As a yoga teacher, life coach, and general health nut, friends and family frequently bombard me with questions about how I maintain my weight. Especially as they see me diving enthusiastically into an (organic, handmade, all-natural, made from local ingredients) ice cream cone. At 5’9” and about 130 pounds, I’m not overly skinny, nor have I ever been. But I am slender and toned—and haven’t always been. I went through my “Pudgy MeiMei” phase at Stanford, when I gained the notorious Freshman 15. This quickly turned into the Sophomore, Junior, and Senior 30+ due to a diet of three hearty dorm meals a day, plus regular midnight pizza and a few too many frat party punches.

In the spirit of maintaining those ever-elusive New Year’s resolutions (research indicates that by Valentine’s Day this Sunday, 80% of us already will have failed), here is my quick and easy guide.

Eat Well

I think Michael Pollan summed it up brilliantly in his bestselling book In Defense of Food when he wrote: “Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.”

By “eat food,” Pollan means real, whole foods. Try to eat food that is as close as possible to the Earth. The less processing, the better. This means avoiding packaged foods and refined grains such as white pasta, white bread, and crackers.

“Mostly plants” is pretty obvious. Fruit and vegetables should be the primary focus of every meal, not the side dish. Go for color—greens, reds, yellows, oranges, purples. A rainbow on your plate is a delight to all the senses.

As for “not too much,” that’s a little more complicated. I don’t believe in dieting—it puts you in a deprivation mindset, so that you feel like you’re suffering and can’t wait to “cheat.” It’s more effective to view eating well as a way of life. But you can’t avoid the fact that we’re machines: input - output = weight. If you want to weigh less, you need to eat less and exercise more. Here, the best advice I can give you is to eat when you’re hungry, not out of an emotional need to comfort yourself and not because it’s mealtime. Don’t be afraid of being hungry—a little stomach grumbling can be a good thing. Once you’ve gotten accustomed to eating less, you won’t get as hungry any more.

I don’t believe in taking supplements, unless you are specifically lacking something from your diet, per your doctor’s instructions. Eating whole foods should do the trick. A recent New York Times article provided great evidence for this line of thinking.

Play Well

How about working out? I don’t subscribe to any hard and fast rules here either. Rather than obsessing over how many minutes you must do of weight lifting versus cardio, the recommended heart rate, or anything scientific, I recommend setting a simple goal of at least 45 minutes of exercise, a minimum of 4 times per week. What matters most is that you find something to do for exercise that you love, whether that be walking, swimming, biking, doing yoga, climbing trees, or (ideally) some combination of two or more activities. Bottom line: If your exercise routine makes you happy, you’ll be more inclined to do it.

Note: This is my latest post to Stanford Alumni Association’s “Living Well” blog.

Back when the Beatles traveled to the foothills of the Indian Himalayas to study Transcendental Meditation (TM) with Maharishi-guru, most people thought of the activity as some sort of new age, hippie pastime. But over the past few decades, scientific studies have revealed time and again the significant benefits of meditation in terms of health and wellbeing.

The National Institutes for Health (NIH) reports that in clinical trails, meditation has been shown to relieve stress, asthma, and symptoms of chronic pain; reduce frequency and intensity of hot flashes among menopausal women; and improve attention and focus. It is thought to work by minimizing our body’s stress response and increasing activity of the parasympathetic nervous system (causing heart and breathing rate to slow, blood flow to increase, and digestion to improve). And it’s free, available to everyone regardless of age or health, and can be done in the convenience of your own home.

I have attended two ten-day silent Vipassana meditation retreats (find out how you can, too, at www.dhamma.org). Not only were we not permitted to talk, but we could not listen to music, write in a journal, exercise (other than walking during breaks), or read books. Basically, we had to live in the prison of our own minds with no distractions.

I was so nervous on my first day there that I nearly threw up on the meditation hall floor.  Seriously. For three straight 16-hour long days, I stewed, raged, got bored, fidgeted, and generally hated the experience. The only part I looked forward to was the delicious vegetarian lunch.

But on Day Four, I had a breakthrough. The afternoon session slipped by without my becoming anxious or agitated. In fact, I couldn’t believe it when the gong sounded, signaling that the evening tea break had begun. My mind had quieted down. I had found peace. I bowed forward on my cushion, placed my forehead on the floor, and wept with gratitude. Of course the very next day, I was back to my jumpy self… but at least I knew that my efforts were getting me somewhere.

