But before that, I’m going to make a disclaimer. In no way
was I paid to reference this webinar. I initially thought of keeping all the
things out that will make it look like I was promoting it, but it’s not fair
too right? If you come across something good, you talk about it. Same like
Cohen, I have no negative things to speak about it except the task of preparing
1 meal separately and that’s just me talking lazy. :D
I’m a voluntary subscriber to Mindvalley. I don’t remember
how I came across it (maybe FB) but somehow I felt that it’s alright to spend
some money on learnings I would not get except through the web. Why not? My
take on it is that learning in any form contributes to your pool of knowledge.
Today as I was having my morning coffee outside, thinking “what the hell just happened last night?!?!?!” (deviation, Day 45, just binged at night). There I was so good and straight and then boom! Hunger and craving got the best of me. Why? Why was I feeling hungry the past few days? Is it because I wasn’t busy and bored? Or I’m just plain hungry? I was scrolling through my emails and saw an email from Mindvalley about the re-run of the masterclass called: Evolution of Health and Fitness with Eric Meads. So I decided to give it my time since I’m just sitting having coffee and doing nothing.
As in any other business, this is filled with references to the program they are selling called Wildfit. I’m not really interested in that because I am a solid Cohenite (there I said it! :D). But it somehow follows the same logic: eat natural foods & workout not required. Anyhow, they have started the discussion on a study of how an elephant in the wild and captivity eats. Then it continued to how we used to eat in the hunter-gatherer time (reminds me of Paleo concepts) and to how we are eating now. So..yada yada yada... and then they showed 3 people who followed this program (cool, not overselling and that’s fine). Then at the end, a 30minute talk about the program which I didn’t listen to (yet).
Key Points:
1. Beware of
sugar -> what struck me most:
a. It makes you want to eat more- aha! And so there it is. I have been eating mangoes for about
a week now. I started with properly portioning 1 huge mango into 2 meals to
just eating 1 whole per meal or snack twice a day! This could have slowly led to
my hunger that eventually led me to binge on 1.5 bars of gluten free chocolate
and instant noodles!
b. Eliminating it, improves your taste buds – true to form, as I was eating these gluten free chocolate
bars I found it to be TOO sweet while my bf was saying “really? its not as sweet as a normal chocolate.” And in spite of it being too sweet for me, I
still kept eating it.
2. Beware of chemicals -> Everything is made up of chemicals. But what he was referencing to here are the unnatural ones or the ones that are manufactured or altered i.e. chemically / artificially flavoured, even naturally flavoured (coz it's just partially natural).
3. Think in Seasons -> Not the seasons
where we live in, but where we originated from as homo-sapiens. It talked about
Recommended Daily Allowance (RDA) which points out that there was no time in evolution that identified what we actually needed to survive in terms of vitamins and
minerals.
We ate in seasons, when natural foods were plenty. So we should give our bodies a chance to enjoy
these seasons i.e. when we travel to a tropical country, why not make it our ‘fruit’ season and enjoy all the natural stuff we can get there. Then
get off of these when we return home because of the amount of natural sugars in
there. Cool
then, point taken
4. Get enough of the good -> What is more important? Getting rid of the bad stuff or getting enough of the good stuff? Our society now encourages getting rid of the ‘bad stuff’ i.e. gluten-free, lactose-free, sugar-free etc. That’s not the bigger problem, yes getting rid of the bad is good, but we don’t notice that we are not getting enough of the good stuff in our bodies. So if a person eats perfectly (all good stuff in, all bad stuff out) and you leave out one good thing like Vit. C, eventually the person will suffer from a deficiency and could get scurvy. So it’s much more important to get enough of the good stuff in.
Kind of clashes
on item 4, but is a valid point.
5.
Master
the hungers -> here’s the meaty part of the
Masterclass J Loved it!
Willpower. He simply said that if we approached eating through brute force/willpower (good angel vs. bad angel)
eventually the bad angel can take over the good one will defeat your willpower.
However, he teaches people to approach food psychologically, changing their
associations with food.
I agree to
this, I mean how many times have we tried so hard to lose weight, get fit and
failed. Because we are forcing it without actually understanding it. As per my
experience, I want to understand things before I can accept it, whether it be
on relationships (why we broke up) or why people behave like that (toxic boss),
otherwise I will rebel. I will act out, which I know to this degree that I do
when I eat the things I know that are bad for me.
