How to eat Mindfully and Mindlessly lose weight

Anna Daniele Kazmierczak

How to eat Mindfully and Mindlessly lose weight

Simplifying your complex relationship with food to easily live the healthy life you want

First published by Manageable Pieces LLC 2021

Copyright © 2021 by Anna Daniele Kazmierczak

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning, or otherwise without written permission from the publisher. It is illegal to copy this book, post it to a website, or distribute it by any other means without permission.

Anna Daniele Kazmierczak has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of URLs for external or third-party Internet Websites referred to in this publication and does not guarantee that any content on such Websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate.

Designations used by companies to distinguish their products are often claimed as trademarks. All brand names and product names used in this book and on its cover are trade names, service marks, trademarks and registered trademarks of their respective owners. The publishers and the book are not associated with any product or vendor mentioned in this book. None of the companies referenced within the book have endorsed the book.

This book contains the opinions and ideas of its author. This book is not intended to render medical, health or any other personal professional services, or constitute medical advice. The author and publisher disclaim all responsibility for any liability, loss, or risk that is incurred, directly or indirectly, by the use and application of any information and content of this book.

First edition

ISBN: 979-8-9850710-0-9

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Contents

Introduction

I. OUR MULTIDIMENSIONAL LIFE

1. Multidimensional Life, Multidimensional Eating

2. A Different Perspective

3. Think About It…

II. PSYCHOLOGY OF EATING

4. Psychology of Eating

5. The Beginning of Our Food Obsession

6. Why We Eat

7. Complex Eating Relationship

8. Things to Remember About Psychology of Eating

III. MYTHS AND FACTS OF DIETS AND CHANGE

9. Myths and Facts of Diets

10. Restrictive Diets

11. Why Dieting is Hard

12. Reality of Change

13. Things to Remember About Diets and Change

IV. MINDFUL EATING

14. Mindful Eating

15. Unearthing Habits

16. Awareness is Central to Mindful Eating

17. The Joy in Food and Eating

18. Mindful Eating in Real Life

19. Things to Remember About Mindful Eating

V. MINDLESS EATING

20. What Is Mindless Eating

21. Weight Gain Does Not Happen Overnight

22. Things to Remember About Mindless Eating

VI. ENJOYING FOOD AND EATING HEALTHY

23. Enjoying Food and Eating Healthy

24. Supporting Healthy Eating

25. Informed Food Decisions

26. Health Halos and Eating

27. Things to Remember About Enjoying Food and Eating Healthy

VII. LASTING CHANGE

28. Lasting Change

29. Implementing change

30. Mind the Sizes

31. Use Your Senses

32. Manage Habits

33. Create Great Expectations

34. Enjoy the Comfort

35. Make Your Own Decisions

36. Things to Remember About Creating Lasting Change

VIII. LIVING WITH CHANGE

37. Change and You

38. Written Words Have Power

39. Having a Plan Makes It Easier

40. Use Rules to Your Advantage

41. Things to Remember About Living with Change

42. Living Your Best Life

IX. APPENDICES

43. Appendix A – Substitution Ideas for Comfort Food Makeovers

44. Appendix B – Journals and Checklists

45. Appendix C – Menu Planning Ideas

46. Appendix D – Rules and Policies

References

Resources

Acknowledgements

Notes

About the Author

This book is for informational purposes only and does not constitute medical advice. The material is not intended to be a substitute for professional medical advice. Always seek the advice of qualified medial professional regarding any medical problems, conditions, or treatment and before undertaking new health-related changes. Health and nutrition needs vary between people based on their unique circumstances. This book is intended to provide general information to help you make informed decisions around food and eating.

Any application of the material provided in this book is at the reader’s discretion and is his or her sole responsibility. The material presented was written to provide accurate information relevant to the subject matter at the time of publication. Care was taken to confirm the accuracy of the information presented and to describe generally accepted practices. However, the author, editors, and publisher are not responsible for any errors and omissions or any consequences from the application of the information and material presented. No warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the completeness or accuracy of the contents is made. The author and publisher will not be liable for any losses and/or damages in connection with the use of this material.

