Pay Attention

Susan Albers is a psychologist at the Cleveland Clinic who specializes in eating issues, weight loss, body image concerns and mindfulness. The author of 50 Ways to Soothe Yourself Without Food, and Eating Mindfully, Dr. Albers is something of a media star, appearing The Dr. Oz Show, CNN, and NPR, and her work has been featured in O, the Oprah Magazine, Family Circle, Shape, Prevention, Self, Health, Fitness, Vanity Fair, Natural Health, and the Wall Street Journal.

She’s kicking off the Mindful Eating Marathon, a dieting alternative and a fresh approach to all those weight loss resolutions that come with the new year, on January 1. It’s 26.2 days of daily challenges and tips for weight management. Going hungry is not part of the program but eating foods you love is. The secret is to learn about what drives your behavior, focus on your habits, and teach the brain and stomach to know when you have eaten just the right amount. Sign up directly through the website and the tips will be sent to you via email.

 I asked Dr. Alber to tell me more about what it means to eat mindfully, why it can be an effective way to address diet and weight issues, what the Marathon can do for participants and how it works. These are her responses.

 If you’ve ever signed up for a marathon, you know that it requires extensive training, mental tricks to keep you motivated and the ability to listen to your body. Sound familiar? It’s the same skills you need to eat well--for the long term. Mindful eating is more like a marathon than a sprint. My clients tell me how exhausted they are by the stop-start processing of dieting. Keeping a slow, but steady pace adopting mindful eating habits prevents frustration and giving up. Research indicates that restriction puts you at high risk for bingeing.

Mindful eating is not a diet. There are no menus or recipes. It’s about changing how you eat rather than what you eat. A recent study of middle aged women who frequently ate at restaurants cut their calorie intake by approximately 300 calories a day just by learning mindful eating skills—and they still ate out at restaurants. Therefore, it’s a skill that can let you still lead a normal life of eating out with friends and having fast food now and then. It's sometimes impossible to meet all the demands of a fad diet in your everyday world.

What’s interesting about mindful eating skills is that it can help a wide range of eating problems including weight loss, body image problems, chronic eating problems (ex. binge eating) and reduce the symptoms of diabetes. How does it help such diverse problems? Being mindful helps you to stop your emotional knee-jerk reactions around food. You can’t control your brain telling you “I want that fudge brownie!”. What you can alter is if you respond to it. We often think of our thoughts as an “order” instead of just a suggestion. No matter what your brain tells you to do with food, being mindful can help you manage it.

 The Mindful Eating Marathon:

1) Is free

2) Is a gift someone can give themselves for the holiday--the gift of health and a new way of eating

3) It provides an alternative to dieting, which has proven time and again to be ineffective. We know dieting doesn't work but we go back to it time and again. You can't expect different results by doing the same thing.

4) It's a long term strategy that has been clinically tested to help people manage weight.

I'm intrigued by her ideas and as a professional eater the notion of being attentive to my own relationship to food is intriguing. So I've registered for the Marathon, my first ever, and am looking forward to what shows up in my inbox next month.

Hot Days, Cool Place

Sitting on a cushy couch sipping a tall cold mojito while birds in the trees provide a final serenade before the sun sets, it’s easy to imagine that I'm relaxing in some Caribbean island hideaway. That’s the scene at Rumbar but this lovely little enclosed garden patio, outfitted with teak furniture and brightly colored umbrellas, is only steps away from Euclid Avenue. I just recently discovered the place tucked behind the restaurant in the InterContinental Suites at the Cleveland Clinic. It was quite a surprise to find this pleasant and comfortable outdoor oasis amidst the concentration of big buildings on the sprawling medical campus.

Open only during the summer months, Rumbar is a good choice for Happy Hour. The bartenders muddle up ten different versions of the mojito- my favorite so far is pineapple, but I have yet to try the cucumber, watermelon and peach- and they obligingly accommodated my request to dial down the sweetness. Normally $9.95, the mojito of the day is $6.95 Monday-Friday from 4-6 PM., however it gets cheaper as it the temperature rises: $5.95 if we get to 80 degrees by 3 in the afternoon, $4.95 above 90, $3.95 when the mercury inches up past 100- it’s enough to make you pine for a heat wave.

If merely sipping the classic Cuban cocktail isn’t enough to satisfy you, sign up for one of the weekly Friday night mojito-making class (216-707-4054). $25 gets you a lime mashing lesson and the tool to do it, recipes, three drinks, and some appetizers.

The drink selection also includes frozen treats, rum inspired martinis, and what management calls tacky tropical drinks. The menu of small plates insures that sippers won’t go hungry. A nice extra- valet parking is always free.

Brokaw at the Clinic

Some musings from Tom Brokaw who spoke to Cleveland Clinic employees after work yesterday.

"We're in a crisis and we ought not waste the opportunities that will come our way because of it."

"I think it's time for us collectively to raise our hands and re-enlist as citizens again."

(Close paraphrase) One-hundred years from now, when historians look back at our time, they won't be talking about whether Barack Obama had the answers or whether Republicans had the ideas. They'll look on our actions. That's how we'll be judged.

"We have allowed two classes of citizenry to form. One in civilian clothing and one in uniform. It's antithetical for a great nation to have that happen."

Place was packed — one of the few cases when you're sitting in a seat wanting one of the (now former) talking heads not to stop talking.