If You’d Like to Gain Weight, Go On A Diet

Just prior to Thanksgiving, many of the health and wellness blogs and articles shared the common focus of helping people control their appetite during the holiday.

I wondered if someone were to follow any of these suggestions to help curb their appetite, would they feel empowered?

The modern mind has become a master at transforming self-improvement into self-blame. We get trapped into feeling stuck rather than empowered. All these articles seemed to speak to our fears and shame rather than our strengths.

We live in a dieting culture where diets are beginning to create more problems than solutions.

Almost every study shows that 99% of humans who lose weight on a diet gain it back within a year or two. Why do people diet for years on end even though it isn't working?

Chronic dieting (i.e. endlessly dieting 'on and off') has become a seductively destructive epidemic. For most, it enhances self-judgment and unworthiness. In our culture it has become totally acceptable (and somewhat expected) to diet.

Well, here are six reasons why ongoing dieting doesn’t work:

1)  The body’s response to food restriction is to slow down metabolism. This is a natural survival response to prevent death by starvation. If the body senses there is a famine, it will slow down caloric burning to sustain itself on less for longer. We can actually gain weight or not lose weight when eating fewer calories.

2)  Dieting puts the body into a ‘stress response’. Mental cycles of self-judgment and self-hate increase our stress hormones, cortisol and insulin. “I’m no good, I’m too fat” is a physiology that pulls away from our digestive power, hormonally negating muscle building and fat burning.

3)  Most dieters will be a little fat deficient and protein deficient. When we are missing essential fatty acids and essential amino acids, our thermal efficiency is slowed down.

4)  Many dieters cannot find pleasure in their food. Part of our digestive power is fired in the cephalic phase in which the brain senses pleasure through the senses. When we are not getting the pleasure, metabolism is weakened. This is also why eating too fast or when distracted weakens digestion, as the senses are not involved.

5)  Many dieters skip meals, eating less in the morning and more at night. When we skip breakfast and eat a late lunch, we lose out on the heightened hours of digestion. 12-1:30pm and the hours prior to that are the strongest caloric burning hours.

6)  If we have less food, we can take in oxygen less efficiently because the body is trying to slow down its systems. Oxygen enhances the proficiency of our bodily functions.

Calories have little power over the power of the mind.

While diets can be useful and healing short term, a chronic dieting mentality is anti- weight-loss. If it worked, we wouldn't need to continuously diet!

There are a tremendous number of health issues that are a direct result of chronic dieting. These include fatigue, poor digestion, low mood, immune problems, headaches, binge eating, skin, constipation, and more. These conditions are often misdiagnosed as the problem rather than a symptom of nutrient deficiency.

When we are stressed about eating, our body is incapable of properly digesting.

To change our patterns we need to change our thoughts. We need to learn how to relax into the process. While there are many paths of personal growth and evolution, I can speak to the path of yoga, as it has been a pillar in my own personal development.

The path of yoga aids in improving health and weight for various reasons such as caloric burning, cleansing, and mental stress reduction that soothes our emotional drive for overeating. More than that, yoga works because it changes the stress physiology, which prevents us from losing weight no matter how little we eat.

What are your methods for changing your stress physiology?

Related Articles:
The 100 Year Diet Cycle
Are We Overestimating Overeating?
Understanding Macronutrient Balance

What We Judge We Can't Digest

Our number one goal is to become relaxed eaters.

Recently I sat down to eat lunch; a home-made stir-fry of homegrown kale and organic grass-fed beef. Sounds pretty healthy. And yet as I was about to take a bite, a thought popped into my head about the “pesticide ridden tomato” I mixed into the stir-fry. A tomato I bought last minute at a local 7/11 just for the convenience. Was I really judging this beautiful meal as unhealthy due to a tomato?! I put down my fork, took a breath and took a long look at my food. The kale began to look greener, the smell of the beef got juicier. My digestive system had turned on. It looked amazing and I was once again excited to eat.

Our digestive efficiency is dependent on our nervous system which in turn is dependent on our mental state. When our body is under stress it goes into a state of “fight or flight” which physiologically halts our digestive efficiency. The same switch in the brain which turns on stress, turns off digestion. Digestion is at its strongest calorie-burning power when we are in a relaxed state which is when we breathe deeply and feel okay with ourselves and the foods that we choose.