I just don’t understand why
of all people I have to be the one who needs to watch what I eat. It’s so
unfair! I'm just starting to come to terms that its not me, its everything about
me – the way I grew up and how my family approached food, my age, how I treated
my body on food, and the fact that we are all wired differently. I see this as a defeat, like by default I have to accept it. But what else is there to do about
it? Just deal with it and fix it because nobody is going to fix it for me.
Six
human hungers: What triggers people to eat
a. Nutritional Hunger: We experience it
all the time, we evolved by avoiding starvation. But nowadays we are
“over-nourished” in terms of having access to food that are actually not good
for us. We eat a lot but we are still under-nourished, so our body screams out
for more, and then we reach out for more food that doesn’t nourish us, it fills
us, yes, but it doesn’t keep is nutritionally full. -> Yep. Guilty as charged.
b. Thirst: You think it’s about water but it’s
not, long term it is. Naturally we used to get by with water rich foods. So
when our body tells us ‘you are hungry’ most of the time it has something to do
with hydration. For the modern day human, we can’t distinguish the real hunger
vs. the need to hydrate. Same as item a. we keep reaching for food that is not
reach in water that some of them takes water away from us, so we grab more food
and it becomes a loop. -> For someone who drinks
a lot of water, I never really thought of getting hydration through water rich
foods. I know watermelon is rich in water, but I don’t associate it in keeping
the thirst away. Thank you.
c. Variety: It’s a natural thing that our
body seeks variety and that we don’t eat one thing over and over. This ties up
to the ‘Think of Seasons’. As the season changes, what's available to us changes too which should satisfy us + link to Nutritional Hunger. -> Boredom canget the best of us, ehem! It can give us cravings that can make us
reach for the food that’s not right for us, because its convenient.
d. Low blood sugar: Thing to watch out for
because once the body sends this signal to the brain, the brain thinks that it
will go in starvation mode and it will not get enough glucose. Ergo, we reach
for sugar. According to him the best way to get sugar is by metabolizing fat
(burning fat = long term solution). To avoid this, avoid having a lot of
dietary sugars in your body in the first place which sounds counterintuitive to
begin with, but once you got this down, the body goes on to metabolizing your
fat to gain access to sugar for energy. -> Mood
swings here we are. So what do we do? Just suck it up and eventually it will
evens out and work to our advantage? Okay, lets give it a try, I guess being on
Cohen does this for us and bringing us to what we lovingly call ‘the Zone”.
Cool.
e. Emotional hunger: Links to nostalgia
and the associations we have about food, the memories and what we felt during
the time we were eating those foods.
I.e. A child skins his knee, and
what do we do? Give him some comfort food, and so subconsciously this comfort
food equals to care and love. Fast forward, we reach out for these things to
comfort us when we feel hurt or sad..
Oh yeah, as I mentioned in my previous
post about the role of food that played in our lives, it had become a social
thing. The food ties to memories that come with it, whether good or bad. We go
out, we want to eat. Hay.
f. Empty
stomach hunger: Not a hunger at all, it’s a feeling we have linked up to
hunger. So for example out stomachs are empty and then it is coupled by any of
the points above (emotional hunger or thirst etc.) then we link it to being
hungry. If you have been eating well that you are nutritionally full, your fat
metabolism is on point and your stomach is empty, your body is not actually
hungry, but we always thought that empty stomach = need to eat something.
Knowing that the stomach can expand/shrink and what we do is eat far more
than what we are supposed to and eventually the empty stomach feeling becomes
more pronounced and the more space we need to “fill”.
We should notice this hunger, really feel it and determine if it’s really
hunger or it’s something else that you need to fulfill. Also, to curb this is
to eat smaller more regular meals so your stomach stays small.
I didn’t know this, I always heard about eating small and
regular meals is good for you, and good for your diet. Yes, it help us avoid
hunger, but I never made the connection to the empty stomach hunger. Cool. It
doesn’t have anything to do with the calories but just the fact of keeping the
stomach somehow filled and avoid that psychological part of my stomach is
empty, I want/should eat something.
So there you have it folks, some learnings for today. Marinate
on that.
Day 46: Deviation free. Vitamins taken. Still had mangoes,
but shared it with the bf so Im still ok with the portions.
Mood = ok
Hunger = yes
