The “Food for Thought” part:

Experience mindful eating and discuss the thoughts, feelings and ideas that arise about the important role food plays in [...]]]>

I am very excited to be holding a local Food 4 Thought Meal in Portland on September 24, 2010 at 6pm – 9pm. Here are the details.

The “Food for Thought” part:

Experience mindful eating and discuss the thoughts, feelings and ideas that arise about the important role food plays in our lives. We will explore possibilities for improving our complex relationship with food and identify the ways in which we can transform negative energy about eating into positive activities that fulfill our human potential for happiness.

The “Meal” part:

The Black Rabbit restaurant offers seasonal ingredients from the McMenamins Edgefield organic gardens – herbs, vegetables, fruits and flowers that flourish throughout the property’s beautiful 74 acres. The evening’s meal will include a 4-course meal of innovative Northwest cuisine, housemade dessert, regional and local wines, and McMenamins’ roasted coffee.

When: Friday, September 24, 2010

When: 6:00pm – 9:00pm

Where: McMenamins Edgefield’s Black Rabbit restaurant (Red Fox room) Click here for directions.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Purchase your ticket(s) below – space is limited!

How? Two ways.

The first is changing our relationship with food from the inside (mindful eating and the practice of eating) and the other is changing our culture by choosing to making food and mealtimes important parts of our daily lives. [...]]]>

If we change our relationship with food, we change our culture and our future.

How? Two ways.

The first is changing our relationship with food from the inside (mindful eating and the practice of eating) and the other is changing our culture by choosing to making food and mealtimes important parts of our daily lives. Food 4 Thought Meals help with both. They are both Practice and process.

Click here to view the embedded video.

August 31st replay of Ian’s Virtual Food 4 Thought Meal

My Virtual Food 4 Thought Meals take place via teleconference every Tuesday night at 7pm PST. I would love for you to join us. To receive call in details just enter your email below.  I can’t do this alone.

As always, I would love to hear your thoughts in the comments below.

Ian- [...]]]>

I just had a wonderful conversation that I wanted to share with you all. AnnMarie Michaels is a fellow lover of real food and is involved in the Weston Price Foundation which advocates many of the ideas that I believe in about the WHAT we should eat. Check her out at http://www.cheeseslave.com or http://www.realfoodmedia.com

Ian- “How do you briefly explain that full fat is better than  low/non fat- especially dairy?”

AnnMarie- “Well… why would someone choose a low-fat item?”

Ian- “The usual issue- calories”

AnnMarie- “Oh ok so they think eating fat makes you fat?”

Ian- “LOLLOL!! I love talking with someone who totally gets where I’m coming from. :-) No, just concerned about getting to many calories and so chooses low/non fat to help them do so”

AnnMarie- “There is no evidence that eating fat makes you fat and there is no evidence that eating fewer calories makes you lose weight. Most people who have trouble losing weight either are overeating or they have other issues like a slow metabolism due to hormonal issues or they are eating too many refined carbs. Fat’s got nothing to do with it and cutting calories does not work. Fat is actually good for your metabolism — speeds it up, good fat, of course, like butter & coconut oil”

Ian-”You and I know that to be the case but let’s say, for the sake of argument, that they do overeat and are trying to cut a few calories. why not cut fat from dairy? Tell me more about that last piece about fat speeding up metabolism”

AnnMarie- “Check out this article. Cutting calories doesn’t work- http://www.naturalnews.com/026808_coconut_oil_metabolism_fatty_acids.html

Also, hormones are made from cholesterol so if you don’t eat enough fat your hormones get out of whack. How many ladies do you know who have mood swings that are also on a low-fat diet? ;-) If you want to lose weight, cut down on refined carbs”

Ian-”LOL. Stop making me laugh- its hard to type ;-) So, that is really the crux of it then. That makes sense to me that its really the whole dieting/cutting calories brainwashing that affects attitude toward fat.

