Andrea Lieberstein on Mindful Eating to Nourish our Whole Selves

We think things that hold us back and dampen our spirit. But it's not just about thinking. Our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent, and creative effort to make a life worth living. This podcast is about how other people keep themselves moving in the right direction, how they feed their good wolf m Thanks for joining us. Our guest on this episode is Andrea Lieberstein, an author, speaker, trainer, and

mindfulness meditation expert. Andrea is a mindfulness based registered dietitian, nutritionist, mindful eating and mindfulness based stress reduction instructor and coach. Andrea leads well Nourished, mindful eating and living retreats and workshops internationally. She was a leader in developing and implementing mindfulness and mind body programs at Kaiser Permanente, Northern California for over twenty years and is a contributing author to

resources for teaching mindfulness and international handbook. Her new book is Well Nourished Mindful Practices to Heal Your Relationship with Food, Feed your Whole self, and end over Eating. And here's the interview with Andrea Lieberstein. Hi, Andrea, welcome to the show. Thank you so glad to be here today. Your book is called Well Nourished Mindful Practices to Heal your Relationship with food, Feed your whole self, and end over eating. So we will move into all of that in just

a moment. But let's start like we always do with the parable where there's a grandmother who's talking with her granddaughter and she says, in life, there are two wolves inside of us that are always at battle. One is a good wolf, which represents things like kindness and bravery and love, and the other is a bad wolf, which represents things like greed and hatred and fear. The granddaughter stops and she thinks about it for a second. He says, well, grandmother,

which one wins? And the grandmother says the one you feed. So I'd like to start off by asking you what that parable means to you in your life and in the work that you do. It's such a great parable, and it's so directly ties into the work that I

choo and my life. Where we put our attention is really everything that creates our life, our experience of our life, and we do have we know who through neuroscience, through psychologies, the mindfulness that we we have, these tendencies of habit of mind that come in even even with all the work that we've done, we could have thoughts, feelings arise

that we may not particularly want to to follow. So mindfulness is so important that that mindful plods, that mindful awareness to see what's arising and then be able to that moment is actively choosing Am I going to put my attention there? Am I going to follow and engage in that thought? What would be most helpfulness, energizing, most positive, most healthy for me? Where should I put my attention now?

And you could fill in the blank there. And then also there are so many in terms of working with human emotions, seeing human and the emotions that come and go, we can nourish our emotions, nourish the quality of our emotions, the feelings, the feeling tones with mindfulness, with attention. So what that means for me is that I feel that I'm pretty vigilant in practicing mindfulness after all these years.

And I absolutely love the practices that we we have being given that we know, you know that some of us we just know from our own life experience. We just bring in or we've been taught, kind of a combination of both. For me, but bringing in gratitude practice, bringing in mindful self compassion, focusing and noticing beauty in

my life. I will intend sly pause and notice beauty and really nourished my attention with that, and then I'm feeding these really beautiful qualities that interviewty, really soaking and nourishing in it. Brings in that sense of beauty common piece inside helps me be more calm, talent, happy, you know, better person. So nourishing through beauty, nourishing through gratitude practice by notice that I'm focusing on things that are making

me feel stressed or unhappy. And as we know, there's a lot in the world these days, a lot going on. It's easy just to go down that track and stay there. So bringing myself that nourishing with positive qualities, loving kindness, practices another really wonderful quality which maybe we'll get into talking about. But it's but right, but not just just

to feel good. But then then coming from this place in our lives, our accidents, our interactions with others, it helps to nourish our relationship, the the ways that we contribute to the world. So nourished is a word that

you use a lot. And one of the things that you talk about is you say, it's very easy to focus on diets and eating is the answer to all our problems, but that that is only part of the solution, and that this nourishment you you talk about lots of different You talk about eight bodies that we can nourish, and we'll we'll get to that in a second, but I want to go back to the title of the book and talk about feed your whole self and end over eating. And the last part of that, the end

