CHAPTER 1: Ending Your Struggle with Weight

CHAPTER 1
Ending Your Struggle with Weight

I have been struggling with my weight all my life. I know I have to lose weight. I do not like the way I look. I do not like the way I feel. I have gone on diets, tried diligently to exercise, lost the weight, and had it all come back in no time. I’ve lost count of how many times I have gone through this yo -yo cycle of loss and gain. I am totally frustrated, ashamed of myself, anxious and overwhelmed about my weight. I am tired of carrying this extra weight around. I do not feel good. Every day is a struggle for me. Every night is a nightmare. I have diabetes now, and I am really worried. I fear that I will not be around to see my children grow up. I am here because I do not want to give up. There must be a way out of this suffering.

—Participant in a mindfulness retreat

THIS WOMAN IS NOT alone. Everywhere you turn—from television, magazines, and Web sites to newspapers and radio—you see, read, or hear stories about the U.S. population’s frustrating struggle to lose weight. Two out of three adults in the United States are overweight, and one out of three is obese,¹ more than double the rate of obesity in the late 1970s. In scienti c terms, we are in the middle of an obesity pandemic, a state of extreme weight gain that is overtaking not only the United States but also much of the globe. This steep rise in obesity over the past thirty years has no parallel in our history, and if we do not change our current trends, the numbers will continue to rise.

And this is largely because our society has become toxic in a way that experts call “obesigenic.” We are surrounded by societal forces that drive us to eat more and move less. And the natural result is weight gain, obesity, and the myriad health and emotional problems that go along with them. Yes, it’s ultimately a personal decision to eat more than one needs and to not exercise enough, but it’s also nearly impossible to escape the pressures around us that lead to unhealthy behaviors. Bombarded day in and day out by unhealthy outside in uences, we

easily become dissociated from what our bodies truly need and truly want.

Just think of the food court at the local shopping mall. It’s a feast of choices that can overwhelm the senses. You see and smell foods that are savory as well as those that are sweet—steak sizzling in teriyaki sauce, oven-fresh pizza, hot cinnamon buns drizzled with snow-white icing, rich co ee confections infused with sugar syrup and topped with cream. The abundance of aromas, colors, and sounds awaken your palate and your urge to eat. In and of itself this isn’t necessarily a bad thing—who doesn’t love the look and smell of delicious food?—but it often spurs us to eat automatically whether we’re actually hungry or not. Before we know it, we’ve eaten a supersized meal that has two-thirds of the calories we need in one day—and we weren’t even hungry to begin with. When this happens day after day, week after week, what began as one enjoyable moment of eating becomes a weight problem that can a ect us the rest of our lives. And this is just one of many examples of the impact our surroundings and social networks can have on our weight and health.

In our food supply, there are plenty of foods and drinks that are highly seasoned with salt, sugar, and fat. According to Dr. David Kessler, former commissioner of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, the food and restaurant industries deliberately produce high-salt, high- sugar, and high-fat foods just so that people cannot resist them and want more. In his book The End of Overeating: Taking Control of the Insatiable American Appetite, citing research done in behavioral neuroscience, nutrition, and psychology, he reports that foods high in fat, salt, and sugar alter the brain’s chemistry, stimulating the release of dopamine, which in turn is associated with the feeling of pleasure.² This is one of the reasons that we crave more of foods and drinks high in fat, sugar, and salt—because they are satisfying.

Advertising is another. It’s the market economy’s way to shape social norms that propel consumption and profits. And when it comes to the food industry, what they want is for consumers to truly consume—to eat as much food and to drink as many drinks as they can stomach, and then have some more. It is telling that in the United States, the food industry spends more on advertising than any other industry except the auto industry.³ Every day we’re exposed to dozens of ads for food and beverages, each one cueing us to eat and drink. And there is no place that is o – limits for eating and drinking: we eat and drink in our cars and at our desks, as we sit in meetings and as we stroll through the shopping malls. It is no wonder that we

often nd ourselves eating and drinking beyond what we need to satisfy our true physiological hunger. We have created a culture of constant snacking, drinking, and eating.

Now, think of our social norms around physical activity. From the Industrial Revolution in the early 1800s up to our current information technology revolution, we have become increasingly sedentary as we rely more and more on machines, gadgets, and automobiles to do our work and get around. We have drastically diminished the amount of energy we burn every day through bodily movements and the use of our muscles. And with the average home in the United States having more television sets than people,⁴ we have become couch potatoes living under the spell of the television.

Together, all these societal forces push us toward eating more calories each day than we expend, and without our being aware of it. Over time these extra calories build up, and before we even realize it we’ve put on a good deal of weight. And it doesn’t take too much for this to happen. Over the course of one year, one hundred extra calories each day—the equivalent of eating one small cookie or of driving a mile instead of walking it—could end up packing ten pounds of extra fat on our bodies.

Given the huge burden these social in uences place on us, how can we get back in touch with our bodies and relieve ourselves of the burden and su ering that arise from being overweight? How can each of us reach a healthier weight?

