Cravings 101: Fight the Saboteur

Your saboteur (or as Annie Lamott aptly calls it: KFKD radio) is the one telling you that dumping the junk is a waste of time. Why bother? Who cares? Who does that quack doctor think she is?

The key to counter your saboteur is to get empowered both to recognize and to talk back. Or send your saboteur my way and I'll handle him/her. Your saboteur has no power over me.

Here are some other techniques, from 12-Step food programs, that work for me when the saboteur is after me to just have one bite of chocolate or just a little bite of croissant or a cup of coffee while cleansing.

• Think it through to the bitter end. (This is from 12-Step literature). Rather than indulging in the fantasy and romance of what special food/wine you're craving and how it will taste, think through where your food trip has taken you in the past. Recall the injury. Recall the morning after - the remorse, the bloating, fatigue, hopelessness and shame. For some of us, the morning after includes struggling to zip the jeans.
• HALT: Hungry, Angry, Lonely, Tired. Eat every 4-6 hours so that you don't become hypoglycemic and cranky. If you're angry or lonely, write it out or call someone to talk it through. Sleep more while cleansing - that is when all of your cells reparative work is performed.
• Take action. What's the opposite of eating for you? Leave the scene of previous crimes (the kitch), make a gratitude or joy list (proven to raise your energy vibration), take a bath (I take up to two per day while cleansing with generous scoops of Epsom Salt), take a walk, call a friend.

I wrote yesterday about the physiology of craving, that they tend to last 15-20 minutes, and so I recommend setting a time for 20 minutes, drinking a large glass of water and having instead a small 1oz protein snack such as nuts or seeds or fruit. In other words, set the intention to use your knowledge of physiology to combat your craving and saboteur.

I'm also fascinated by the phenomenon of craving and how it separates temperate or normal eaters from problem eaters (of which I am one - I'm a sometimes compulsive eater). Do you know some normal eaters? Are you one? I have a friend who is a normal eater. She'll eat one small piece of cheese on bread, and stops. No message like crack goes to her brain (like cheese does in my brain - most contain morphine). Here's how Alcoholics Anonymous lays it out, which I believe applies to food, particularly gluten, dairy and sugar (that would include chocolate) items:

• cravings become a habit, usually to soothe restlessness, irritability, malcontent
• one cannot break the habit and it becomes more entrenched
• creates remorse -> bargaining -> craving -> sometimes binge cycle
• erodes self confidence
• we become more reliant on self will which often doesn't work
• problems pile up
• finally, it becomes astonishingly difficult to solve the problem; psychic change, as Jung stated, may be the only solution

Another way to look at psychic change is to borrow a concept from the buddhists: when faced with difficulty and suffering, seek refuge in the Buddha (or Higher Power, of your own understanding in the 12-step literature). If that doesn't work, seek refuge in the Dharma (or sacred texts, some literature which speaks to you and your suffering, offers a solution). If that doesn't work, seek refuge in the Sangha.

We are a Sangha, our sweet group of Cleansers.

Those are just a few ideas to work with as we march closer to our first official day of smoothies twice per day. In many ways, the 7-day pre-cleanse is the hardest part of the 21-day cleanse because you are navigating 3 meals per day while dumping gluten, dairy, caffeine, sugar and alcohol.

Are you skin brushing? Drinking your hot water with lemon and cayenne? Taking your detox packets twice/day? Stocking up on seasonal vegetables? Stepping away from the microwave?

Keep up the awesome work, and share with me in the Comments section what's working well, what's hard, what's neutral, what's charged.

Monday Mystic: Menopause Poem by Adair Lara

Adair Lara is our Monday Mystic for Jan 31, 2011. She sent this phresh poem to me today (see below), and got me thinking I need to banish people-pleasing from my life far in advance of menopause. You? And start self basting in this Bulgarian hotel I call my body.