over eating, is one that grabs a lot of people's attention. Right. Diet books are one of the best selling books of all time. If I had any sense, I'd start a diet podcast and we'd probably be huge. But that's not your message here, So talk to me about the relationship of mindfulness, this nourishing and how this interacts with over eating. So food is so much the easy go to place for so many people to to comfort, to soothe when

one is feeling stressed or um. You know, there's many people that just use it as the very first soother when feeling angry, frustrated, or bored or sad. As a coping mechanism really, which can be learned from early childhood. So many of us have were given food to be comforted by when we were feeling sad or when we had an alley and kind of a combination of many things. Those that developed eating as food is more of a as a major coping mechanism than others that don't. But

everybody has some of that. And food is also so ubiquitous in our environment. I mean the food get when we're at the checkstands, it's just staring at us. And if we're hungry, it's so easy to want to go for those high sugar or higher fat foods, but quick energy foods. So my book is really it's about nourishing the whole cellf and and resilient becoming really fully nourished from the inside out and from the outside in. I

also like to use the word resourcing. When we're fully resourced, then we don't need to turn into food for that quick fix or quick feeling better. That is, anybody that really looks at what happens when you leave that, you know, kind of ice cream for three more cookies than you really wanted. Usually you feel bad after right pretty quickly. Maybe you get a stomach ache, or if it's not physical, then it might be feeling guilty, beating oneself up. Why did I do that? Or I shouldn't have had that.

There's this whole relationship that we have with food that we carry with us. It's not very peaceful, right for most people? And so where do we start with this? So if let's just say that I'm looking at this and I think, well, you know what, I do have an issue with overeating. I have the regret cycle that you talked about. Sometimes I want to do this differently. Where do people start? So I always like to have people start with basic mindfulness practice. Actually even before that,

backing up is intention. Why do you want to do this work? Why do you want to make a shift, Why is this important to you? And the more that we can connect that reason why to our values, to things that are bigger than just cultural ideas. I need to be a certain way to be okay, or I should go on it because it should do this diet that you know all my friends are doing, but she have something bigger because I just I want to feel better. I want to feel good, I want to be more peace,

I want to have energy. So the rest of my life, I'm so focused on this all the time, trying to have the right body, looks, the right way or what you know, whatever, it is all tied in eat the right foods. So there's so much energy that is connected to that. So the intention, big attention, tied to values that are bigger, that are really important to you, intrinsic values. And then mindfulness bringing awareness, starting to bring awareness to our lives too. Are eating triggers two um and all

who will talk of them. Knowing a little bit about the eight bodies, but also the other what I call the bodies of nourishment, of the realms of ourselves in our lives, that we we need nourishment to thrive. So we start with building mindful awareness and then mindful awareness of our own bodies and our own selves. So I

have in my book Seven Steps to Mindful Eating. In the first one of the first chapters, we've start to learn to to still our mind through a practice of mindfulness meditation, and then bringing this ability to be more present, more focused, and that grows with practice and time, and we can practice in the moment, but bringing that to our eating, cultivating this kind, non judging, compassionate way of being with our experience and being present and then paying

attention to our inner experience, learning to tune in, so using our body as our barometer, learning to tune into hunger, our true physical hunger, our fullness of different ways we can tune into society and have we had enough? And also tuning into what am I truly hungry for. Being able to tune into our physical hunger first is really helpful to them to be able to differentiate all the other kinds of eating triggers that happen out there. And

then we can make a conscious informed choice. And the more we make conscious informed choices, like we might choose to have that really special brownie our mother in law made us um, but we can do it without guilt and beating ourselves up. And there's so many creative ways that we can, you know, have something to not have to eat the whole thing or end up filling um over full or sick or maybe having a bite savoring it, thanking you're relative so much. Oh, I can't wait to

have more of this. I'm gonna bring it home that I'm really ful from this amazing dinner. There's I bring that example in because there's always that Often the families usure we're all going this time of year now is Thanksgiving, so many of us are going to family gatherings and different family meals dynamics come up. But how do we honor ourselves our bodies and also appreciate others and then learning to savor the food that we eat so that