We could be eating the healthiest of meals, but if we feel any degree of stress, anxiety, fear, or judgment, we are unable to assimilate its nutrients. Hence, we decrease the nutritional value of the meal because our metabolism is impaired.

It is basic science and yet we are never taught this. Everything to do with advertized diets has to do with food and not with ourselves. Quite simply, this type of information can’t be packaged and sold.

Stress will decrease the blood flow to the gut needed for digestion, and will prevent the production of important growth and thyroid hormones. These hormones boost metabolic rate and are important for growth and healing, building muscle and burning fat. Stress will cause the excretion of vitamins and minerals. When we are under chronic low-level stress on a daily basis, we decrease our oxygen intake.
Stress will increase inflammation, change the chemistry of our cells, and alter the physiology of the digestive system. Inflammation is a major contributor to weight gain, blood sugar imbalance and diabetes.

If we are multi-tasking or rushing our meals,  we are eating under stress. If we say to ourselves, “I’m too fat, I shouldn’t be eating this, food is bad; this will make me unlovable,” these are all stresses.

Even if we eat less food, we are still chemically training the body to store fat because that is the body’s natural response to stress.

Our ongoing process is to recognize our mental state when engaging in activities of self-nourishment. Not just with food, but also in conversations, our exercise (movement practices), or anything else we do to nourish ourselves. 

We can create a powerful difference if we learn to modulate and influence our state of mind and heart.

Overeating? It's NOT Lack of Willpower! It's Physiological...

"I'm glad you're overeating," I told my friend, who was complaining she has no willpower around food and consequently is overweight.
"How do you feel right after you eat?" I asked.
"Guilty," she answered.
"And before that?"
"Calm."

Exactly!

Overeating, or any other symptom or unwanted behavior always has a beautiful reason for its presence. In my friend's case, her overeating calms her, fills her, and medicates her. While it may have negative consequences in the immediacy, it is relaxing. When we are overly stressed we have to do something overly relaxing. We each have tools to bring us down.

Our nervous system is structured in a way that we can respond to each moment in a way that contributes towards either stress or relaxation. Its either/or.

If we are concerned with weight issues, impaired digestion or matters of immunity, we often examine the body and forget to take into account the effect of life itself on health, weight and metabolism.

When we are affected by stress, we contract both physically and emotionally. When our emotional energy is stuck, metabolism is stuck. We can continue to try to battle the symptom, but unless we learn ways to increase the relaxation response and care for ourselves within times of stress (career, relationship, finances,) symptoms such as overeating will most likely prevail.

Overeating is not the problem. It is the symptom.

Overeating has little to do with willpower!
Why is it that we find ourselves eating more than we think we should or make unhealthy choices despite "knowing better?" How is it that we eat a meal and hardly remember what it tasted like?

Stress desensitizes the pleasure response in the body. When we experience stress, the body is programmed to go into fight or flight, making it hyper aware of its own pain as a survival mechanism. Decreasing sensitivity to pleasure will increase sensitivity to pain. (This is why deep relaxed breathing reduces awareness to pain.)

Without pleasure we can't physiologically enjoy the foods that we eat. Stress shuts down digestion so the neural connection between the gut and brain is severed. Without this connection, the brain can't radiate pleasure to the gut and the gut can't signal fullness to the brain. When we feel full in the belly but the mouth still wants more, the connection between gut and brain is impaired.

When calm, we are able to connect to the parts of the brain that govern wisdom and reasoning around food and digestion. Under stress this part of the brain containing the knowledge of what foods make us feel good, what makes us bloated, what energizes us, or what gives us a headache is neurologically isolated. When the survival part of the brain is activated and the connection between gut and brain is impaired, it is neurologically harder for us to listen to the wisdom around which food types or quantities make us feel more guilt than pleasure in the long run.

Pleasure helps regulate our appetite. When the body feels pleasure, the brain is able to communicate to the gut the right amount of food that will maintain pleasure. When under stress we can't feel the pleasure so we eat more in search of it.

Overeating is not about willpower. We simply don't have the proper physiology to register what we're eating and how much. When stressed, the body requires more food to taste the sense of pleasure.

Stress is not bad: it is natural. Often it keeps us on our growing edge. Detrimental stress is the self-induced kind created either by our thoughts or by holding on to stress that is no longer prevalent.

We are naturally self-correcting beings and we can physiologically produce powerful healing in the body by learning to modulate our frame of mind and heart.

