Meditation and Healthy Eating

by Nina

My friend Elizabeth told me that before I knew her she weighed 205 pounds, but that she was able to lose weight and keep it off by changing her eating habits. From my observations of people close to me who have weight problems and from what I’ve read, I understood how unusual this was. So I asked Elizabeth to share her story with us. Okay, fine, I admit it! I have an agenda. Because I know from our previous conversations that Elizabeth has a regular meditation practice as well as a regular yoga practice, and that she credits both with helping her stay focused on maintaining her healthy eating habits.

Cake and Photo by Brad Gibson (yeah, he bakes, too)

I also happen to be reading The Willpower Instinct by Kelley McGonigal, Ph.D. because I want to learn more about how to help people change their eating habits. That’s because, as I'm sure most of you know by now, maintaining a healthy weight and eating more nourishing foods is vital for healthy aging. And sure enough, in one of the early chapters in Dr. McGonigal’s book she tells us that one of the best ways to strengthen your self control (and don’t we all need that to help us resist the daily food temptations we’re exposed to, I mean, my own daughter is pastry chef!) is to meditate.

Here is what she says:

“Neuroscientists have discovered that when you ask the brain to meditate, it gets better not just at meditating, but at a wide range of self-control skills, including attention, focus, stress management, impulse control, and self awareness. People who meditate regularly aren’t just better at these things. Over time, their brains become finely tuned willpower machines. Regular meditators have more gray matter in the prefrontal cortex, as well as regions of the brain that support self-awareness."

And the good news is that it doesn’t take a lifetime of meditation to change the brain. Here’s another quote from The Willpower Instinct:

"One study found that just three hours of meditation practice led to improved attention and self control. The new meditators had increased neural connections between regions of the brain important for staying focused, ignoring distractions, and controlling impulses. Another study found that eight weeks of daily meditation practice led to increased self-awareness in everyday life, as well as increased gray matter in corresponding areas of the brain.

"It may seem incredible that incredible that our brains can reshape themselves so quickly, but meditation increases blood flow to the prefrontal cortex, in much the same way that lifting weights increases blood flow to your muscles The brain appears to adapt to exercise in the same way that muscles do, getting both bigger and faster in order to get better at what you ask of it."

I don’t know about you, but I find these results fascinating. Because while self control is important for healthy eating, it’s also helpful for many other ways of fostering of healthy aging, whether it is something you need to stop doing, such as smoking, or something you need to start, like exercising.

But enough about science! Let’s hear what Elizabeth says about putting theory into practice:

Nina: Can you tell us something about why you needed to change your eating habits?

Elizabeth: I was overweight (205 lbs) and unhealthy at 32. I also had Crohn's disease. The change started when I moved to California in 1999. Eventually, I lost 50 lbs and have kept it off for 12 years.

Nina: What changes were you able to make that led to the weight loss and helped you maintain it?

Elizabeth: I started by making small, realistic changes that I knew would be easy to maintain. For dietary changes, I started with milk. I went from regular to 2%, then 1%. If I had fat-I tried to make it a healthy one such as avocado or olive oil. I also created a cookbook of my favorite recipes, and revamped them so they are still flavorful but healthy. I'm a genius at the 30-minute healthy dinner. My favorite is Cuban Black Bean soup. I try to always make time in my day for exercise. If I couldn't go to the gym, I would make a point of taking the stairs or walking on my lunch break. I also changed my perspective by viewing eating healthy and exercising as a way to do something positive for myself, not something to dread. I have a nice variety of yoga and exercise DVDs at home, which is also very convenient.

Nina: What is your meditation practice like and how do you think it helps you maintain healthy eating habits?

Elizabeth: I practice Transcendental Meditation, which is typically done twice daily, for 20 minutes. I meditate in the morning—I feel it's a great start to my day. It helps me to get the rest and focus that I need. It also manages stress and helps me to be checked in with what's going on in my life. I'm more likely to defer my unhealthy snacks once I've checked in with myself.

