Emiko: Day 78, Cinematic Consumption

Things have been pretty busy in the A&E household. Lots of job-hunting, and related stuff. I am feeling pretty anxious these days. Adrian and I decided to go to a movie last night, which was a nice break from some of the activity this week. As we were getting ready to head out to the movie theater, I realized that my thoughts were turning to food. Specifically, popcorn and candy. I realized how conditioned I am to eat during movies, and felt a little disturbed by that. I sat down and ate my dinner - a bowl of sliced apple & banana and milk - and knew that I didn't even really want that junky food, I was just used to it. And so are most people. It kind of sucks that we are conditioned to mindlessly consume candy, popcorn, soda, chocolate, and whatever else. Despite confronting it, the feeling stayed with me through the movie. I didn't act on it, but I was quietly aware of it.

Speaking of anxiety, I have a phone interview for a job this afternoon. Wish me luck! I plan to have my third and final indulgence directly following the interview, so I will be updating on that soon! Hope you all are well.

Emiko: Day 52, Ebb and Flow

As Adrian mentioned, today we both went to our first meditation retreat at the Berkeley Zen Center. It was a half-day sesshin, from 8:30am-3pm, and was geared toward beginners and new community members. We did alternating periods of Zazen, sitting meditation, and Kinhin, walking meditation, with breaks for lecture, lunch, and an informal discussion over tea.

What I wanted to write about today is a connection that I made between observing my mind during meditation and observing my habits in daily life. This is a very simple one, and one I've made before, but it's particularly relevent today. Because today I had a big time craving for sweets, and it was very difficult to battle with. Actually it was less of a battle, and more me just giving into it. I feel like at this point in the Project I am losing some of my initial motivation, so it's harder to say No to myself.

After noticing the ebb and flow of my thoughts during meditation, I realize how much I also indulge in my thoughts. I let myself fall onto a train of thought and before I know it, five or even ten minutes have gone by without my awareness. I think this is the same for the way I eat and think about food.

Some days, I could care less about sugar. Other times, like today, sugar is all I can think about. I want to eat all of the yummy dates in our fridge, the banana chocolate-chip cookies at work, and drizzle honey on everything else. And I often let myself indulge in my cravings, at least in some little way. Even if it is small, I am still letting myself do it.

I am finding that my willpower is not what it should be. All of these small actions are probably the big reason I have been so unhealthy throughout the years. It is also affecting my results during this project, I'm sure. I have such a tough time letting my cravings pass ...instead, I grab onto them. It's like allowing myself to attach to a train of though during zazen. My effort is not quite right. These small actions show the big picture of how I truly act.

Upon rereading this, I feel like it's coming off as a bummer. But I don't want that! It is really positive to realize these things. It reminds me of something that was said during the lecture at the sesshin today: Even if what you're doing is hard, as long as you trust the person asking it of you, then you know it's coming from a place of care. I know that when I realize these things in myself, and even when I feel frustrated with finding solutions to them, working on them is a way of caring for myself. I face my problems to care for myself. So this is really a very happy thing!

Also, I wanted to record my reckless behavior today so that, like Nate said, I can be held accountable in a way. Being honest about guilty actions is hard, but I hope that it will help me to avoid straying from the plan!

Adrian: Day 41, Cravings

I've been craving fast food a lot lately.  I was flipping through a slow cooker recipe book this morning, looking for a good chicken curry recipe, when I started daydreaming about Japanese style curry, and Indian Curry.  I snapped out of it and saw a recipe for sweet and sour chicken and then I started daydreaming again about Chinese take-out.  Later in the afternoon, I took a short nap, and dreamed that I was stuffing my face with chocolate.  I felt guilty but I didn't stop. When I woke up, I was relieved that it was just a dream.

I think what's most appealing about these foods is the convenience.  When I was daydreaming, I wasn't sitting there imagining delicious tastes and smells.  I was visualizing completely prepared dishes.  

