Intentional Eating: An Easy, Mindful Approach to Dietary Wellness for Increased Vitality, Weight Control, Chronic Disease Management and Stress Reduction - Softcover

DeBruler, Cyndy Hess

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1504388437 ISBN 13: 9781504388436

Publisher: BalboaPress, 2017

Synopsis

This book will help you come into harmony with food and your body by learning to eat with intention and mindfulness. The result will be blissful enjoyment of healthy real foods that will nourish your body, heart and soul. 'Dis-ease' starts with emotional, spiritual and physical imbalance. Often that imbalance is sparked by eating the wrong foods and falling pry to common food addictions including sugar, too many carbs, salty flavorings, and bad fats. The first step in regaining your health and living the vital life you want is to break these addictions. This book provides the tools needed to easily break food addictions in 10 days and then identify the foods that are right for your body. You will learn how, when and what to eat. Following the guidelines provided, in 10 days your body will experience a revolutionary shift in how you feel. More energy, mental clarity, freedom from digestive problems and prevention and healing of chronic diseases are all possible by changing your diet and practicing intentional eating.

About this title

About the Author

Cyndy graduated with a Masters in Pharmacy from the University of Washington in 1972. After working in a community pharmacy for several years, she came to believe that if she was going to achieve her goal of making a real difference in people's lives, conventional medicine and pharmaceuticals might not offer the best solutions. Her first "Integrative" certification was in hypnotherapy, building a large private practice in Hood River, Oregon. Cyndy developed a special passion for dietary wellness counseling and various forms of energy healing work, in addition to the use of hypnotherapy developing a unique program based on 'feeding a hungry heart'. The inspiration for this book came after a serious auto accident which left her unable to do the things she loved. Hiking, swimming and gardening were lost to her because of neck and back injuries. A debilitating TBI (concussive injury) caused memory loss and loss of basic skills in cognitive processing, verbal communication and social skills. The effects on her life were profound and compounded by PTSD and frequent severe anxiety attacks. She set out on a path of self healing. Along the way, she decided to put her life-long acquired knowledge about healthy eating and its importance into a book. Recently she served on staff at the GARM (Global Alliance for Regenerative Medicine) clinic in Roatan, Honduras as dietary counselor and coach, hypnotherapist, and Tai Chi instructor. She is now living in Palm Springs and works with Mo'tus Wellness Center, offering classes and individual session work on dietary wellness and hypnotherapy. Her web site is healyourlife.info.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Intentional Eating

An Easy, Mindful Approach to Dietary Wellness for Increased Vitality, Weight Control, Chronic Disease Management and Stress Reduction

By Cyndy Hess deBruler

Balboa Press

Copyright © 2017 Cyndy Hess deBruler, RPh, CHT
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-1-5043-8843-6

Contents

Introduction, ix, 
Chapter 1–Breaking the Cycle of Addiction, 1, 
Chapter 2–Rebooting Your Metabolism, 10, 
Chapter 3–Bringing INTENTION to Eating, 17, 
Chapter 4–What Foods Our Bodies Need, 22, 
Chapter 5–Proper Food Combining, 31, 
Chapter 6–Vitamins and Supplements, to Do or Not to Do, 38, 
Chapter 7–Making Mealtime Special Again, 46, 
Chapter 8–How to Shop, What to Buy, 50, 
Chapter 9–Basic Skills of Cooking, 54, 
Chapter 10–To Meat or Not to Meat, 61, 
Chapter 11–The Raw Foods Controversy, 66, 
Chapter 12–Everything in Moderation, Listen to Your Body, 69, 
Appendix A: Reboot Program Guide, 73, 
Appendix B: Smoothie & Juicing Basic Recipes, 77, 
Appendix C: Recipe Sampler & Ideas To Inspire You, 81, 
Appendix D: Resource Guide, 99, 

CHAPTER 1

Breaking the Cycle of Addiction

Our culture is prone to addiction. We are addicted to drugs, alcohol, smoking, food, shopping, sex, Sunday football ... you name it. Almost everyone has some sort of addiction. We seem to depend upon and even subconsciously enjoy these addictions as they provide a much needed source of identity, comfort and sense of self.