The answer almost certainly doesn’t rest with the current weight- loss industry in the United States. Weight-loss programs, diet books, and diet foods, herbs, and pills represent an estimated $59 -billion industry in the United States.⁵ Thousands of fad-diet books and weight-loss plans come and go. Yet these nearly always fail people over time. You can lose weight on any diet, but there is no scienti c evidence that rigid dieting will help you achieve weight loss in the long run. On the contrary, the U.S. population is growing fatter and fatter, and growing increasingly frustrated and discouraged by its failure to lose weight.

Millions are spent on research and development by pharmaceutical companies to nd an obesity x. But there is still no magic pill or formula that can help us lose weight and maintain our lost weight without side e ects. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration is cautious in the approval of these fat- ghting drugs. Yet those few drugs on the market that can help people shed a few pounds have unwanted side

effects.⁶

The di cult truth is that the basic law of thermodynamics still holds: When we eat more calories than we expend, we gain weight. When we burn more energy through physical activity or exercise than we take in from food and drinks, we lose weight. Though this sounds basic and simple, the fact that so many of us are overweight points to the complexity of the situation. For anyone who has tried many times to lose weight, the thought of trying again may feel like an overwhelming and daunting task. Is it truly possible to change one’s habits of eating and moving, especially in the face of a society that pushes us so hard in the wrong direction? How can one begin to make these changes?

The Buddha teaches that change requires insight, and insight cannot begin until we stop and focus our attention on what is happening right in front of us. This stopping, or shamatha, allows us to rest the body and the mind. When we have calmed ourselves, we can then go on to look deeply into our current situation. We need to step o our frantic life treadmills, to stop unconsciously doing the same things over and over again that have allowed our weight to creep up. We need to stop, rest, and re ect on a constructive way forward that will end the habits that have led to our current weight issues. We need to be fully aware of what is going on in our daily living. Only then can we begin to change.

Changing Your Habit Energy

There is a Zen story about a man and a horse.⁷ The horse is galloping quickly, and it appears that the rider is urgently heading somewhere important. A bystander along the road calls out, “Where are you going?” and the rider replies, “I don’t know! Ask the horse!”

This is also our life story. Many of us are riding a horse, but we don’t know where we are going, and we can’t stop. The horse is our “habit energy,” the relentless force of habit that pulls us along, that we are often unaware of and feel powerless to change. We are always running. It has become a habit, the norm of our everyday living. We run all the time, even during our sleep—the time that we are supposed to rest and regenerate our bodies. We are our worst enemies, in conflict with ourselves, and therefore we can easily start conflict with others.

When a strong emotion arises within us like a storm, we are in great turmoil. We have no peace. Many of us try to pacify the storm by watching television or eating comfort foods. But the storm does not calm down after hours of watching. The

storm does not go away after a bag of chips or a bowl of ice cream. We hate ourselves afterward for eating the chips and the ice cream. We dread stepping on the scale the next day. We vow to never do it again. But time after time, we do. Why? Because our habit energy pushes us.

How can we stop this state of turmoil? How can we stop our fear, our despair, our anger, and our cravings? We have to learn to become solid and stable like an oak tree, and not be blown from side to side by the emotional storm. We have to learn the art of stopping—stopping our running so that we can be present for and embrace our habit energies of worry, blame, guilt, and fear, and calm the strong emotions that dictate us. We have to learn to live fully in the present moment. We need to practice breathing in and breathing out with all our awareness. We have to learn to become mindful.

When we are mindful, touching deeply the present moment, in the here and now, we gain more understanding, more acceptance, more forgiveness and love of self and others; our aspiration to relieve su ering grows; and we have more chances to touch joy and peace.

We need the energy of mindfulness to recognize and be present with our habit energy so that we may prevent it from dominating us and stop its often destructive course. Mindfulness allows us to acknowledge our habit energy every time it pops up: “Hello, my habit energy. I know you are there.” If you just mindfully smile to your habit energy, it will lose much of its strength. The chips stay in the cupboard, the ice cream in the freezer. The storm passes by, and we watch, breathing in and breathing out all the while.

After we become calmer, we can recognize our weight problem more clearly and acknowledge it instead of denying it. This may not be easy for you to do. You may feel angry, frustrated, or fed up about your weight. Do not suppress these feelings of anger. Instead, as the Buddha has taught us, accept and embrace these di cult feelings, like a mother cradling her crying baby. The crying baby needs the mother’s loving care. In a similar manner, your negative emotions and turmoil are crying out loud, trying to get your attention. Your negative emotions also need your tender, loving care. By embracing your negative feelings whenever they arise, you can prevent yourself from being swept away by your emotional storm, and you can calm yourself. When you are calmer, you are more able to see that you already have within yourself the power and the tools to begin to change.

Stopping, calming, and resting are preconditions for healing. If we cannot stop,

we will continue on the course of destruction caused by unmindful consumption.

The Four Noble Truths of Healthy Weight

The Buddha o ered many teachings to help people end their su ering, the rst and most important being the Four Noble Truths. The First Noble Truth is that all of us have su ering in our lives. None of us can escape from it. The Second Noble Truth is that we can identify the causes of our suffering. The Third Noble Truth is that we can put an end to our su ering and that healing is possible. Finally, the Fourth Noble Truth is that there are paths to free us from su ering. We can cultivate our well-being by concretely applying mindfulness to our daily living.

