Nicole loves to run, and has recently upped her training to include half and full marathons. While she has never run with the goal of weight loss, she has noticed that when she trains for longer races she has a tendency to gain unwanted fat around her midsection that she isn’t happy about.

Nicole’s hypothesis is that the extra fat is a result of the additional refined carbohydrates (e.g. bread and pasta) that she eats during training periods. She said that she has tried to fuel her workouts with foods that contain fewer carbs, but that she notices a negative impact on her performance.

After some investigating of her training and eating habits, Nicole and I conclude that this theory is inaccurate and that most likely culprit isn’t the pre-workout carbs but the post-workout hunger and subconscious overeating that results from intense training.

Extensive training both increases the body’s calorie demands and hunger, while weakening willpower and normal social constraints on overeating. The end result is a subconscious tendency to eat more calories than you actually need to refuel and subsequent weight gain. Achieving balance in this case is uniquely challenging.

This leads to a detailed discussion of the optimal ways to fuel her workouts and plan her post-training meals and snacks so that she doesn’t inadvertently eat more than she needs to recover and feel satisfied.

Wish you had more time to listen to the podcast? I use an app called Overcast (no affiliation) to play back my favorite podcasts at faster speeds, dynamically shortening silences in talk shows so it doesn’t sound weird. It’s pretty rad.

Related links:

Better Than Before by Gretchen Rubin

Mindful Meal Challenge

How Can Julie Stop Overeating at Dinner Parties?

Home Court Habits: The Secret to Effortless Weight Control

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If you’d like to be a guest on the show, please fill out the form here and tell us your story.

My best childhood memories include big family BBQs at my grandparents’ house, jumping off the diving board anywhere my mom would let me, riding bikes with my brother Dana, and of course Mexico.

My grandfather’s parents were Mexican immigrants. He grew up in Texas in a bilingual home, then ultimately enlisted in the Army where he served in WWII and became a featherweight boxing champion. He was so good at boxing in fact, that he was ultimately recruited to fight with the Marine Corps as well.

After his service he met my blue-eyed, red-headed grandmother in LA. Together they were a spitting image of Ricky and Lucy Ricardo.

After getting married they opened a German sandwich shop and hofbrau in LA. Grandpa was the chef and I don’t know why he chose German food, but my guess is that he was trying desperately to assimilate into the country he loved so he and his family would not be stigmatized by his immigrant heritage. Spanish was never spoken in the home my mother grew up in.

By the time I came into the picture though we ate Mexican food a lot. Even though my mother was the one with Mexican heritage, my father was a self-proclaimed Mexiphile and it was a rare day that our home wasn’t stocked with homemade salsa and guacamole (pronounced wah-cah-moe-lay, please). Chips were optional.

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Jason is an old friend of my husband’s who also happens to be the editor of this podcast. Since he’s started listening to the show he’s become more and more health conscious, and when I launched the Mindful Meal Challenge he decided to give mindful eating a try.

Jason is a perfect test subject for mindful eating, because as he was already trying to get his healthstyle in a better place he already has a set menu for breakfast and lunch. This means that what he was eating didn’t change, so any change in his eating habits can be directly attributed to mindfulness.

He found that his morning three egg omelet was in fact larger than he needed to be satisfied, so he has now cut back to two. He also found that even though he found himself consuming less for breakfast, he wasn’t as hungry when lunch and dinner came around.

Simply by eating one Mindful Meal per day in the morning, Jason lost 4 lbs in the first week of the challenge.

Although he is still trying to figure out the best healthstyle for himself moving forward (which I help him troubleshoot in this episode as well), mindful eating is now a major part of his weight control strategy.

Wish you had more time to listen to the podcast? I use an app called Overcast (no affiliation) to play back my favorite podcasts at faster speeds, dynamically shortening silences in talk shows so it doesn’t sound weird. It’s pretty rad.

Relate links:

Mindful Meal Challenge

Foodist Kitchen

Simple Gourmet: Roasted Beets With Fresh Mint and Chèvre

Aeropress coffee maker

Hamilton Beach toaster oven

Blue Bottle Coffee

“The reason you’re suffering is you’re focused on yourself.” -Tony Robbins from Tools of Titans, by Tim Ferriss

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Peg had a regular habit of drinking a couple glasses of wine every night and felt like it was a problem, like something that she needed.

Not only did this habit impact her general wellbeing and ability to be at her best for herself and her work, she also knew this wasn’t the person she wanted to be.

At the same time, Peg knew that she couldn’t just stop drinking all at once. So she decided to try slowly, a method that worked for her in the past to overcome bulimia.

Kaizen is the Japanese principle of making continuous small, incremental improvement. For Peg, addressing her problems slowly removed the fear of the idea of stopping completely, which she knew she wasn’t ready for.

Starting with one small change––not drinking for one night, not purging for a few hours––gave her the courage and empowerment to continue.

Her deepest motivation was to ultimately become the person she knew she wanted to be, and kaizen was her method to get there.