Within the addicted psyche, there is a sense of "lack". That sense of lack drives consumption as we seek to fill the void with something to soothe us. Sometimes it is alcohol or drugs. Often it is food. Some foods are more likely to be addictive. Sugar, fat, and salt are the worst offenders. The huge food and drug corporations have basically used these poisons to control our food purchasing and fatten their bottom line. The most profitable aisle of the grocery store happens to be the cereal section where tons of cheap, low-quality grains are loaded with sugars, coloring and flavorings to appeal to the youngest of shoppers and feed a growing sugar addiction in the most vulnerable, our children. The Big Food Industry is causing a health crisis across the planet.

Take a minute and imagine, if you will, a big pile of cauliflower or a mountain of apple slices. Do you know anyone that would binge on the cauliflower or apple slices? When you change the image to a pile of cookies or a mountain of potato chips, the response changes. It becomes easy to imagine someone who cannot help eating the last chip or munching all the cookies. Let's look at what the difference is between these two scenarios.

Many doctors and nutritional specialists believe it is caused by a certain irresistible combination of sugar, fats, and salt. Some experts believe that 'food science' has perfected this toxic combining to make saying no to these addictive foods extremely difficult, if not impossible. Volatile chemical compounds assault our taste buds with artificial flavorings to make even "low sugar" foods taste sweet and the chips with low sodium levels taste salty. Everything has more flavor, actually dulling our taste buds to the point that healthy foods may taste bland and undesirable. Fresh vegetables and fruits are certainly not something you want to grab when you need a pick-me-up or a mood changer.

Sugar Blues, a book written in 1975 by William Duffy, documents how we became addicted to sugar. The process is the same for salt and fats. We are talking physical addiction here folks ... just like the addiction caused by heroin! What is just becoming apparent now is the extent of the biological and very real food addiction that people who are overweight or eat unhealthy foods experience. Addiction is a disease and choice or restraint is not an option. It must be treated and the addiction healed.

"Sugar is the biggest public health crisis in the history of the world," says Dr. Robert Lustig, an endocrinologist at the University of California, San Francisco. His 2009 speech "Sugar: The Bitter Truth" has received more than 2.5 million hits on YouTube. In a paper published in 2015 in the journal Nature, Lustig and his colleagues provoked debate when they stated that sugar is so harmful, it should be regulated like alcohol and tobacco. "Every substance of abuse – cocaine, heroin, you name it – has required personal or social intervention," says Lustig. "For sugar we have nothing, and my prediction is that we will need both."

Let's look at sugar addiction briefly, as it is the primary culprit on which the others rely.

Sugar in all its forms is the root cause of our obesity epidemic and most of the chronic disease sucking the life out of American citizens and the economy (and increasingly the world). You name it; it's caused by sugar. Heart disease, cancer, dementia, type 2 diabetes, anxiety, depression. Even acne, infertility, impotence, and Alzheimers have all been linked to obsessive sugar intake.

You cannot win by reading labels, as there are dozens of names for hidden sugars. Processed foods rarely have just one sugar, but many, and most are disguised under strange unfamiliar names we would never think of for sugar. Names we don't recognize like erythritol, barley malt, dextrose, maltose, sucrose, brown rice syrup, fruit juice concentrate and on and on. The average American consumes over 150 pounds of sugars a year!

That's roughly 22 teaspoons every day for every person in America. In addition, our kids consume about 34 teaspoons (that's more than two 20-ounce sodas a day) making nearly one in four teenagers pre-diabetic or diabetic.

Sadly, (because we all love a great loaf of bread) flour is nothing more than another form of sugar because it is metabolized quickly into sugar in the body. Grains are a fairly new addition to the human diet and not a good one. Eating flour in breads and pastas compounds the sugars we get from processed foods and baked goods. Americans consume about 146 pounds of flour a year. An important but unknown fact is that flour raises blood sugar even more than table sugar because of how it is digested in the body. This is true for almost all flours, even whole-wheat and whole-grain flours. Estimates for sugar consumption are between 150-170 pounds per year per American. If we stop to think about it – that's 296 pounds per year for both using the lower estimate. That is just under one pound of sugar and flour consumed daily for every man, woman and child in America!

Here's a shocking fact: sugar is eight times as physically addictive as cocaine! In tests, rats will choose sugar water over food, sex and any other substance until it kills them.

Sugar in all its forms (including flour) is the reason nearly 70 percent of Americans and 40 percent of kids are overweight. In one study, Harvard scientists found that a high sugar milkshake (compared to a low sugar one) not only spiked blood sugar and insulin and led to more sugar cravings, but caused huge changes in the brain. The sugar lit up the addiction center called the nucleus accumbens in the brain. These biological changes are easy to see and measure with brain scans and blood tests. They are real!