As a start, make sure to improve your conditions around meals. Fast eating activates stress, multi-tasking when eating causes stress, negative self-talk or judging your food ("this food is bad for me") equals stress and equating food as fat or viewing it as the enemy is ultimately stressful eating.

Making our meals more relaxed can be as simple as adding 5 minutes to breakfast, taking 5 breaths before and after each meal or turning off the computer at lunch.

Fast eating is a reflection of fast living, i.e. living in a way that is not always self-nourishing. When we slow down, we connect to feeling. The switch in our brain that turns on relaxation turns on digestion and body wisdom. We can be eating healthy foods, but if we eat them in stress or judgment, we change our metabolic chemistry.

Where else do we move too fast? Usually we are too fast in our interaction with others- a true sign of not being present.

How Being Healthy Can Be So Unhealthy

Modern culture has taught us well to obsess about our looks. We knowingly apply toxic chemical products to our hair and skin for the sake of appearance and deal more and more with eating disorders.

Whether consciously or not, we often sacrifice our physical or emotional health for the sake of our appearance.

While it is fun and important to feel beautiful in our bodies, we often are driven to do so by stress rather than self-love. This is an inevitable result of a culture that has little focus or education around how to nourish the spirit.

Hyper concentration on the finite body is based on our fears. We fear that we are not good enough or attractive enough. We fear that we won’t be liked or accepted.

There is no way out of this obsessive suffering without shifting our attention internally from finite to the eternal-self, the love that exists in us all. Self-awareness leads to non-violence, both mental and physical, against ourselves and others.

The Journey Will Inform the Destination.
However the journey looks is the way the destination will look. If we hate ourselves into exercise and diet, it will end with more hatred. Even if we lose the weight, we will either gain it back or keep hating ourselves fearing its return. The Biggest Loser educates us how to shame ourselves into weight loss. While I am in awe of the strength that each participant emanates, I suspect that unless each found further guidance in self-love, he or she will live forever in shame of their bodies regardless of the number on the scale.

There are two types of people who heal themselves of their health challenges: Those who do it from love and those who do it from fear.

If we are working on self-acceptance, why are we spending all our energy on external results? This leaves little room for focus on the process of self-acceptance.

In my early 20’s I discovered the practices of meditation and yoga that revealed to me a whole new world of mysticism and self-revelation. Up until that time I had been very self-conscious of my body. The movement of my long limbs always felt very awkward and somewhat lifeless. The more time I spent exploring this internal world, the more I started to connect to my body as a sacred space. As a container for my spirit, there was much to honor and be grateful for.

Unknowingly I started to walk differently, I started to be noticed more, and I felt comfortable being seen. By connecting to something greater within myself and in seeing it in others, I felt worthy to take up space in the world. My muscles naturally started to tone and my stride became more confident.

I realized that the state of my body had everything to do with my mind. The subconscious need to “blend in” is what had prevented my body from shifting its shape.

Weight or any other health challenge is the way we express our deeper challenges in the world. In our healing process we are learning lessons that can be very powerful to our growth. These very challenges are the signs pointing us towards our personal development.

Learning to heal involves learning to love ourselves into healing.

The Body Knows Best - Respecting My Symptoms

Six or Seven years ago I was diagnosed with severe digestive complications and was told I would have to be on medication for the rest of my life. Within a year I was off my medication and besides a few minor episodes over the years, I have been free of symptoms ever since.

Nutrition works!

But nutrition does not represent the entire picture. A holistic notion of healing treats not only the body, but the mind and spirit as well. To credit healing entirely on external influences is to underestimate one’s self-worth and inner-power as well as the body’s internal wisdom.

Each physical symptom we experience, whether it is weight, pain, or disease, carries an important message. The body is a mirror of our inner thoughts and beliefs. Every cell responds to every thought and every word you speak. No matter what disease or symptom may be present, it carries important messages to help us develop our individual path.

Symptoms are messages from the body to slow down, look deeper, and listen. Welcome the symptoms. You are being asked to really explore how to better nourish yourself, listen to your gut and start over. What is the symptom saying, how does it express itself? Symptoms love stress; we need to explore the stresses in our lives. 

The body speaks through sensation, pleasure, and pain. Relaxing into life entails learning the language of the body.

My initial thoughts when I first got sick and was diagnosed were all on the lines of  “Oh no! I’m screwed!”