we're really present, not just eating on automatic pilots. So it sounds like there's a couple of different places that we become mindful. One is we're mindful of, you know, how we're feeling, our moods, and then we're mindful of the actual eating itself. So do you tie all that together into when you talk about the seven steps for

mindful eating? Are those all tied in there? That I go through in the book, and this is really only in one of the first chapters, and it is foundational, But then there's so much more that we begin to look at the rest of our lives where we're missing nourishment, and what are the ingredients that that we can bring in to make a full, well nourished life. So we don't need to turn to food for that extra soothing, but to start with just start eating and tuning into

our eating. We we do a mindful check in, sometimes called a mindful pause. You can think of it as a mindful moment where you're so the seven tips pause, maybe taking a few deep broths to bring yourself or present, begin to relax the mind and the body and check into what is present, what thoughts, what feelings, motions, particularly related to the foods that you're about to eat. So we can do this when we're feeling that birge to eat, or we're walking by the staff room and they're donuts

out and other items. You may not even really be hungry, or maybe you're walking by you're actually very stressed by an interaction that just happened, and that stress is an automatic trigger for you to want to go reach for that food, but by stopping and doing their pausing and doing that mindful check and you can see, but what's

really going on here? What do I really need? Do you notice that you're stressed and not hungry and learning to tune into hunger at different levels of something that I work a lot with clients on because many people aren't a wear at their hunger, and then many of us might just sort of work through our hunger or skip the mail thinking that, oh, I'm you know, I'm decreasing my calorie intake for the day by getting killed.

But that's not's not doing good right, but then ending up eating more later because the body says, uh, I'm gonna make you really hungry later, and you're gonna want to eat everything and eat into the night. That's the one that does me. And if I skip meals or or I let too far go and I get too hungry, all of a sudden, all bets are off on me eating anything decent. It's like, all of a sudden, I'm like, I am starving and I'm going to eat whatever is present,

which usually isn't great. Exactly that's exactly what happens. And yet so many people think that skipping the meal is kind of a good thing. But yeah, when we're really hungry, we reach for those foods that aren't helpful. We call them the highly palatable foods in research are the highly processed foods which might make us just want more of

the high cards. That sugar, so really important to be aware of our hundreds of tune in and eat at the regular intervals for us that most nourish us and keep our bodies and our blood sugar at a good even level where we can be at our best. That was mind cognitively, mood wise, all of that. So learning to tune in see what we really need is importance.

So maybe you're not hungry, but going back to that example of walking by the table of food, donuts and other things that work, so you notice that you're very stressed and agitated, but by pausing, taking a few deep breaths, really checking that out feeling. And by the way, this checking can be as as short as you know, and the better we get at it, the less time we need. And sometimes we might just want to take a little more time because we're actually using it as a way

to calm and come present. And then we can say Okay, what do I truly need right now? What would what would help me on feeling stressed? Me? I just want to go out and walk in the hallway, or get a drink of water, talk to a co worker, share a few jokes, right journal, whatever, whatever it is, whatever help man is stressed. There's so many different ways and

the next and that can help break that cycle. Just eating for the sake of eating because of emotion anyway, that mindful check in, deciding seeing what's really happening, and then deciding to eat, deciding what you want to eat, checking in and checking in with your hunger and fullness. We just mentioned checking in with hunger. You can also check into socidy levels, and then when you choose your food, take a moment to reflect upon it. Just really helps

deep in the experience of eating. Be taking a moment to appreciate the food, where it came from, the sunshine, the earth, water carrying hands that were involved in preparing it. Really kind of rounding out that experience by taking a moment to reflect upon it and then enjoying it with

all your senses. So when we first began eating mindfully, we might beat lower we're really putting on training wheels first practice that our workshops often we'll we'll work with a raspberry or a raisin, and we're going very slow, and people will sometimes find out challenging, and of course others will can't believe how amazingly pleasurable be experience was, or how satisfied they feel was just a few crasberries or reasons by being so present for it and so yes,