Do you have pre-diabetes or type 2 diabetes? Ninety percent of these disorders go undiagnosed. Do you have belly fat? Are you overweight? Crave sugar and carbs? Have trouble losing weight? Have you been measured with high triglycerides, low HDL or been told your blood sugar is a "little high"? In some countries, diabetes is simply called 'Sugar'.

Do you eat when you are not hungry or experience a food-induced sleepiness after eating? Do you feel bad about your eating habits or avoid certain activities because of your eating? Do you get withdrawal symptoms like dizziness, fatigue or headaches if you cut down or stop sugar or carbs? Perhaps you need more and more of the same bad foods just to feel good? These are all symptoms of health sabotaging sugar (and carb) addiction.

Food addiction is not a simple emotional eating disorder as the food industry would like you to believe! Stop feeling guilty! It is a biological disorder and a true addiction. Out of balance hormones and neurotransmitters in our bodies fuel sugar and carb cravings, leading to uncontrolled overeating and consumption of substances that should not be considered food.

The big three big food addictions are sugar, fat, and salt. While sugar may be the worst, unhealthy fats and too much salt and flavorings are right behind in creating an unhealthy planet. They can be found in abundance in most processed foods and almost all fast foods. How many people do you know who sit at home at night and will have a cookie or several, followed by something salty, then something containing fat like ice cream?

It becomes a vicious cycle and the practice of eating mindlessly while watching TV makes it worse. Dr. Dean Ornish, a pioneer in nutrition and health, makes the case that the first bite of ice cream is always the best. So why don't we stop there? Realistically, most of us cannot -- no more than the heroin addict can say no to the next fix.

The Food Industry and the American government encourage more "personal responsibility." Their answer to the crisis in obesity and health related illness is individuals exercising self-control, making better choices, avoiding over-eating and just reducing your intake of sugar-sweetened drinks. They lead us to believe there is no good food or bad food. It is only a matter of balance and calories. Just eat less and exercise more. This sounds good in theory, but new scientific studies prove that industrial processed, fat, sugar and salt-laden food is addictive. Apples are not addictive, nor is broccoli or kale, but soda, chips, and cookies can absolutely become addictive drugs. Self-control and increased exercise are not the solutions.

It is as hard for the biologically-addicted person to drive by their favorite fast food place, or take a small bowl of ice cream and not follow it with something else or more of the same, as it is for a cocaine addict or a drunk to "just say no." Addiction is a disease that needs to be healed like any other if you are to move beyond it. Food addiction is no different. People don't want to be fat. They usually know what they are doing is destructive but they cannot stop. It is interesting that many people go through a "healing crisis" with physical side effects when they stop eating these foods, just as the caffeine junkie gets headaches or the alcoholic gets the shakes.

New studies show that sugar stimulates the brain's reward centers through the neurotransmitter dopamine exactly like other addictive drugs. Brain scans show that high-sugar, high-fat foods and even artificial sweeteners work just like heroin, opium, or morphine in the brain. Obese people and drug addicts both have lower numbers of dopamine receptors, making it more likely to crave things that boost dopamine in the brain.

Furthermore, foods high in fat and sweets stimulate the release of the body's own opioids or "feel good" chemicals in the brain. This has been further documented by studies showing that the brain's receptors for heroin and morphine are the same receptors involved in preference for sweet, high fat foods in both normal and over-weight eaters.

Just like with other addictions, people and rats develop a tolerance to sugar, needing more and more to satisfy themselves. Moreover, we all know obese individuals continue to eat large amounts of unhealthy foods despite severe personal health and social consequences. Just like other addicts, humans on soda pop addictions will experience "withdrawal" symptoms when cut off. They need the food or sugary drink to just feel normal long after the initial period of enjoyment has passed and many people drink pop or diet soda in massive quantities.

A Harvard Study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association showed that overweight adolescents consumed an extra 500 calories on average daily when allowed to eat junk food as compared to days when junk food was not allowed. They ate more food because the food itself triggered the cravings and addictive reaction. Sugar, fat, and salt stimulated their brain's reward centers. They wanted more and could not stop.