How wrong I was! I began to explore and journal about all the belief systems in my life that would cause my gut (intuition,) to be so heated and over protective. I explored both my diet and the internal workings of my mind until I learned what was needed for my personal growth at the time. Addressing the cause, released the symptom. My digestive issues had become my dearest friend, a barometer for my internal stress levels. 

A couple of weeks ago I started to experience cramping in my stomach. My old friend was showing early signs of a visit. I was confused, as nothing had changed much in my nutrition or lifestyle in recent weeks. I sat with the question, “why are you here, what are you here to say?”

On the evening of the third day of cramps and sitting with the question, it occurred to me that I had recently declined a great professional opportunity in the field of nutrition. The decision came from the voice of reason while in my body there was a huge urge and curiosity to explore this opportunity. While I felt at peace with my decision, I realized that in doing so, I had shut down the excitement stirring in my gut.

What happened next has still left me amazed! I mentally acknowledged my belly, letting it know that I had heard its voice and decided to take a different route that was better for the whole.  In that instant I felt a shift, a subsiding of pain and the next morning I woke up feeling as good as ever. 

When we ignore our symptoms we act irresponsibly and disrespectfully to our body. While modern day medication is extremely valuable, many of us take over-the-counter medication a little too often, anytime we have the slightest onset of discomfort. The symptom is masked and we forget it was there or how often it appears. We keep it under control and choose to keep riding the wave of our stresses, refusing to truly slow down and listen.

Calorie Free But Loaded With Stress

Stress is a natural body mechanism for survival. The classic scientific definition of stress is “a real or imagined threat and the body’s response to it.”  Hence, each time we experience stress, the brain interprets it to the body as a threat to your survival.

In primal days, stress (fight or flight) was the body’s reaction to a potentially life threatening experience, such as a lurking predator. In response to stress, the body shuts down the digestive system in order to supply more energy towards survival mechanisms.

Most of us function on low-levels of stress all day every day. While some stresses can help motivate us to get things done on time, much of our stress is created by “stressing ourselves out” in our own heads. The quality of our thoughts affects the stress levels in the body.

Low-level stress reduces your ability to burn calories and can minimize the flow of blood to the digestive tract by up to four times.

Stress levels will rise from anxiety, judgment or attack mode against self or others. Fighting people, lack of forgiveness, and unresolved past experiences will all raise our stress levels. Any thoughts or words that degrade self and others will cause stress. A simple thought such as “I’m five lbs over weight and that sucks” will elevate your stress levels and tell your body not to digest or assimilate.

The same switch in your brain that turns on the fight or flight stress mode will simultaneously turn off digestion.

The stress response will eventually show up as weight issues, immune issues, digestion concerns, blood sugar levels, heart disease and cholesterol levels.

Dieting and Stress

Any strategy or remedy that creates stress, any diet or exercise that is driven by stress or asks you to hate yourself is harmful and counter to healing.

When the body is under stress it is less connected to its gut wisdom, the neural information regarding digestion. We eat when anxious or stressed, a time when the appetite is most deregulated. If we over eat it is not because we have will power problems, but rather the brain has not registered “I’m full, nourished and satiated”. When we are relaxed, the brain is fully engaged in the digestive process and is making choices from body wisdom. When we relax, the digestive system is at its best.

When the body has an excess of stress hormones, cortisol and insulin, it slows down calorie burning, sustains fat and refrains from building muscle in order to maintain energy. This is an evolutionary survival response to primal time famines. This is the main reason why people often gain weight on diets. If the body doesn’t get the calories it needs, it believes its in famine and goes into survival mode.

Eating less, exercising more, pushing yourself, hating yourself and beating yourself up does not work. The stress response can over ride any of the wonderful healing dietary strategies that we choose.

We must integrate tools to relax in all the key realms of our life so the body can be in a natural state of healing. Then all the healthful nutritional strategies will really take hold.

How you eat is as important as what you eat. Take 5- 10 deep breaths before and after each meal to signal the body that you are eating in a relaxed environment. Take a moment to notice if the mouth has started to salivate, and you will know that your digestive juices have started to flow!

Yoga Sutras 1&2: Bringing the Mind to Rest

Now The Discipline of Yoga

Yoga is The Cessation of Mind

Patanjali’s first and second yoga sutras have been a great reminder, a mantra, to center and ease my recent experiences of a tumultuous mind.