A simple example from the eld of medicine can help illustrate the Four Noble Truths. Let’s say you are diagnosed with type 2 diabetes (First Noble Truth), which was likely brought on by eating a poor diet and becoming very overweight (Second Noble Truth). Your doctor tells you the situation does not need to be like that and can be controlled (con rming the Third Noble Truth). You follow the doctor’s prescription—taking your medicine, eating better, and exercising more—which is your route to healing (Fourth Noble Truth). These teachings of the Buddha originate from a time when su ering was more likely to be caused by a lack of food rather than too much, or by a body overburdened with physical labor rather than one grown ill from lack of use. Yet they apply to all forms of su ering, including those related to being overweight.

Now, let’s re ect upon the Four Noble Truths and how they relate to achieving your healthy weight. The self-exploration that begins here and continues throughout this book will help you navigate through all the important factors in your life that a ect your weight. It will help you discover what science-based paths you can follow to reach a healthier weight. And through your own awareness, you can discover and decide for yourself what is bene cial and what is not bene cial for your body and well-being.

Through the process, you will realize whether your weight has a ected you physically and emotionally. You can become more in touch with the way you have been eating and drinking, the amount of exercise you have been doing or not doing. You can recognize the amount and type of e ort you have been spending to control your weight. You can appreciate how your work is a ecting your daily lifestyle and your weight. Through all these re ections, you can gain insights from your past that can lead you to success on your path of healing.

As you read the rest of this chapter and this book, read with an open mind and an open heart. Do not struggle with the concepts—the information here is not intended to simply add to your warehouse of knowledge. Be like the earth. When the rain comes, the earth simply opens up to the rain and soaks it all in. Allow the wisdom in this book to nurture the seeds that lie deep in the soil of your consciousness so that they can sprout and mature into the transformative energies of mindfulness and insight. A teacher cannot give you the truth. The truth is already in you. A teacher can only offer you the chance to awaken your true self.

Enlightenment, peace, and joy will not be granted by someone else.

The well is within us,

And if we dig deeply in the present moment, The water will spring forth⁸

The First Noble Truth: Being Overweight or Obese Is Suffering

When we are overweight, every part of the body may feel the burden. Our knees may ache, carrying too much weight, becoming swollen and sti with arthritis.⁹ Our heart may labor harder, our blood pressure may rise, and harmful plaque may build up inside the lining of the arteries, heightening the risk of heart attack and stroke. Our breathing itself may become a problem around the clock as the risk of asthma, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, and sleep apnea increases.¹⁰

Many of these increased health risks exist in people who are merely overweight, not just among those who are obese. Diabetes, an insidious disease with disabling and deadly complications, is two to four times more likely to strike someone who is overweight than someone who is at a healthy weight, and it is ve to twelve times more likely to strike someone who is obese.¹¹ The risk of cancer in several parts of the body—breast, colon, esophagus, kidney, pancreas, and uterus—is higher in people who carry excess body fat than in people who do not.¹² So is the risk of having gallstones that require the gallbladder to be removed.¹³ The risk of infertility,¹⁴ cataracts,¹⁵ and perhaps even dementia may be higher in people who are obese than in those who are at a healthy weight.¹⁶ Given the toll that excess weight takes on all areas of the body, it is no surprise that being overweight or obese in midlife increases the chances of dying early.¹⁷ Even people who are not

overweight but have gained more than twenty pounds since the start of college have an increased risk of dying early.¹⁸

Those who are overweight and obese su er in countless other ways as well, due to the pervasive stigma associated with weight.¹⁹ As children they may, owing to their weight, become the target of teasing and bullying from their peers. As adults, they may be less likely to win a job or a promotion, or they may be stereotyped as lazy or less disciplined. Even in the doctor’s o ce, they may face prejudice because of their weight.

What type of su ering have you endured because of your weight? Physical pain? Emotional pain? A feeling of shame, insecurity, regret, anger? Identifying and acknowledging the nature and depth of your su ering may be di cult. You may want to suppress it and not deal with it. However, our rst step toward healing and transformation is to recognize the existence of our suffering and not run away from it.

The Second Noble Truth: You Can Identify the Roots of Your Weight Problem

Before you can change your weight, you must have a better understanding of the reasons that you are overweight. Fundamentally, weight gain or loss results from changing the balance of energy coming in (the calories we eat and drink) and going out (the calories we burn o through our everyday activities). Yet science has found that many factors can lead us to get out of balance and gain weight—our ancestry, our lifestyle choices, and our surroundings.

Take the time to re ect on the numerous factors that we describe here. Look deeply to see whether they apply to you so that you may understand the true nature of your problem with weight. Looking deeply requires courage. The causes are knowable, and with diligent e ort you can get to the bottom of them. With greater insight into the reasons that you are overweight, you can begin to determine what course of action you can take to achieve a healthier weight.

