselves from our suffering. Without wisdom, forgiveness, and compassion, happiness and peace will not be possible. Suppose we are standing in front of the refrigerator after encountering a splash of anger from a family member. We are not hungry, because it is only an hour or so after dinner. We have a choice. Either we can be totally consumed by the unpleasant incident, get distressed, and then assuage our hurt feelings with food from the refrigerator, or we can mindfully tender the unpleasant emotions and recognize that overeating would lead us to feel even worse later-ashamed for abandoning once again our commitment to eat more mindfully-and would not help us resolve the hurt feelings from our quarrel with our family member. Mindfulness helps us free ourselves from dwelling on the unpleasant incident and stops any thoughts of revenge or overeating as it waters the seeds of wisdom and compassion in us. When we pause with mindfulness, we recognize that our family member must be suffering somehow. If one is happy and peaceful, one would not behave with such anger. Mindfulness practice can help reveal this kind of insight, which can free us from the imprisonment of past events so that we can make clear choices to help us manage our weight.