Mindfulness is a Buddhist concept of meditation to help an individual recognize and cope with emotions and physical sensations. This paying attention on purpose, in the present moment, and non-judgmentally brings one's complete focus to the present experience on a moment-to-moment basis. With eating, this lets us fully enjoy the moment of eating, and recognize when we are full. During this 30-day period, I will try to focus each meal on eating with intention and direct focus and see how this changes eating habits and other life areas.
Day 25:
I can't believe this challenge is already coming to its final posts. I was so frustrated that it was taking so long and now this has become a steady part of my everyday life.
The weekend continued to be slow and restorative. My husband and I hung out the entire time, and only left the house in order to get Poboys from our favorite food truck (shout out to Toby's New Orleans Po'boys). The Devastator sandwhich is served with fried shrimp and hot links, which combined with the rest of the sandwich was extremely filling. It was AMAZING and pretty much the only thing that I had all day. I don't know if it's the slow eating and waiting to see how my body feels, or the fact that the Poboy was super stuffed but my body had no desire to eat anything else the rest of the day.
Day 26:
In checking my weight today, I was able to see one of the possible benefits of the mindful eating practice over the past 26 days. I had seriously let myself go over the summer and not put much attention to where things were with my weight. Due to my focus on class work and disregard of any dietary practice, I was the highest weight of my life at 262.9 lbs.
After nearly a month of returning to my job, practicing to be a teacher of Hot Yoga, and focusing on what was going into my body and how it was making me feel, I am proud to say that I am less than the place I was when I ended the school year last year, at 253.9 lbs.
On top of this, over 10 lbs of fat has been lost. I don't feel that I've necessarily been working hard to make this change happen, but I'm happy about it none-the-less. In celebration of this success, I made a focused intention to have my lunch outside and fully embrace the time meditating. I followed this in the afternoon by conducting my first Kung Fu practice at the school.
Day 27:
Today was a busy day of running around the school between meetings and deescalations. I met with a student who had caused some trouble last week by saying some terrible things, calmed a child down who had problems with a teacher, and I met with my principal, twice, to discuss expectations on the job and resolve some of the miscommunications and misunderstandings that we had been having. All of these things, plus the regular go-go process of the school day left me at 3 PM without having eaten much since breakfast. This was a slight problem because I had Hot Yoga practice at 4:30 PM and definitely needed to eat something beforehand so I didn't pass out. I was able to resolve this by driving to the yoga studio and arriving at 3:50 and sitting in my car eating my lunch slowly. While I need to take a break from the craziness during the day, and definitely can't let my lunches get taken away every day, my jobs is pretty unpredictable and I loved being able to embrace the moments of silence which happened while I was eating.
I had my first Chemistry class at the college level this evening from 6 PM until 9 PM, and the classes are quite close to the yoga studio (like 5 minutes away), so I was able to quickly shower after practice and head over to the class. What I will need to do in the coming month is begin to figure out when I can eat dinner so that I am fully prepared to do this slowly and mindfully while meeting the tight schedule I have to keep.
Day 28:
Chocolate chip cookies are my worst enemies when it comes to mindful eating. Last night, after I came home, I made chocolate chip and pecan cookies for my husband to take to work. I did munch on the dough a bit, but what really got me was all of the cookies left out this morning on the counter. Without even thinking, I had eaten 3 of them. It's this uniquely delicious combination of sugar, salt, and smooth chocolate that I just die for. While I am able to focus on the specific tastes of other food and slow down, this just seems impossible with the power and influence of the infamous CCCs.
I didn't get a lunch again today, which is unfortunate because it makes me feel like I'm breaking the promise to myself of taking a break throughout the day from the grind and stress of work. In order to make up for this, though, I left school right afterwards, came home, ate "lunch" at home on the porch and then had to head back to school for back-to-school night with our families. Throughout the rest of the night I didn't eat much else but a hot dog because of how busy I was followed by my energy being completely depleted.
Day 29:
The day started off pretty easy. I was able to eat my breakfast slowly and with intention, made my way to work with little to no problems, and there weren't many issues to respond to from students until after lunch. This is when things got a bit crazy. While the students were headed back to class, one girl came up to my partner and said that she wasn't feeling well. When my partner asked for further clarification on what she meant by "not feeling well", the girl said that she had eaten something that had marijuana in it and that she was feeling dizzy. At this, my partner took the girl to the nurse and told me what was going on. I went to talk to the girl and ask if she had any information, and she told me, at first, that she had simply found it and eaten it. This then turned into a story where she had gotten it from 'some guy' off campus. I told her that both of these were terrible situations (who eats random things they find lying around or takes food from a stranger), and that she should tell the truth instead.
I made a call to the girl's mother and then was called to a classroom because of a 'health/medical' situation. When I arrived at the class, another girl was sitting in her seat and the teacher told me that she was dizzy and couldn't walk. I helped the girl stand up and saw that she has tiny red eyes and was having a hard time speaking. I walked her over to the water fountain to get something to drink, and then walked her to the nurse. A boy left that same classroom right as I got out from the nurse because he was on his cell phone, got in trouble, but refused to give the cell phone to the teacher. I got the student's cell phone, locked it in my cabinets, and sent him back to class. Upon heading back to the nurse, the 2nd girl had admitted that she was high because she had eaten a marijuana chocolate, and the first girl's mother had arrived. I spoke with the mother, who wanted me to check on the girl's best friend (who ended up not being intoxicated). After I checked on the friend the mother took the first girl home for the day.
