How Do You Listen to Your Body?

It is common these days to hear health and exercise gurus telling you to "listen to your body".  Some of them are quacks, pushing pseudo-science remedies for everyday ailments, but others have advice backed by good research and years of medical practice.  It's usually easy to tell who is good.

What I want to talk about in brief is what it means to listen to your body, and how you can do it relatively reliably.

What is listening to your body?

In short, it is the practice of self-awareness where you take note of how you feel (output) when doing certain things or changing the fuel/stimulus of your body (input).

The inputs can be things like experimenting with different diets, e.g. slow-carb, low-carb, zone, paleo, etc. and the outputs, how you listen to your body, could be noticing responses like less aches and pains, more energy to perform activities, weight loss, different thought patterns, better sporting performance, etc.

A parkour example, to illustrate a slightly different approach, is when warming up for a solo training session.  The practitioner will assess her body and how muscles, joints, and mental aspects are operating.  Am I sore anywhere?  Do I feel up for a challenge or is there a lazy kind of feeling about myself?  Then using this information, she will likely decide to train in a way which rests those areas of her body that are sore and allows her to receive the mental stimulus appropriate to the day.

How can you do it?

It's quite easy to copy this approach in a general way.  I think most people do unconsciously.  However, to add more value to the approach, getting better results from your self-experimentation, it is useful to be a little more rigorous in your method.

One way is to record your inputs and outputs with a journal.  A simple spreadsheet with three columns would suffice.  One for the input - what are you trying?  One for the output - what effect(s) did you notice?  And one for any comments or recommendations to yourself for further reflection and action.  

It is important to note that some trials should take place over a number of days, weeks, or years.  Careful research is also necessary so that you know what to expect with your trials.  And finally, it is a great idea to find others who have experimented in a similar way so that you can discuss and collaborate for further added value.  Getting others involved, sharing anything learned, that makes all the difference sometimes - that's why I write a lot of what I write, to share the joy!

A final note is that you don't have to wait to experiment with inputs and outputs.  You are already immersed in a lifestyle which is producing outputs.  See if you can list all of the aches, pains, and annoying things about your body.  These are your default outputs and the goal is to improve on these.  Sometimes our bodies have been screaming at us for years and we have not noticed!

So there it is, I hope this has cleared up a bit of confusion or brought some clarity to your thinking.  Now go forth into the world and listen to your body!

The Deliberate Eater - a.k.a. Eating for Life (feeling good now and later)

I try to lead a relatively deliberate life. That means I like to have reasons for everything I do. This, in turn, prevents me from wasting time and usually leads to more enjoyment in life. I want to share some of this here so that others can find more enjoyment and how to feel good in the way I have.

For the James Brown song "I feel good" there is a video at the end!

A warning: this post might require a bit of brain engagement, but the rewards of doing so are worth the effort. Here we go!

My reasons to eat
The way my deliberate life works out in things nutritional is that I eat for the following reasons (in no particular order):

1. To enjoy what I am currently eating in the moment - every mouthful 
2. To have what I crave, when I crave it 
3. To be able to control what I crave so that I don’t feel guilty after eating
4. To feel satisfied after eating, not hungry, not craving anything bad, e.g. sweetness 
5. To be able to stay active, fuelling for the exercise I love to do 
6. To be healthy for life, by taking in a good balance of nutrients and not adding to my waistline 
7. To be stress free (including stressing over cravings) 

Most people eat only because they’re hungry and/or they want to enjoy the experience. That’s okay with me as long as this is a deliberate decision and as long as my tax dollars don’t fund their health care (which it does in this country).

A lot of people also try to eat to be healthy but are usually misinformed about how to eat to accomplish this, or they are ill-disciplined in their approach. Hopefully there are a few useful tips here to help overcome these two problems. I have had, and continue to battle them in myself. I want to be clear about that. But having dropped from 130kg+ down to an average of about 95kg (maintained over the last 2 years), I think I’ve worked out a few things that can help - and I really want to help.