eating mindfully is eating slower, but it doesn't have to be really really slow excerciated, and and even by bringing our attention more fully in a way it slows down the expense. We're just more present, we don't have all the other stuff going on, so we can enjoy it more. We're more satisfied. We can check in a few times during eating to hunger and fulness it really be aware of the taste. Sometimes the taste changes goes down, and

especially with those file these process highly palatable foods. But that really good takes doesn't usually last very long. Sometimes it can last a long of three bites. One of the things I've heard is that it takes like twenty minutes for your stomach to signal to your mind that you're full and a is that true? And be if it's true, what on earth takes that long? I mean, it just doesn't seem physiologically like the rest of our

system moves that slowly. What's so wonderful about mindful eating is there's a lot we fund, there's a lot of other ways to tune in. We don't have to wait twenty minutes, right, we were all brought up with that, So you're not going to know for twenty minutes. Well, actually I just mentioned taste. Taste can begin to change, especially with those highly processed foods, which we don't want to eat a lot of anyway, And so that's a

great indicator and you know, awareness to stop. Maybe I don't want to keep eating this, it doesn't even taste good anymore. Um. Also just fullness, stomach fulness, the pressure on our stomach as the volume of food we're eating. That can happen sooner than twenty minutes, for sure, and we can start to feel satisfied and for to notice, oh, you know, we're starting to feel full. What is moderate fullness for me? That physical fullness, and then also just

tuning into hunger. After a while, our hunger is going to go down and we are going to start to feel satisfied, and it could be sooner than twenty minutes pausing, We're not sure, taking the time to pass while we're eating and eating in conversation, letting conversation nourish you while you're pausing. Hopefully that's the nursing, not always on who you're talking to. That's that's right, where we're putting our attention. As going back to that terrible what kind of conversation

are we intentionally creating? I think that's important noticing if we're starting, you know, for example, talking about politics and we're starting to not feel very well, maybe we should, you know, how about changing the subject to something more nourishing while we're eating our meals. It's being really aware, you know, again where we're putting our attention while we're eating,

and in this case were in the food. And then also we all eating is generally social, so we want to be able to learn that way of shifting being in tune with our eating and our bodies, but also being able to shift into conversations and being present. So so how do we know we have enough? Going back to that twenty minutes. So it's these other finers, fine tuned ways of checking in and we can pause, and then we have a lot of different society ways to

check into satiety. And some of the research that I draw upon my program was done with mb eats, a lot of research on that in different satiety cues, such an tools such as tuning into taste, but also body satiety, and that's probably more related to this twenty minute. As the food starts to digect in the body, you start to feel this sense of overall satiety, and so that pausing is helpful because that can stick in more if

we're not sure we're hungry or not. Yeah, one of the things I've heard and has been really helpful for me with that is just to set your fork down between bites. Is a very simple sort of at least a rule of thumb for me. That helped me to slow down a little bit. Although people always accuse me of being the slowest eater on the planet as it is, so I may not need the help as much, but

I do find that to be a helpful thing. Yes, it is and right, and not only setting our fork down, but when we do that, really tuning into the taste and the pleasure of the food. If we're still eating it, you know we're still chewing it, but yeah, that's putting down the forks. What's a great behavioral thing to do. The other thing that you recommend at one point in the book is make one meal or snack a day a silent one so that you can really practice and

get better at the basic mindful eating practice. Yes, yes, so making it a practice, just like many of us will have a regular meditation practice and have a regular time to do that, which, by the way, I find it really help inform the mindful eating practice. Makes it easier and makes it easier to remember to pause during the day to check in what do I really need here? What's really happening? And what do I need to nourish with?

What do I need to see? If you're enjoying this conversation, I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but we're nearing the end of it. I wish you could keep listening once the episode ends. Well, I've got some good news too, you can. The interview continues over at one you feed dot net slash support there. If you pledge at the ten dollar level, you'll get access to this additional exclusive content, as well as many other bonus conversations.