A couple months ago, it was very easy to get a variety of completely prepared dishes.  We'd just log onto yelp.com, figure out what kind of ethnic food we wanted, find a place with a good user review rating, and then drive to the restaurant, order, wait 10 minutes and then eat.  Flipping through recipes these days, the food takes so much longer to appear.  First, Emiko and I have to decide on what dish we want to share.  Then, we have to make a grocery list, drive out to the grocery store, come home, prep the kitchen, divvy up the tasks, and then start cooking.  Most of the time, the food comes out quite well, but sometimes it doesn't.  Also, we've been pretty much eating the same stuff; we don't vary our food all that much, or that often.  Variety takes a lot more work and effort, and we haven't had much time as it is.

Things have been going pretty smoothly for us lately, at least when it comes to sticking to our diets.  But I'm really starting to see how changing our diets (and habits in general) can be a big mental game.  The key seems to be repetition.  We're almost halfway through now, and I've been wondering - "Will 90 days really be enough time for me to change?"  Even though it's been a bit tough at times, and I've doubted myself, its been a much more fulfilling and engaging way to live than what I'm used to.

Adrian: Day 21, Time really does fly!

Have 21 days really gone by? Wowaweewa. It went by really quick. The way I'm feeling right now is that none of this PCP stuff is out of the ordinary. All the meat, veggies and egg whites that I'm eating every day just feels like a normal part of life, and it's almost hard to imagine it any other way. I guess I've finally hit that groove, and I'm going high octane if you catch my drift. And I really can't imagine going back and eating all the old junk that I used to.

At this point, I feel like I'm 90% over all my old cravings; they just don't really come up anymore. And I haven't felt the least bit bothered by hunger in an "I could go for Chinese take-out" sort of way. I do get hungry by dinner time, but I feel very satisfied by my apple, banana & milk soup, & egg whites. Though, I do have to admit that my mouth watered just a tiny little bit while after looking at that picture we posted yesterday. It looked pretty disgusting to me, but my body's instinct was for my mouth water, because that's the sort of stuff that Emiko and I used to eat. Weird how that works huh? And I still look twice at the chocolate bars when checking out at the grocery store. Also, for some reason, after eating my egg whites for dinner I am sometimes tempted to eat the yolks.

We all got our new diets tonight, and our portions have been cut quite a bit. I'm not even worried though. That means less groceries, and I'm not gonna miss running to the store every other day. Looks like we'll have to stock up on tea though.

Some day soon, Emiko and I hope to grow our own food. But that's a post-PCP project, so keep an eye out!

Adrian

Emiko: Day 5, Cravings Cravings, Cravings...

...leave me be! 

It is already Day 5 of the PCP and our "eat only half" diets, and my body has finally decided to rebel. I have had cravings all throughout these five days of dietary change, but Day 5 for me was when, in Patrick's words, "your body might say, 'I've had enough of this BS, hand me a cookie!'" It wasn't just cravings, really, it was the habitual action of filling myself with food and drinks all throughout the day. The cravings only fueled my actions. This constant feeding is more in anticipation of hunger than in reaction to hunger. And that just pisses me off!

At first I was like, "you're right, body, I need a bagel! Ooh, and hand me that pastry. Pour me a latte while you're at it!" You see, I am trying to cut these dense, sweet and buttery breads out of my diet, and am also weening myself off of caffeine. Of course these are all things I'm surrounded by at work, and I used to not think twice about eating or drinking something I didn't really need. I soon got a grip on myself today and said, "Fuck off, body! It's time for me to help us feel better in the long run."

I am so glad that we have the benefit of having a community built in with the PCP. Without that, I may have cut myself more slack today, and just gone downhill from there. Knowing that I have the support of Adrian and everyone here, I just can't give up or give in! (That was probably corny, but I can't help it!)

Adrian: Day 4, Moderation

It was a bit gloomy here in Oakland today. Cold and overcast. I didn't really feel like doing my exercises today and waited until about 6 p.m. to do them. I took things a bit easier, following the advice of my PCP friends not to overdo things. I did my jumps in sets of 100, instead of pushing to the point of exhaustion like I did a couple days ago. During this first week I have mostly ignored the soreness in my muscles.

I've always been the type to push myself to the limit physically, to see what my body is capable of. I see now how counter productive that is. I've gone through phases with my meditation practice like that too - sitting for hours a day, and then kicking myself whenever my concentration flagged (and it's very difficult to kick oneself while seated in the cross legged position).