Introduction

Do you think there is a right way to eat? Do you think there is a best diet to manage your weight? Have you ever been on a diet to lose weight? Did you learn about it from a someone who tried it and claimed to lose weight? Did you lose weight on that diet? Many of us would answer yes to most of those questions. Now let’s go a little deeper. How was your experience? Did you enjoy the experience of being on that diet? Did you enjoy the food or structure of the diet? Did you plan to make the diet your new normal way of eating going forward? Did you continue that eating plan after you met your weight loss goal? Did you keep the weight off long term (two years of more after you reached your weight loss goal)? If you answered no to most of the above you are in good company.

Most people who lose weight on a weight loss diet, be it a supervised commercial plan (Jenny Craig® for example), meal delivery plan (like Nutrisystem®), medically supervised plan (Medi-Weightloss® for example) or a popular weight loss diet (think Paleo or Ketogenic diet) do not keep it off long term. The long-term success rate between them varies but in general more than 80 percent of people who lose weight on them gain it back within five years (Hall & Kahan, 2018).

Despite these admittedly dismal statistics people keep trying these methods in the hopes of being one of the 20 percent who make it. They think, Some people managed to make it stick. I can do it too. I just need to get through the hard part and everything will fall into place. They focus more, work harder, and beat themselves up when they think they did not do well enough. They hyper-focus on the what and how much. What they should and should not eat and how much they are allowed. When they do not get the results, they work to increase their control without pausing to consider any other options or reasons. They keep trying the same things in the hopes of finally getting a different result.

They fail to ask the right questions. Unfortunately, without the right questions, it’s hard to figure out why some things worked for some people but failed to produce results for them. Instead of taking the time to seek out real information, they make assumptions and assign blame to themselves. It was not the diet that failed, it was me. I was not committed enough, not strong enough, and did not follow directions." Failing to identify the culprit for their perceived failure, they bounce around between the latest weight-loss schemes promising quick results.

Here is the reality. There are no quick and easy solutions to weight loss. It took months, if not years, to put it on and expecting it to be gone in two weeks is frankly ludicrous. Diets and solutions that promise quick weight-loss results are only giving you part of the picture; the rest is in the fine print. The fine print is where all the ifs, buts, and qualifiers reside. What qualifiers? The ones that spell out the unreasonably low-calorie counts required. The additional activities you are required to follow. Plus, the undeniable fact that "results shown are not typical and you should not expect to achieve the same results." Keeping weight off for six months is not a long-term result; it’s barely a blip. Wearing the same clothes (not just clothes size, since that can be moving target) five years from now is a better measure of long-term success. No diet is better than another for weight loss. What works for one person may not work for another. What works now may not work ten years from now.

Of course, in all this talk about diets and weight loss, we often forget to mention the little tiny wrinkle that we often ignore until it becomes the proverbial nail in the coffin of our latest weight-loss scheme: the fact that we actually like to eat and prefer our food to taste good. For the sake of doing the healthy thing we convince ourselves that we can remove our favorite foods from our life (for now) and replace them with a scripted menu of everything but things that taste good. We plan to make a temporary change to what and how we eat but expect permanent weight loss results while we go back to our normal life.

If you lose weight, then go back to doing what you did before, why would you expect the weight to stay gone? The obvious answer is that if you make a temporary change, you will get temporary results. But permanently giving up on eating our favorite foods, or at least food we enjoy eating, just to keep our weight in check seems like a lot to ask. I agree, it is. Losing weight and keeping it off should not mean giving up the simple pleasure of eating delicious food you like. It may not seem like a recipe for weight loss, but it can be. Remember those 20 percent who follow a diet plan and manage to keep the weight off for years? It’s not that the diet provided a miracle cure. It is because the diet satisfied their need for eating delicious food they like while they made healthy choices, among other things.

