Less can be more

I have so much: especially compared with much of the rest of the world. In this month of Thanksgiving we take time to remember this idea of abundance. Abundance certainly is to be celebrated – but along with much comes a tendency to overuse, or take for granted, or harbor feelings of entitlement.

In the U.S.’s environment of plenty, we tend to take in too much, with food being a major area of over-consumption. Below I offer a few strategies to tame our eating too much and its natural consequence of becoming overweight.

You’ve likely heard these before, but hopefully the reminders will be helpful. This is long – so enjoy the liberty of picking from the bolded headings what most interests you.

* Use smaller dishes – “Chose a 10" lunch plate instead of a 12" dinner plate to cut out 100-200 calories a day – and 10-20 pounds in a year. Cornell's Brian Wansink, PhD, found in test after test that people serve more and eat more food with larger dishes. In Wansink’s/Cornell University's food lab tests, no one felt hungry or even noticed when tricks of the eye shaved 200 calories off their daily intake.” [See Wansink's Mindless Eating website for some specific ideas to avoid eating mindlessly].

* Watch what you drink -

1) Use a tall, skinny glass instead of a short, wide tumbler to cut liquid calories and weight. You’ll drink 25-30% less juice, soda, wine, or any other beverage. Brian Wansink, PhD, says visual cues can trick us into consuming more or less. His tests at Cornell University found all kinds of people poured more into a short, wide glass — even experienced bartenders.

2) Replace one soda with a zero-calorie seltzer or water (add lemon, mint, or frozen strawberries for flavor and interest) and you'll avoid 10 teaspoons of sugar. The liquid sugar in soda appears to bypass the body's normal fullness cues. One small study compared an extra 450 calories per day from jelly beans vs. soda. The candy eaters unconsciously reduced their calorie intake from other foods by about the same amount of the caloric intake of the candy and their BMI didn't change; not so with the soda drinkers. The soda drinkers did not reduce their intake from other foods and gained 2.5 pounds in four weeks.

3) Limit alcohol. When an occasion includes alcohol, follow the first drink with a nonalcoholic, low-calorie beverage like sparkling water instead of moving directly to another cocktail, beer, or glass of wine. Alcohol has more calories per gram (7) than carbohydrates (4) or protein (4). It can also loosen your resolve, leading you to mindlessly inhale chips, nuts, and other foods you may normally limit.

4) Drink green tea. Some studies suggest that it can rev up the body's calorie-burning engine temporarily, possibly through the action of phytochemicals called catechins.

* Sleep more - Sleeping an extra hour a night could help a person drop 14 pounds in a year, according to a U of Michigan researcher Dr. Michael Sivak, who ran the numbers for a 2,500 calorie per day intake. Our “inactive wakefulness” in the later evening often includes mindless snacking (of 147 calories on average; as reported by WebMD) . Each additional hour of sleep he estimates reduces caloric intake by 6%. Additionally, there’s evidence that getting too little sleep revs up your appetite, making you uncommonly hungry.

* Serve more veggies - Greater variety has been associated with eating more food. Try serving three vegetables with dinner instead of just one, and you might just eat more veggies. The high fiber and water content fills you up with fewer calories.

* Pay attention –

1) to slight fullness - Americans are conditioned to keep eating until they’re stuffed, but residents of Okinawa eat until they’re 80% full. Researcher Brian Wansink’s studies show most people don’t miss it when they’re dished out 20% less food.

2) to your self - Women who do yoga tend to weigh less than others, according to a 2009 published study in the Journal of the American Dietetic Association. The yoga regulars reported a more "mindful" approach to eating. For example, they tend to notice the large portions in restaurants but eat only enough to feel full. Researchers think the calm self-awareness developed through yoga may help people resist overeating.

3) to the pause - Most people have a natural "eating pause," when they drop the fork for a couple of minutes. Watch for this quiet signal that you're full but not stuffed, and don't take another bite. Clear your plate and enjoy the conversation.

4) to portion size - measure portions to avoid super sizing. Slim people and successful losers do it, according to a Consumer Reports survey. Make portion control easier with small "snack" packs and by keeping serving dishes off the table at meal time. See www.deesdirt.blogspot.com (Nov 1) for some one-portion serving sizes.

* Eat more slowly - Set a timer for 20 minutes and reinvent yourself as a slow eater. Savor each bite and make it last until the bell chimes. Paced meals offer great pleasure from smaller portions and trigger the body’s fullness hormones.

- According to large study (of more than 4,100 men and women from Japan who were asked to fill out surveys about their diet history and overall cardiovascular risk) published in the British Medical Journal, eating quickly and eating until full were directly associated with being overweight. In fact, a combination of the two habits was shown to play a part on actually becoming over weight.

