Women's Bodies, Women's Wisdom (149 page)

Your emotional state, including past or present stressors

Genetic heritage

Macronutrient intake (proteins, fats, carbohydrates)

Micronutrient intake (vitamins and minerals)

Exercise habits

Environment and timing

Food
chi
(food energetics)

Nourishing yourself optimally means paying attention to each of these areas, which I will cover in the steps that follow.

CREATING OPTIMAL BODY COMPOSITION
AND VIBRANT HEALTH

Reaching or maintaining healthy body composition and vibrant health through the right food choices happens in both your mind and body. I’ve spent more than forty-five years studying nutrition and its effects on women’s bodies, minds, and spirits—both personally and professionally. My interest began in childhood. I was raised on organic food and my parents studied the work of Adelle Davis, author of
Let’s Eat Right to Keep Fit
(Harcourt, Brace, 1954), and Robert Rodale. But eating whole grain bread, homemade yogurt, and seven-grain cereal as a child didn’t prevent me from feeling the need to go on my first weight loss diet at the age of twelve. I had read in a fashion magazine that a girl of my height (5'3") should weigh 115 pounds, a weight I could never maintain no matter how much I starved myself. (My natural weight by the eighth grade was 125 pounds—heavier than most of the girls in my class at that time.) Thus began a personal war with my size and weight that lasted through my forties, when I finally learned the se crets of lifelong weight maintenance and health that I share with you here. Being born with a body that my parents termed “solid,” having had to work consciously at accepting my size and weight for most of my life, and having worked with thousands of women with the same problem, I can assure you that I know what works and what doesn’t.

Though I had grown up knowing about the healing power of food, it wasn’t until I met Michio Kushi, the founder of the American macrobiotic movement, that I really saw, up close and personal, how effective diet was at reversing chronic disease. At the end of my residency training in Boston in 1980, I met Michio and sat with him while he used techniques similar to those of traditional Chinese medicine to diagnose and treat everything from heart disease to cancer in people who came from all over the world. Because they came with their medical records, I could easily see that they’d gone through the gauntlet of Western medicine and had exhausted its ability to help. Macrobiotics was their last hope. In those who followed Michio’s dietary recommendations, the changes I witnessed in the ensuing months were nothing short of miraculous. In those who were willing to make changes, a simple diet of whole grains, beans, and vegetables helped heal heart disease, cancer, and other diseases as well. It also produced such striking changes in people’s faces that they were often barely recognizable two months later when they’d come back for follow-up. I was so impressed with these results that I realized I had to incorporate this approach in my medical practice when possible. And I also knew I had to adopt it myself. I read everything I could get my hands on about the health benefits of vegetarian diets. I also took cooking classes and became a very proficient macrobiotic cook. My daughters were “imprinted” with this diet, which is what I ate when I was pregnant with them and also what I served up until they were about ten years old. Now in their twenties, they remember their childhood “comfort” foods as being brown rice and miso soup.

Though macrobiotics was not the panacea I had originally hoped it would be, it was a great start for discovering how powerful food is for healing. A mostly vegetarian diet rich in whole grains, beans, and veg etables became the cornerstone of my approach to PMS, endometrio sis, menstrual cramps, and other women’s health problems for years. And for those who followed it, this diet resulted in vast health improvements. My colleagues Dean Ornish, M.D., the late Robert Atkins, M.D., and many others—each with their respective diet plans and philosophies—have since demonstrated how effective the right nutritional balance can be in reversing chronic degenerative diseases far more quickly and effectively than conventional medicine leads us to believe. I’ve now refined my own approach considerably and have discovered the key to lifelong weight loss and vibrant health through proper diet. If you follow the steps I’ve listed below, I guarantee you that you’ll lose weight for good, keep it off, and never have to buy another diet book or go on another “diet” again. Simple. Not easy.

Know this: It’s possible to achieve a healthy, vital body that has the right amount of body fat and also looks wonderful. You can begin to move toward this right now. Read through this section and commit to doing as much of it as you feel comfortable with now, even if that means simply taking a walk once a week, enjoying your breakfast more slowly, or starting a vitamin supplement. Each step you take will make it that much easier to begin the next one. Remember, you don’t need to go from A to Z in a week. Just go from A to B!

Be easy with yourself and integrate these steps to nourishment gradually. When you change your attitude about self-nourishment, your body composition and body image will also be transformed. This begins with understanding that your body is shaped by your beliefs. To change your body permanently, you must change your beliefs—and you must do this with com- passion and love. As my friend Louise Hay says, “Changes that are loved into being are permanent.” But changes that are shamed or blamed into being—or that are achieved through deprivation—are fleeting at best (which is why diets simply don’t work long term). Like so many women who have gained and lost the same ten pounds repeatedly, I can assure you that the only path to sustaining an optimal weight and size is to slowly integrate new behaviors and a new self-concept. Research has shown that people who have been obese their whole lives, for instance, and then lose weight quickly often continue to have a distorted body image and literally can’t see what they really look like even after their size is normal.
¹

Step One: Understand That Self-Respect
and Self-Acceptance Are the Cornerstones of
Optimal Size and Body Image

Regardless of how you feel right now, the first step toward optimal health is deciding to respect the body you have. It’s a big stretch for many women to love their bodies.
Psychology Today
reports that body hatred among women is epidemic. The National Organization on Women and Body Image points out how the extreme pressure on women to be thin often has crippling consequences for their self-confidence and lives. You’ll note that when there’s a news story about a woman, her appearance always leads. When the same story is about a man, no one is commenting on his clothing or hair. It’s all about his credentials and accomplishments.

According to statistics reported by this organization, American women and girls get an average of forty negative messages a day about their bodies.
²
No wonder we’re unhappy with what we look like! One study found that four out of five fourth-grade girls are afraid of becoming fat, so they diet. Remember, fourth graders are only nine years old! The pressure starts even earlier—35 percent of eight-year-olds are also dieting. This occurs at a time when the nutritional foundation for peak bone mass and breast health is being laid down. One of my friends (now in her fifties), whose mother was obsessed with weight, routinely dumped her lunch down the storm drain every day on her way to school when she was only nine—because she, like me, was told that she was “solid.” But dieting isn’t such a great idea for adults, either, considering that 87 percent of the people who go on diets end up gaining weight in the long term.