I am fascinated by how much more the body can be affected by the stories of the mind than actual life experiences. Circumstantial events, such as my car accident this past summer, are not the worst upsets to the body. As people we are extremely adaptable in times of crisis. Although life’s events can be destabilizing, it’s the mental worrying about our imagined future or perspective on past that truly causes internal damage.

Yoga postures are not really concerned with the body, they are concerned with the capacity to be. It is only in the Now that we can understand the science of yoga, the scientific laws of being. Yoga is an experience, not an idea or belief. Such an experience can only be accessed in Now.

Discipline means the capacity to know and learn. But we cannot know unless we have first attained the capacity to ‘Be.’

Osho describes us as a crowded house of people filled with our various personas. As we currently are, there are many people in our house but we are not there. A disciple is a seeker, learning to feel his/her being, to be the master of self rather than a slave to the crowding desires. To Be is to learn to be alone in your home in silence.

Yoga is the state of no-mind. The mind includes anything thought related: All ego, desires, hopes, fears, preconceptions, philosophies, or beliefs.

I often confuse the mind with something substantial that exists within my body. I can physically feel the effects of its turmoil. The second Sutra reminds me that the mind is just a function. The mind is an activity just as talking is. If we stop talking, talking stops existing. When we stop ‘minding’, minding stops existing. The problem is we’ve forgotten how to stop. We have lost the capacity to Be in Now.

These two Sutras serve me as a reminder to recognize the turmoil of the mind and to simply remember that this “minding” can be put to rest.

It doesn’t matter how many times the mind wonders off or for how long. What matters is the moment we realize the wondering of mind and bring our attention back to the experience of now, feeling the breath. To recognize the wondering of the mind and to attempt to shift back to present is the ultimate act of compassion for our process and ourselves.

Coming Back To Life Through Yoga

It’s absurd (in my humble opinion) to think that when one experiences physical trauma, there would not coincidently be emotional levels to resolve. 

In the last three weeks since my car accident, while my body has been diligently working on healing, I hadn’t felt the need for much emotional release. 

While I have been conceptually thankful to escape an accident with such minor injuries, I can’t say I’ve experienced an emotional overwhelming sense of gratitude. Until today.

This morning I was back to practicing yoga in a class setting. Every movement and each pose carried my body through the experience of being alive. Living was no longer a concept but a feeling. Life force in those moments translated into happiness and it was engulfing me from both inside and out. 

Catharsis came in a twist following my deep backbend, a heart opening pose that I have physically not been able to access in these past few weeks. 

The tears started flowing and through the vibration of the quivering body, a huge surge of tension found its way out of the system. 

When I was a kid I felt weaker for crying and as an adult I’ve learned not only the strength of tears but their necessity. We are all vibrational beings; a good cry or a good laugh are the response of a vibrational process. Preventing that vibration by 'holding on' creates accumulated tension, hence creating dis-ease.  

Swami Kripalu called crying “one of the highest devotional songs. If you can cry with a pure heart, nothing else compares to such a prayer.”

The practice of yoga has taught me (perhaps above all) how to feel alive. 

The Yoga of Car Accidents

The ‘attack’ of the shopping bag occurred while driving on the highway with open windows. The wind carried a bag that flew into my face, blocked my vision and lead me to swerve off the road. I crashed into the median and flipped the car over taking (what I think was) a couple of rolls.

Once the car went from spinning to flipping there was nothing I could do to control it. I closed my eyes, stayed clam and waited for the movement to come to an end. I felt the body release its tension as it took its last few tumbles. Once coming to a halt, I unbuckled my seat belt and crawled out through the window of my upside down vehicle.

As the airbag had never inflated, (thanks Toyota) I had hit my head badly on the steering wheel and was bleeding heavily. The medics had covered my nose and eyes with bandages and I was taken to the ER.

For the next 4 hours of care my eyes remained shut from swelling and bandages. Without the stimulation of sight, I stayed fully focused on my internal experience of thoughts, emotions and patterns of breath. Each time a thought would bring a sense of panic, I’d return to my deep rhythm of breathing and the anxiety would subside.

As I was being stitched up, I could hear a woman in the other room screaming, more from fear than pain. It is so easy for us all to get trapped in the fear if we don’t access the tools to bring us back to center.

I am so grateful for my yoga training that had enabled to release my muscles at a time of extreme tension, minimizing the impact of the crash, and has taught me ‘breath awareness’ to transform my experience to a lesson in healing rather than pain.