Know that the attachment to pleasurable desires can cause us to su er. As we crave insatiably for delightful and pleasurable experience through our consumption of foods and drinks and our sedentary way of life, we are well on our way to gaining weight. Do these desires really satisfy you in the long run and bring you happiness? Not likely, since all these are temporary xes that get us to gain more weight. When you succumb to these cravings, you are perpetuating the cycle of frustration, anxiety, and suffering.

Buddhism describes creatures known as pretas, or Hungry Ghosts, who have insatiable appetites for food, drinks, and other cravings. They are desperate beings who are always hungry, with tiny mouths; long, narrow necks; and distended bellies. Though they are constantly ravenous, driven by the desire to eat, their tiny mouths and necks prevent them from swallowing the food they ingest. The act of eating does not help them overcome negative emotions and cravings. Eating more only causes them to have more pain and agony. Are you consuming like a Hungry Ghost?

As you begin to look deeply into the roots of your weight problem, take care not to be harsh on yourself. The “judge” inside your head often makes you feel bad about all the “shoulds”—you should not have eaten that cheesecake, you should have spent more time at the gym. You may also be daunted by your past failures and struggles with weight. It is time to stop blaming yourself for these failures. Perhaps you were following the wrong advice. Perhaps you were able to lose some weight initially on one diet or another, but the diets were too restrictive, your cravings took hold, and you eventually gave up and gained the weight back. You are not separate from your family and environment. In the past you did not have enough of the right conditions supporting you to maintain a healthy weight.

Do you understand why you did not succeed? What were your obstacles? Do not get lost in regret about your past mistakes. The past is the past. It is not the present. You can seize the present moment—any present moment—to begin anew. Just as you embrace your negative feelings, embrace your weight problem like a mother cradling her crying baby, so that you can transform your fear, despair, anger, frustration, and self-criticism. Mindfulness practice can help you become calmer, so that you can look at your situation in a more detached way, without self -condemnation. This frees you to focus on the solutions rather than dwell on the past or your problems. The Buddha said that if we know how to look deeply into our su ering and recognize what feeds it, we are already on the path of emancipation.

Do Your Parents Have Weight Problems?

What you have inherited from your ancestors’ gene pool can a ect your weight. Studies have shown that when one of a child’s parents is overweight, the child is more than twice as likely to become an overweight adult, regardless of whether the child herself is at a normal weight.²⁰ Having two overweight parents further

increases the chance that the child will become overweight.²¹ Nevertheless, parental in uences on our weight could be due to nature, nurture, or a combination of both. When we were young, parents also controlled what and how much we ate as well as how active we were. If your mother breast-fed you, it may have lowered your risk of becoming overweight.²² If your father encouraged you to “clean up your plate” as a habit, you may nd it really hard to stop eating today’s supersize portions even though you are full. Did your parents spend their free time playing with you in the yard, or did you spend much of your family time slouched together in front of the television set? As you consider the role of parental in uences on your weight, keep in mind that your genetics are not your destiny— and genetics alone cannot explain the rapid rise in obesity we have seen over the past thirty years. Even if your parents were overweight, you can still achieve a healthy weight by following a healthy lifestyle. It just means that you may have to pay more attention to what you eat and how much you move than someone who does not have a genetic tendency to be overweight.

Do You Drink Too Much Sugary Soda?

Drinking sugar- sweetened beverages can contribute to weight gain. A study in teens found that for every additional can of soda they drank a day, their chances of becoming obese increased by 60 percent.²³ The Nurses’ Health Study found that women who increased their consumption of sugary drinks from one or fewer drinks per week to one or more drinks per day gained more weight over a four-year period than women who cut back on sugary drinks.²⁴

Scientists believe there are several reasons that drinking sugary drinks contributes to weight gain. The calories from soda are often “invisible.” When you drink your calories rather than eat them, you may not cut back on other foods to compensate for the liquid calories. With a twelve-ounce can of sugary soda containing nearly ten teaspoons, or about 150 calories, of sugar, it’s easy to stack up extra calories during the day, especially if you’re drinking sugary soda to quench your thirst. Soft drinks may also increase your sense of hunger or decrease your sense of satiety or fullness.²⁵

As you consider the role of sweetened drinks on your weight, notice whether you feel hungrier after you drink a sugary soda. If you have already cut back on sugary drinks and substituted diet ones, notice whether drinking the intensely sweet sugar substitutes has conditioned your palate to expect, crave, and seek supersweet foods.

Do You Get Less Than a Half Hour of Exercise or Physical Activity Each Day?

For weight control, the “energy out” side of the energy-balance equation is just as important as the “energy in.” There’s strong evidence that getting enough physical activity can help prevent weight gain and, when combined with a lower -calorie eating plan, can help promote weight loss. What is enough? It depends on how t you are. For some people, taking a brisk half-hour walk ve days a week would be enough. For others, taking a high-intensity spinning class for seventy- ve minutes a week would be enough. For people who are very inactive, just getting moving is a start. We discuss physical activity for weight control and for general good health in chapter 6, “Mindful Moving.” For now, re ect on whether you get enough physical activity. If not, why not?