The 2nd girl, upon further questioning, admitted that she had been the one to distribute and sell the chocolates to the first girl AND to the boy who had given me his cell phone. At that point I left to get the girl's backpack from the classroom and pick up the boy. I called the children's parents, and when the girls mother arrived she began looking through the girl's phone and found messages between her and a female Junior student about how much to sell the chocolates for and we finally got the full story of the distribution in the school. This situation took the entire afternoon, and I wasn't able to grab a lunch (which I had needed to leave the school for anyway).
On the way home I did something I don't normally, and stopped by McDonalds to get some fries and two cheese burgers, as I was in a rush to get home, let out the dogs, and take a quiz before my class that night. I waited until I got home, let out the dogs, and ate the food as mindfully as possible. As I got to the end of the food, I started to feel terrible and sick to my stomach. and feeling terrible and tired afterwards. This is how I went to class, and it helped me understand what a bad idea eating fast food can be.
Day 30:
It's the final day of this challenge. As a result of what happened yesterday, I made a dedicated effort to take a lunch, focusing on eating and even getting a 10 minute mediation in. That's not to say that that crazy things didn't happen in the building, though.
In the morning I had the honor of dealing with a young, future Julian Assange. This boy had his computer taken away by the computer science teacher, and when he went to the front desk to borrow a Chromebook I asked him what was going on. He told me that he had gotten in trouble with the teacher, so we went to my office where he told me the whole thing. The previous week, he had been using LANSchool, a networking tool that lets teachers access individual student computers on the school network. No student is supposed to have this, but this Sophomore boy has had it installed since 7th grade. He is part of an online community of boys who share inappropriate images, and tried to access another student's computer and send an inappropriate image (Hentai, i.e. Japanese manga porn), and 'accidentally' sent the image to all of the computers in the computer science teacher's classroom. Luckily, the teacher had a planning period and no other student was subjected to the image.
I called home for the boy to let his parents know, then circled with my partner and the principal to tell them what happened and what the parents said. The student's parents weren't extremely surprised by what had happened. Actually, they had received a cease-and-desist order from Epic Games (the makers of Fortnite) last semester because the student had hacked into their systems. During the summer, he was offered a job with the company as a bounty hunter and is paid $1,000 per hole in their system. That means that he could potentially make more money, at 15, than I could depending on how many holes he finds. I placed him in our 'reflection room', a room where we have kids sit and work while they aren't allowed to be in class, with the two children who were high (and weren't the distributors) from yesterday.
As I walk by the principal's office, I see a boy who was reported as a runaway talking with the principal. When I get to my office, a text message come through from the principal saying that she is outside with the boy and may need support, but we also should contact the police to let them know that the runaway child has come to school. The social worker joined the principal to talk with the boy and the police came to discuss him going home. He said he refused to go with his guardian and would be happier leaving the school. They managed to convince him to stay until the guardian came to the building. Upon her arrival, he said he was going to call the police and turn himself in. My partner convinced him to hang up the phone so they could discuss what he meant, had him separated into the counselor's office, and he told his story. What I heard from the counselor later was this, "the student disclosed to me that he stabbed an adult woman in front of a 7/11 store. Afterwards, he fled the scene by foot. He stated that he did not know the woman but she was provoking him by stepping on his shoes and swinging her fist at him. The student admitted that he was under the influence at the time of the incident." Upon hearing this, the police were called again, came and took statements, then said they would get back to us and the guardian took the child to a psych ward for evaluation.
It was at about this time that I went to lunch, did my meditation, and came back to give the police (who were now in the building for a 3rd time) the typed statement about what had happened with the children who were selling yesterday. All in a day's work.
Conclusions:
The past 30 days have been a big wakeup call on the neglect I've been showing to what and how I've been eating and the amount of time that I take out of my day to do something simple such as be present to enjoy the moment.
The benefits of this activity were both mental, making me feel great about giving myself time and what I was eating, and physical, losing weight and having a better understanding of how I feel after eating food. I would highly recommend anyone who feels overwhelmed by the different pieces of their lives to do this. I plan to continue it, as best as I can, going forward.
Pork Chops with Mushroom Cream Sauce
2 Tbs olive oil
8 small pork chops with bone in
Salt and pepper to taste
2 Tbs butter
16 oz sliced mushrooms
1 teaspoon garlic minced
3 tablespoons flour
1 13 oz can of beef broth
2 tablespoons heavy cream
1/3 a cup of water.
How to cook it up:
1. In a large skillet, heat the oil on Medium heat. As ready, place the pork chops into skillet. Salt and pepper the pork chops as you like, but be careful not to pour too much on.
2. Heat each side of the pork chops between 4-5 minutes or until there is a golden glaze on each side (this will only be possible if you have cooked them on a medium heat). Make a slight cut into the thickest pork chop to check if the meat is cooked (no pink)
3. Warm a plate (or two) in the microwave. After the pork chops have finished cooking, remove them from the skillet and place on the warmed plate and cover (or use the other plate to help cover) and keep warm.
4. Heat the butter in the skillet. Add the mushrooms and saute for 3 minutes. Add the water and continue to cook another 3 minutes or until softened.
5. Add the flour on top of the mushrooms and cook another minute or two. Add the beef broth slowly to the mixture, stirring as you do to thicken the sauce. After all broth is added, add the heavy cream.
6. When the sauce is thoroughly mixed, place the pork chops back into the sauce and scoop the sauce on top. Serve and munch!