If you don’t have a meditation practice, I recommend giving it a try. Just pick a quiet place in your house and set an alarm for 15 (or start with five, then ten, then work your way up to even 60) minutes. Sit comfortably on a cushion with a tall spine, and watch the breath move in and out of your nostrils. When you notice your mind wandering, simply label what you’re doing without judgment (“thinking,” “planning,” “remembering,” “fantasizing”), and then return to monitoring your breath.*

My favorite excuse people give for not meditating is: “I’m no good at it!” Really? I say. Guess what? None of us are good at it! You’re not born a meditator, anymore than you’re born a pianist or athlete or doctor. You have to work at it. What’s more, there’s no such thing as a good or bad sit. If you’re sitting, you are by definition meditating. Some days are easier than others. Some days bring a nearly instant sense of calm and grounding, whereas some days you’ll find your mind wandering and struggling throughout.

But isn’t that the nature of life? We feel more balanced and competent when we stand in our deep-rooted sense of who we are and the goodness of life, than when we allow ourselves to get swept up with intense emotional responses to every “good” or “bad” event that happens. The key—to meditation and to wellbeing—is not to judge or react, but rather to find equanimity, returning to the breath time and again no matter what whirlwinds surround and invade us.

*If you want to learn more about meditation, I strongly recommend the classic book “Wherever you Go, There you Are” by Jon Kabat-Zinn, MD. You might also try attending a meditation group at a church, yoga studio, hospital or wellness center, or Buddhist facility near you.

The day before Halloween was a beautiful Friday morning in San Francisco. The sky wore its favorite fall shade, a sharp pale blue. “The perfect day for a bike ride,” I thought to myself. I packed up my computer, shouldered my backpack, and headed off to Samovar Tea House to write for a few hours.

Five minutes later, I was lying on the pavement on Market Street with a bloody split lip, smashed front tooth, and dislocated shoulder. I’d hit the infamous Muni train tracks at precisely the wrong angle and gone flying over the bike’s handlebars, landing on my right arm and my face. Ouch.

I made it to the ER, where doctors shoved my shoulder back in, gave me a sling, and told me to lay off the yoga for at least a month. They stitched my upper lip back together, and advised me to see a dentist about the tooth, which now sticks backwards into my mouth at about a 45-degree angle. All in all, they said, I was lucky. No permanent damage. All fixable.

I freaked out for a while. No yoga—my sanity! My perfect teeth—ruined! Braces for four months! Only mushy foods for the next four to six weeks! I threw myself a pity party. Poor me! Poor me! (Pity parties are the best—you should try one sometime if you haven’t already. Nothing like a good, long cry to release all those feelings of frustration and despair.)

Then I settled myself down. Literally, by sitting on my meditation cushion and just watching the breath flow in and out of my nostrils. I realized that, thank heavens, I could still type at my computer, so I wrote. I reveled in the visits from my wonderful friends, who brought me homemade pumpkin soup and savory (mushy) tamales, organic Vitamin E oil to prevent scarring, movies, laughs, and hugs. One even found a t-shirt sporting a hilarious cartoon of a biker hitting the Muni tracks (see below). I watched in awe as my lip miraculously repaired itself.

ParkLife Tee

A week later, what lessons have I (re)learned from this experience? A few.

First, there’s no reason to have a big, nasty reaction to unexpected and unpleasant experiences. It was okay to throw a fit for a day (or two), but that was enough. If I’d continued to feel sorry for myself, I only would have made matters worse—and probably interfered with the healing process. I have adopted the mantra, “So that’s that.” I can choose to be upset about my braces and the lack of yoga, or I can choose to accept my new reality—and feel appreciative of what I do have every day.

Second, I’m acutely aware of yet another reason to eat whole foods, exercise, not smoke, and generally be kind to your body. It’s not just so that you look and feel good. It’s also so that you give yourself the power to heal.

Third, I was reminded of the true nature of life. S.N. Goenka, the Buddhist instructor of my two ten-day Vipassana silent meditation retreats, frequently intoned, “Anicca, anicca, which means, in the ancient Pali language of the Buddha, impermanence.” Nothing is certain. Nothing remains stable. This is the truth. The trick is to move peacefully through the groundlessness–and preferably avoid stumbling on the Muni tracks along the way.

Caveman

Reposting my latest contribution to the Stanford Alumni “Living Well” blog:

I’m typing up a blog posting. You’re reading it online. It’s unlikely that either of us is outside doing a physical activity at this moment. According to University of Kansas psychology professor Dr. Stephen Ilardi, we’re breaking the rules for beating depression—we are not living like cavemen.

My mom sent me a care package the other day. (Yes, I am 36 years old and my mother still sends me care packages. Aside from newspaper and magazine clippings, they are likely to contain random objects like Corn Nuts. It’s adorable.)