- A 2008 study published in Journal of the American Dietetic Association discovered that if people changed their eating habits slightly - by taking small bites, putting down the utensils between bites and chewing all food thoroughly – their overall feeling of being full after eating were maximized. Framson, C. Journal of the American Dietetic Association, August 2009; vol 109: pp 1439-1444.

- More recently, the January 2010 issue of the Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism includes the first study to find that there are possible physiological reasons behind feeling full after a slow consumption of food. In this small study, a total of 17 healthy men ate the same meal consisting of 300 ml of ice cream, but were told to eat it under two different conditions. In the first condition, the meal was divided into two equal portions and the men ate the first portion, waited five minutes and then ate the second portion. Under the second condition, the meal was divided into seven equal portions and over 30 minutes the men ate one of the seven portions every five minutes. Through the use of blood samples taken before and in 30-minute intervals after eating the meal for a total of three and a half hours, the study found that the body released higher amounts of appetite suppressing hormones after the 30-minute meal than after the 5-minute meal. The higher level of these hormones (glucagon-like peptide-1 and peptide YY) made the men feel fuller after the 30-minute meal compared to the 5-minute meal.

* Eat home-cooked meals at least five days a week. A Consumer Reports survey found this was a top habit of "successful losers." Shortcut foods can make for quick meals, such as pre-chopped lean beef for fajitas, washed lettuce, pre-cut veggies, canned beans, cooked chicken strips, or grilled deli salmon.

* Start with a broth-based soup - it slows your eating and curbs your appetite. For an easy soup, add fresh or frozen vegetables to a low-sodium broth or canned soup and simmer. Beware of creamy soups, which can be high in fat and calories.

* Shovel in the whole grains such as brown rice, barley, oats, buckwheat, and whole wheat - they help fill you up with fewer calories and may improve your cholesterol profile, too.

* Chew sugarless gum with a strong flavor when you're feeling like snacking. Gum with a big flavor punch overpowers other foods so they don’t taste as good.

* Burn an extra 100 calories a day and lose 10 pounds in a year. Try one of these activities: Walk 1 mile, about 20 minutes, Pull weeds or plant flowers for 20 minutes, Mow the lawn for 20 minutes, Clean house for 30 minutes, Jog for 10 minutes.

Portion sized, not super sized

One serving size:

Meat: a 3-ounce portion = A deck of cards or the palm of your hand

Peanut butter: 2 tablespoons = size of a golf ball, has about 190 calories, 17 grams fat

Chips: = 1 handful; that's 6 large tortilla chips or 20 potato chips or mini-pretzels

Fruits and veggies = size of a baseball or of your fist

1 cup leafy greens = size of 2 tennis balls

Try these tips to increase awareness about (and maybe even reduce!) portion sizes:

- Ask about half portions or order from the child's menu.

- If you get a full portion size, box up half your entrée before you start eating.

- Share your food with your companion.

- Eat a healthy appetizer and soup or salad instead of an entrée.

- Eat more dark green (spinach, broccoli, Swiss chard, kale), red, and orange foods with lots of nutrition: (berries, red bell peppers, tomatoes, pumpkin, sweet potatoes).

Without

To be without some of the things you want is an indispensable part of happiness."

- Bertrand Russell, philosopher, mathematician, author, Nobel laureate (1872-1970)

Provide enough

The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much, it is whether we provide enough for those who have too little.

-Franklin D. Roosevelt, 32nd US President (1882-1945)

Sensed you

Secretly Sensed You Everywhere

I’ve secretly sensed you everywhere

in birch trees

in crystal clear lakes

in cool misty mornings

in rolling every-shade-of-green hills

in grazing-upon-grass animals

in early dusk drives into the city

In shaded walks

in sun sifting through ivy

in small silent flowers

in the dawns and the dusks

and the mid-afternoons between

the two and the rising moon

And now this

in laughing trees

in windows everywhere

showing forest

in birds calling and cooing

for mates too far away to hear

I am caught now

in each

The vision

wraps a serene glow

around the tendrils

of my far-flung inattentiveness

and calls me home

- Joyce Rupp

To rise above?

Calvin College professor Quentin Schultz wrote in his book Habits of the High-Tech Heart,

“Cyberculture offers us no means to rise above the entropic noise, no dwelling place to catch our breath, gather our wits, discern our course, and become more intrinsically moral people.”

Agree or disagree?

Admire

When I was young, I admired clever people.

