Portion size

One thing I recognized early in the fight against my expanding waistline was that I ate way too much at meals.

How could I not? Have you seen the size of the portions you get at restaurants? And that's not even talking about that unique American contribution to cuisine, the "all-you-can-eat buffet."

Then take into account that it is rather difficult to make a meal for only two people (they have entire cookbooks dedicated to the problem). And it's really no wonder I find myself gorging until I'm so far past full it hurts.

It's fairly common knowledge that Americans stand pretty well alone in this habit of eating till it hurts, and that many other cultures do just fine with much smaller portions.

I recently read Michael Pollan's book, "In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto." And he refers to a couple very interesting studies dealing with this problem.

When the folks performing the first study asked people in France how they knew when to stop eating, they replied "when we're full."

When they asked Americans the same question, the reply they received was "when the plate is empty."

In another study some participants were given soup bowls that automatically refilled themselves from the bottom. The diners with the bottomless bowls ate substantially more.

These studies are not all that surprising. Our culture has long demanded that we "clean our plates." And in the feast-or-famine agrarian society that formed the code, it was logical.

But in our wondrous modern world where a never-ending supply of empty calories which go straight to our bellies are only a snack machine away, the rule doesn't make as much sense.

I have been making a concerted effort to eat less at meals. But it is a struggle.

Not only do I have to deal with the external forces of plate size, and the looks from meaningful family members who wonder if I'm starving myself. But I also have to deal with my inner demons, I'm one of those people who eat to comfort myself. If I'm stressed out, I want to eat.

I was surprised to find that I was sitting down to eat meals when I didn't feel hungry. And it came as quite a shock to realize I didn't know how to tell if I was really hungry or if it was just an emotional craving.

How could I learn to stop eating when full, if I couldn't even recognize when I got there?

My first step was to master the difference between physical and emotional hunger. Not to say that I never give in to the emotional hunger; I do, and much too often. But at least now I can usually recognize which is which.

The second move I've made is to reduce how much I eat. I take less and I try not to go for seconds.

Thirdly, I take longer to eat. Another interesting fact in Pollan's book is that it takes your stomach 20 minutes to signal your brain that you are full. So no more wolfing down a McDonald's combo meal (make it large) in 5 minutes.

My Beloved and I are trying to make our meals more of the social occasion they used to be. We talk. And we really try to savor the food. Really, what's the point in eating if you knock it back so fast you don't taste a thing? Might as well just hook yourself up intravenously.

It is a constant struggle, but I am making headway. Hopefully I will continue to have to punch new holes in my belt!

Spam boy

The mother moved into the checkout lane and began unloading her cart.

As the items inched towards me on the conveyor belt I noticed her surreptitiously slip a couple cans of behind another product out of view of the young boy sitting happily in the cart.

It piqued my interest as it was obvious she did not want her son to see those cans. And her plan almost worked. They were almost to the scanner when he saw them.

And he let out the most heart-wrenching sobs I've ever heard from a kid. These were not your standard "I'm a brat and don't want that" cries either.

He wailed: "No, mom! Please! No! Not SPAM! Please don't get SPAM!"

You'd have thought she was buying some kind of torture device.

Rain

Trying to
beat it as
it’s coming.

Getting caught
in it as
it comes.

Dripping on
the floor
of the store
waiting for it to go.

Texters

Heads hunched over,
as they walk,
fingers flying furiously,
oblivious of the world around them.

Is yoga Hindu worship? Doesn't matter

Someone asked me recently, in response to all I've been writing about yoga: Isn't yoga really Hindu worship?

I replied that it wasn't. That, as I understood it, the practice of yoga outdated Hinduism by many centuries. That yoga was just an ancient way to exercise.

But I got to thinking about the subject and had a revelation. If it so happened that yoga was indeed a form of Hindu worship, it wouldn't matter.

Yoga philosophy teaches that the most important thing is love. And the Bible says in 1 John 4:7 that everyone who loves is a child of God and knows God.

Christian fundamentalists like to think that they have the direct line to the One True God. But anyone who knows love knows God; no matter what name they call him (or her) by, or even if they acknowledge the existence of god at all.

The reason that this is so is also found in 1 John 4, "God is love." You hear folks often say that God is "a god of love," but that isn't what the scripture says. He isn't a god of love, he is love. Makes for a very big difference.

Christian fundamentalists cannot accept that a Hindu may very well be worshipping the same god as they are because they do not serve the god that is love.