Wish you had more time to listen to the podcast? I use an app called Overcast (no affiliation) to play back my favorite podcasts at faster speeds, dynamically shortening silences in talk shows so it doesn’t sound weird. It’s pretty rad.

Related links:

How to Cut Back on Alcohol Without Going Cold Turkey

yogahealer.com – Cate Stillman

How to Get Past “I Should” and Actually Become a Healthy Person (external vs internal motivation)

Listen:

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If you’d like to be a guest on the show, please fill out the form here and tell us your story.

For the Love of Food

Welcome to Friday’s For The Love of Food, Summer Tomato’s weekly link roundup. 

A quick heads up that starting next week I’ll be traveling until early March (Kevin is turning 40!), so I won’t be posting Friday links. The podcast will continue as normal.

Next week’s Mindful Meal Challenge will start again on Monday. Sign up now to join us!

This week why big goals lead to failure, how friends sabotage your health, and why vegetables are the best path to weight loss. 

Too busy to read them all? Try this awesome free speed reading app to read at 300+ wpm. So neat!

I also share links on Twitter @summertomato and the Summer Tomato Facebook page. I’m very active on all these sites and would love to connect with you.

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Photo by Alex “Skud” Bayley

John Fawkes is a fitness expert who helps people lose weight and get into the best shape of their lives by gradually changing their habits. His sustainable approach to fitness allows people to look sexy and feel great about themselves, on fitness programs that are easy to follow.

In the movies the mad scientist works in his lab developing an experimental super-soldier serum. When he thinks he has the formula right he injects himself with it, and lo and behold he becomes superhuman.

As a kid I always wanted to do that. And as an adult, I learned that I can––minus the needles, experimental steroids, and insanity. Running experiments on yourself is totally possible, and very very effective for improving your habits and quality of life.

Unlike traditional scientific experiments, self-experiments don’t have a bunch of research subjects. They just have one: you. That means they aren’t very good at finding out what works for people in general, but they’re great for finding out what works for you specifically.

In fact, I’ve run over a dozen self-experiments lasting one or two weeks each, and many of them have produced massive improvements in my life and health. If you want to learn how to do this for yourself (or copy a few of my most successful experiments) read on.

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Amy has been working on her healthstyle for over a year. Slowly she has changed her eating, exercise, sleep and mindfulness habits, and she finally feels like she’s in control of her health.

Now she’s waiting for the other shoe to drop.

Amy is a natural worrier, always ready for something to come along that negates all the hard work she’s done. She knows this is a tendency of hers, yet it’s hard not to feel like there’s some truth behind her fears since even successful diets have always left her in a worse place.

Her question for me today is what: does success look like from here now that everything is great?

This is an educational episode whether you’re a seasoned foodist or a newbie finding your path, since it will give you an idea of what the endgame looks like. Your brain judges success by what it expects it to look like. One great way to know this is by listening to someone who is already there.

Wish you had more time to listen to the podcast? I use an app called Overcast (no affiliation) to play back my favorite podcasts at faster speeds, dynamically shortening silences in talk shows so it doesn’t sound weird. It’s pretty rad.

Related links:

Mindful Meal Challenge

The Worst Thing You Can Do if You’re Trying to Lose Weight

Listen:

Listen on iTunes

Listen on Stitcher

Listen on Soundcloud

If you’d like to be a guest on the show, please fill out the form here and tell us your story.

For the Love of Food

Welcome to Friday’s For The Love of Food, Summer Tomato’s weekly link roundup. 

A quick reminder that next week’s Mindful Meal Challenge will start again on Monday. Sign up now to join us!

Also if you’re a food blogger and are grateful for the international cuisine brought to this country by immigrants, please join our #ImmigrationIsTasty recipe round up on Feb 21. More details here.

This week a smack down of The Case Against Sugar, how to read animal welfare labels, and how to talk climate change with deniers. 

Too busy to read them all? Try this awesome free speed reading app to read at 300+ wpm. So neat!

I also share links on Twitter @summertomato and the Summer Tomato Facebook page. I’m very active on all these sites and would love to connect with you.

Read the rest of this story »

It’s no secret that I’m a big fan of mindful eating. Research has repeatedly shown that mindful eating helps people make better food choices, stop bingeing, enjoy meals more and naturally eat less.

It can help you break unhealthy eating patterns and replace them with healthier ones.

And it is often the last piece of the puzzle for healthy eaters who still struggling to lose those last few stubborn pounds.

But mindful eating is hard to do. Your brain naturally rejects mindful awareness and desperately seeks to follow your impulses to think and/or judge your current situation rather than simply observe it.

These impulses are STRONG. And fighting them to bring your attention back to the present moment can feel exhausting, especially in the early days of your practice.

This is usually when people start to question if mindfulness is even worth it. Enjoying your food more and eating less sounds great and all, but at what price?

How can you enjoy your meal when you’re in a tug of war with your own mind?

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