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I recently came across this statement on the U.S. Department of Agriculture website: “About 90% of Americans do not get enough dairy.”1 A review of dairy consumption by country shows that the United States ranks 17th in the world with an average intake of 560 pounds per person per year.2 In comparison, the average Japanese person consumes about 158 pounds annually, ranking Japan 109th on this list. Meanwhile, Japan ranks first in the world for life expectancy. The United States is 54th.3 If a country that consumes 28% as much dairy as we do outlives us by an average of eight years, is it accurate to say, “90% of Americans don’t get enough dairy”? Who defines “enough”?
It's questions like these that inspired me to create a new kind of course in nutrition – one that teaches people how to think critically, listen to their bodies, and develop a healthy relationship with food. In How to Eat, I explain how to achieve your optimal weight without counting calories or eating in a totally unnatural way. I lead students to a way of eating that promotes abundant energy and a clear mind without having to wade through all the contradictory information out there. Through a combination of modern science, psychology, and a strong foundation in traditional Eastern systems of medicine, I’ll teach you that it’s not just what you eat, but how you eat that matters.
For today I want to offer you just one simple piece of nutrition advice: stay conscious while eating.
We all tend to think about things other than the act we’re currently engaged in, and this is an especially bad habit while eating. We daydream, we work, we read, we watch TV, we talk, we drive, we play on our phone. This causes us to miss out on many of the benefits of eating, and it also makes us more likely to eat in ways that aren’t healthy.
There are three good things that happen when we stay conscious (i.e., mindful):
- The eating process tends to work better. We're relaxed, we consume at a healthier pace, the body assimilates it better, and I believe we probably derive more nutritional value from the food.
- We notice and can respond to the subtle (or not-so-subtle) messages our body is giving us, such as, “I’m not hungry anymore” or “This food is not compatible with me” or “Slow down.” You can learn virtually everything you need to know about how to best feed yourself – both the specific foods and the ideal time and manner to eat them – just by giving all of your attention to the act of eating.
- We have an amazing opportunity. Truly. I believe that most people may never experience just how profound the act of eating is. This profundity is only available when we give it our full attention. Then we start to get an inkling of it . . .
. . . the complexity of colors, textures, flavors, and nutrients in the food
. . . the incredible sophistication and intelligence of the human body; its ability to extract what it needs from the food and turn it into energy, blood, muscle, bone, and the capacity to remain conscious and sharp
. . . the whole ecology we’re part of – the sun and the almost magical ability of plant cells to turn its light into biological energy; the constructive roles of soil and water; the human labor and the care that was taken to cultivate this food; and the lineage of thousands of generations of plants and animals that were intentionally chosen for the purpose of nourishing us.
When we have an experience of just how special this is, eating is no longer just about making the hungry feeling go away or getting a good taste in your mouth. It can be calming and centering. It can be a beautiful spiritual practice. It unites us with our environment.
If you’re ready for a new way of relating to food and how you feed yourself, check out my course, How to Eat. It’s on sale for 60% off right now.
Be well,
Peter
1. https://www.myplate.gov/eat-healthy/dairy
2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_milk_consumption_per_capita
3. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_life_expectancy
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During a particularly hard break-up in my 20s, a friend advised me, “The more present you are during this process, the bigger the present you’ll get out of it.” And though I barely understood what that meant, I gave it a try and an odd thing happened. I saw that I was choosing the big, dramatic grieving process I was going through. And that meant it was optional.
In The Art of Presence, Eckhart Tolle says, “Through thought you cannot possibly grasp what presence is.” But he gives some clues to point us in the right direction. He says it’s there, “when you’re not thinking about the last moment, or looking to the next one.” And he uses phrases like “a state of relaxed alertness” and “a spacious stillness,” to describe it.
Thich Nhat Hanh said, “The most precious gift we can offer others is our presence.”
Our presence is tremendously rare and hugely valuable. Especially in this age of epidemic distraction, it’s increasingly difficult and uncommon to choose a voluntary time-out from technology, data, and our own mental analysis. But unlike the artificial value of a coin that accidentally got stamped with a head on both sides, our presence can do for us what nothing else can. And we can make it more abundant by simply choosing it.
Although it may not put food in our belly, most other problems disappear with presence. The need to fix or relive the past disappears. The need to avoid certain unwanted events in the future disappears. Even if we're working on something now that will benefit us in the future, with our presence, we work on it now in order to work on it now. And that’s enough.
The allure of distraction, which so often threatens our presence, dissolves when we practice being present. Do you know the word obviate? I like to write using words that almost everyone understands, but there’s only one word I can think of that means “to make unnecessary,” and that word is obviate. Learning to deepen our presence obviates the urge for distraction and mental departure from our current reality.