Do You Watch More Than One Hour of Television a Day?

Many studies in adults and children have shown that watching too much television increases one’s risk of becoming overweight. The Nurses’ Health Study, for example, found that for every additional two hours of television that women watched per day, their risk of becoming obese increased by 23 percent. Even getting a lot of physical activity did not fully protect these women from the e ects of TV watching on weight: among the most active women, those who watched more than twenty hours of television per week had a higher risk of becoming obese than those who watched less than six hours of television per week.²⁶

Researchers believe there are several possible ways that watching too much television could lead to weight gain. Sitting around and watching television may take the place of more physically demanding activities, so the “energy out” side of the energy balance equation goes down. TV watching may also a ect the “energy in” side of the equation: people tend to eat while they watch television and also tend to eat what they watch on television—fast food, sugary drinks, and other high-calorie snacks. This adds up to extra calories in, fewer calories out, and, ultimately, to weight gain. As you re ect on your TV-watching habits, think about why you spend as much time as you do watching television. Do you watch a lot of television to avoid boredom? To avoid communicating with your family members? Or to cope with stress? What other activities might you do instead? (See a list of suggestions in appendix D for ideas.)

Do You Get Enough Sleep?

A good night’s sleep is essential for good health. New research suggests that a good night’s sleep may also be essential to controlling your weight.²⁷ The Nurses’ Health Study, for example, followed seventy thousand women for sixteen years. Women who skimped on sleep—getting ve hours or less each night—were 15 percent more likely to become obese than women who got seven hours of sleep per night.²⁸ Scientists are still teasing out why lack of sleep may lead people to pack on the pounds. People who don’t get enough sleep may be more fatigued than people who get a healthy night’s sleep,²⁹ decreasing the “energy out” side of the energy-balance equation. Or staying awake for a longer period of time may simply give people more opportunities to eat, increasing the “energy in” side of the energy-balance equation.³⁰ Sleep deprivation may shift the balance of key hormones that control appetite, making sleep-deprived people hungrier than people who get enough sleep.³¹ One small study found that sleep-deprived volunteers reported more hunger, especially for high-carbohydrate and high-calorie comfort foods.³² If you are not getting enough sleep, think about why. Are you lying awake at night lled with anxiety? Do you stay up too late watching television? Do you notice that you are hungrier on days when you have not gotten as good a night’s sleep?

Do You Eat Mindlessly?

Nowadays, with all the societal pressures and the “high speed” living of our Internet age, much of our eating happens on autopilot. We do not pay attention to how much food is served or how much we have eaten, how tasty the food is or whether we’re even hungry at all. Instead, how much we eat is often driven by external cues—the size of the bowl, the size of the plate, the portion size of the food itself. Given the supersizing trends over the past twenty years, it is easy to fall victim to “portion distortion” and to lose sight of how much food is an appropriate amount to eat.³³ Recently, researchers have conducted scienti c studies looking at how mindless eating a ects our food consumption. What they found is that mindless eating can easily lead to overeating. In a classic experiment, people at a movie theater were served fresh or stale popcorn in di erent-size containers. Moviegoers who were given stale popcorn said the taste was “unfavorable.” Yet when they were served stale popcorn in a large container, they ate 61 percent more popcorn than they did when it was served in a small container while they were

watching the movie—and they underestimated the amount of popcorn they ate.³⁴ In another experiment, graduate students at a Super Bowl party who served themselves from large bowls ate 56 percent more snack food than students who served themselves from smaller bowls.³⁵ The larger the portion size, the less able we are to estimate how many calories we are eating.³⁶

The cues for mindless eating reach beyond the size of a plate or the size of a portion. Our whole surroundings support mindless eating, from the ads on TV to fast-food “dollar menus” to favorable placement of unhealthy foods on supermarket shelves. All these cues combined can make it very, very di cult to nd what it is our bodies truly need. Are you often eating on the run, in the car, or at your desk? Do you have to dine out often because you have not had time to cook? And do you find yourself making unwise food choices when eating out?

Practicing mindfulness can help us avoid the external cues that trap us, avoid mindless eating, and focus in on the practices that keep us healthy.

Mindlessness is the opposite of mindfulness. Eating is not the only activity that we do mindlessly, and we are driven to mindlessness by more than just the size of a bowl or plate. We drink a cup of tea and focus more on the worries and anxieties of the day than on living the moment of enjoying the tea. We sit with someone we love, and rather than focus on the person and this moment we have with them, we’re distracted by other thoughts. We walk but are more focused on reviewing the talking points for our next appointment than on the serene moment we’re having as we walk. We are usually someplace else, thinking about the past or the future rather than the now. The horse of our habit energy is carrying us along, and we are its captive. We need to stop our horse and reclaim our freedom. We need to shine the light of mindfulness on everything we eat and do, so the darkness of forgetfulness will disappear.

Do You Live or Work in an Environment That Makes It Difficult to Eat Healthfully and Keep Moving?

