Healthy Eating, Stress and Self Control

by Nina

One of the most important things you can do to support healthy eating is to practice stress management. Thought the reasons for this weren’t immediately obvious to me, the more I’ve looked into this topic, the more compelling those reasons become. Recently I wrote a post Yoga, Stress and Weight Management about how chronic stress causes weight gain by stimulating your appetite. As if increased hunger isn’t bad enough, it turns out that being stressed out can pose an even bigger challenge to your commitment to eating right: it weakens your willpower and causes you to be more impulsive. Say you had a long, traffic-jammed commute on the way to the office, there’s a critical meeting with a client that you make with a minute to spare, and someone’s left a big, pink box of fresh donuts glistening there on the table. Then, even though you planned a day of healthy eating, with a homemade lunch and a healthy snack, before you have time to stop yourself, you somehow you find yourself with a half-eaten donut in your hand.... Does this sound familiar to anyone? According to The Willpower Instinct by Dr. Kelly McGonigal, you’re more likely to cave in to temptation when you’re experiencing the stress response than you are when you are in a state of relaxation.

“While your body was getting ready to defend your life, the alarm system in your brain was busy trying to make sure you didn’t get in the body’s way. It focused your attention on the saber-toothed tiger and your surroundings, making sure no stray thoughts distracted you from the threat at hand. That’s right, the fight-or-flight response wants to make you more impulsive.”

As is often the case, a response that makes sense when your life is actually in danger (a time when over-thinking is probably not a good idea) can backfire on you in modern times. The traffic jams and the meeting with the client that were stressing you out weren’t exactly life threatening, so not being “distracted” by your plans for healthy eating won’t improve the situation (and might even make you feel worse after you come down from your sugar high).

Line of Moss by Brad Gibson

Fortunately, yoga has a few solutions to offer, both for the short term and the long term, to help you reduce the impulsive behavior that can accompany chronic stress. For the short term, Dr. McGonigal recommends slowing down your breathing to four to six breaths per minute, which she says helps shift your body from a state of stress to “self-control mode.” This is obviously something you could do discretely at your desk or even in that conference room where the donuts lay glistening at you. (Your meeting might even go better if you stopped for a minute to “center” yourself this way before it begins.) And since lengthening your exhalation is also a good way to turn down the stress response, I’d add that you could practice any form of pranayama that emphasizes the exhalation over the inhalation.

For the longer term, Dr. McGonigal recommends that you spend some time practicing conscious relaxation to “restore your willpower reserve.” She suggests lying down and breathing deeply, which sounds like Savasana (Relaxation pose) to me! Besides this, of course, yoga has a huge repertoire of ways you can de-stress, including meditation, yoga nidra, restorative yoga, supported inverted poses, and active asana poses practiced with mindfulness (see The Relaxation Response and Yoga for further information).

So if you’re having trouble sticking to your healthy eating plans for the new year, why not experiment by trying one or more of these relaxation techniques and see if they strengthen your willpower. I’d love to hear back about any results. (Besides, if worse comes to worst, you’ll at least be less stressed out!)

Yoga for Healthy Eating, Part 2

by Baxter

Today, as I was driving to the Farmers Market in Berkeley to enjoy my weekly ritual of buying local grown and produced fruits, veggies and animal protein, I happened to catch a bit of the show “Your Health and Fitness” on KPFA. The host posited the assertion that “health” bestows on each of us the opportunity to live a full life. I gotta say, I loved the simplicity of this notion, and all that it really implies. Then I got home to read the following comment on my recent post regarding yoga for healthy eating, full of more wisdom born out of personal experience. It came from an old friend and colleague of mine, and with her permission, I share it with you now:

“Hey Baxter,

Kudos on taking on such a complicated subject! I have a few ideas I think are worth adding to the discussion on mindfulness and healthy eating, and when I say "ideas", I really mean personal opinions I've formed along the journey of nurturing my personal health.

The first idea that really drives my weight management is focusing on eating more good food rather less bad food. "Eat less" is very common advice, but when we set out attempting to do this, what happens is, we end up eating meals that are less than we need to feel satisfied, and then, when we are inevitably hungry in an hour or two, we reach for a convenient snack. This snack is rarely nutritious, and does two things; it keeps us from our goal of losing weight and gives us a sense that we are inept in managing our food. This second part is often the killer. When people ask me for advice about weight loss, I always say the same thing; "EAT MORE VEGGIES". If you add a large serving of vegetables to lunch and dinner, you will not be hungry in between meals. And these vegetables are of tremendous value to your long term health. Your body will shift naturally a healthier size. Eat more, not less.

Also, I believe that living in the modern world means being absolutely inundated with information about dieting, and most of this information is not helpful. Find a plan that works for your lifestyle and stick to it. I've used the same food plan through two terms of weight loss (one in my early thirties & one after my daughter was born), and I generally use the same plan for maintenance today. Find a plan that works for your lifestyle and stick to it.

Lastly, I think exercise is vital to weight maintenance, not because it assists in weight loss (I've actually found it to hinder my weight loss), but because it helps with stress reduction and confidence in the long run. Stress is perhaps the most important factor in why we eat and why we fail at weight loss. When we find exercise that we enjoy and we can integrate into our lifestyle, we have a useful tool in managing our long-term health through stress reduction. Secondarily, we gain in the process an enjoyment of our bodies that is necessary to continue on a path of nurturing self -care. Exercise we enjoy makes us feel good. Feeling good helps us to want to continue on the journey.

Hope this is helpful to the greater discussion.

Amelia”

Yes, Amelia, I think this is very helpful to the greater discussion around healthy eating. Implied in Amelia’s approach is, as I see it, the idea that a longer vision goal is being set by each of us as we decide to make healthy changes in our eating habits. It seems prudent, as an example, that if my goal is weight loss for me to sit and consider what my expectations are when my goal is reached: do I expect to feel better physically, emotionally or mentally? Do I expect a present health problem to resolve itself secondary to my weight loss goal being met? Is there an expectation of an underlying happiness that will arise? In all likelihood, quiet contemplation around this goal of “weight loss” will reveal these sorts of underlying hopes and expectations that could ultimately be more important than any number on the scale.

The practices of yoga, starting with pranayama as a beginning method to quiet the normal mental chatter and give the busy portion of the mind a rest, can be quiet helpful in this process of introspection.  From there, dharana and dhyana, one-pointed concentration practice and continual meditation practice, will refine and sharpen the ability to be receptive to these deeper goals. One of the qualities that is always mentioned in either succeeding or failing at these sorts of attempted changes is the presence of “will power.”  And according to Stanford psychologist, author and yoga teacher Kelly McGonigal, scientists now consider will power to be like a muscle, versus something you either have or don’t have. We all have the muscle, and you can strengthen it with practice. And yoga is a discipline that teaches us about practice, or abhyasa, as one of the main tools for succeeding in meeting our highest goals. 

So to recap Amelia’s wisdom:

• Eat enough good food (VEGGIES!) to satisfy your energy needs and satisfy you hunger.
• Find a plan that works for your lifestyle and stick to it, ie practice it everyday!
• Don’t underestimate the value of exercise as a stress reducing and confidence-inspiring tool (a strong asana practice could be part of that I’d think!), as stress is a huge trigger for unhealthy eating.  And exercise makes us feel good, which has a positive feedback on motivation.

Keep those comments coming! We love ‘em!