Why you should start being deliberate today
Because the things you eat have a huge impact on your emotions, energy, stress, concentration, and more, you must consider your nutrition deliberately and carefully if you have any goals in life that come under mental or physical (or even spiritual) categories. It sounds like this will turn out to be complex, but really it’s quite simple to make some major changes, and these changes will have such an effect that you should be inspired to make even more positive changes in your diet.

Achieving goals, or just feeling great, no matter what age you are, is entirely achievable. And the quicker you make a start, the sooner you will see more happiness and enjoyment in life.

Some quick ideas to get you started
I suggest choosing two or three of these ideas to try first, then come back after a few weeks to assess your progress. Some people will have more lasting habit changes by bookmarking and re-reading this every week. Others will prefer to make a written note and stick it up in an obvious place (I’ve found it helpful to make desktop backgrounds with goals and long-term reminders incorporated).

Idea 1 - Start thinking about food as a pharmaceutical drug that controls your hormones (which control your mood and your energy level). Anything that spikes your energy requires you to come down from that spike - a low in energy and a resulting low mood.

Foods that make your energy spike include sugar, bread, potatoes, pasta, cereal, any other white/starchy carbohydrates, sugary fruit, fruit juice.

Idea 2 - There’s a difference between a mental and a physical craving. If you decide you feel like something sweet, first pause and work out where it is coming from. I find it helps to become consciously aware of my taste buds and to imagine what the response in my mouth will be if I put something sweet on my tongue.

If I decide my sweetness craving is physical, then I have the healthiest options I can. My first preference is natural and unprocessed honey - I savour a teaspoon full in my mouth and then reassess my craving. Sometimes a small piece of sweet fruit will do, e.g. a peach or strawberry. In the absence of honey or fruit, a small glass of diet coke with it’s evil artificial sugar. While this isn’t ideal, it is better than some refined sugar in lollies or biscuits.


Idea 3 - Stress is a killer that makes you crave sweetness. Unsatisfied craving for sweetness can lead to more stress than it’s worth which is why you should keep some honey nearby. I firmly believe it is better to binge on honey than on giant jellybeans (my nemesis sweet). Honey satisfies much quicker too.

Idea 4 - Drink plenty of water but spread it out rather than having it all in one big hit.

Idea 5 - You shouldn’t feel very hungry between meals if you eat this way but spreading out your food into smaller meals every three or four hours is good.

Idea 6 - Eat before you are hungry to prevent overdoing it with a panic-sized meal. Try to limit meals to 2000KJ (approx 500 calories)

Idea 7 - Of the foods that are okay to eat, find something reliable and have plenty of that around. The more thinking you have to do about what to eat, the harder it is to stick to an eating routine that will work for you. I have two or three quick and reliable meals, and another two or three quick foods which usually stop me craving. The more I crave food (of whatever kind) the more likely I am to misinterpret that craving as a desire for sweet.

My reliable foods/meals to eat as much of as I want are:
Tuna (plain chunky in spring water - drained) + four bean mix (from a can with no chickpeas - drained and rinsed also) + salt + extra virgin olive oil + balsamic vinegar. Variations can remove the beans and add veges (cucumber + tomato). This is a large-ish meal for me now and I usually have half only, saving the other half for another time.

Scrambled eggs - Extra virgin olive oil or butter in a pan + two to five eggs (depends how hungry I am) + salt. A cup of mixed veg on the side if you want a little more colour on your plate.

Coffee with cream (liquid, unprocessed, pouring cream). I usually make my coffee weak and I am moving to decaff.

Cheese, unprocessed of course. I prefer mild cheddar or another harder cheese.

Cream (as above in my coffee) straight from the bottle. This is a good top-up for me because I love fresh cream but it is rich enough that I can’t take too much before I feel satisfied.

Mixed vegetables.

There you go
I hope there is something of use here to help you become a more deliberate eater.

If there is one main idea to take away it is that we should eat not just for the immediate rewards, but also for the mid-term and long-term rewards. Rather than feeling bad shortly after finishing your meal, whether due to guilt or a low in energy, you can eat in such a way that you feel good all day and every day into the foreseeable future.