Where you live and where you work can have important implications for whether you can eat well and stay active. If healthy choices are not available in your workplace or neighborhood, it makes it very di cult for you to eat well, no matter how knowledgeable or determined you are. If your neighborhood is not safe enough for you to walk, jog, or ride a bike in, it will deter you from staying active. Pay attention to your surrounding environment, and take note of the various

barriers to active living and healthy eating. What prevents you from following your good intentions? Are your sincere e orts being sabotaged by family or friends? Does your job or what you do on a daily basis prevent you from staying on course with healthy eating and active living? Do you have too much work-related stress? Do you have time for yourself?

As you start to clear your mind of distractions, these barriers will become clearer to you, and you will start to work on ways around them as well as ways to work with people in your community to make a healthier environment for everyone.

The Third Noble Truth: Reaching a Healthy Weight Is Possible

You can put an end to your weight problem. You have already taken the rst step: by spending energy to understand the roots of the problem, you have stopped running away from it. When you direct your attention to your excess weight and the su ering associated with it, you can see the potential for wellness. You also understand that it is possible to reach your goal of a healthy weight when you take the right actions. Remember, there was a time before you became overweight when your weight was normal. It is easy to forget that.

Ask yourself where you are in this healthy-weight journey. Focus on whether or not you aspire to be a di erent person, to feel better about yourself, to be able to function better, to be happier. Ask yourself what this extra weight means to you, and ask yourself whether you are truly ready to let it go.

To be successful, it is very important for you to believe that you can achieve a healthy weight. Believing in yourself, having the faith that you can change the habits that do not serve you well, and adopting science-based wisdom are important for successful transformation of our behavior. According to psychologist Albert Bandura, “perceived self-e cacy” is essential for any behavior change.³⁷ Self-e cacy is simply the belief that one can carry out a behavior necessary to produce a desired outcome. What we believe can signi cantly a ect what we can achieve. People who believe that they can reach a healthier weight through healthy eating and active living set relevant goals that they perceive to be important for the desired change. They believe that those goals are attainable, and they believe that they have the ability to carry them out.

What are your current beliefs? Are they real, or are they shadowed with illusions from your past experiences, failures, and disappointments? The past is the past. The past is your teacher and can o er valuable lessons on what worked and what did not work for you. But it is not your present reality. It remains your present reality only if you allow it to be. Do not let your past experiences hold you back. Your failures do not need to determine your current or future experience. Focus on the present. When you focus on the present, you do not give any power to your past actions.

Recognize that losing weight is possible and that you can do it. It will not be as easy as popping a pill and watching the pounds melt away, but it will be a journey —sometimes hard—that will be well worth taking.

Learn to listen to your body with compassion. You are more capable of helping yourself if you treat yourself with compassion and a loving heart. Your guilt and hopelessness will diminish, and you will be more accepting of yourself. Don’t judge yourself harshly. Love yourself, and affirm that you can reach a healthy weight. You are losing the weight for yourself, not to please anyone else.

As you start to recognize your innate capacity to be more mindful, you will become calmer, and it will be easier to nd solutions to the problems you face. Allow yourself to truly feel what your life would be like if you could maintain a healthier weight. A rm to yourself that reaching a healthier weight is possible

when you pay attention to and take care of your weight. When you take care of an orchid plant, the plant needs your focused attention, to be watered and nurtured on a regular basis. Without such care, the owers will wither and die prematurely and you cannot enjoy their beauty. You are just like the orchid plant. You need tender loving care for your ideal to be realized. When we look at all beings, including ourselves, with eyes of love and compassion, we can take care of ourselves better. With mindfulness, we can nurture ourselves with greater ease and interest, and our effort will come more naturally.

Even if you have been burdened and tormented by your weight throughout the years, there are seeds of well-being inside you. But you may have lost sight of this because the discomfort of your overweight is overpowering. When you have a toothache, you call your dentist and ask for an emergency appointment to relieve your pain. You know deeply at that point that not having a toothache is happiness. Yet later, when you don’t have a toothache, you forget and do not treasure your non-toothache. Practicing mindfulness helps us appreciate the well-being that is already there and realize that further well-being is possible if we take the right actions.

We need to water the seeds of joy in ourselves in order to realize well-being, including the well-being that comes from being at a healthier weight. Please ask yourself, “What nourishes joy in me? What nourishes joy in others? Do I nourish the joy in myself and the joy in others enough? Do I appreciate the many reasons for joy that are already in my life? Or have I been living in forgetfulness, taking many things for granted?” If you have good eyesight, appreciate it, even though it’s easy to forget what a gift this is. If you’re able to sleep well, appreciate this. If your lungs are healthy, appreciate the simple fact that you can breathe in and out easily. The same goes for myriad things we can do every day but don’t take note of.

When you su er, you can look deeply at your situation and nd the many blessings that are already surrounding you. It is wonderful to sit with a pen and paper and write down all the conditions for happiness that are already there, already available to you right in this moment.

When you do this, you have a rm foundation from which to better embrace and transform your su ering. Transforming our su ering is like becoming an organic gardener, one who does not discard the unwanted scraps from the kitchen or the yard. Instead, the gardener composts these scraps so that they can nourish the ower. You can transform the unwanted garbage in you—your depression, fear,

despair, or anger—into the nourishing energy of peace and joy. Don’t throw away or deny your su ering. Touch your su ering. Face it directly, and transformation is within your reach.