The Temptations of Ego

As the end of January approaches, it becomes more difficult for many of us to keep our New Year’s resolutions. Fearing change we may begin to make excuses to keep us repeating old patterns.

We all have egos that endeavor to maintain a sense of control and do everything possible to prevent us from breaking out of our comfort zones.

Although we understand that it is time to take action and make changes, we often experience a strong resistance. Our ego whispers, “don't bother. It's too much work. Things are fine the way they are.”

As we begin applying ourselves towards creating change (getting fit, losing weight, quitting an unhealthy habit, prioritizing family and friends, becoming organized, etc.), the trapped energy within our bodies and minds begins to stir. Things swept under the rug rise to the surface, making change to be a somewhat difficult experience. This is when the voice of discouragement and doubt can grow louder.

The ego's most common strategy is resistance; saying we are too tired or too busy to deal with such things, that we can do more constructive or enjoyable tasks. Ego manifests as reasoning to celebrate our weight loss with a cookie, or as an injury that occurs just as our new workout has become routine.

Resistance is like breathing, even if we don’t think about it, it just happens. The ego is not evil; It is just trying its best to keep us safe. Making changes in our lives and taking steps towards self-improvement can be overwhelming. The ego, rooted in fear, much like an overly protective parent, prefers us not to  take any chances that might cause us to feel hurt.
 
Which Map Are You Using to Reach Your Destination? 
Be very clear on what intentions motivate you to achieve your goals. Your New Year resolutions could just be another ploy of the ego... For example, say you are at an unhealthy weight. The ego may have fooled you into believing  that you need to change your weight to feel beautiful or accepted. Then as you stride to make changes, the ego does everything in its power, through doubt and temptation, to prevent you from following through. It has now succeeded trapping you so that you will never feel good enough just as you are. Never satisfied with how things are now.

However, if you realize that the unhealthy weight is a result of habits created while your soul was asleep, your journey is now about waking up and loving your soul, rather than just liking your body. As the soul awakens, the ego’s hold on you weakens. When we find love for the process more than for the goal, there is less space for ego.

Moving Forward is Learning to Stay: 
We need not surrender to ego nor do we need to fight it.  Coming up against ego will only cause it to act out. If we don’t learn to stick with the resistance, the slightest incident will be a trigger and we will run.

We crave breakthroughs and get discouraged when we don’t see dramatic results fast. The excuses start pouring in:  we are too tired, or too busy to cook ourselves healthy meals, or move our bodies. Find ways to enjoy the process, to waken the soul.

We must ask ourselves, “According to my decisions now, what will the results be in a year or two?”  Giving into the resistance will bring more of the pain we are trying to overcome.  Such a realization might inspire us to work through the discomfort. Avoiding it will keep it there year after year.

Adzuki Beans for Winter & Adrenal Health

The Adzuki bean is a small red colored bean with a sweet and nutty flavor. Adzuki beans are known as the “king of beans” in Japan, where they are used in dishes from soup to dessert  (commonly in the form of red bean paste.) These beans are one of the easiest to digest, providing a good source of protein and a grounding effect.

Adzuki beans tonify the kidneys and adrenals and can help ground and soothe us during the busy holiday season. They are digested slowly and cause only a gradual rise in blood sugar levels, making them a superior carbohydrate for those with diabetes and blood sugar imbalances. Adzuki beans are low in fat and high in calcium, potassium, iron, zinc, many B vitamins, and they contain isoflavones, which help prevent cancer and heart disease.

Adzuki beans cook quickly, and can be used in casseroles or stews, mixed with grains, added to soups, tossed in salads, or enjoyed alone. They can be substituted for any other bean in a recipe.

Squash and Adzuki Beans
1 cup adzuki beans -- dried
3 1/2 cup water
1 piece dried kombu*
1 cup butternut squash -- diced
1/2 tsp ginger root -- grated
1 tbs Fresh parsley -- chopped

Place beans, water, and kombu in a medium-size saucepan. Bring to a boil, then reduce heat and simmer, covered, for 45 minutes. Stir in squash and ginger root, then cover and simmer 30 minutes longer. Mix gently with a wooden spoon, and break up the kombu which has softened. Serve garnished with parsley.

Variations: add onion, garlic, carrots or other root vegetables instead or in addition to the winter squash.