We are creatures of habit. We like things to happen a certain way and with a certain level of consistency. Our days are organized and run efficiently. We like our food a certain way and enjoy it more or less based on a number of unique factors and circumstances. We lead complex lives that include things that impact the smallest decisions we make each day. Food, eating, our health and weight are all part of this complex web. Picking a miscellaneous diet and jamming it into this complex environment is rarely a recipe for success. Diets work when they fit in seamlessly into our complicated daily machine.

Picking the right way to eat healthier and lose weight is not about trying dozens of different plans, proposed by other people, and hoping they (finally) work. It is about understanding your complex machine and setting up a unique way of eating that works for YOU.

This book is not another diet plan. It is not a prescriptive set of rules, dos and don’ts, or foods to eat. Why? Because there is no one set of rules that fits every life and works for everyone. This book is the start of understanding how food and eating fit into YOUR LIFE. There are lots of practical things you can implement in your life that will make battling your weight a thing of the past and make managing your weight easy. If you are ready to start a new chapter in living a healthy life, a life that includes enjoying the food you eat while losing weight, then read on.

I

Our Multidimensional Life

Food is a vital component of a vibrant life.

If we keep doing what we’re doing, we’re going to keep getting what we’re getting. - Stephen R. Covey

1

Multidimensional Life, Multidimensional Eating

Most of the time when we talk diets, we focus on the what and/or how much. We aim to control the things we eat in the hope that it results in weight loss. We take a one-dimensional approach because we think that eating is a one-dimensional exercise. Fuel for the body. We conveniently forget the pleasure we get from a meal we enjoy. Even if we remember that pleasure, we discount its importance and think of it as secondary. We think that if we apply enough willpower, we can control our body and get the results we think we want.

I want to propose that despite our focus on what and how much, eating is not one dimensional. When it comes to eating, those two things are not the most important parts. What we eat and how much we eat are the result of more important, or at least stronger, factors. Our environment, emotions, health, and physical and mental state all impact our eating, yet we rarely notice them. Even worse, we completely ignore them when we want to lose weight or change our eating habits.

Instead of celebrating the differences in our lives that make us unique, when it comes to weight loss, we do our best to fit ourselves into neat little boxes designed by someone else. Then we wonder why it’s so hard or why the new scheme fails. We list all the reasons for our failures except for the most important one; our unique life. Being unique and living a unique life is not bad; it’s a reality for everyone. We know that we cannot all be doctors because we need engineers, plumbers, farmers, carpenters, artists, and many others in order for our society to function well and have longevity. Even better, we know that we need different combinations of professions and talents in different places at different times. A metropolis like New York will have different needs for different professions and populations, than a small rural town in New Hampshire. Those unique combinations are what make each city or town not just survive, but thrive.

Your life is like that. If you live in a big city, you may not need or want a car. Along those lines, your shopping habits may also be affected by your access to stores and transportation. A diet built around organic produce may work for someone who lives a five-minute walk away from an organic market but not for someone who gets most of their groceries from a corner store. Your work schedule and family status will affect your food buying and preparation choices. Your background, taste preferences, and upbringing have an important say too. Every little thing that makes your life multidimensional and different also affects every aspect of your eating.

Your preferences are affected by many factors, including early childhood exposures and experiences. They continuously evolve with time. Your living situation is unique and may change significantly with time as well. All those things, rarely thought of in relation to food, affect your eating. You ignore them to your own peril, or at least disappointment. Why would you think that the same is not true for your body? You need different varieties and proportions of nutrients to stay healthy (that is why they are recommended in ranges rather than discrete amounts). Nutrients are just a piece of the puzzle because you also have different eating experience preferences that help keep you satisfied.