Negative habits can be changed. You can begin anew. Try to be fully aware of your inner motivations for wanting to reach your healthy weight. Why do you want to lose weight? Allow yourself to truly feel that life would be signi cantly better without your weight problem, as you would feel better and become healthier. Your intention to reach a healthy weight has to come from you—and from nobody else.

You need to get back to the wisdom of balance and moderation. Think of balance and moderation as seeds that lie dormant in your consciousness. Water them so that they can grow and be strong. Attaining a healthy weight is your choice. And it is a practice, not an idea.

The Fourth Noble Truth: You Can Follow a Mindful Path to a Healthy Weight

The mindful path to a healthy weight is not a diet that you go on and o . It does not rely on any pills or potions. All it takes is your belief and a rmation that you can follow a mindful path, and your willingness to commit to this path. Following a mindful path means creating your own personal goals for healthy eating and physical activity, goals that you believe you can carry out and live with, day after day. These goals must be realistic for your own life’s demands. Over time, as you progress on this mindful path, it becomes your way of living, one that allows you to reach your healthier weight with great ease and confidence.

Appreciate the lessons that your excess weight is o ering you. Your excess weight is like a bell whose sound reminds you that your past actions, your past way of living, did not serve you well. You can liberate yourself from the imprisonment, struggle, and burden of your weight. Though you are not solely responsible for your current state, you are the only one who is able to change it. You must act for yourself. No one else can do this for you. The rst step is to be aware that you are choosing to change.

Bear in mind that everything is impermanent, including your extra weight. The mindful path to healthy weight is to start living with mindfulness, which will help you be more conscious of what you are thinking, seeing, hearing, feeling, eating, and doing throughout the day.

Take small steps toward change. Do not aim for unrealistic goals that require a quantum leap. This usually sets you up for a vicious cycle of failure. Another

experience of failure is not what you need. Chances are that your past failures in weight-loss attempts have reinforced the notion in you that you cannot do it.

By accomplishing little steps, you start to have a taste of what you can do. You begin to have a taste of success. Every day, allow yourself to witness that it is possible for you to make changes in the right direction, no matter how small. Success breeds success. It is contagious.

Set a realistic goal for weight loss. For most of us, this means losing one to two pounds a week. Losing weight steadily allows your new, healthy habits to be rmly rooted. When you lose weight quickly with fad diets, you usually regain the lost weight in a short time. The best approach is to establish healthy eating and physical activity habits that you can stick with.

There is a National Weight Control Registry of more than ve thousand women and men who have each lost more than thirty pounds and kept it o for at least a year.³⁸ Most of them lost the weight on their own. How did they do it? They exercised and burned an average of four hundred calories a day, which is about sixty minutes of brisk walking. They ate less, keeping to about fourteen hundred calories a day. Plus, they watched less television and limited their visits to fast-food restaurants. There are other examples of success, from a fast-food chain’s formerly overweight pitchman to people who participated in reality shows like The Biggest Loser. The key is to be able to stick with eating well, eating less, and moving more.

Learning what to do to lose weight is not di cult. Putting that knowledge e ectively into practice, though, is the key challenge. Despite advances in weight management research over the past decades, people worldwide still struggle to make the lasting lifestyle changes that would help them achieve and maintain a healthier weight.

So, what can help you begin to make healthy behavior changes and keep them up over time?

Mindfulness.

Mindfulness is a way of living that has been practiced over twenty-six hundred years by millions of people to help them transform their su ering into peace and joy. Applying mindfulness to your su ering with weight gives you a catalyst that you can draw on at will to change your behavior. Consider mindfulness as your ally to help you get out of your own way, change your habits that are counterproductive, and overcome the obstacles and di culties that led you to be

overweight.

Start rst with practicing mindful breathing, mindful eating, and mindful walking every day. We will explain these practices in chapters 4, 5, and 6. It may seem like a lot to start with, but it doesn’t take much at this stage. We are already breathing as long as we are alive, and we are eating and walking every day. Mindfulness is simply a different way of breathing, eating, and walking.

Don’t be discouraged if you nd yourself not being able to follow your plan 100 percent. As long as you are heading in the right direction, you are making progress. Be patient with yourself. Even if you change only one unhealthy habit a week, you will be making twenty-six changes in six months and fty-two changes in one year. Act with determination. Practice diligently. Take one moment at a time.

In addition to your personal mindfulness, you will need to look outside yourself if you’re to reach a healthy weight. Besides your own will and action, you also need support at home, at work, and throughout your community to be able to eat well and stay active. If healthy choices are not available at work, it will be much more di cult for you to eat a healthy lunch. If your community does not have any food outlets besides convenience stores that do not stock many healthy choices, it will be hard for you and your family to eat well.