Nina: What you said about meditation helping you get focus is very interesting. Kelly McGonigal says, “Meditation is not about getting rid of your thoughts; it’s learning not to get so lost in them you forget what your goal is.” So meditation is supposed to help you stay “focused” on your goals.

I know that you also practice yoga asana. Has this helped with you maintain healthy eating habits? If so, how?

Elizabeth: Yoga has been wonderful in many ways. I am more relaxed, have less back pain, and I am more aware of how I'm feeling. For example, for most of the time, when I'm hungry, I'm actually dehydrated or have low potassium. I'll have a glass of water and a banana and I'm fine. Yoga helps me to be quiet through an uncomfortable situation (there are many of those in my practice!). I've learned to just pay attention to my breath and it usually moves me through a situation feeling very safe and grounded.

Nina: What you just said is so important! I think self-awareness is vital for healthy eating. You need to learn, as you said, when you’re just dehydrated rather than hungry, when you’re full and should stop eating, and which foods make feel good rather than just tasting good. And the relationship between stress management and healthy eating is so key that you’ve given me an idea for a future post. Thank you so much, Lizzy!

Yoga for Healthy Eating: An Interview with Dayna Macy

by Nina

Although we haven’t addressed the issue so far on this blog, we’re all aware that maintaining healthy eating habits and a healthy weight as we age is vital for healthy aging. As Dr. Timothy McCall says in Yoga As Medicine: 

“This is a matter of serious concern because there is little doubt that being overweight can have major health consequences, including type 2 diabetes, sleep apnea, high blood pressure, heart disease, and some forms of cancer. Extra body weight makes back problems more likely, increase the strain on the joints, and can contribute to or worsen injuries to ankles, knees, hips and other vulnerable areas of the body.”

And Brad says that being overweight may contribute to a shorter health span (the years of your life during which you are relatively healthy) as well as a shorter life span. So recently Baxter and I decided that we wanted to learn more about how yoga can help with healthy eating. As a first step, I decided to interview Dayna Macy, who is a long-time yoga practitioner and the author of Ravenous, which describes how her yoga practice helped her lose weight and develop healthier eating habits for life.

Nina: Can you tell us a little about your weight issues and how yoga has helped you with maintaining healthier eating habits?

Dayna: I've overeaten for most of my life. It wasn't until I hit 35 that my habits really started to catch up with me. I put on a lot of weight and that made my yoga practice, and my life, difficult. Extra weight made it difficult to do any kind of flowing asana. And it made standing poses and inversions more difficult as well, because it was hard to hold a pose for any length of time. My extra weight also made it harder to simply move through my day. Hiking, cleaning, walking the dog, the stuff of daily life is made more difficult when you have excess weight. When I reached my mid-forties, I realized that if I didn't really start to get a grip on my issues, I was looking at a less than optimal midlife and old age. 

I think it's always wise to start where you are, and yoga is a fundamental part of my life. I've been practicing for twenty years. Who and what you are shows up on the mat, and I knew that the practice itself could help me see myself more clearly. It helps you "be here now" and that is essential when wrestling with issues of habit and addiction.

Nina: Are there any particular yoga poses or practices that you found especially helpful for healthier eating and that you would recommend to other people? 

Dayna: I have learned to pay deep attention to my feet and how my feet are grounded on the mat. It is essential to learn to literally ground your body when you are working with old samskaras and habits that you want to unwind. I also found slow and attentive sun salutations very useful. It builds tapas and heat, and for people who are carrying extra weight, it is important to slowly burn your inner fire.

Nina: Now that your book has been published, have you heard anything from other people who have also been able to change their eating habits? If so, what about your story do you think has inspired them the most? 