With presence, we perceive all kinds of intelligence and detail that we’re otherwise deaf and blind to. We know when to eat and when to stop eating. We know how to move our body in a way that doesn’t cause pain or injury. Our work becomes more interesting. Our relationships become healthier. We listen better and we feel heard.
With two kids, my presence is requested almost incessantly. I hear the word Papa at least 100 times a day. Often, I hear it ten or more times in quick succession. We all yearn for someone’s total presence with us. These are the moments of connection between what is the same in both of us. Presence uncovers what’s real in this moment. And that’s refreshing, exciting, and affirming.
When we’re all so busy that we see time as a commodity, it can seem that giving our presence to someone else is like giving away our treasure. But are we actually giving something away?
Of course not. When we “give” our presence we gain the present. To withhold our presence means both we and the other person miss out.
So, how can you learn to be more present? It takes practice. If you’re new to this, I don’t recommend making a goal like, “I’m going to be more present from now on.” I don’t want to discourage you, I just want you to be realistic about what you’re up against – a lifetime of habits and a sea of tantalizing distractions.
Try something a bit less ambitious, such as this: Once a day, as you begin some activity – whether it’s buying groceries, playing Candyland, eating a meal, and listening to a friend’s problems – select this activity as an exercise in presence. In your mind, identify what exactly you’re doing – “I’m vacuuming the floor” – and devote yourself to that. Don’t run away in the middle of the activity. This means don’t pick up your phone, don’t depart in your mind to explore other thoughts and ideas, don’t visit the past, don’t anticipate what’s next, don’t judge. Just dwell in the present. Be saturated by the present. Feel everything. Accept everything. And let each next moment come.
Over time, quicker than you might think, you’ll start regaining your attention. You’ll be able to focus on something for more than five seconds. You’ll begin to yearn for this, which will make your practice much easier. And as you start willingly selecting more and more moments to be completely present, you’ll experience an unending offering of presents.
Be well,
Dr. Peter Borten
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As a young adult I often stayed at the beautiful Marin Headlands hostel just north of San Francisco. I was there one weekend while a large group of missionaries was passing through. We were all sharing the same kitchen space and I was chopping some broccoli when a cute young woman around my age approached me. We started talking and I thought it was going well. I have always enjoyed conversing about spirituality and religion, even with people of different beliefs than my own.
At the time I was immersed in learning about Advaita – nondualism – which was blowing my mind. Nondual philosophy asserts that, although we perceive many things that may feel separate, in reality everything is an expression of a single Oneness experiencing itself in infinite ways.
Some people call this Oneness God or Goddess or Source or Divine or Dao. What’s important isn’t the name but the experience of this connection, and how it redefines how we see reality.
I had in my suitcase a book called Aghora in which an eccentric spiritual teacher explains that since everything is God, both sex and eating are simply acts of “putting God into God.” So, when this missionary woman asked me what I was doing, I guess I thought I was being clever by replying, “Oh, just chopping up some God.”
She was clearly taken aback, so I explained that if the whole universe is an expression of one God, then broccoli was of course included, and therefore I was chopping up some God to put into God (myself). She was speechless for a moment, then said – a bit louder than was called for, I thought – “God is not broccoli!” and walked away.
There were several lessons for me in this story, starting with (1) nobody likes a smug person pushing their buttons, and (2) if you truly want to make a difference in the world you need to meet people where they are. But aside from my social failure, maybe the most important lesson was that there’s often a huge difference between the description of an experience and the experience itself. In other words, to understand something intellectually tells us nothing of how we’d be affected by experiencing it.
In lectures, I used to explain how physics seems to “prove” nondualism, hoping that even the nonspiritual types in the class would be won over. I’d point out that while each of us feels we’re separate from everyone else in the classroom, we and the world around us are all just different configurations of the same fundamental stuff – subatomic particles or even more fundamental fluctuations of energy. It’s a powerful idea, but I doubt it’s caused many people to conduct themselves differently towards their neighbors.
For me and most people I know, life changes have come through direct experiences of this Oneness in non-ordinary states of consciousness facilitated mainly by meditation, yoga, ritual, self-inquiry, immersion in nature, music, acupuncture, art, pain, dance, conscious breathing, interpersonal connection, and entheogenic substances. Ordinary reality (even with impressive-yet-unactualized spiritual concepts) appears random and soulless by comparison.
I didn’t have the chance to ask, “If God is not broccoli, what is broccoli?” We tend to draw vague, subjective lines around life and then deem one side worthy of our reverence and the other unworthy, but the abolition of such lines isn’t automatically liberating. I’ve seen people, myself included, latch onto the idea that everything is Divine and then fall into nihilism. Because, if it’s all God, why try? Why care? Why choose one path over any other?