It is extremely challenging to change on your own. Build a support community or sangha (the Sanskrit word for a Buddhist community of spiritual practitioners) around you to help you stay on track. The support system can be made up of people you meet with in person or online. Think of all the people you come into contact with in your life. Which can be your potential allies, o ering you support in the myriad of small daily actions? How about your family members, your friends, your coworkers, and your health-care team? How about using the Web and other tools to remind you to eat, move, and live mindfully? See appendix A to download the mindfulness bell sound to your computer to remind you to come back to the present moment. You may also want to have a digital watch or cell phone that you can program to beep at regular intervals, say, every hour. The beep can be a reminder for you to stop whatever you are doing and breathe deeply three times. In all the practice centers in the tradition of Plum Village (Thich Nhat Hanh’s monastery in France), whenever the phone rings or the clock chimes in the dining hall, people stop everything they are doing and breathe consciously, releasing all thinking and any tension.

Ending Your Struggle with Weight: The Path Begins Here

You have within you the wisdom, the strength, and the ability to follow through with your plan to lose weight. Through reading this book, you will learn scienti c facts that will help you eat more healthfully and be more active. You will learn more about the internal and external obstacles that may have prevented you from reaching your healthy weight in the past. You will know yourself much better than before. You will see whether your thinking is working for you or against you. You will realize that what you do every day for leisure and for work a ects your weight and well-being. You will be more conscious of how your level of focus, the extent of your mindfulness or mindlessness, and your commitment are all a ecting how much you weigh.

Make a serious pledge to yourself. Begin writing a personal healthy-weight mission statement. This mission statement is a symbol and reminder of your commitment and can help you see more clearly what you intend to achieve. As you go through this healthy-weight journey, return to your healthy- weight mission statement periodically to help you focus, get inspired, renew your ongoing commitment, and stay on track. You may also like to post it where you can read it often.

Your mission statement for healthy weight and well-being should be made up of concrete, achievable goals. It should begin broadly with what you want to achieve overall and then have some more specific goals you can work toward along the way to your ultimate goal. For example:

My Mission Statement for Healthy Weight and Well-Being

Through being more mindful and paying better attention to my health and well-being, I will lose 25 pounds by __________, and keep it o over the following year and beyond.(insert date)

Beginning Goals, __________ (insert date)

I will practice some level of mindfulness every day, with a goal of increasing the amount every week.

I will walk at least 5,000 steps (measured by a pedometer) or half an hour every day, and slowly increase this each week until I reach 10,000 steps or one hour per day.

I will buy more fruits and vegetables.

I will not buy any sugary sodas.

Revised Goals, __________ (insert date)

I will work on being mindful for at least two hours a day, with a goal of increasing the amount every week.

I will walk at least 10,000 steps every day. I will buy more fruits and vegetables.

I will avoid all fast food.

I will not buy any sugary sodas.

Mission statements are works in progress, just like ourselves. While the overall goal of your mission statement will likely stay constant over time, the smaller goals will change and be revised as you gain experience and gure out what you’ve been successful with and what you still need to work on.

As you think about your mission statement and the commitment you’ve made to yourself, you can sometimes become overwhelmed by the larger goals. But remember that those are the goals to be reached much further into your journey. Right now, just stay focused on the individual steps that will get you moving toward your goals. Instead of focusing just on the scale and your weight goal, stay focused on your daily mind-set and actions moment to moment. Smile to yourself, and feel good about every change that you can make, no matter how small. It takes time and determination to transform the deeply entrenched habits that caused you to gain weight.

You are not expected to be able to change overnight. Just like a woodpecker that has to keep pecking away to create a hole in the tree trunk, you need to focus and keep practicing. Stay present in the now so that you are fully aware and can take concrete steps in the direction of healthy eating and active living. To stay on this route to health and well-being, you need to wake up from your autopilot mode. You have to live deeply and with more awareness so that you can be attentive to each moment. Mindfulness practice is the key that will help you free yourself from unconsciousness and forgetfulness. Mindfulness can help you eat, move, and live more consciously.

In the beginning, it maybe di cult to change your daily routines. As you bring more mindfulness into your daily living gradually and consistently, you will

increase your awareness of your daily activities. Before you fully realize it, mindful living will become your new habit, part of your daily being.

A bonus of practicing mindful living, as many others practicing mindfulness throughout the centuries have found, is the sense of being more centered, more joyful, more at peace with yourself. You will wonder why you have lived so much of your life in numbness and forgetfulness. This numbness prevented you from being fully conscious of what caused your su ering and undesirable states of mind and body. This forgetfulness caused you to miss your appointment with life, out of touch with all its beauty and wonders.

By combining science-based advice with the practice of mindfulness, we have the tools to transform the unhealthy habits that have led to our current weight. Our mindfulness will lead us to adopt lifestyle choices that are not only good for ourselves but also good for our planet. We will realize that we cannot attain well-being all by ourselves. Our well -being is intimately dependent on the well-being of others. Our health is dependent on the health of our planet, and the health of our planet depends on us. We all need to consume and act in such a way that the health of our planet is preserved for our children, our grandchildren, and all future generations. We cannot focus just on ourselves if a future is to be possible. We need to maintain the well -being of all. Each of us can contribute by mindfully taking care of ourselves—and our home, planet Earth—for our generation and for generations to come.

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