That have been recorded with our guests. We really need and appreciate your support, so we hope you'll head over to one new feed dot net slash support and pledge to access this additional weekly content. And now back to the interview, Let's spend a minute now and talk about some of the other bodies. So the basic idea, I think, well, I'll just read what you say and then I don't have to interpret it. When our mind, body, and spirit are fully nourished, we can enjoy and savor food for

its own sake. We no longer need to rely on food to substitute for other sources of nourishment. So what are Let's maybe not go through all eight, but let's pick a couple of the other eight bodies as you call them, the other parts of ourselves that we need to nourish, and that if we're doing that, we have less need to rely on food to try and cover all those areas. Emotional nourishment is definitely one that is great to go food, just so the the listeners know,

maybe briefly I can mention what those eight bodies are. Yeah, So the first is physical nourishment, which we're all very familiar with. Food and water and sleep at movement exercise. Um, but we don't often think about necessarily other forms of nourishment that we really need to thrive and that make

us uniquely human. So we've got that we have emotional nourishment, psychological nourishment, social social realm is really important, intellectual nourishment, creative nourishment, spiritual nourishment, and what I call worldly nourishment, which is being in touch with what we really love, what our passion is, our our sense of purpose, actually bring that into the world and can make a meaningful

contribution that is very nourishing. And if we're not doing that, that can be source as frustration and can certainly there are many people that are frustrated and that committeed to overeating. Really any of these bodies where we're not fully nourished can create those feelings a frustration or anger, sadness, which if we're emotional leaders or stress leaders, that food may be that way of coping. So the more that we can really nourish what we need in each of those areas.

So the last chapter is about getting in touch with your own unique purpose and contribution, which could be anything from no raising a beautiful, healthy family to starting a global nonprofit, or it could be both. An So emotional nourishment is a really key one, and I've mentioned some of those qualities earlier. How do we work with us challenging emotions and with mindfulness? We recognize that mindful awareness

that they come and go. They can feel like they're big and huge, huge and transient and they don't change, but they actually do. How can we meet uncomfortable feelings discomfort with mindfulness, steady attention. Note there's steps just all kinds of in this book, different processes for working with emotions.

There's something called the allowed process where we can recognize and greet the emotion, meet it with kindness, even bring in there's a process where we work with craving and it works with difficult emotions, where we bring in loving kindness, sense of kindness and love. We can caltivate that from the inside out and surround the difficult feeling craving with loving kindness and develop it and it really begins to shift.

We're actually beginning the nerves wished by loving kindness of craving or difficult emotions shifts in a way that it's no longer have a strong hold over us, and then we can make what that nourishing choice is for us. We can make a choice, if it's a food choice, what would be nourishing in that moment? We can also with mindfulness we can make choice. It doesn't mean, you know, we we get away from good foods and bad foods, by the way, which is a source of stress for

so many. I'd like to use all these foods and sometimes food So what are those really helping nourishing foods that you would like to include in your diet at all times? I think mine always is pizza cream. I know what you mean. I'm speaking for Chris. The listeners know who Chris is. He's he's got problems with his eating. I'm kidding. So well, let's put those in this sometimes food categories. Sometimes, but to eat them with mindful delight and zest and uh you know when when you choose

to eat your sometimes food. So whatever they are, and and yes, generally when I talk about that, those are the foods that may be less helpful, but still being able to eat them because you consciously chosen to eat them, you're mindful. They're not something that are always part of the diet. Um to with enjoyment with all your senses,

so let it nourish you. And actually, when we're not stressed about what we're eating, judging being agitated, we die just better, I think, can actually get more nutrients from the food. So it really serves us to be able

to approach approach our food in this way. And after all, now we have enough stress in life and having this low level stress around to it and food choices and for some people much bigger it's not low levels, this approach can start to help to really really how him that down and be able to make choices without guilt,

feeling more free and so choosing. So I don't know who Chris is, but if he wants going back to intention, if he wants to bring in more of the what is generally considered the health forces, no whole food, more plant based diet, and looking at what what does he love, what is delicious, it's okay to bring him in here and beginning to maybe expand those again if that is