The Christian fundamentalist god is a jealous god (Exodus 20:5), but 1 Corinthians 13 tells us that love is not jealous. The Christian fundamentalist god condemns people to an eternity of the most horrible punishment imaginable because of a crime committed by a man 7,000 years ago, yet 1 Corinthians 13 tells us that love keeps no record of wrongs.

First Corinthians 13 gives a detailed description of what love is, and since God is love anything we think about God that doesn't match up should be done away with.

Yoga diary entry #2

Weeks 2 and 3 - Jan 19, 2010:

My yoga practice was pretty well sidetracked during the second week of January.

Average temperatures for this region this time of year range from highs of 40s to lows of 20s. That second week we saw highs not reaching double digits and lows in the negatives, and I'm not talking about wind chill either. Suffice to say it was cold.

The problem being that the camper we're living in was not designed to handle such cold temperatures and we were caught unprepared. And doing yoga on a floor hovering around 50 degrees (at most -- with our heaters cranked to max) was not something high on my to-do list.

But thankfully the temperatures have warmed back up (above normal now, we got to 60 today!) and I have returned gratefully to the mat.

I'm still working on the downward dog position. And I think I'm still making progress. In the last post I wrote that I found a more natural position taking up the full length of the mat. But lately I find myself bringing my feet closer to my hands and only using maybe three-quarters. The only reason I can say is that this feels more right to me the longer I practice.

One thing that really surprises me about down dog is how much that pose works the hamstrings. And one thing that yoga has definitely taught me about my body is that I have extremely tight hamstrings.

When I first started working on down dog it was a struggle to get my heels anywhere close to the mat. I'm getting better, and I can almost keep my feet flat now. But I really feel the burn in those particular muscles.

Another thing that working on this has really made me realize is that I need a teacher. I'm doing my best to learn these poses from the books, and trying to judge by feel when I'm doing it right. But I really can't see myself. My Beloved and I have tried the video thing some more, but what I need is real-time correction while I'm in the pose so that I can get a more direct sense of what I'm doing.

Luckily there is a local yoga teacher. Samantha Gillmore of Life Yoga in Nevada, Mo., offers classes all the time. And she's also offering a beginner's course at the local continuing education center starting the middle of February.

I've been putting off going to a class mainly because of budget reasons, but if I'm serious about this (and I am) I need to take a class. And that beginner's course is probably just what I'm looking for.

So in addition to working on down dog this week. I've also started the second pose in Yoga Journal's "Yoga for Beginners," Utthita Trikonasana, or Extended Triangle Pose.

I worked myself into that pose (or something similar anyway) for the first time today. And I am amazed at the feeling it creates in the chest. I am very excited about continuing to explore the new pose.

Again though I find myself frustrated by my sticky mat that is not sticky. The Extended Triangle Pose calls for a wide stance and I found my feet slipping while trying to hold the posture. Maybe a more sticky mat should be moved higher on my shopping list ... along with that class, oh and some blocks. I made-do tonight with a square pillow we have, but it wasn't quite the same thing as a solid block.

Ice crystals

ice crystals
Originally uploaded by Nick David Wright

The second week of January got VERY cold here. I really liked the patterns formed by the frost on the inside of my grandparent's window.

Downward facing dog

As part of my resolution to really start exploring the individual yoga poses, I also decided that I would start keeping a diary of my thoughts and experiences regarding my workouts. So here's my first entry.

Week 1 - Jan. 1, 2010:

I started work yesterday really exploring the pose downward facing dog. It is the first listed in the Yoga for Beginners Mastering the Basics, and it seems like you can hardly find a yoga sequence that does not mention this pose in some fashion or another. I figured it was as good a place as any to start.

The AM Yoga video from ExerciseTV utilizes down dog quite a bit, so I figured I could do a little work on this one and move on to the other poses rather quickly. I was wrong.

As I mentioned in an earlier posting, the ExerciseTV videos are great but they do move pretty quickly. So when I sat down to learn down dog "for real" I found that I didn't have quite the grip on it I thought.

Firstly, I found that the back of my calves are extremely tight. I discovered this when I realized that in the past I had been performing down dog on my toes, when according to the magazine the correct position for the feet is flat on the mat. The second indication that I was doing something wrong was that it hurt quite a bit between my shoulder blades.

I was having a very hard time trying to figure out what I was doing wrong, so I asked my Beloved to help me, she'd watch and compare with the photos in the magazine. That didn't work as well as I'd hoped so she pulled out our little digital camera and took some video of me in the pose so I could see what I looked like for myself. She thought the process was quite funny.