Anyway, this particular package included an article about Dr. Ilardi’s happiness research, which my mother had torn out of the AARP magazine. Dr. Ilardi ran a pilot program for combating depression that involved returning to our pre-modern roots. The rules were: get outside, be physically active, socialize a lot, take omega-3 supplements (due to generally poor nutrition), and sleep enough. The results were impressive: 76% of the participants demonstrated a reduction in depressive symptoms, as opposed to just 27% in the control group, which received medication and/or psychotherapy.

I buy this prescription for happiness. It makes sense intuitively that if we’re outdoors breathing fresh air and feeling the sun shine on our faces, we’re treating our bodies well, we’re interacting with others, and we’re spending less time thinking and more time doing, we’ll be less depressed. Taking these steps consistently gets my serotonin pumping, that I know.

In fact, I spent Friday night at my 15-year Stanford Reunion class party. I’d been feeling a bit down and was concerned that I might feel drained by the evening. But the opposite was true. Connecting to old friends whom I hadn’t seen since we were 22, and meeting other fascinating people for the first time, was a fantastic mood-booster. The room buzzed with energy and enthusaism–it was contagious. When the lights finally came on and the organizers asked us to leave, I floated off on a cloud of wellbeing.

What works for you?

I’m now posting every other week to the Stanford Alumni Association’s “Living Well” blog, which you can view here:

http://pgnet.stanford.edu/get/page/blogs/blog/?ciid=117

However, I’ll also be reposting those entries onto my own blog. Here is the first one. It’s an introduction to me, in case you don’t know me already

What makes you feel in love with life?

-    Going for a run, the crisp, cold air burning your lungs and ears.
-    Reading a passage from a book that resonates so deeply you feel the author must know you personally.
-    Laughing to tears with your children.
-    Discovering a new friend, or reconnecting with an old one, and remembering that we’re all more similar than we are different.
-    Working on a project that lights your soul on fire.
-    Music. Art.

I prefer the term “wellness” to “happiness.” Happiness seems like something you have to chase after, a butterfly darting away before you can catch it in your net. Wellness, on the other hand, is a state of being. You might feel happy at times, you might feel sad. You recognize that those feelings are transient, and you connect with a deeper sense of calm that sustains you.

We’ll be exploring ways to access wellness in this blog. To me, this means enjoying moments of small delight on a daily basis. It means focusing on building trust in yourself and your life path. It means finding ways to connect with compassion, love, and generosity with other people. I invite you to comment, send in your own views, and suggest topics for future blogs. I’d like this to be an interactive experience, as I’m certain that we can learn more from one another than you can learn just by listening to me.

A little bit about me. I have a BA and MA (’94, ’95) from Stanford in psychology, where I thoroughly enjoyed being able to study with many of the top minds in the field. I’ll never forget Philip Zimbardo, creator of the revolutionary Stanford Prison Experiment, blasting rock music every time we entered his “Psychology of Mind Control” classroom. Or Robert Sapolski’s revelations about the destructive impact on our bodies and minds of our human reaction to stress. Or Amos Tversky’s Nobel prize-winning research on the surprisingly irrational way in which people make decisions.
Since graduating, I’ve spent ten years co-authoring, freelance editing, and ghostwriting non-fiction books on health and wellness, spirituality, and psychology. I feel that each project has been a mini-thesis, providing me with the opportunity to dive deeply into the subject matter. And I’ve taken on much of what I’ve written about as part of my lifestyle. For instance, after editing two books on Buddhism (professor of Buddhism at Columbia University Robert Thurman’s “Infinite Life;” His Holiness the Dalai Lama and Howard Cutler’s “The Art of Happiness in a Troubled Word”), I began practicing meditation. I have since completed two ten-day silent Vipassana meditation retreats. Co-authoring “Sexual Fitness,” which focused on improving your overall health in order to enhance sexual function, got me to take my eating and exercise habits more seriously. I began doing yoga, and have since become a yoga instructor.

In addition to writing and teaching yoga, I work as a life coach. Around the time of my divorce in 2005, I entered an intensely dark period during which I called into question all my inherited, subconscious ideas of who I am and what it means to be successful. This journey led me to pursue a MA in counseling psychology at Pacifica Graduate Institute, a small school that is home to Joseph Campbell’s library. And so I bring an understanding of depth psychology, archetypes, and mythology to my reflections on wellness, as well.

I look forward to exploring with you.

As of Oct 10, 2009, I’m joining Stanford Alumni Association’s new blog about health and wellness issues, called “Living Well.” Several alumni will be contributing, including an MD who also has trained in alternative Chinese medicine and reiki, and an alumn in her 80s who will talk about longevity and happiness. Please take a look!

https://pgnet22.stanford.edu/get/page/blogs/blog/?ciid=117