* Kombu is a dried seaweed that is known as a flavor enhancer of anything you add it to while cooking. Without adding a “seaweedy” taste to your stews or soups, kombu helps beans cook faster and aids in their digestion.

Note: It is best to soak beans overnight before cooking but you can get away with cooking dried adzuki beans that have not been soaked. If soaking, discard the soaking water before cooking. 

Strengthen Your Adrenals

• Get your beauty sleep! Rest is vital in strengthening the adrenals. That means going to bed by 10pm. Make this a priority and stick with it. 
• Eliminate sugar and processed carbohydrates. Sugar and simple carbs put stress on the adrenals as they interfere with the adrenal glands’ role in regulating blood sugar levels. 
• Eat animal proteins raised with no growth-hormones or antibiotics. Choose organic vegetables when possible, enjoy fruits, nuts, legumes, beans and whole grains.  
• Quit the coffee habit and drink plenty of fresh filtered water every day.

Ho Ho Ho Coffee Buzz Buzz Buzz

Winter has arrived and with it has come the Holiday Season. As the air cools, animals hibernate and trees shed their leaves, conserving their energy by sending it down into the roots. We, on the other hand, are shopping, traveling, eating, drinking and partying from Thanksgiving through New Year's Day. This puts us out of sync with winter's restorative energy.

Introspection is a beautiful and timely process for the winter season. In the spirit of the holidays we celebrate with light during the darkest of seasons. Introspection carries a similar energy of shining light on the areas of our life that feel dark. If the holiday season emphasizes loneliness, it might inspire us to invest in deepening our connections with friends, partners and family. If feeling tired and overwhelmed by our numerous commitments, it’s time to shed some draining obligations and invest in the actions and relations that nourish our soul.

Often though, we distract ourselves in busyness, avoiding this reflective time until the arrival of New Year resolutions. Indulging in food, drink and guilt only to attempt yet another diet next month is not an act of loving one’s self. Engaging in physical and emotional self-indulgence now while vowing to do things differently later makes no sense. By the time the holidays are over, many people are exhausted, stressed or depressed, and dealing with colds and flu. Be smart with your time this year. Celebrate with your loved ones, get plenty of rest, drink less and laugh more, eat less and sing more, shop less and hug more.

Let’s Talk Coffee:

With more obligations, less sleep and a natural attempt of our body to slow down, we may be feeling the need for an extra boost of energy.

When we are naturally stressed, we produce a hormone called adrenaline. During the course of our day, our body starts to tire and we feel the need to recharge. Ignoring the need for proper rest and nutrition, we may develop a craving for stimulants in the form of caffeine and sugar to give us a sense of energy.  These may seem to provide a boost of energy, but has the opposite effect.

By reaching for a cup of coffee we cause our bodies to release more adrenaline so that we can operate at an even faster and quicker pace. Caffeine stimulates the stress response in the body and causes our adrenals to release more adrenaline. In a natural environment such a flush of adrenaline would happen if we were suddenly faced with danger. The body goes into survival mode where it is once again alert and ready to “fight or flight” any rising situation. We feel alert though the body never got the rest or nutrition it originally needed. Continually flushing our body with adrenaline through the consumption of caffeine can eventually lead to adrenal exhaustion, leaving us vulnerable to a variety of health disorders related to inflammation, autoimmunity and fatigue.

Consuming caffeine may feel like it is helping us cope with stress and fatigue, although it is actually contributing to the increase of more stress in the body. Just as with an addiction (such as to drugs, nicotine or alcohol,) we only feel better when we feed our body more of the substance that is causing it most damage. Stress can be addictive in a similar manner.

Caffeine stimulates the excretion of stress hormones, which makes us feel more alert. However, this hormonal response can produce increased levels of anxiety, irritability, muscular tension, indigestion, insomnia and decreased immunity. Increasing the levels of stress will increase heart rate and elevate blood pressure, and can therefore contribute to the development of heart disease. Both decaf and regular coffee increase cholesterol and homocysteine, the biochemical linked to an increased risk of heart attack.

Caffeine stimulates a temporary surge in blood sugar followed by an overproduction of insulin, which causes a blood sugar crash within hours. Diabetics and hypoglycemics should avoid caffeine. In this manner caffeine can contribute to weight gain, since insulin's message to the body is to store excess sugar as fat. On an emotional level depression may occur as part of the letdown after the stimulant effects of caffeine wear off. It may also appear during the withdrawal  period after quitting caffeine while the brain's chemistry is readjusted. Rather than increasing mental activity, caffeine decreases blood flow to the brain by as much as 30%, and negatively affects memory and mental performance.