his intention and that what he wants to do. Anyway, I think most people another approach here with this book is starting with where you're at, where is your eating at, and what do you want to make what shifts and changes? What's your intention? Why do you want to do that? And everybody comes in with their different and intentions, but

generally there is to be more healthy. And then it might be tied to UM cause there's individual needs of purpocens and health needs, and then tied to bigger values. Maybe used to have energy to do this big new project that I feel really passionate about and want to make a difference about, you know, in the world. And I want to be the best that I can be and I want to be around for a while. Right. One of the things you mentioned a couple of minutes ago was craving, and I wanted to talk about a

concept in the book. I've seen it a couple of places now UM called surfing the urge. Can you talk through what that means and how you do it? Sure? So, surfing the urge is that recognition and that that term was first coined by Alan Marlatt, who developed mindfulness based relapse prevention, which is working with mindfulness and addictions, and that recognition that feelings, in particular cravings have their own life.

They be into crests, they get bigger like a wave, and then they go down, so being able to be mindfully present when that urge arises, that craving without giving into it, without immediately reacting, and having that whatever it is, or that chocolate bar, that kind of ice cream, It could be taken a few breaths, so you're getting yourself more present. One of the first foundations of first foundation

of mindfulness is bringing attention to body and breath. It helps us get present, so breath is a great guide. And and then noticing that feeling as it comes, that crazing and we can get really curious about it. Curiosity is helpful. The the shape of it, where is it in the body, does it feel like, and just a bare sensation of it, and just that curious inquiry about it begins to lessen the intensity and the whole that has overass our identification with it, and it starts to

go down. And then we have Faith's mindful face to really choose what we want, what we're going to do. So I developed this process. I have a craving practice. It actually came to me in one of my workshops when I was looking with someone who had was talking about her strong, strong cravings and how they were running her life. And I asked her kind of guided her into a mindful space bringing awareness to the sensation of craving. I had her visualize the food first that she craved

and really feel that feeling. Get that feeling of craving in, and then begin to imagine the sense of loving kindness practice. And there's there's full practice. That's been my book too. How do we eliicit loving kindness practice? It's a traditional

Buddhist practice. It's incorporated and just so many of the mindfulness programs these days that we have in medical centers and schools and corporations um the community, the basic loving kindness practice, this one we incorporate into the actual craving practice and envelop the craving and loving kindness. And it's did I actually mentioned it a little bit earlier, So this is more than just a surfing the urge, but

we're actually bringing in loving kindness. And what most people discover first of all the craving lessons greatly that space that is created is so welcome and new for so many people want to experience that. And then what happens is kind of really very powerful and magic for some people when they realized that what they were wanting was love, the love that they were experiencing from doing this practice,

that's what they were wanting from the food. And sure some of this we've you know, we've read about that, we heard about that um that to really experience it from the inside out and to be able to give yourself that love and that comfort and that's love that maybe you didn't get when you were little, you got I can come instead. To be able to give that to yourself and the inside out is an amazing powerful

skill and tool that is transforming life, transformative. So food no longer used to run you, but you can learn to nourish yourself with loving kindness, with with gratitude, with compassion. So I mentioned these qualities again because they are so powerful, you know, in my own life, the light and my client's life. It's so we need more, you know, this

world so emotional nourishment. Going back to that chapter, it is still with practices, mindful practices, how to nourish from the inside out and navigate it's difficult terrain that can arise as emotions, but not push them away because that creates more energy, it makes them stronger. That is such a true statement. I find it more and more true in my case about resistance. Well, Andrea, thank you so much for taking the time to come on the show.

I've really enjoyed this conversation. I think there's lots of great things in here for people who are looking to change their relationship to food. So again, thanks so much for coming on. The book is called Well Nourished, Mindful Practices to Heal your relationship with food, feed your whole self, and end overeating. And in the show notes we will have links to Andrea's book, to her website and her social media presences, and you can find out more about

her there. So thanks so much for coming on, Thanks so much for having me. Okay, take care bye. If what you just heard was helpful to you, please consider making a donation to the One you Feed podcast. Head over to one you Feed dot net slash support