All the best! (and don’t forget to let me know how it goes)

PS - Eating this way can help prevent diabetes and many inflammatory diseases.

PPS - Take a quality fish oil supplement that is high in EPA. This is essential if you are an athlete.

And James Brown:

Nutrition and Diet (Properly Interpreted Evidence Trumps Worldview)

This is a post from my old parkour blog (which I'm slowly closing down). The important thing to take out of this post is that we don't need to fight about where our reasons come from for some things. The evidence can stand for itself. I've shifted the links to the bottom that were originally at the top because I have a whole set of links from www.crossfit.com that are your one-stop shop for starting nutrition. They are the 8 parts of a lecture by Dr. Sears, creator of the Zone diet. In them, he explains how nutrition can be treated like medication, with dosages to control different hormone levels in your body. Get the hormone levels in the right zone and your weight sorts itself out.

Diet, Inflammation and Disease - parts 1 to 3
Diet, Inflammation and Disease - part 4 (Fish Oil)
Diet, Inflammation and Disease - part 5
Diet, Inflammation and Disease - part 6 (performance)
Diet, Inflammation and Disease - part 7 (performance)
Diet, Inflammation and Disease - part 8 (performance)


3rd July 2009
As I've said in a number of places before (though not on this blog), I disagree with the reasoning behind some of the sorts of dietary advice mentioned but my reasoning leads to basically the same general ideas. The main exception is the recommendation not to eat fruit (or "real fruit" juices) - I think fruit is something that should be part of every diet though, as with everything, in moderation.

Some of my reasoning and assumptions:

1. Disease has become much more prevalent in the last couple of hundred years and is easily linked to diet (though not solely). This means we only need to look back to the diet of people within recorded history to see what is good for us to eat - supposed evolutionary models are not required. 
2. A long life is not automatically an important thing - quality of life (mental, physical, spiritual) is more important than a long life.
3. Nutrition is simple and the main principles can be understood by everyone with a mind to consider it.

These are the ideas that I think everyone can relate to. There are more concrete concepts that derive specifically from my Christian worldview, but my primary desire in this post isn't to get into that side of things, just to give people some ideas for developing their health through diet. If you want more info on that side, email me or post in the comments and I'll give you a brief run down.

A couple of worthwhile articles that Tom Kurz linked to on his blog:
http://blog.zeroinginonhealth.com/?p=1009
http://coolinginflammation.blogspot.com/2009/06/diet-nutrition-and-health.html
http://www.paleonu.com/get-started/

Current Nutritional Regime (March 2011)

Weekdays and Sundays
Breakfast - 2 x whole eggs (a whole egg is a normal egg with yolk and white) and as many egg whites as I feel like (minimum of 3 on top of 2 whole eggs), 1x cup of mixed veges (carrot, corn, pea mix), salt to taste.

Lunch - 1 x 200g tin of tuna, 1 x can of beans (four bean mix), 2 x tablespoons grape-seed oil, 2 x tablespoons balsamic vinegar, salt to taste.

Dinner - 1 x portion of meat (large pork chop, half a chicken, 300g mince, 300g steak, or other protein source), roast veges (pumpkin, carrots, beet), salt or other seasoning to flavour.  Sometimes the veges are replaced by a salad made from lettuce, tomato, carrot, cheese, olives.  Sometimes the meat is replaces by egg whites for protein.

Snacks - mixed veges (sometimes with salt)

Drinks - weak black coffee in unlimited quantities (half a level teaspoon of instant coffee per normal sized cup) and a glass or two of red wine in the evening (Cabernet-Savingion blanc).  I also have a glass or two of Coke Zero but will be cutting back on this and the wine for a few weeks at least.  

Saturdays
Whatever I feel like.  Pig out day.  Binge hard.  This Saturday (just gone) I ate almost two bags of giant jellybeans, 650g of muesli, 2L of soy milk (I stay away from dairy, even on this “day off” because of the way it affects my cardio), 500g honey, some home baking, four drum-sticks of chicken, 2 large bags of doritos, and 1 teaspoon of milo (I hadn’t tasted it in a while).