AnnMarie- “It’s so true though!!!! Look at vegans. Does it get any nuttier? They lose their minds (because they don’t eat animal fats) my addition

Ian- “LOL. You’re killin me!!!!!! I know what you mean. It’s wild”

AnnMarie- “The best book I can recommend is The Diet Cure by Julia Ross. Dieting is the worst thing you can do for your brain”

Ian- “How come you and I understand this but it’s so hard to get people to listen? TV, media, etc brainwashing!!!!!! grrrrr!!”

AnnMarie- “There’s never a crowd on the leading edge, which is where we are standing”

Ian- “:-):-)”

AnnMarie- “The low fat morons have an agenda”

Ian- “What agenda do see?”

AnnMarie- “Refined carbs and empty calorie foods are cheap to make, give the brain a quick rush of a false, temporary high, and they can mark them up high so they make money. But in the long run it’s bad – people are becoming obese, diabetic, having all kinds of health problems due to malnutrition, not to mention mental and emotional problems. 100 years ago when everyone ate 3 square meals a day, obesity was rare and no one was on Prozac and by the way there was no such thing as skim milk or egg white omelets then either :-)”

Ian- “I totally agree. Everyone should read Gary Taubes ‘Good Calores, Bad Calories‘? It’s all about what we are talking about. So, I’ll let ya go for now. Thanks so much for the fun chat. Let’s do it again soon”

AnnMarie- “You are welcome, Ian! Sure thing”

Our conversation covered a lot of subjects- We talked about the food elementary schools serve to kids, the lack [...]]]>

We had another very insightful Virtual Food 4 Thought Meal last Tuesday, August 24th.  Here are a few of my thoughts on why I keep talking about culture, or as one of the participants called it, our environment.

Our conversation covered a lot of subjects- We talked about the food elementary schools serve to kids, the lack of real supermarkets in many urban cities, how certain foods are used for certain occasions, etc.  My point is that these are how our culture has created an environment that makes eating unhealthy and too easy. We need to slow down and get out of the American rat-race to collecting material things.  Everyone agree that we should at least try to change our culture by changing how each of us lives.  Sort of a trickle up policy, you know?

How we live is how we eat, or was it vice-versa.  That’s the point, they reinforce each other and co-create each other in a never-ending circle.  It seems unlikely that our culture will change itself, in fact, it can’t.  Culture changes because WE change how we live and we are our culture. So, where and when you can, subvert the dominant paradigm and choose different than what you have been doing that hasn’t been working.  It isn’t easy, I know, but so much of what we’re doing right now isn’t working so what the hell, try something different.

This article is just one of many that I’ve come across that I thought you’d find interesting on this subject.  Let me know your thoughts.

Excessive Fatigue and Our Crazy Busy Culture

Your friend in food and happiness,

Ian

Replay of the August 24th Virtual Food 4 Thought Meal:

It isn’t about eating less carbs, joining a gym, taking your supplements, walking the dog more, or any of the other hundreds of TO-DO’s of health, wellness and fitness we all think about. It’s about getting over, through, around, under, past, and beyond the inner hurdles that [...]]]>

Maybe you don’t want to read that, but it’s true.

It isn’t about eating less carbs, joining a gym, taking your supplements, walking the dog more, or any of the other hundreds of TO-DO’s of health, wellness and fitness we all think about. It’s about getting over, through, around, under, past, and beyond the inner hurdles that keep us from applying the skills and abilities that we already have towards a life of wellness- in other words, personal growth.

I have heard hundreds of times, “I know what to do, and I want to do it, but I just don’t. I don’t have the (time, motivation, willpower, dedication, ability, desire, drive, courage, etc)”. Yes, you do, you just haven’t tapped into it because if you are like most of us, you’ve tried skipping this step and moved right onto the “checklist” of items listed above. That has lasted about 3 weeks on average for most of the people I’ve known. So often, the ability to maintain a change in lifestyle that comes from the outside-in pales in comparison to the longevity and success of changing from the inside-out. It’s harder, but it’s the better path.