Now that I am old, I admire kind people.
-Abraham Joshua Heschel, theology professor (1907-1972)

Digital distraction

Students these days are less literate and less healthy than their parents, for the first time in about a century – or so I’ve been informed. The reasons behind an unwelcome turn such as this are many and complex, but it seems apparent that less sustained reading and exercise along with more immediate and easy gratification are contributors. We are a screen-staring (computer, TV, ipod, iphone), easy-access, connectivity-dependent, distracted digital nation.

At a presentation I attended in mid-September, the claim was offered that "Electronic media are radically changing the way this generation of students thinks, learns and socializes–perhaps for the better, perhaps not." [*Research does support some positives to e-media and multitasking; see the footnote below.] Some featured segments from Frontline‘s “Digital Nation” broadcast made the case, and research supports, that multitasking – made easier in some ways by technology, and practiced extensively by college students in the broadcast (who talked about writing one awesome paragraph followed by another awesome paragraph after interruption of tending to a text or social network site or google lookup, but with a resulting paper that was nonsensically unconnected) and attempted by many of us much of the time, this multitasking – is a practice that actually hampers the ability to accomplish tasks and alters the brain functioning of the multitasker.

Here's a taste of the research:

The Seattle Times, Nation & World, June 6, 2010 summarizes some research of a Stanford team: “Heavy multitaskers actually have more trouble focusing and shutting out irrelevant information, scientists say, and they experience more stress.” (research of Ophir, Nass, Wagner http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2009/08/21/0903620106.abstract) .

And “A study at the University of California, Irvine, found that people interrupted by e-mail reported significantly increased stress compared with those left to focus. Stress hormones have been shown to reduce short-term memory, said Dr. Gary Small, a psychiatrist at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA).” Dr. Small asserts, in a Psychology Today blog “Brain Bootcamp” Oct 4, 2009: “When paying partial continuous attention, people may place their brains in a heightened state of stress. They no longer have time to reflect, contemplate or make thoughtful decisions. Instead, they exist in a sense of constant crisis - on alert for a new contact or bit of exciting news or information at any moment. And, once people get used to it, they tend to thrive on the perpetual connectivity. It feeds their egos and sense of self-worth, and it becomes irresistible.”

Boss friend Christopher questions - in his "Technology and Distraction" blog post of Sept 21 – whether technology per se was to blame for the "Digital Nation" students’ multitasking. "One key lesson that I gleaned from the history of technology is that problems that seem to be technological are often actually social problems ... As one historian famously said, technologies are “frozen politics” – social decisions, capacities, knowledge, resources that have been literally engineered into a tangible form... then, we should shift blame away from our technologies – with their seductive screens and sounds – and toward our own individual and collective decision-making."

Affected especially by technology are digital natives – young people born into a world of laptops and cell phones, text messaging and twittering — who spend an average of 8 1/2 hours each day exposed to digital technology. But so are us older digital immigrants who live with this rapid pace of information. We are almost all enticed by perpetual connectivity, have egos that want to be fed, and are easily side-tracked.

Maybe that helps explain why we so often choose distraction and the doing of tasks over focused attentiveness and being quietly still. I am often frustrated with my frenetic tendencies of doing. Yet I recognize, and encourage you also to consider, that there is huge benefit in just sitting, in quieting the stimuli, in being silent. No matter that our culture doesn't easily acknowledge it.

Consider these quotes:

“It is in deep solitude and silence that I find the gentleness with which I can truly love my brother and my sister.” – Thomas Merton

The Psalmist relays the heart of God when he says, “Be still and know that I am…” (Psalm 46:10a), and encourages, “…commune with your own heart upon your bed, and be still.” Psalm 4:4

Mother Teresa was quoted as saying, “God is the friend of silence. See how nature--trees, flowers, grass--grows in silence; see the stars, the moon and the sun, how they move in silence...”

“We can make our minds so like still water that beings gather about us that they may see, if may be, their own image and so live for a moment with a clearer, perhaps even with a fiercer life because of our quiet.” – William Butler Yeats

Look for more on the benefits of silent stillness in the near future...

*Some positives of digital technology: Preliminary research shows some people can more easily juggle multiple information streams. These "supertaskers" represent less than 3 percent of the population, according to scientists at the University of Utah. Other research shows computer use has neurological advantages. In imaging studies, Gary Small at UCLA observed that Internet users showed greater brain activity than nonusers, suggesting they were growing their neural circuitry. At the University of Rochester, researchers found that players of some fast-paced video games could track the movement of a third more objects on a screen than nonplayers. They say the games can improve reaction and the ability to pick out details amid clutter.