So what does the Big Food Industry have to say about these new studies? They keep coming back to the three refrains used over and over. They state: 1) It is all about personal choice. Government regulation on how you market or what you can offer to eat violates civil liberties and should not be tolerated, 2) There are no good foods or bad foods. It is solely about amount, so no specific foods can be blamed for the obesity epidemic, 3) We need to focus on education about exercise not diet, because it shouldn't matter what you eat if you burn off those calories. This is merely propaganda from an industry that relies on the profits from a high number of addicted people eating mass-marketed processed food, not one interested in nourishing the nation or the world. And of course, the huge drug industry and medical institutions also benefit more from a sick population. We are only seeing the tip of the iceberg with the health care industry crisis with lots of money to be made by the very industry charged with improving our health.

Unfortunately, industrial food giant corporations control school lunchrooms and encourage our young folk to consume sports drinks now (loaded with sugars) instead of pop. Indeed, they control our entire food chain from industrialized farming to the grocery store and restaurant. According to one estimate, fifty percent of meals are eaten outside the home. Many home cooked meals are simple microwavable industrial food. There is no clear labeling and all efforts to get effective labeling are energetically combated with big money. Few people know that an order of cheese fries is 2,900 calories or an afternoon latte can be over 500 calories.

Huge changes are needed at the political level to increase healthy food availability and make it affordable for the average American. The "eat local" and farmer's market movements are part of the answer, but it is a story of David vs. Goliath. In the meantime, we do need to take personal responsibility, not to limit calories, but to break the addictions in ourselves and our children. I hope you are convinced. If not, do the research for yourself. There is a serious problem here. We must break free of nutritionally empty foods filling our grocery stores that harm our bodies and destroy our health.

So how do we do that?

My recommended method for how to break food addictions is covered in detail in Chapter 2. It is a very simple Reboot Program that anyone can do in 10 days. Yes, it requires commitment, but you can eat five meals a day without limiting portions (within reason), and you will feel satisfied. It will allow you to begin losing significant weight, lower and normalize your blood sugar levels, lower your blood pressure, lower your bad cholesterol and become a new healthier you. Are you ready?

CHAPTER 2

Rebooting Your Metabolism

"The most important decision we make is whether we believe we live in a friendly or hostile universe."

— Albert Einstein

Food is not your enemy. Finding the right foods and learning to enjoy and find delight in eating healthy foods is the task at hand.

As a pharmacist and nutritional counselor, I have studied nutrition and various diets for more than 20 years. I've taught many weight loss classes and for years saw mixed results. Every body is different and what works for one often fails for another. Some people can lose weight and feel better by eating animal proteins and vegetables and limiting carbs. Some people do much better without any meat protein, choosing vegetables and healthy whole grains, seeds and nuts. Without eliminating the addictions first, either way is doomed to eventual failure. Diets restricting calories do not work. Anytime we restrict ourselves in eating volume or calories, there usually is a rebound price to pay. Statistics show that over 90% regain more than weight they have lost.

So what does work? First, we need to do a Reboot to reset your metabolism and break the addictions. You may have heard about some programs for rebooting your metabolism as many doctors and wellness advocates are now endorsing it. Sometimes there are problems with the way it is presented: 1) it is too difficult, 2) it requires you buying expensive supplements only they sell, 3) there are no specific meal plan guidelines that most of us can easily integrate into our busy lifestyle.

The Reboot can be accomplished by following the guidelines in this book's Appendix, or if you prefer, by juicing with vegetables and some fruits for a period of time. Juicing offers the benefits of a reboot for your metabolism and breaks addiction. But for many people, juicing alone has little appeal or feels impossible. So what is this new way to overcome the addictions without fasting or juicing or calorie counting?

First, the good news! You can eat as much as you need and as often as you like with the Reboot Program in this book! Most people find the Reboot phase of eating quite easy and satisfying once they get through the occasionally difficult first couple of days.

We change our bodies, our metabolism, and our relationship to food by going "cold turkey" to the addictive substances in our foods for the 10-day period. Anyone who truly wants a healthier body and better life can do without these foods for 10 days if they can eat freely and regularly and feel satisfied. I will show you how and assure you that at the end of the 10 days, you will feel radically changed. You will not want sugary foods and even cheese may seem just too thick and fatty for your new palate. Gradually, you may add some of the foods back into your diet, but in moderation or as occasional treats, not regular fare. Basically you will be eating whole foods, mostly plant based with an adequate amount of the protein right for you.

(Continues...)

Excerpted from Intentional Eating by Cyndy Hess deBruler. Copyright © 2017 Cyndy Hess deBruler, RPh, CHT. Excerpted by permission of Balboa Press.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

Edition details

• Publisher: BalboaPress
• Publication date: 2017
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1504388437
• ISBN 13: 9781504388436
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 122