It’s better because it’s your path, taken your way, on your time, by your rules. You’ll find out what the action steps are for success and do a damn good job at them too, once you’ve decided that they are the right thing for you to do at this time and place. Not because a doctor told you, or I told you, or some magazine said so, or some friend of yours said it worked. NO. Because you dove deep, wrestled your demons of self-worth, do i deserve to be happy, am I a good person, what difference does it make if I succeed, what will I have to do IF I succeed/fail, will my friends/family stick around if I succeed/fail… the list goes on. Then, like the hero’s journey, you will return from the difficult challenge of inner work tempered and able to handle the ups and downs that will inevitably occur when you decide to change how you eat, move, sleep, work, live, love, play, etc.

Thanks for reading my rant and, as always, I really want to hear your thoughts in the comments below.

Yours in food and happiness,

Ian

Related Posts:

Food 4 Thought Meals: making the practice of eating therapeutic
Why I care about our relationship with food
Your relationship with food is not your fault

I was eating a casual dinner with my wife Sarah and watching Rick Steves doing a show on Saltzburg Austria and the surrounding rural areas. Twice during the show I had a powerful [...]]]>

So, I feel a little weird writing about this but a video doesn’t feel right either. Let me know what you think.

I was eating a casual dinner with my wife Sarah and watching Rick Steves doing a show on Saltzburg Austria and the surrounding rural areas. Twice during the show I had a powerful emotional reaction where I just started crying and feeling something- sad, longing, disappointment, I’m not sure what. The scenes were of beautiful scenery and/or people enjoying food with others. I could say it’s just that I’d really like to travel and so I was feeling sad that I hadn’t, but it felt like something more, something deeper. I’m just not sure what.

Maybe it was something about seeing people having a good time with food. All smiles and laughter. I know that I miss that in my life and I know others do as well. I also thought about how Americans have such a different history with food, that gives us much of our current relationship with food. Maybe they’re happier because food abundance is relatively a new thing and they have lots of history of being thankful for what food they did have. They also have the European twist on community that I think we haven’t developed or have lost some of. They’ve lived in close proximity for centuries, we’ve just continued to move west and from urban to suburban to rural to fill in the country. We don’t appreciate getting along so eating by ourselves must seem less unnatural than it does to them. I don’t know. This is part stream of consciousness so it may not flow, but whatthehell.

Is my sadness born from my recognition of how much happier they seem with life than so many of us seem? Do I really think that it’s because of how they interact with food? Am I really that arrogant to think I’m on to something that deals with the deep psychic angst of mainstream Americans? Maybe. All I know was that the feelings were powerful and they didn’t occur when I saw a church or a museum, it was when there was food! Maybe I’m tapping into that collective unconscious need for people to connect with and through food that seems to have been so messed with in my life. The days of “good food, bad food” and worrying about protein and carbs while I sit at the dining room table for an hour after my family has moved on to tv, reading, etc. I can still remember how sad I was to not be with them, but to be there staring at my plate of food and forcing myself to eat another bite because I had to gain weight and eating like this was what it took. How many of us spend time like this… miserable but rationalizing why we do it. I wasn’t happy, I was doing it because I felt crappy about my body. I learned this from movies, etc, just like everyone else. Whatever, it’s just that maybe there is more here than food.

Maybe it’s about happiness at the deepest levels. Maybe seeing those people in the video reminded me about how unhappy so much of my time with food has been and continues to be. I want to spend more time with people who are joyous about food, not trapped with guilt, shame, etc. I want to be free of that part of my life and be able to spend it “being” the best person I can be. I want to learn from them how they do it, how it feels, how it affects their lives, what’s it really like.

I hope some of this rant makes sense. Thanks for reading it. I’d love to hear your thoughts.

In emotional confusion,
Ian