Focusing on Food Alone Is Risky

Despite all that variety in our life when it comes to weight loss or management, we hyper focus on food alone. Sometimes we focus on exercise alone or as part of the weight-loss plan. We ignore all those things that make our life go smoothly, while we throw major disruptions into the mix. Focusing on food alone makes us select plans based on what worked for others, such as friends or celebrities. We buy programs, cookbooks and subscribe to meal plans based on what we think we should do. It worked for Kelly in the office next door, and she had a big cupcake problem; therefore it should work for me. All those people following diet X look great and happy, so I can do that too. The lists of foods I can eat and those I have to give up look doable for a few months. We focus externally without much thought of the impact to our life.

We spend so much time focusing on the plans and the expected results that we forget to look at the big picture. Those prepackaged meal plans are great if you are living alone. They save time, planning, and limit options and temptations. They limit grocery store trips and, with that, opportunities for unplanned purchases of snacks and other forbidden goods. But how appetizing will they look when you are watching the rest of the family enjoy a meal you cooked but cannot eat? No time or effort savings here, just a daily reminder of the things you cannot have. How appetizing will the same limited set of meals look after eating them for a few months? Can you see yourself eating that same set of meals for years? Why years? Because to keep the results you achieve, you have to follow the plan forever, not just for a few months.

Focusing on food alone ignores things that may be very important toward the success of your chosen diet plan. If you do not take the time to understand the impact food-related change will have on your daily life and on your body, you leave a lot of potential saboteurs to your success. Food is just one of the pieces of our unique and complex daily lives. Believe me, the connections are complex. They involve our environment and our bodies (especially our brains), and rational and conscious decision making is only a small piece of the puzzle.

Ever Wonder Why Losing Weight Is Hard?

I hear all the time Why is it so hard? when it comes to weight loss. Brenda followed this diet and lost sixty pounds and I have not been able to lose ten after weeks of trying. I am following the exact same diet, so why is it not working? It must be me. These comments are frequent and the answer is rarely, It must be something you are not doing according to plan. The reality is that you are not Brenda and you do not lead Brenda’s life. You do not know exactly what Brenda did or how hard it was for her. At best, you have the information Brenda shared or pointed you to. Most importantly, your multidimensional life is not Brenda’s multidimensional life; therefore your experiences and results will be different.

What do I mean by multidimensional? I mean that your taste buds are different, your texture preferences are different, and you may find other colors appealing. You have school-age kids in the house; Brenda is an empty nester. You have a forty—five minute commute in each direction; Brenda lives ten minutes from work. Maybe your kids have a busy extracurricular activity calendar. Maybe they have special dietary needs. Did I mention that kids come with snacks? No unapproved snacks at Brenda’s house. Your sport taxi duties leave limited time for working out. Brenda started spending an hour at the gym six days a week when she started her diet. (Oh and she forgot to mention that when she shared her weight loss plan with you.) These are just a few of the things that make you YOU and Brenda BRENDA and your lives completely different.

How many times have you started a diet based on someone’s recommendation but failed to take a deeper look at how your lives differed? How often have you focused on the food, ignored the rest, then faced frustration at why it was so hard for you? How many times have you failed while others succeeded at seemingly the same thing? How many times did the weight come back even after a successful diet? Odds are the answer is too often. The key is that it was not for lack of trying, or willpower, or desire, or determination but something completely different; a poor fit with your life.

Life Happens

The truth is, life happens; yet we pretend that it has no impact on our efforts for change. We want things to work out so they should (or so we think). It rarely works that way. Your life follows a predictable set of patterns and is set up to minimize and resist disruption to those patterns. My life has a unique set of patterns that makes it work. Yours is unique too. Our actions, conscious and unconscious, set up those patterns over time. Undoing them is harder than we think. It’s hard to change, not because we are set in our ways, but because we do not realize just how ingrained and deep those ways are.

Our daily life is full of actions, reactions, connections, and habits we are not really aware of. It is all set up to make us as efficient as possible in getting things done. From the way we wake up, get out of bed, get dressed, and complete a hundred tiny tasks, to the moment we fall asleep, our day flows along these patterns. We