This kind of thinking is a sure sign that we’re operating from a mental concept and not actually experiencing what it represents. It would be similar to take a psychedelic mushroom and hold it between your teeth, telling yourself, “So this is what psychedelic mushrooms are all about. Meh.”
Your homework is to determine whether or not broccoli is God. Since “God” is a spiritual concept, it can’t really be assessed in ordinary reality. Everyday thinking needs to fall away. You can get there using any of the approaches I mentioned above.
Be well,
Peter
P.S. I’d like to share one of my favorite quotes on nondualism from Tantra scholar Christopher Wallis in Tantra Illuminated (slightly abridged for space):
“Since reality is One, and everything is equally an expression of the one divine Light of Consciousness, every experience by definition is an experience of God… If we propose that some things are more God than others, like concentrated orange juice versus watered-down orange juice, then we must propose the existence of something that is not God that waters down divinity. But no such thing can be found, at least in this philosophy, because 1) the definition of God here is the unbounded Light of Consciousness, 2) everything that is known to exist is an object of experience, and 3) every experience is by definition pervaded by consciousness. Therefore, this – whatever is happening right now – is as God as it gets. Now, if you are in a miserable or banal life situation, you may be disappointed by this announcement. But notice I said, ‘This is as God as it gets,’ not, ‘This is as free as it gets.’ Freedom means actually experiencing the divinity in each moment.”
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I recently came across this statement on the U.S. Department of Agriculture website: “About 90% of Americans do not get enough dairy.”1 A review of dairy consumption by country shows that the United States ranks 17th in the world with an average intake of 560 pounds per person per year.2 In comparison, the average Japanese person consumes about 158 pounds annually, ranking Japan 109th on this list. Meanwhile, Japan ranks first in the world for life expectancy. The United States is 54th.3 If a country that consumes 28% as much dairy as we do outlives us by an average of eight years, is it accurate to say, “90% of Americans don’t get enough dairy”? Who defines “enough”?
It's questions like these that inspired me to create a new kind of course in nutrition – one that teaches people how to think critically, listen to their bodies, and develop a healthy relationship with food. In How to Eat, I explain how to achieve your optimal weight without counting calories or eating in a totally unnatural way. I lead students to a way of eating that promotes abundant energy and a clear mind without having to wade through all the contradictory information out there. Through a combination of modern science, psychology, and a strong foundation in traditional Eastern systems of medicine, I’ll teach you that it’s not just what you eat, but how you eat that matters.
For today I want to offer you just one simple piece of nutrition advice: stay conscious while eating.
We all tend to think about things other than the act we’re currently engaged in, and this is an especially bad habit while eating. We daydream, we work, we read, we watch TV, we talk, we drive, we play on our phone. This causes us to miss out on many of the benefits of eating, and it also makes us more likely to eat in ways that aren’t healthy.
There are three good things that happen when we stay conscious (i.e., mindful):
- The eating process tends to work better. We're relaxed, we consume at a healthier pace, the body assimilates it better, and I believe we probably derive more nutritional value from the food.
- We notice and can respond to the subtle (or not-so-subtle) messages our body is giving us, such as, “I’m not hungry anymore” or “This food is not compatible with me” or “Slow down.” You can learn virtually everything you need to know about how to best feed yourself – both the specific foods and the ideal time and manner to eat them – just by giving all of your attention to the act of eating.
- We have an amazing opportunity. Truly. I believe that most people may never experience just how profound the act of eating is. This profundity is only available when we give it our full attention. Then we start to get an inkling of it . . .
. . . the complexity of colors, textures, flavors, and nutrients in the food
. . . the incredible sophistication and intelligence of the human body; its ability to extract what it needs from the food and turn it into energy, blood, muscle, bone, and the capacity to remain conscious and sharp
. . . the whole ecology we’re part of – the sun and the almost magical ability of plant cells to turn its light into biological energy; the constructive roles of soil and water; the human labor and the care that was taken to cultivate this food; and the lineage of thousands of generations of plants and animals that were intentionally chosen for the purpose of nourishing us.
When we have an experience of just how special this is, eating is no longer just about making the hungry feeling go away or getting a good taste in your mouth. It can be calming and centering. It can be a beautiful spiritual practice. It unites us with our environment.
If you’re ready for a new way of relating to food and how you feed yourself, check out my course, How to Eat. It’s on sale for 60% off right now.
Be well,
Peter
1. https://www.myplate.gov/eat-healthy/dairy
2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_milk_consumption_per_capita
3. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_life_expectancy
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