Dayna: What I learned most is that just like yoga is a practice, so is learning to eat in a way that serves your body. Most people don't just sit in Lotus, they work to open their hips and one day, maybe, they get there. It's the same with food. You are discovering who you are in your relationship with eating. You don't just wake up one day and say, "ah ha! This is the perfect way to eat! Now I will do this perfectly from now on!" Knowledge is earned and learned, one day at a time. The truth must resonate and live in your body to become real change.

This sense of slow change is helpful for people. It gives them breathing room to experiment and learn. We hear a lot in yoga about how there is no perfect pose. I would say you could also say that about eating, weight and our bodies. In the course of my journey, I lost about 25 pounds. I'm still a curvy girl. And frankly, even at my thinnest, I was still a curvy girl. What I've learned is that I am so grateful for my body. Today, at 51, I'm healthy, active, and my body works. It's a miracle. I spend less and less time wishing I were something other, and more time grateful for what I am. This is the gift of yoga. 

Photo by Victoria Yee

 Dayna Macy is the communications director and managing editor of international editions for Yoga Journal. Her book, Ravenous: A Food Lover's Journey from Obsession to Freedom, was recently published by Hay House. See www.daynamacy.com for more information about Dayna and her book.

FRIDAY Q&A: DOES YOGA MAKE YOU FAT?

Very Salty Water by Brad Gibson

Q: I have a student, a 55 year old male, who has been practicing twice a week regularly for about four months. He recently commented that he has gained weight. How does yoga relate to metabolism? The classes he takes are general hatha style.

A: Thanks for writing in about your student who complains of weight gain despite two yoga sessions a week. Right off the bat, it is unlikely that two sessions a week would have a sustained effect in improving his metabolic rate. Any form of exercise, and here we will say that yoga asana is his exercise, would likely need to be aerobic in nature and done at least every other day, for at least 30 minutes, to affect his metabolism. Likewise, it is unlikely that amount of yoga would lower the metabolism, resulting in weight gain.

I’d also like to respond in general to the issue of yoga and metabolism. If nothing else, Maureen Dowd’s strange “editorial” two weeks ago in the New York Times claiming that yoga makes you fat (see here) raises intriguing questions regarding the effects of regular yoga practice on weight loss or gain that unfortunately won’t be answered until Broad’s book is released in February of next year. The piece will likely boost early orders of her colleagues book, but it casts yoga in the middle of our wonky relationship to “weight” in this country. From my experience as a yoga instructor for more than a dozen years now, I’ve never once heard a student complain that their yoga practice had contributed to weight gain. And on occasion, I’ve been told just the opposite. Of course we don’t know what style of yoga those folks in the alluded to study were practicing, nor for how long and how frequently they practiced. But nothing in Ms. Dowd’s article would lead me to contemplate not practicing yoga. And keep in mind that poor health can sometimes be accompanied by weight loss, and for those individuals, gaining back weight via yoga would be considered a very welcome benefit of a regular practice. So until February, I still confidently prescribe yoga! —Baxter Bell

A: Maureen Dowd set the yoga world abuzz two weeks ago with her editorial that quoted from a not-yet published book by William Broad:

“For decades, teachers of yoga have hailed the discipline as a great way to shed pounds,” Broad writes. “But it turns out that yoga works so well at reducing the body’s metabolic rate that—all things being equal—people who take up the practice will burn fewer calories, prompting them to gain weight and deposit new layers of fat. And for better or worse, scientists have found that the individuals most skilled at lowering their metabolisms are women.” See here for full article. 

So who are these nameless scientists? And can we see the original studies, please? Our own staff scientist, Dr. Brad Gibson, said skeptically that he wonders if any of this is true. And he promises that when the book comes out, he’ll review the original studies to see what, if any, conclusions he can draw from them. In the meantime, if you read his post from last week on science, aging and yoga (see here), you’ll understand why most of the scientific studies on yoga do not really merit conclusions that are as definitive as the one that Ms. Dowd cites. Our advice for now:

1.    Get out your saltshaker.

2.     Shake vigorously.

—Nina Zolotow