Adair connects me to another time and place -  to the refreshingly honest voice of Annie Lamott's Operating Instructions, which I clutched to my bosom like a bible before my kids were born. Finally, a mom who tells the truth. Now the kids are getting older and a new part of the women's life cycle presents itself to me... namely, hormonal chaos. Actually, pregnancy and post-partum was rather hormonally chaotic too, but in a different way. I had a precious new life that kept me focused.

Adair Lara reminds me of the rugged, hilarious, wise and seamed women I love from Alaska who live fully, boldly and without qualification. She is the author of 13 bold books, including the most recent: Naked, Drunk and Writing (Ten Speed Press, 2010).

Menopause

The mother of all wake-up calls
After the hormones wear off like party drugs
The house is  rewired
By a blind and maybe drunk electrician
Sparks are flying
The thermostat’s out of whack
It’s like living in a Bulgarian hotel

Still. The craziest hotel has its dance band.
I see you there in your little black dress
And little black mood.
You got back from Bangkok with new eyes,
 just in time for your first granddaughter
to be born with your old eyes.
You can now turn your head side to side
Say no in several languages.
Oh, the forgotten pleasure
Of not pleasing.
You  who skipped Ivanhoe and parallelograms
take night classes and sit up front.
Making  yourself  sharp and sure for
that woman in the glass.

The to-do list has changed
Do  become self-basting.
Do  buy yourself roses
And hang one over an ear.
Don’t   finish books if you don’t like ‘em
Don’t  examine thighs in tooth-paste flecked glass
Do  stroll in the dark up Kilimanjaro
Write books start tea shops paint wild canvases?
 
-- Adair Lara

Open to Grace

When I first became a student of yoga over 20 years ago, I struggled first with my mind. I considered yoga to be the best method I had encountered for retraining the mind. My untrained mind is best summed up by local writer Annie Lamott: “My mind is a neighborhood I try not to go into alone.”

More recently, I’m learning a new way to hold the mind, a more loving way, based on the ancient wisdom of Tantra, which to me is based on our intrinsic goodness or inner divinity. Tantric scholars propose that ego, desire, and even mind are vehicles—rather than obstacles—to one's highest Self.

Last month I had the supreme pleasure of taking my first workshop with a gifted Tantric scholar and yoga teacher, Sianna Sherman. She is superb professor of Anusara Yoga, which was founded by John Friend in 1997 and is the fastest growing segment of yoga. Sianna is one of his first disciples. Anusara is based on the heart-opening ideas of Tantra. In our workshop, she described the First Principle of Anusara: Opening to Grace.

While in Sianna’s workshop, I of course was so deeply in the now that I can’t recall exactly what she said, but I found a recent interview with Sianna by Ginger Coy.

Here is an excerpt:

The First Principle of Anusara is, according to Sianna, about “allowing ourselves to be become more sensitive, more spacious, more with attunement, more listening, more present with however something is in the moment, and allowing ourselves to feel compassion and love in ways that we’re connected to ourselves and more than just ourselves in the moment, connected to the bigger picture we like to say in Anusara.”

“When I would be inside a situation in my life that was challenging for me, I would actually ask myself, what does Open to Grace look like right now in this moment in this situation, when I’m off my yoga mat, and here I am feeling all these challenges or intensities, or something that is pulling me off-center in a big way, and I started really asking the question, what does Opening to Grace look like right now in this moment and what would happen was an immediate bonding with a greater sense of love and self-love inside myself.”

John Friend adds: “When we get out of alignment with Spirit and we try to make or expect life to be something different than it really is, suffering happens. We all experience pain and suffering, but it is not the quintessential nature of life. Just because the earth turns away from the sun and night occurs doesn't mean that the sun isn't always shining. It might be hard to see sometimes, but goodness and divine beauty can always be found if you adjust your vision just right.”

Wishing you attunement, connection to your intrinsic divinity and “just right” vision this Valentine’s Day. Open your heart, open to grace, just like Sianna (below) for Valentine's Day.