Honestly though, I've gone through many things in life in that fashion - pushing myself strenuously towards my goals and ideals, and then being disappointed whenever falling short. I've also waded in the nihilistic end of the swimming pool. I guess that's how I came to the middle way of Buddhist practice. How I've been working with my body during these first few days of the PCP, dealing with my food cravings and hearing the words of my fellow PCPers has been a good reminder of moderation.

Adrian: Day 2.

Emiko and I just finished the daily workout, and right now we're listening to the Zen is Stupid podcast. I think it's kinda cool how we're 30% of the listeners. It's like they're talking just to us. We're listening to the episode where Patrick and Gwen bash old people for half an hour..

We ended up skipping the lecture at the Berkeley Zen Center today. I ended up playing around with our new laptop instead. I created a last.fm account and I spent pretty much the entire morning fooling around on it. I guess I finally jumped that bandwagon.

Anyway, back to the workout. The jump rope part of it was a bit easier today. I did 350 jumps for my first set, then I took a short break to heave and gasp for a minute. Then over the next 5 sets I did 350 more. Oh yeah, and those stomach cramps are a nice bonus.

Today's workout:

Jump rope: 350/91/78/122/56/203
Squats: 20/20/20/20/20
Pushups: 8/8/8/8
Roll up like a newspaper: 15/15/15/15

For breakfast this morning, Emiko and I split a bowl of cereal and a banana again. I had a cup of earl grey/green tea and some water. Around 10:30 Emiko made a delicious salad with mixed greens, onions, red bell peppers, corn, cherry tomatoes and a red wine vinaigrette. After that I had a singular date. I wonder how well I would eat if I were doing this alone. I've caught myself fantasizing a lot about oily pizzas, gyros, falafels, sushi, fried chicken and paneer tikka masala. Did anyone else just salivate? Actually it hasn't been all that bad. I'm definitely playing the mental game with myself right now though. How's everyone else getting on?

Quote of the day:

Emiko: "I wish cats didn't poop. It would be so much better if they didn't."

Emiko: Day 1, I Am a Hummus Addict

Well, today is the day!

I started out the day with a slow wake-up at 5:30am, and getting ready for an 8-hour shift at my cafe job. I had a small bowl of cereal for breakfast and shared a banana with Adrian. I biked to work (a new thing for me, but more about that  later) at 6:10am and had a good 20 min. bike ride. Very invigorating in the early morning!

Trying not to eat at work is a big challenge. Apart from avoiding all the milky, sweet lattes and so on, there are bagels galore and we happen to get our fresh cookie delivery on Friday

 mornings. Talk about temptations!

But I did manage to eat only half-servings. I had an ultra small (and cute!) piece of toast with hummus, tomato and cucumber on top. It was delicious, but definitely small. Later, I had a half pita pocket sandwich with 1 slice of prosciutto, some hummus and cucumber. I know, I know..I'm a hummus addict! I have a feeling I might be told not to eat hummus anymore once our diets get more strict (have mercy!).

After biking home I took a rest, and then got to my work out. The jump-roping would have been more fun if I did not whip myself with the rope every 10 jumps! Adrian and I share a jump-rope, so it is a little bit long for me, and I haven't worked out how to adjust to that quite yet. Also, I am just not used to jump-roping. My toes were taking the worst beating from the rope, so I found a solution: my old ballet slippers! They were perfect for the job, and felt good to jump around in. I surprised myself by doing a grand total of 688 jumps. Woo!

The rest of the work out was fine, although I found myself constantly talking and getting distracted (and distracting Adrian, too). I got through it, though, telling myself to not escape from the struggle and burn, because that the struggle was a good struggle and the burn was a good burn...all those weak muscles that were screaming now would soon be strong and useful.

I took a long, warm bath half an hour after the work out, and it was wonderful. It was so good to relax those muscles and reward them for their hard work. I also took that time to do some deep-breathing and to be mindful of the sounds around me for a while. It felt really good.

Anyway, I will end with that for now. Adrian just told me he saw that Amy posted something and I want to read it! See you all tomorrow, Day 2!!

Emiko

p.s. I must confess now that I came this close to eating a spoonful of ice cream...but I resisted! ..somehow!