You Don’t Have To Give Up Coffee:

If you really love coffee then put in the time to enjoy it. Most Americans drink their coffee “on the go,” while rushing to work or while multi-tasking. If we consume a stress-stimulating substance (caffeine and sugar) while our body is already stressed, we are pushing ourselves to an extreme.

In Europe you will often see people enjoying a cup of coffee while sitting peacefully with friends at a local coffee shop. In Italy a small espresso is consumed after a large meal as a digestive aid. In the States; “America Runs on Dunkin’.”

Caffeine has wonderful health benefits. We can read plenty of studies that show that coffee contains high levels of antioxidants. These antioxidants are stored in the coffee bean but are destroyed within half an hour of grinding and brewing the beans. When drinking instant coffees or purchasing a cup from most stores where the beans are not fresh, we are not getting those benefits. We are just causing the stress response.

Savor the experience. Purchase a high quality organic brand of coffee, grind it fresh (or store your freshly ground coffee in the freezer) and sit down and relax while drinking it. Make sure your coffee is an addition to a healthy diet and not substituting a meal or hours of sleep.

The Mind and Body Connection

Our body is composed of various biological systems, linked and coordinated with each other via the nervous system. The nervous system is composed of the brain and spinal cord, and from there it branches out to a network of nerves that connect to both the sensory and internal organs. The entire nervous system regulates bodily functions such as the circulation of blood, digestion of food, and breathing while carrying the information the body needs to adapt to its environment. Some of these responses reach our consciousness and some do not. For example, when we interpret a situation as dangerous, we become aware of our fear, but we are unaware of the physiological responses of elevated blood pressure and greater blood flow to the muscles as less blood flows to the digestive organs. Similarly, most stressful situations will have the same effect i.e. impaired digestion.Psychological events and stress levels will affect physiological functions. Yet many nutrition professionals continue to preach that loss of weight is the result of the number of calories ingested versus the number burned. If our emotions affect every part of our body and in particular our digestive system, how can they not be part of the equation?!Stress can be a major contributing factor to gaining weight. Not only because you might be driven to consume more calories, but also because its link to weakening digestion and to heightening fat production. Creating more stress around your weight loss process is counterproductive.Each time we stress ourselves out (yes, we are responsible for our own reactions to any given situation,) we demand our body release a surge of adrenalin. The more we stress, the more adrenalin we need. If we are not careful to replenish ourselves with good nutrition, stress relief and rest, our body will no longer have the fuel to keep up. Commonly this leads to cravings for caffeine and sugar which can stage a similar effect on the body. Caffeine and sugar can contribute both to emotional stress and weight gain. Without giving the body any real nutrients, most coffee brands and refined carbohydrates will cause a rise in blood sugar levels and get our adrenals to release more “juice”, giving us a renewed false sense of energy. This type of continuous behavior can trap the nervous system in ‘survival mode’ where digestion and other functions are impaired, the internal organs are weakened, and the adrenals are overworked (leading to other symptoms like insomnia).The Placebo effect: The mind is powerful beyond belief. A placebo is an inactive substance given to satisfy a patient’s symbolic need for drug therapy. It is also used in medical studies to compare results with an active drug. If the actual drug shows equal results to a placebo, it is discarded. That is because a placebo does in fact draw results.The placebo effect validates the relationship of body and mind. If the body believes it is healthy, it functions as healthy. Healing happens when our nervous system is in ‘relaxation mode.’ When the body trusts that our environment is safe, it puts the focus back on healing the internal organs of any impact caused while stressed. This strengthens the digestion system.The more ease you create in your life, the stronger every system of your body will be.If you are working on improving your health, take a look at what negative and limiting thoughts you are currently holding about yourself. Write them down and rephrase them into positive thoughts. Start loving who you are, rather than who you want to be. A seed holds the potential of a flower but will never bloom unless you shine some light on it. Come out of the dark.Carve out time to relax and replenish, find a way to move your body in a way that you enjoy; take a few deep breaths before each meal to calm the nervous system and stimulate digestion.Bring love into the process. When we feel love in a situation, our body is at ease. Our breathing is deeper, we trust in the moment, everything flows. Falling out of a state of love and trust, is when we contribute to dis-ease. on.