Acorn squash skins are quite leathery and the cooked flesh will pop out of it as you cut the wedges. Use a butter knife to help separate the skin and flesh if needed. This combo of winter squash, hearty wheat berries, toasted walnuts and blue cheese is the essence of fall. Soaking the wheat berries overnight is smart trick to help slash the cooking time in half. It’s the same principle as soaking dried beans.
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OK, let’s have it … how many of you have stuck to your New Year’s resolutions so far this year? If you’re grimacing right now, you’re not alone. Statistics show that somewhere between 78% and 88% of people give up on (or forget) their resolutions before the days on the calendar hit double digits.
My theory is that people get frustrated when their lives don’t do an about-face after seven days of good intentions. I know I used to. Then one year, about eight years ago, I gave myself an entire year to lose the 20 pounds I’d been trying to lose and everything changed. I changed.
In the years since, as I learned about behavioral change, it became clear that time was a major key to my success. It makes sense if you think about it; a habit is something we’ve done so consistently for so long that we do it without thinking. The cool thing, though, is that we can use the same process to develop new, healthier habits.
How we form habits
There is a proven progression in learning:
1. from unconscious incompetence (not knowing that you don’t know)
2. to conscious incompetence (knowing that you don’t know)
3. to conscious competence (you know what you want to do, but you still have to think about what you’re doing)
4. to unconscious competence (you automatically do what you want to do).
It’s the shift from conscious competence (the “I should”) to unconscious competence (the “I want to”) that creates sustainable change. You get to the place, in fact, where it feels uncomfortable to go back to your old ways. I hear this voiced all the time with My Nourish Mentor participants near the end of the program. They say, “I look back on how I used to eat and I wouldn’t even choose to do that any more.” Not only have their behaviors shifted, but positive emotions and experiences have reinforced those new behaviors and cemented them into place.
Getting there takes time, though. One 2009 study found this long-term shift takes an average of 66 days (incidentally, My Nourish Mentor takes 90 days … I like the extra padding for peaks and valleys).
Reforming habits in real life
Let me give you an example of how this worked in my own life. For years and years and years, I was frustrated with myself because I couldn’t lose the weight I wanted to. I tried diet after diet, but still couldn’t get the dang pounds to stay off. At that point, I was at the first stage of unconscious incompetence; I had no idea what I really needed to do to make sustainable change in the way I ate.
When I finally walked away from silver bullets and diets of the month and dug into learning sound nutritional truths, I knew what I needed to do to lose the weight for good—eat more vegetables and whole grains, and less calorie-dense meat and refined foods—but I didn’t know how to get there without feeling like I was giving up all I enjoyed (sound familiar?). I had gotten to the second stage of conscience incompetence.
I decided to tackle one area at a time. To start, I set out to double the amount of vegetables I ate each day. Sounds easy, sure, but when you’re not used to consuming vegetables in large quantities, there are a lot of hurdles. Like refrigerator space, for instance—I had no idea how much space a pound of kale could take up! And then there was repertoire. Most of my go-to’s at the time centered on refined grains and meat—sandwiches made with deli meats for lunch, pasta with meat or sausage and a bit of veggies for dinner. I was in this third stage of conscious competence for quite some time, working at how to get more vegetables on my plate in a way that got me excited about—not dreading—eating them.
But I did get there over time, and I eventually reached the fourth stage of unconscious competence. Now if I don’t get enough vegetables during the course of the day, I feel a bit off kilter and will crave them for dinner; eating an abundance of veggies has become my norm.
So if you’re struggling with the resolutions you made earlier this month, I urge you to give it time. Set your sights on something you want to change and, over the next two months, experiment, work out the kinks, mess up and try again. Most important, though, consistently practice the way you want to be.
Hara hachi bu is a Japanese term that roughly translates to “eat until you’re 80% full.” It sounds simple, I know, but many deeply profound concepts wear a simple shell. This is one of them. Hara hachi bu is sound advice for many reasons. It takes your brain about 20 minutes to register how much your body has eaten, for instance, so stopping when you feel about 80% full means you’ll likely top off around 100%. It also gets you tuning in to every bite rather yielding to the temptation to mindlessly barrel through a burger.
For me, though, that 80% is the border over which the battles of will are fought. Here’s a snippet of what my brain sounds like when I’m eating a so-juicy-and-delicious-all-I-can-do-is-close-my-eyes-and-hum burger and I hit my 80% mark.
Willful Me (turning a shoulder to Mindful Me): “Shut up, I’m eating.”
Mindful Me: “You know, you’re just going to feel like crap if you eat the whole thing.”
Willful Me: “I’m not listening, I’m not listening …”
Mindful Me: “Seriously, why don’t you just put the rest down and take it home.”
Willful Me: (suddenly taking faster bites): “But there’s really not enough left to take home.”
Mindful Me: “Then why don’t you just put down those last couple bites so you don’t stuff yourself and you can feel a bit better about this whole thing.”
Willful Me: (holding the last bite in front of my mouth): “But I WANT this burger!”
I’ll bet if you miked everyone’s minds at that burger joint you’d hear a lot of conversations that sound like this.
The problem is, we don’t have much experience in listening to our bodies and stopping when we’re full—much less 80% full. Instead, we’ve just re-engineered our food so that we can eat more and more and more of it (oh, I remember the glee when Snackwells would come out with a new cookie flavor). Or we’ll “lighten” something up with the implicit notion that we can eat more of it.
But that’s missing the point.
When we ignore our body’s cues for the sake of … MORE … we’re snubbing our nose at the complex, wonderful system that connects our brains to our tummies.
FYI, I did feel awful after eating that whole burger. I was nauseous and uncomfortable all night, and was mentally flogging myself with guilt (“what was I THINKING?”). But I had another experience with another burger a few months later that felt entirely different.
I cut the burger in half and luxuriated in every bite of the first half. Then I noticed myself starting to feel full. I waited for a few minutes, sipping my beer, and noticed that I continued to feel more full even without eating more. Sure, I was still eyeing that other half. But I remembered how it had felt when Willful Me had had her way last time and, finally, I pushed my plate away.
“I’m done,” I said.
“Aren’t you going to have any more?” Christopher asked?
“No,” I answered. “I’m done.”
I felt great. I felt respectful. I felt at peace.
I’m not saying I’ve mastered the territory struggle for that 20%, but I have learned a few battle lessons. Here’s what helps me stop when I’m 80% full:
Give these a try and let me know if they work for you!