My Ideal Diet

Having lost a significant amount of weight in the last couple of years (more than 35 kilograms), I often get a number of people asking me what sort of diet I used to accomplish this.  This is not necessarily the best diet for someone to lose weight, but it is the diet that I aim for to suit my active and busy lifestyle.

Right up front I want to say that I don’t diet.  I won’t restrict myself to salads or just starve myself.  That sort of thing doesn’t work.  Instead, I’ve approached eating with a bit of science and recommendations from established research that I’ve come across in sport science books and articles.  So when I talk about my “diet” I am actually talking about what I like to eat, not a special plan or menu.

So what do I eat?
Lots of protein such as red meat, chicken, fish, some milk/dairy products, and legumes such as beans.  Protein fills you up, keeping you feeling satisfied for longer, and is harder for your body to get energy from which means you will have a more consistent supply of energy.  If you eat lots of sugary foods and fizzy drink, that energy is dumped straight into your system which has no hope of using it all (even if you get a sugar high and go crazy bouncing off the walls).  The excess energy in your system tells your body that it doesn’t need to use stores of fat for energy and you are less likely to get rid of the excess poundage.

You might have latched onto the idea in the previous paragraph, but I’ll restate it here for emphasis.  To burn fat for energy, whether that is fat eaten or stores in your body, you need to have a slow but consistent supply of energy.  

Foods that provide too much energy are either simple (often processed) carbohydrates such as sugary drinks and lollies which dump too much energy into your system too fast; or energy rich carbohydrates such as potatoes, bread, rice, pasta, and anything else that is starchy.

Foods that contain a lot of fibre are good because they do not digest easily.  Carrots are an example of a type of food that actually takes more energy to digest than they provide, assuming you eat them raw.

There is some research that shows that if you eat anything you want one day out of seven, taking that one day as a day to totally indulge yourself, you are more likely to stick to good eating habits the rest of the week, and you reset particular hormone levels in your body to stop it going into energy/fat storage mode.

I love green salads with chicken or feta and some balsamic vinegar.  I love green apples for snacks and I tend to eat the core to get the minerals and vitamins in the seeds.  If I get bored of water I will drink sugar free fizzy drinks like Coke Zero.

Simple meals are generally better for you rather than complex or elaborate meals.  They are also quick/easy to prepare.  Sauces add a lot of flavour but are an unnecessary source of energy and often disguise the natural flavours of the food.

Find relatively low energy foods that you love and can snack on when you are hungry before your meal.  Exchange lollies for a sweet fruit if you have to have something sweet - the natural sugars are better for your system than processed sugars.

My ideal meal will be about half a kilogram of lean red meat with a bit of salt and a large green salad with feta cheese and cherry tomatoes.  This is one of the most satisfying meals for me.

According to one of my favourite Sport Science books, if your meal is appropriately balanced you will not feel hungry for 3 or 4 hours after the meal.  If you do then you need to look at what you ate and see if there is anything missing (protein, carbs, fat, water).

For the average person with an averagely active lifestyle you should consume about 2000 Kilojoules of energy per meal and have roughly 3 or 4 meals each day.  You can see how much energy you are consuming by looking at the packets of what you eat or searching online for guides.  I tend not to worry about kilojoule or calorie counting because it makes me worry and stress about feeling hungry.  I just try to focus on topping up my tummy with protein or green apples if I feel hungry because I know these things will fill me up fast, I will enjoy eating them, and I will stay full for longer.

So there you have it.  A little all over the place, but that is some of the things I’ve found that work for me.  If you are a good learner you will experiment and develop your diet over a number of years.  Don’t be afraid to try things out.  You may find that your biggest challenge will be eating within a budget, as carbohydrates are ridiculously cheap and protein is expensive.  There is no way around this, but know that protein does leave you feeling full longer so it might pay off in the end to spend a bit more on your food.