The first thing I noticed on the video was that for some reason I was only using about half my mat. The photo in the magazine depicts a guy with the tips of his fingers near one edge of the mat and the heels of his feet at the other. And here I was scrunched up in the middle of mine. My first thought was "no way I can stretch out that far, he must be taller or have a shorter mat."

Wrong again. I tried again this time making sure I was using the whole mat. And wouldn't you know it? I could do it. And it felt much better this way. Imagine that. And here's where I discovered another problem, my $9 Wal-Mart mat is not nearly as sticky as I thought. Trying to hold downward dog became pretty difficult because my hands kept slipping forward. I suppose I will have to invest in a better mat sooner than I had thought.

Getting myself spread out was a big improvement, but I was still experiencing some pretty intense pain between my shoulders. So I took a short break, read through the article again then worked a little more in the puppy dog variation described by the author. In the puppy dog I paid very close attention to the alignment of my hands, arms and shoulders; I just knew that the problem lay in that area somewhere.

Then when I got back down to try the full downward facing dog, I noticed something about my hands. The text of the article says to make sure that the crease lines in your wrists form a straight line. I had figured that if my fingers were pointing straight ahead, those lines would be straight too. I was -- again -- wrong. To make the creases of my wrists form a straight line, I had to angle my fingers outwards just a tiny bit. And so far that seems to have done the trick.

All told I practiced down dog for about 40 minutes. By the time I had finished I felt I had made really good progress with this pose. And after finishing I was very surprised to find that my entire body felt very good. I think I had been working under the assumption that to get the "yoga-glow" feeling you had to do a complete set with several different poses. I was not expecting to find that working on just one pose left me feeling so good.

I am very encouraged by last night's effort and cannot wait to continue working on these exercises.

Yoga 2

For some time I have been looking for a simple form of exercise that I could practice on my own that did not require a large investment in equipment.

I've been learning Tai Chi on-again-off-again for the last two or three years. Tai Chi though is rather complex, the basic form has 24 different moves that you must learn to complete the sequence. And the entire set requires quite a bit of space to move.

Around about this past October I finally got around to looking at yoga (I'll explain a little more about why it took me so long later). I got on the iTunes Store looking for instructional videos and quickly found ExerciseTV's "Anytime Yoga" series of which they were giving the "PM Yoga" video away for free.

Since Halloween I have done the 10-minute PM set nearly every night before going to bed. The effect on my rest at night were noticeable immediately. However what surprised me most was that the near constant back and neck pain along with numbness and tingling in my hands and fingers that I had been experiencing since late summer and which was beginning to interfere at work was gone by Thanksgiving, a mere four weeks later.

Yoga is exactly what I've been looking for. There isn't a lot to learn in order to start. There isn't a lot of equipment to purchase, I bought a $9 mat from Wal-Mart because I found myself slipping on the carpet when trying to hold some of the poses. And it doesn't require a lot of space. There is just enough space in the living room of our camper for me to do the exercises, though I am already dreaming of the time we finish our house and can have more room to stretch out in.

The past three months I have been very happy keeping to the videos, but now I feel the need to really learn the poses on my own. The videos are good but they go rather quickly, and I'm looking to slow down and really plumb the depths of these exercises.

So for the coming new year I will be making a concerted effort to learn the individual poses by themselves and in depth. I will utilize the "Yoga for Beginners" special issue put out by Yoga Journal along with the many resources online as well as hopefully finding a local teacher to spend some time with.

Scientific reductionism

If I went in to an auto parts store and came out with only a steering wheel and announced that I was going to drive somewhere you'd think that I had gone insane. Obviously, you need much more than just a steering wheel in order to go places.

Yet that is exactly how scientists treat food. They see that folks who eat food X have less disease Y. Upon examining the food and discovering it has high levels of nutrient Z, they'll announce that taking a supplement of nutrient Z will lower a person's risk of disease Y.

But they are making two grave errors. First they are ignoring the fact that food X is not just nutrient Z, it is a whole host of other things that work together to make food X what it is. Secondly, they are assuming that they know everything there is to know about what makes up food in the first place. And if you take a look at the history of nutrition science you'll see how often scientists find new players in the game of food.

Scientific reductionism, as the practice is known, may make sense in certain circumstances. But it leads to sloppy decisions regarding a subject much too important to be playing chemistry with ... our food.

For more information see Michael Pollan's book "In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto."