As usual, a lot of what I learned I harvested from working on the magazine. So I want to start by expressing gratitude for that opportunity and heartfelt appreciation for all the great ideas and resources that other people have shared (or just let me cop). An extra-big thanks to our super staff.

Last year I did a top-10 list, but this year I’m feeling a little less listy, a little more stream-of-consciousness. So here, in no particular order, are some of the most valuable “aha” moments I took away from the past 12 months:

Sleep is serious business. The “Getting to Sleep” feature we did back in November reconvinced me of something I’ve known intuitively (and from personal experience) for a long time, but that I tend to forget when I’m busy: Namely, that not getting enough sleep trashes your immunity and generally turns you into a miserable wretch. I started forcing myself to bed an hour earlier this fall, and it helped a lot. I also became more cautious about keeping my bedroom clutter-free and I started winding down at least 30 minutes before bedtime with a bath, a little slow yoga or some journaling, and that really helped. The bonus: More great dreams.

Play pays you back. There were a few times this year when I played really fun games of no-rules softball with my family, including my niece, Xanthi, who is 13 and has a terrific arm (she is the first girl in our family to not throw “like a girl”), and my nephew, Toliver, who is 10 and does this great thing where he goes weaving and zigzagging totally off the baseline in order to avoid being tagged. It’s hilarious, and he’s a fast runner, so he’s hard to catch, particularly while you’re laughing. Anyway, these games are among my most favorite memories of the year, all of them played on weekends when I had a lot of work to do but decided that playing was more important. In each case, it was the right decision, and I am totally convinced that whatever time I spent goofing off and laughing with my family more than paid for itself in renewed creativity, improved focus and a happier outlook. So thanks, X and T. I love being on your team.

Kindness is a virtue. No news there, but it sank in with me recently that one of the best ways to cultivate this virtue is to be kind to yourself. This year, for the first time, I approached my fitness training with a self-loving (vs. self-driving) attitude. I used my heart-rate monitor to moderate my intensity and to track my progress and recovery, and when a slightly elevated heart rate told me I was overtraining, or under too much stress, I dialed my workouts back. I did more yoga. I took long walks down by the river. I focused on recovery. At one point, when I got really busy, I simplified my calisthenics down to pushups and Pilates. Perhaps as a result, I was more consistent in my workouts this year, and enjoyed them more, than at any other time in my life. I ended up liking the results better, too.

There’s a lot more, of course, and most of it is catalogued, in one way or another, in the articles from this and the past nine issues. This issue in particular, though, is one of my favorites. Perhaps it’s because it reflects the culmination of such a satisfying body of work. Or maybe it’s because I relate so personally to so many of the articles (I think “Fire Your Inner Taskmaster” might have been written for me).

In any case, I hope you enjoy reading this issue as much as our team enjoyed putting it together. I also hope you’ll share the articles with anyone you think might connect with them. (Just a little plug here: Keep in mind that a subscription to Experience Life makes a superb last-minute gift!)

One last “rejoice” item: We are thrilled and grateful to have more than a half million passionate, intelligent, discerning readers. We appreciate all the great feedback and ideas you gave us this year, and all the sweet pieces of personal correspondence you sent our way. We look forward to hearing more from you in 2005!

This suggestion sprang to mind recently on a hike through Redwood Regional Park in Oakland, Calif. I was several miles into my hike at the time — and just about all the way through my water. Oops.

I had started out that Sunday morning thinking I’d only take a little out-and-back walk on a segment of the park’s Bay Area Ridge Trail, but then, on my return trip, I’d stumbled across the Golden Spike Trail, which sounded intriguing, and turned out to be gorgeous. I had the mostly uphill path all to myself, the wildflowers were in bloom, the birds were chirping, and I kept passing through these amazing little ecosystems full of different plants and temperatures and qualities of light.

I saw dozens of little animals. I smelled countless plants and herbs and the sweet aroma of rich dirt. I had the sun on my shoulders, the wind in my hair. I was smitten. I had the outdoor bug. I didn’t want to go back. Which was convenient because, as it turned out, the narrow, twisty-turny trail didn’t actually go back. It just kept going up, and out, and up and out, mostly through heavily wooded hills, until it reached what appeared to be the other side of the park. Which was where I started getting just a little bit panicky.

I had munched down my little flaxseed-and-date bar hours before; I had been toting the aforementioned empty water bottle like some kind of useless baton for miles now; and I had absolutely no idea where I was. The trail just sort of stopped and splintered off into some footpaths that led God-only-knows-where. If this sucker didn’t loop back, I realized, I was in trouble. Which of course, I was.

At about the time I was kicking myself for having committed every no-no in the hiker’s bible (know your route, have plenty of food and water, tell someone where you are going), I heard voices. Round the bend came two happy-looking women and their happier-looking dog. “Um, hello!” I said, trying to disguise the desperate tone in my voice. “Do you happen to know where this trail goes from here, or where it ends?” They looked at each other and one of them pointed back over her shoulder. “We’re just here walking the dog,” she said. “But there’s a parking lot with a map up there.” She was pointing, with a purple, long-handled pooper scooper, toward the top of the grassy hill behind her.

Deducing that no one carries a pooper scooper on a serious hike, I figured it couldn’t be very far. I suddenly felt a little sheepish, like: Of course, I’m in an urban park lined with residential neighborhoods — how lost could I be? Relieved, I thanked them, dashed up the hill and found the map. My heart sank a little when I’d investigated it, though. There was no shortcut back. Just the way I had come. Crud. Hours more hiking. I wasn’t going to die, but I was going to be hungry and thirsty and sunburned by the time I got back.

Then I heard the words every worn-out hiker longs to hear: “Hey, want a ride?” It was the dog-walking women, back already from their mini-outing. I accepted, piled gratefully into the backseat with Lola, their boxer, and about five minutes later, was delivered to my car.

I thought a lot about this experience over the next few days, wondering why I had taken the dumb risk I had, why I had ignored all the practical advice I’d learned over the years. What I realized was this: Some part of me wanted to get lost outdoors and spend several unplanned hours wandering around in the forest. It’s the part of me that resents being deskbound and scheduled to death, I guess — the part that needs the mystery and beauty of nature even more than it needs an adequate water supply.

Point taken: I’ve got several weekend hikes and camping trips planned for the season, and I’ve made a pact with myself to get outside in nature a lot more often. Equipped with all of the great sun and hydration advice we packed into this issue, I think it’s going to be a good, safe summer.

There’s the “lighten up!” I sometimes got from a certain ex-boyfriend when what he really meant was: “Say, why don’t you just relax and do it my way?” There’s the “lighten up” that means, “Hey, cheer up — don’t be so hard on yourself!” And, of course, there are a variety of other context-driven “lighten ups,” most of which suggest reducing your physical burdens or emotional worries in some way.

The interesting thing about the phrase “lighten up,” particularly when it comes as a directive from someone else, is that it often carries an implied criticism, as in, “Silly person, you are worrying about something you shouldn’t be,” or “Uptight person, you are being inappropriately rigid and humorless!” Which means, of course, that the minute someone utters that phrase, you now have something else to feel worried and burdened about.

Given that, I think it’s natural to feel a certain amount of ambivalence whenever someone comes at you with the suggestion that you “lighten up.” This is particularly true when the person making that suggestion is ostensibly interested in convincing you to move off your position, thus allowing him or her to proceed unhindered by your pesky concerns.

But there’s also a very different sort of “lighten up” — one that comes as an internally issued invitation, not an external command. This is the “lighten up” request we hear from our bodies when they become tired, heavy, loaded down with excesses. It’s the “lighten up” we hear from our minds when they are so loaded down with problems that they can no longer perceive useful information or think creatively. It’s the “lighten up” we hear from our spirits when our souls are so burdened with worry, fear and regret that we lose our capacity for gratitude, praise and compassion.

The response to these internal “lighten up” requests often requires us not to ignore our concerns, but rather to reframe them, to view them more discerningly. Very often, it means looking down beneath the surface of the flotsam and jetsam to see why all that stuff happens to be gathering there in the first place.

For example: We may decide to do a detox because of concerns about the chemicals that have made their way into our bodies. But where did those chemicals come from? How are they making their way into our environment, and what part can we play in stemming the tide? The desire to unburden our own bodies from their toxic load may lead us to rather sobering discoveries about the impacts of our own consumer habits — and to even heavier messages about our personal and collective environmental responsibilities.

So should we just “lighten up” about these bigger concerns and forget about them? I don’t think so. Ultimately, the messages we receive at the personal level often reflect larger imbalances occurring at a global level. So should we forget all about personal tinkering and just strike out in the direction of grand causes? I don’t think that works either, because very often, the best (and sometimes only) way to change the world is to change ourselves.

Awareness and concern are good things, and I don’t believe that levity and responsibility are mutually exclusive. Striking the balance, of course, is a very personal art. My way involves subscribing both to The Onion (a very funny satirical paper: www.theonion.com) and to Ode (a more serious, but positive-minded progressive magazine: www.odemagazine.com). I spend some Saturday nights making music with my guitar-playing pals, and others engaged in more serious pursuits that I like to think might help change the world for the better. I listen carefully for those internal “lighten up” voices, and take the external ones with a grain of salt.

We compiled this issue of the magazine with the goal of offering you, our readers, a wide range of ideas and perspectives for improving your energy, vitality and resiliency. And for the record, when we say “lighten up,” all we really mean is: Hey, just relax and do it your way.

Or whatever the editorial version of a rampage is: mostly attacking piles, returning calls, reviewing copy, planning future issues, getting to the bottom of my giant “to read” list. I know: Yawn. Very dramatic. But still, for me, this winter has been surprisingly invigorating.

One thing that helped me get the year off to a good start was getting encouragement from our resolutions experts to work with the energy of the winter season. Both Jane Alexander and Cat Thompson talked at length about the importance of recognizing winter as a time of dreaming, contemplation and planning — and not so much a season for launching bold large-scale commitments. They advised individuals working on resolutions to commit to doing only what energized them, even if those things seemed small, quiet and contemplative.

That advice led me to take a weekend away in January for a little writing retreat and career-visioning workshop with my younger sister and a good friend, and boy did that turn out to be an amazing experience.

It was just the three of us, tucked into this friend’s comfy cabin beside a frozen lake up north. We had set aside a single Saturday to get a bead on where we wanted to take our work, how we might best nurture our skills and how we’d most like to see the coming year play out. The overarching goal was for each of us to come away with a vision and a plan to which we could commit wholeheartedly.

Technically, I’m not sure one can refer to a tiny, three-person event as a “monster success,” but it certainly felt like that. The efficiency of the thing was stunning. We divided the day into two parts: In the morning we did an extended creative-visioning session (facilitated by yours truly); after lunch and a walk to clear our heads, we came back and did the more linear, logical work of goal setting and task mastering.

During the right-brained visioning session we used our intuition and imagination to help us identify the components of our ideal work, to identify what aspects of life and work needed bolstering, to see more clearly what we most wanted out of our professional lives, and to understand how we might best overcome the stumbling blocks in our way. We also got in touch with our core motivations regarding our work, and got clearer about how we could be of the best and most powerful service to others.

Later, during the left-brained analysis and planning session, we harvested all the juicy stuff we’d written during our visioning sessions and used that information to distill a central goal. Next, we spent some time generating some supportive objectives and tactical plans. We brainstormed about the things we could do to nudge our key objectives forward. Finally, we shared our lists and helped each other refine them until each of us had our marching plans: a pared down collection of defined, realistic action items that got us jazzed. We set target dates and everything. Not bad for a day’s work.

By the time we finished, we were all shining with excitement and appreciation. We were eager to get home and implement our plans so we could report back, as agreed, a few weeks later (a nice built-in accountability structure). We were also all excited to return with a larger group and do the whole thing again as a formal workshop. Or maybe a funshop? Either way.

Whenever I think of the word “integrity,” I think of integration — the interconnectedness of things. I think about how integration is always about a bringing and fitting together of parts, ideally to make a harmonious whole.

It was inspiring for me to discover how seamlessly my dreams and plans could fit together if I let them. And I guess if there’s any core message I took away from this issue, it’s that one — that integrity, at its best, is really never so much about us battling a bunch of warring instincts and choices; it’s more about identifying and melding together our most central and compatible ones.

“Um, r’okay,” I mumbled from behind the air tube. Standing on the treadmill as Ryan readied my heart monitor and the computer thingy that would be analyzing my athletic stats, I gazed at my reflection on the mirrored wall.

It was a sort of Top-Gun-meets-Muppet effect. The bright green respiratory mask looked vaguely menacing (I had opted to buy my own mask, and now that my nose was smushed against it, I was glad I had), and those silly head straps – yikes! I had hair going every which way and this slightly dazed, skittish expression that said: “Lord, how did I get here?”

“Okay,” I told myself, “chill.” This wasn’t about glamour; it was about finally checking off an item that had been clinging to my to-do list since 2002. I’m not sure if my apprehension was due more to my fear of the test (I’m still traumatized by the memory of a childhood asthma attack I suffered during the Presidential Physical Fitness challenge), or to my dread of the results (what if I was still a cardiovascular lost cause?), but I had to admit: I had been putting this thing off for a while.

Once the test got underway, though, it wasn’t nearly as miserable as I expected it would be. Just your basic, short run at a gradually increasing speed and incline. Ryan kept giving me the thumbs-up and telling me I was doing great, and I didn’t feel pathetic or ridiculous at all. By the time I hit the hardest part – the last few seconds of the test when I was pushing to see if I could get my heart rate above 180 – I was so jazzed knowing it was almost over that I didn’t really mind the pain.

And then I was done. The sweaty mask came off, and I felt a kind of triumph. Less than half an hour from the moment I set foot on the treadmill, I was holding a printout with my V02 max, my anaerobic threshold, and a precise profile of the various of heart rates at which my body burned the most fat, carbs, and calories overall. There was no bad news, just useful data.

I sat down with Ryan to talk about how this information would impact both my endurance and speed work. But all the while, my mind was a little distracted by an odd, emotional surge going through my chest and belly. What was this feeling? It felt giddy, fluttery, almost childish – and so happy! Why, it was pride. Not seven-deadly-sins pride, but the “good job!” kind of pride we experience all too rarely once we stop bringing home stellar report cards and turning out towering Lego structures.

The intellectual part of me knew this whole V02 max test was just a little thing – a mere training tool – but the emotional part of me knew better. In reality, this was an important part of a much bigger personal action plan I’d set out for myself nearly two years before, a part that I’d been hiding out from for quite some time. Now that I’d nailed it, I felt a kind of invincibility about tackling the other parts of my plan, and a huge return of the energy that had been stored up in fear and doubt.

That was a good experience for me to have heading into 2004, which will be a big year for this magazine. You’re looking at what will be the first of 10 issues – all constructed around ambitious themes like Integrity, Momentum, Courage and Dreams.

Starting with the March issue, you’ll also be looking at the work of an expanded crew! I’m delighted to announce the addition of two new senior editors to our ranks. Matthew Solan comes to us direct from the award-winning Yoga Journal; Kathy Kukula from a long writing and editing history with a variety of leading national publications, including Men’s Health, Self, Outside, Prevention and Parents magazines.

You may also notice we’ve added some new departments and reorganized the contents to make your reading experience more enjoyable. Let us know what you think!

Two years of digging up interesting topics and researching them in detail; of working with smart thinkers, trainers, doctors and scientists; of canvassing readers, family and friends about their biggest challenges and successes; of exploring different approaches and writing about the ones that work.

In short, it’s been two of the most mind-blowingly educational and interesting years of my life. But the best part of this whole thing hasn’t even been the writing and editing. It’s been taking the stuff I’ve learned from doing the magazine and then putting it to use in my own life.

The rewards have been both subtle and tremendous. What I’ve seen is a gradual, but marked, shift in the way I eat and work out, the way I handle stress, the way I think about and treat my body. I’ve also noted some interesting developments in how I feel about life in general — what I believe in and choose to spend my time doing, what I am and am not willing to tolerate in my midst.

Just for yucks, while waiting on perma-hold for an interview the other day, I started jotting down a list of the most important concepts I’ve actively incorporated into my own life while working on this magazine. My top 10 looked something like this:

10) How my food was grown and raised matters: The more whole, natural, humane and sustainable, the better.

9) Getting some kind of daily exercise is important, but getting a balance of exercise (cardio, strength and flexibility) over the week is essential.

8) Media habits count: My life seems better (and my priorities clearer) when my TV is stored in the closet and my stereo is tuned to public radio.

7) Boundaries are good: My workdays are more productive when my mornings and evenings are just for me — relaxing and sane.

6) No person is an island: The best way to get help is to ask for it.

5) In matters of the body, as with most things, self-acceptance works better than self-criticism: The kinder and more compassionate I am with my body, the better it looks and feels, and the more energy, resiliency and strength it delivers.

4) I serve others best when I’m at my best: When I’m happy and healthy, I’m more observant, energetic and creative; when I’m feeling satisfied, I’m more generous, hopeful, empathetic and enthusiastic.

3) Energy follows attention: Whatever I pay attention to takes on greater life and importance, and thrives accordingly.

2) My life reflects my choices: Creating lasting change takes time, but even the biggest changes generally start with a single, clear decision.

1) There’s always more to learn: Never stop looking, listening and asking questions.

My favorite, of course, is that last one. Which is why I’m looking forward to 10 more issues of Experience Life in 2004. I’m grateful for that opportunity, and excited by what the next year holds.

I’d like to extend a special thanks to all the readers and contributors who’ve shared their brilliant ideas, questions and recommendations with us over the past two years. To make even better use of your contributions in the future, starting with the Jan./Feb. issue, we’ll be introducing a nifty new department called “Works for Me.” If you’ve had a personal breakthrough or “aha!” of your own that you’d like to share — some shift, insight or tip that’s made a difference in your quality of life — please send it along to us.

In the meantime, I hope you’ll enjoy this issue, and that you’ll take full advantage of the opportunities it presents for satisfactions of all sorts.

The other problem with this summer: I didn’t get to see many movies. One day back in mid-July, while looking for a reprieve from the heat and a too-crammed schedule, I did see Whale Rider. Despite being a little mushy and formulaic in spots, it turned out to be one of my favorite films of the year, in part because it dovetailed with some themes I was developing for this issue of the magazine. (I know, this is the “Growing Up Fit” issue, not the “Whale” issue, but bear with me.)

The plot of this independent New Zealand film concerns a little girl, Pai, who is destined – against all expectation and tradition – to become the next chief and spiritual leader of her modern-day Maori coastal community. The problem is, the community’s chiefs have always been men. In fact, the lineage of first-born sons traces back directly to Paikea, the whale-riding progenitor credited with leading the very first Maori people to New Zealand. Despite Pai’s having the appropriate, first-born genealogical lineage and many other qualities that make her promising chief material, on the basis of her gender, Pai’s grandfather, Koro (the current chief), stubbornly refuses to consider her.

Ironically, as Pai grows and begins showing all the marks of a gifted natural leader, Koro grows increasingly rejecting of her and tries even more desperately to identify a local boy whom he can train to lead the next generation. In the process, he misses the answer that’s in front of him.

Meanwhile, evidence of the Maori community’s gradual demise mounts: Their traditional way of life and spiritual foundations are being eroded by the dominant culture’s societal and economic forces; their physical health and connections with the natural world are being undermined; their sense of purpose seems all but lost. In short, these people need a miracle. And by the end of the film, it comes, but in an unexpected way – a way that initially washes up looking like a huge problem.

There’s a lot going on in this film. There are stories of personal formation, stories of spiritual crisis and stories of cultural drift – all of which are underscored by themes related to the necessary tension between tradition and change. But there are also a surprising number of subplots and subtler messages about physical health.

Several of the characters in the film, including a number of the children, are overweight and out of shape. At various points, we get messages about the damage wrought by a Western diet, lack of physical exercise and a waning connection to the natural world. We also get insights about how the culture’s social and physical ills are creating a vicious cycle – a cycle in which one form of disconnection, oppression and disempowerment leads almost inevitably to another.

The underlying truth in all of this, it seems to me, is that the physical health of the people living in a culture mirrors, to a large extent, the health of that culture as a whole. A culture that loses its ritual and spiritual grounding, that suffers a disconnection from nature, and that fails to imbue its people with a sense of meaning will begin to demonstrate the physical manifestations of these deficits. In other words, when we aren’t getting enough of one thing, we typically compensate with too much of another. But obviously, no amount of food, drugs, distractions or stuff can ever make up for those bigger and more important things lost.

We are now witnessing a generation of children who are showing us with their bodies that something is amiss with our culture. The way we are living, they are saying, isn’t working out so well. Improving our family’s eating and exercise is certainly a good start, and necessary, but so is pausing to consider the deeper causes and solutions to this problem.

Walking out of Whale Rider, I kept thinking to myself: What if, instead of frantically looking for cures to the troubling manifestations of childhood obesity, we began seeing this problem as the catalyst for a much larger-scale review of the way we are living – and not living?

We took on this issue of Experience Life with that spirit of inquiry in mind. We’re eager to hear about the insights it brings to the surface for you.

Have you looked at the face of America’s future lately? You might have to step back to fit it in the frame of your viewfinder. According to James Hill, obesity researcher and director of the Colorado Clinical Nutrition Research Unit at the University of Colorado, by the year 2050, almost all Americans will be overweight.

Yessiree, if our nation’s obesity continues to increase unchecked, that’s what we have to look forward to during the first century of this new millennium. But there’s no need to wait and see how things turn out. With nearly 65 percent of Americans currently overweight or obese, it’s already now more “normal” to be overweight than it is to have a healthy lean-body mass. As a raw, numerical fact, that’s disturbing, but when you stop to think of all the individuals represented by that statistic – all the lives needlessly disrupted and limited, all the families burdened by ill health, to say nothing of the immense public health costs – it becomes downright devastating.

It seems that, as a nation, we are at a crossroads. We can either veer onto a different, better path, significantly changing the way we think about and relate to food, or we can stay on our current course and come face to face with our tubby destiny.

Eating Ourselves Up

Once you really stop and consider the three-ring obesity circus, it doesn’t take long to realize that the world of food has gone totally, completely nuts. Check it out: We’ve got pizza, chicken, taco and burger outfits trying to outdo each other with ever-more-outrageous fried, stuffed, cheese-encrusted, carbohydrate-enhanced, saturated-fat-oozing, super-sized offerings. We’ve got marketers trying to find ways to make sugar drinks even more enticing to small children. We’ve got lawyers and public-action groups who want to sue both the soft-drink and fast-food industries for making us fat. We’ve got people taking drugs and “stapling” their stomachs in an effort to stave off more adipose gains. And of course, we’ve got a whole raft of hucksters and diet czars selling us an outrageous variety of sure-cure products and “fast fix” eating-plan gimmicks, none of which appear to be working.

Meanwhile, hordes of people continue to expand. Millions of our fellow citizens are suffering and dying – not for lack of food as in so many countries, but rather for our embarrassing excesses of it. As taxpayers and insurance-policy holders, we’re spending billions on the public health costs of obesity-related diseases.

Given the enormous quantity of deaths and diseases attributable to obesity, it’s evident that we are quite literally eating ourselves to death. At least, we eat too much of some things. Meanwhile, most of us are probably not eating nearly enough of other things – like fresh, nutritious vegetables and fruits, wholesome proteins and healthy fats. Being creatures of habit and convenience, we’re also not eating nearly enough variety, which nutritional experts say is a critical factor in getting an adequate array of vitamins, minerals, fatty acids, phytochemicals and amino acids.

Instead, in the foods we turn to day after day, we get an overdose of the same handful of remixed and repackaged “commodity” ingredients – flour, sugar, vegetable oil, corn, potatoes – and we get most of it refined and processed and cooked beyond recognition.

You can slice and dice the problem any way you want. You can say we eat too much. We don’t exercise enough. We eat on the go. We eat while we watch TV. We’ve forgotten how to cook. We’ve forgotten how to farm. It’s the chemicals and genetically modified organisms in our food. It’s our culture of convenience and indulgence. It’s a conspiracy of the government and food companies. It’s an economic problem. A social-class problem. A genetic problem. It’s all of the above. And it’s not going away any time soon.

So what can you do? For one thing, you can stop looking at the problem as something (or a conglomeration of things) against which you are powerless. Like it or not, in the end, what reaches your mouth is ultimately a matter of what you are willing to put into it. Yes, it’s tricky to make strides with so many factors and factions working against you. In fact, in a world that makes eating badly feel so easy and taste so darn good, eating well can be a perplexing daily challenge, at least at first. But if you’re waiting around for change to come from the outside, there’s a good chance that your pounds will pile up faster than the collectively brokered solutions. Net outcome: While everyone else is wringing their hands and haggling over whose fault it is, you end up just another statistic in stretch pants.

You don’t have to let this happen! You can buck the system, duck the fat, dodge the bullet! You can go your own way. But first you have to reclaim your fork from the forces-that-be, and take it firmly back into your own hands.

There, doesn’t that feel good? Now, it’s time to stand up, raise your cutlery in the air and yell: “Stop this ride – I want to get off!”

Taking Off the Blinders

The first step toward solving any problem is fully understanding it. As tempting as it may be to dive into simplistic solutions (“Just eat less and exercise more!”), doing so inevitably sets us up for trouble. For one thing, that particular bit of advice hasn’t managed to set most of us on the good path. For another, it really is a tad more complicated than that.

Rain or shine, you probably eat three to six times a day, 365 days a year. Between shopping, driving around, watching TV and going in and out of work and social situations, you’re probably exposed to food, food images, food messages and food choices hundreds of times that often.

That’s a lot of different situations to navigate, and a lot of different decisions. To cope well, you need to be vigilant, discerning, mindful, clever and prepared for anything (add brave, clean and reverent and you’ll qualify as a Food Scout!).

Seriously, though, if you’re not seeing things clearly and you don’t have all the information, mere platitudes and diet tips aren’t going to do you a whole lot of good. So let’s start by looking at the problem on both a micro (individual) and macro (cultural) level.

Why, oh why, are we eating the way we do?

At the individual level, many of us simply have no idea how food affects us or why. For the most part, nutrition isn’t taught in schools or in our homes, so we typically get most of our information about food and diet from marketers, diet books, magazines and other popular media. Much of that information is misleading (“Lose 10 lbs. in 10 days!”), heavily influenced by commercial interests (great headlines and advertiser-friendly content only please!) or it depends on government-generated public-health guidelines (like food pyramids and RDAs) that aim for lowest-common-denominator damage control, not optimal health.

As a result, unless we seek out in-depth, holistic nutritional information from a variety of educated, unbiased sources (generally not the lightest or juiciest reading in the world), we tend to get a fractured and slanted story – news related to specific products for example, or sensational stories about research discoveries or scientific breakthroughs that are taken out of context, blown out of proportion and poorly reported for maximum newsstand appeal.

One decade, fat is the villain. The next, it’s carbs. Instead of understanding the full scope of our body’s nutritional and metabolic requirements and dynamics, instead of seeing that all foods and nutrients have certain properties that can be desirable or undesirable under certain circumstances and in certain forms, combinations, and quantities, we simply villainize some foods and glorify others. We also tend to direct our eating by avoiding certain foods, rather than eating foods for the nutrition they have to offer.

Admittedly, understanding the bigger picture is a challenge. The digestive system, hormonal system, immune system, metabolism – they’re all incredibly complex, interdependent miracles of engineering. But it’s not that we’re incapable of understanding how our bodies work, it’s just that we’re mostly too busy learning other stuff (like how
to download email on our palm-top computers). So we look to diets and commercial “eating plan” advice to help us simplify matters. And too often, we get led astray.

The cure for this problem? We have to educate and reprogram ourselves to be more discerning and less easily influenced. That doesn’t happen overnight, but it does happen by choice. You can begin by simply putting on your game face when you go shopping for food or out to eat at a restaurant. Instead of eating like a kid at a county fair (“Ooh, look – corn dogs!”), you can become a “tough customer” who reads labels and ask questions (“Hmmm, I wonder how they gave this meat a two-year shelf life?”). Next time you’re at the newsstand or bookstore, look past the pretty faces and promises on the covers and try to get your hands on some real, solid information that will tell the truth and inspire you to take better care of yourself. You’ll find the truth is actually far more interesting and satisfying than the “Lose 10 lbs. in 10 days!” drivel pandered by the lightweights.

A Calorie is NOT a Calorie

One of the biggest and most overlooked misunderstandings about excess weight is that it is strictly attached to caloric intake. For years, diet books and weight-loss articles harped at us that “a calorie is a calorie.” And many of us took that advice to heart, attempting to monitor our caloric intake while failing to understand that everything from the quality of our food to the ratios and timing of our macronutrient intake could have profound effects on how those calories operated in our bodies and – ultimately – whether they turned to fat or not.

We now know without a doubt that strictly limiting caloric intake without regard to nutritional and chemical considerations is counterproductive. First, when we’re limiting calories but not getting good nutrition – including the right balance of protein, complex carbs and healthy fats – our energy plummets. We become less active, and much more susceptible to food cravings, overeating and, in some cases, ill health.

Second, if we’re using a significant portion of our daily caloric allotment for metabolism-disrupting substances like sugar and refined carbs, or stocking our diets with so-called “free” but body-stressing items like diet sodas and coffee, we’re setting ourselves back even further.

So forget “a-calorie-is-a-calorie” thinking. While it’s true that if you regularly consume more calories than your body can burn you’ll gain weight, you can’t forget that how many calories your body burns is also directly related to how well you eat. That’s because the nutrients attached to the calories in some foods nourish your body in a way that strengthens and energizes you, speeding up your body’s fat-burning machinery. Conversely, nutrient-poor foods – especially those with lots of empty sugars and carbs – can actually help to turn your body’s fat-burning machinery to its lowest setting, robbing you of energy and vitality in the process.

Tally the caloric intake of many natural-health and nutritional experts and you’ll be shocked to find that on a daily basis, many of these slim, healthy-looking people take in twice the calories that you do (or more). While most of these people are relatively active and exercise moderately, their caloric expenditure during exercise is not what accounts for the difference. The difference, as any of them will tell you, is that they’ve learned how to eat in a way that supports their metabolism, supplies ample nutrients and encourages their bodies to run efficiently. In short, they’re eating lots of “good calories” – calories that carry everything their body needs to function brilliantly – and not much else. Yet they hardly ever count calories, because the way they eat, they don’t need to.

Okay, so we know that the key to eating for sustainable weight control and health involves eating in a way that nourishes the body, supports our hormonal balance and stokes the metabolic fire, leaving us feeling energetic, healthy, optimistic and craving-free. Once we accept that, the next step is figuring out why we don’t do that, and how we can.

View to an Expanding Culture

There’s no question that individual ignorance about food and nutrition, combined with individual food issues (like emotional, unconscious and compulsive eating), are responsible, in large part, for our willingness to eat badly. But it’s also important to remember that if individual ineptitude and maladjustment happen to blunt and dull the tines on our forks (making them work better as shovels), we still have our culture to thank for providing a giant drawer full of giant, lackluster cutlery for us to work with.

In his book, Fat Land: How Americans Became the Fattest People in the World, journalist Greg Critser traces the influences that certain political, economic and social shifts have had on our eating habits over the past 30 years. Covering the same time period of our increasing girth and deteriorating health, Critser exposes how sweeping policy changes in agriculture, education and health have all contributed to making obesity America’s No. 1 health problem.

Predictably, a lot of it comes down to money. According to Critser, it all started in the 1970s with Americans insisting on cheaper food during a brief time of scarcity and price escalation. The Nixon and Ford administrations responded with policies (including fencerow-to-fencerow planting, free-trade rules and food-regulatory flexibility) that created huge surpluses and made some foods (especially some industrial sugars and fats) so darn cheap that food companies began using them in everything. They began cranking out their “new and improved” foods in huge quantities – and at very attractive prices. Lower grain prices also resulted in lower meat and dairy prices, ending shortages, but also making it tougher for local farmers to make a living farming wholesome foods in a sustainable manner. Agribusiness picked up the slack.

It was, in a sense, a permanent solution to a temporary problem, and it gave birth to the double-headed quality/quantity monster we face now.

The first head to show its face was “quality”: As cheap ingredients flooded the market, calorie-dense convenience foods, TV dinners, fast foods and an astonishing variety of snacks and novelty items began springing up everywhere. Most of them were full of industrial sugars and fats (like corn syrup, fructose and hydrogenated palm and soybean oils) that could be combined to create many appealing sensual properties (aroma, color, mouthfeel).

These ingredients offered great value and long shelf life (a food manufacturer’s best friend). Many also turned out to have exceptional propensities for stimulating appetite and encouraging insulin-resistance and obesity. But back in the ’70s and early ’80s, obesity wasn’t nearly the concern it is today. Food manufacturers knew what
consumers wanted – convenience and low prices – and they gave it to them.

By combining these ingredients with flavor additives and putting them through innovative cooking processes, the food industry had found a seemingly magic formula for creating prepared-meal and snack products that American consumers loved. Such manufactured foods and snacks quickly took on a bigger and more central role in many busy consumers’ diets, replacing more nutritious and less-refined homemade fare.

It didn’t take long for the monster’s second head – “quantity” – to emerge. As food technology improved to make the best use of the glut of inexpensive raw materials, and as food manufacturers ended up with gobs of product on their hands and an increasing amount of competition in the marketplace, marketers got savvier and more aggressive about promoting their wares.

They needed to sell more stuff. So portion sizes got bigger and the offers got more tempting. Meanwhile, commercial flavor-and-texture enhancing became a fine art. Funny thing – you just couldn’t get enough of these new foods! Don’t worry, said the manufacturers, “we’ll make more!” And they did.

Initially, manufacturers and restaurateurs had to concoct a way of nudging us past our preconceived notions of “normal” portions. They had to devise strategies for getting us to eat twice as much without making us feel like gluttons.

It didn’t take them long. Value-meal deals and super-sizing was born. Well, of course: We weren’t piggish, slovenly and gluttonous – we were thrifty, pragmatic and powerful! The bargains and offers became irresistible.

In the past few years, satiety studies have demonstrated that the amount of food it takes to satisfy our appetites is directly proportional to the amount we’re served, (see Web Extra! link at top of this page for more on that). But we didn’t know that then. As a result, there was basically no stopping us, and no turning back.

For the American food industry, the news was all good. It was spending less on raw ingredients and making more than ever on its finished products. For average Americans, as Critser points out, the conclusion to this story was largely inevitable: “A plenitude of cheap, abundant and tasty calories had arrived. It was time to eat.”

Feeding the American Landscape

Even as the food industry’s overuse of concentrated forms of fructose, hydrogenated fats and other new-fangled ingredients were, as Critser puts it, “skewing the national metabolism toward fat storage,” its outlets for these ingredients were multiplying.

Fast-food outlets and convenience stores started springing up everywhere. Back in the inconvenient ’50s, finding food involved going to a grocery store, a restaurant or (gasp!) home. Corner markets were few and far between. But by the ’80s, you could grab a snack anywhere, anytime.

Drive-thru windows became ubiquitous and made swinging in for a burger and fries easier than ever. Gas stations and convenience stores remodeled to create space for whole aisles of snack foods, also making them highly visible and largely unavoidable.

Vending machines became standard issue in most schools and offices. All kinds of foods were repackaged and reformulated to make them microwaveable, portable, bite-sized and generally easier to eat “on the go” – which really meant anywhere but at the table (while driving, watching TV, working at your desk, etc.).

The sheer number and variety of snack foods also increased dramatically. In his research, Critser discovered that the number of new candy and snack products, which had remained stable throughout the ’60s and ’70s at about 250 a year, began to rise dramatically in the ’80s. By the mid-1980s the food industry was turning out 1,000 a year; by the late ’80s, it was closer to 2,000. In 1999, the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition published a chart that showed this trend closely mirroring the rise of obesity.

Meanwhile, of course, thanks to the technology boom, we became less active in our work and entertainments, and more inclined to munch. It’s tough to feed your face while you’re playing sports, collecting stamps or making birdhouses. It’s easy while sitting in front of a video monitor or home-entertainment center. This is particularly true if you have a microwave, which makes preparing and eating a thousand-calorie snack such a fast proposition you barely have to think about it. Still hungry? Just hop up and make another batch of microwave popcorn – it only takes 30 seconds.

We all intuitively understand that eating was healthier back when people personally prepared what they ate and then sat down as a family to eat it. But we don’t always realize how much difference our culture of convenience has made in our eating habits. When you cook something on the stove, you have to get up and assemble and prepare the ingredients. You have to think about what you’re doing. You get to stir and taste it while it cooks. Your appetite has a chance to adjust, your senses have a chance to take it all in. When you eat, you know exactly what you are eating, how it was prepared and how much of each ingredient is in there.

None of this is true with prepared food. You get the urge to eat, and the food can be in your hand and down your gullet before your conscious mind can register it.

There’s no time for second thoughts and no time for the craving to pass. The food is right there in front of you. There’s no “please pass the salt” necessary. The salt and sugar are already in it. No need to ask for a second helping. The second, third and fourth servings are right there in the bag, box, or freezer, waiting.

Stopping the Madness

Can we blame the government or the food industry for this sorry state of affairs? Sure, but government will tell you it only sets policies, distributes funding and influences trends in reaction to the voice of the voter (that’s us!). The food industry, meanwhile, will tell you it has a revenue-maximizing mandate from its shareholders (who might also be us).

And then of course, there’s the fact that most of us think we’ve got better things to do than cook. Kraft’s “latest effort to respond to consumer demand for convenience” is a product called Easy Mac. As the Kraft Web site explains: “This innovative product requires only the use of a bowl and a microwave, so today’s older kids can ‘cook’ Kraft Macaroni and Cheese on their own, independent of their busy parents.”

This, we are told, is precisely what we want. On the other hand, if these “you asked for it” answers don’t satisfy you, you’re not alone. To date, the federal government has let most of its food-related decisions be guided much more powerfully by big-business interests than by public-health concerns. And, even if you do hold some measly amount of stock in a soda- or snack-food company, you are probably not the one directly pressuring them to find the cheapest possible ingredients or the one getting enormously rich off their profits. But you do have a voice, and your voting and investing choices will be noted if you let them be heard loudly enough.

Many big-name food companies are now spawning or acquiring smaller, healthier labels (H. J. Heinz currently owns 20 percent of Hain, the “healthy-foods” group that owns dozens of health-oriented and organic brands including Health Valley, Arrowhead Mills, and Garden of Eatin’). After more than a year of consecutively falling monthly profits, even McDonald’s has started testing healthier items (like Premium Salads) on its menus. This spring, ironically, it also launched a new “Winning Time Game.” It offers “Ultimate Prize Packages to Help Consumers Enjoy Their Time More.” As noted, probably not a good idea to look to business for the solutions.

The government, meanwhile, has finally recognized the enormous fiscal costs of having 60-plus percent of its population wearing plus sizes and has finally declared obesity a full-scale epidemic. It is now funding obesity-fighting research and casting about for ways to educate and empower citizens to take better care of themselves. It’s even lending a polite (though not terribly open) ear to experts like Yale University’s Kelly Brownell, who’d like to see a state-levied “fat tax” on unhealthy food items to help fund a public-awareness campaign promoting healthier eating habits.

But again, don’t hold your breath. According to Critser, “the trend in most state capitals, increasingly beholden to special interests, has been in exactly the opposite direction.”

So what can you do? You’re doing it now! Understanding what you are up against is really the first and most important step.

Keep your eyes and ears open. The cultural forces at work are strong, but once you know what to watch for, you can become a much savvier consumer and citizen. You can also get more vocal about asking for what you really want. (If you’re not sure, compare and contrast the core agendas of, say, www.slowfoodusa.org with its restaurant- and food-manufacturer-sponsored nemesis – the dubiously named www.consumerfreedom.com.)

And then, finally, there is the power of you and your mighty fork! Once you’ve got a grip on it, you’ll find it a powerful tool. You can use it to draw a line in the sand. You can use it as a divining device to tell you which foods are edible, nourishing and satisfying, and which are merely for sale. You can wield it to slay double-headed monsters of all kinds.

And when you want to, of course, you can put it down.

About six months ago, I started looking into doing an article on Candida albicans – a type of naturally occurring fungal microorganism that can overgrow in our bodies, generating all sorts of health problems, from digestive disorders to respiratory problems to fatigue.

Candida overgrowth (or Candiasis) apparently affects millions of people. Some doctors dismiss it as an imaginary problem or a “fad” diagnosis, while others see it as a hidden epidemic and are keenly interested in how this internal imbalance gets started, the impacts it has, and how it can best be avoided and resolved.

The topic of Candida originally surfaced when we began planning the article on intestinal flora that appeared in our last issue (“Gut Check,” May/June 2003). We knew we wouldn’t have enough space to go into detail on Candida there, but I thought it might make a good story down the road. A few friends and one of my sisters had tangled with Candida in the past, and all said that they wished they’d had far more information about their foe from the beginning. So I looked into it a little, and as I started turning up interesting facts about the condition, I just kept filing them away in my “future articles” file.

I’ll backtrack now and say that a few weeks before any of this started, I had developed a mild (but annoyingly flaky) rash on my chin. Rashes are extremely unusual for me, and when this one came up, I tried everything in my natural-health arsenal against it, from calendula to vitamin E. It didn’t budge.

Suspecting it might be stubble-burn from kissing my boyfriend, I withheld my affections for a week or two and, on a pal’s suggestion, donned a nightly “beard of lotion” in an effort to heal it. No dice. (Sorry about that, hon, but it worked for Lisa when she dated a stubbly guy.)

Finally, thinking it might be a food sensitivity, I took a dietary approach. First I tried cutting out milk. Then, in turn, I cut out most other common allergens: sugar, wheat, eggs, corn, soy and peanuts. Still the rash. I figured it must be hormonal or something.

Before long, my inner ears and throat started itching. My digestion got a little off kilter. I started craving sugar (which I almost never eat). I couldn’t figure it out. What was going on here? Then one night, I sat up in bed and said, “Candida!”

I don’t know why it didn’t strike me before. But once I had made the connection, I was a woman on a mission. I got up, went down to my office, dug through my file, booted up my computer and started researching. What I found encouraged me: I could address my suspected imbalance mostly with a low-glycemic diet and a few herbs.

Unfortunately, for the first stage of the anti-Candida diet (which lasts until one’s symptoms are reduced by 50 percent), I had to simultaneously cut out just about everything: sugar for sure, but also alcohol, fruit, coffee, many grains and flours, most milk products, fermented products and virtually anything else that wasn’t a non-starchy vegetable or lean meat. It was one of the most stringent and challenging eating plans I’ve ever followed in my life, but within a week, my rash and itchiness totally disappeared, and I felt a ton better. I proceeded with stage two of the diet, which was somewhat easier.

The last few weeks of anti-Candida eating have been tough, but educational. I discovered there are a lot of very appetizing things you can do with vegetables, for one thing. I also gained a new respect for my body’s complex and delicately balanced chemistry.

In truth, I can’t say for sure whether I was actually dealing with Candida (I never got an official diagnosis from a doctor), but evidently, whatever I did worked. And in retrospect, that frustrating rash was a gift. It forced me to pay attention to an internal challenge with which my body had obviously been struggling for quite some time, and it inspired me to improve my eating habits.

This issue of EL is one big invitation to explore and embrace challenges of all kinds. As for me, I’ve had enough challenges for one season. That’s why next issue (thank heavens) we’re focusing on “success.” We’ll squeeze in the article on Candida somewhere, though – and if you have any challenges of your own you’d like us to tackle, just give us the heads up!

It’s bedtime. Do you know where your brain is? Up until about six months ago, if you had listened in on my pre-doze mental chatter, it would have sounded something like this: Man, am I tired. (Check clock). Wow, it’s really late. I am only going to get about five hours of sleep. Okay, what do I have to do tomorrow? Oh god, that huge project is due. I did most of it last week, but now I don’t even know where the file is. Did I leave it in the car? Which reminds me, I gotta do all those errands tomorrow. But I have to get gas first. Do I have enough money to pick up my dry cleaning? Better balance my checkbook first thing. Why am I so bad with money? I really should take a class on that. But I’ve been saying that for years. I never even read that money book my girlfriend lent me. Oh god, I never returned that book, either. Where IS that book? I’m sure she thinks I am scatterbrained anyway. Does everybody think I’m flakey? I think I just need more sleep. Why can’t I fall asleep? I should try to fall asleep. (Check clock). Ugh, I’ve just got so much to do tomorrow. Better run through it all again “

If the nights were bad, the mornings were worse. I’d just be coming into consciousness and wham! – my alarm clock’s shrill, repetitive beep would go off like a starting gun. Before my eyes were open, I’d be asking myself: What should I be stressing about today? In response, a fleet of thoughts, anxieties, fears, and lists of things to do would push their way into my mind, flooding my body with a cold, adrenaline-like rush.

This created a surge of heart-pounding anxiety strong enough to propel me out of bed. I’d lash out at the alarm to silence it, then stumble downstairs to the coffee machine. Bleary eyed and still reeling from the abrupt physical and mental shift, I’d brace myself for the noise of the grinder and then – with a growing sense of dread – start reading my emails while waiting for the coffee to brew.

Within four or five minutes of waking, I was already hip deep in new problems, projects, world affairs and random snippets of information. Before I’d taken a single deep breath or seen the sun, I’d accumulated several new action items, and created several mental addendums to my “list of things to worry about.” Running on a residual fuel of self-pity, stress and barely repressed resentment, I’d spend the rest of the day reacting to and rearranging all these to-do items in the order of the panic they instilled.

I’m not sure when I fell into this pattern, or how. The funny thing is, I never even realized that I was particularly stressed, much less that I was stressing myself out. I just felt – like everyone else I knew – that I had a busy, exciting life, a lot of responsibility on my shoulders, and the pressures of modern life knocking at my door. I needed to get things done!

My answer to this challenge was constant multitasking and multi-thinking, trying to make the best possible use of every waking moment. I often did two or three things at once (brushing my teeth with one hand while transferring laundry from washer to dryer with the other, for example). And whenever I had a rare quiet or still moment, I ran through mental lists. This was particularly true first thing in the morning and last thing at night. There were lists of things to do, but also lists of things that had gone (or might go) wrong, lists of people who might not be happy with me, lists of things I was afraid of.

It was instinctual for me, as I went to bed, to start thinking about these things before my head hit the pillow, and in the morning, just as instinctual for me to begin thinking about them almost before my mind became conscious. It had occurred to me, several times, that I could have been spending these significant moments – the “bookends” of my days – in more constructive, positive, enjoyable ways, but I just never had the time or focus to do much of anything about it.

Then, last fall, in an effort to deal with my rising stress level, I went on a weeklong retreat for busy professionals who were feeling overwhelmed by responsibility (sound like anyone you know?). During the day we did a variety of interesting exercises and readings related to self-knowledge and spirituality, but for me, some of the most useful and insight-provoking things we did actually happened outside of class.

Rising Up Slowly

On the first night, we were given the instructions we were to follow for the rest of the retreat. Each morning we were to allow ourselves to come into our waking state gradually (the sun rose at 6 a.m. and class wasn’t ’til 9, which helped). More specifically, we weren’t supposed to pop out of bed and start doing things right away. Rather, as we woke, we were to lie there and slowly let ourselves become aware of our bodies, of the temperature, light, sounds and smells around us. We were encouraged to spend a few moments letting our minds “come to,” recalling any dreams we’d had, pondering any waking feelings or insights of which we were aware. We might begin noticing the sensations in our hands and feet, the instructors suggested, perhaps wriggling our fingers and toes, then slowly moving our arms and legs to bring our entire bodies into a waking state gradually.

Next, we could either journal about our dreams or observations while still in bed, or we could lie there for a moment or two just thinking kind thoughts about ourselves and others, perhaps mentally or verbally repeating some affirmations or considering some things for which we were grateful. The point was to focus on simple, positive thoughts or feelings that didn’t demand too much brain power.

Our instructors explained that as we come out of sleep, our brain waves are still in a “theta” state – the deeply relaxed but shallow sleep state that both precedes and follows deeper delta-wave sleep. In the theta state, our left brain (conscious mind) and right brain (subconscious mind) are in an exceptionally balanced, connected relationship. Shocking ourselves out this state, they emphasized, robbed us of the opportunity to benefit from the theta state’s potential insights as well as its calming and healing effects on the body and mind. Abrupt movement and mental or emotional stress upon waking, they noted, can also trigger the release of stress hormones that negatively impact our biochemistry and put unnecessary strain on our endocrine and sympathetic nervous systems.

Had I not been having daily, personal experience with this nasty phenomenon for several years running (turns out that “adrenaline rush” feeling really was an adrenaline/cortisol rush), I might have pooh-poohed all this stuff as New Age nonsense. As it stood, though, I was desperate enough for solutions to keep an open mind. I did, however, make a note-to-self: Do some research on this brain-wave/endocrine stuff when you get home. Reviewing several books, articles and Web sites related to the scientific study of sleep patterns and their impact on human health eventually reassured me: It all checked out.

Once we were comfortably awake, we were to go outside, breathe some fresh air and then either sit in meditation, do yoga, or journal for 10 minutes (longer if we liked) before starting any of our other daily activities. Only then would we have some herbal tea and a light breakfast (spirulina-protein-raspberry smoothies – strangely green, but not bad). Our instructors explained that a breakfast heavy on starches or refined sugars would send our metabolism into a glucose frenzy, robbing us of mental clarity, setting us up for an energy crash and encouraging us to overeat at lunch.

Amid all this clean living, there was a little part of me that missed my weird, early-morning coffee-and-email fix. But there was a bigger part of me that couldn’t deny that this more gradual, contemplative approach to morning was a lot more humane. In truth, while none of these initiatives was totally new to me in concept, the net impact of actually applying this whole series of calming, introspective, slow-start exercises was nothing short of revolutionary. I felt better from the first day. By the second, I was in a good mood! My energy levels were remarkably stable. My cravings for carbs and sweets all but disappeared. I felt kinder and more generous toward everyone, especially myself.

Even in periods of emotional turmoil (the retreat format was designed to push a lot of buttons), I found I possessed an inner sense of calm, self-compassion and perspective that was exceptional for me. Okay, true, I was on vacation, but even factoring that in, this was a personal-discovery watershed: Starting my day in a sane fashion worked! I wanted to take it home with me. On the third day of the retreat, I wrote another note-to-self in my journal: Quit with compulsive a.m. list-running; start day with 10 minutes of silent meditation.

Going Down Easy

In the evenings, there was a slightly different, but similar protocol. We were again encouraged to make the transition gradually, easing ourselves toward bedtime with quiet, calming activities of our choice. Then, after we had gotten into bed, we were supposed to breathe calmly and deeply while we considered an area of our life where we’d like some insight or assistance.

The next step was for us to issue a request for that assistance from our “Higher Self.” At first, I wasn’t entirely clear on what this Higher Self was (God, my conscience, me without all my flaws?) or what it was supposed to do. After some Q-and-A with my instructors, I concluded that it was a sort of super-conscious, all-knowing aspect of my own mind and spirit – one that had access to awareness and knowledge far beyond my conscious reach during waking hours. More importantly, it was an eager, active and very helpful aspect of self, available to serve me by request!

After some further inquiry, I deduced that not having a separate physical body of its own, my Higher Self (HS) wasn’t available for errands like picking up dry cleaning, but it was available for things like helping me stay focused, paving the way for specific things to go smoothly, providing answers to quandaries and so forth – which turned out to be even better!

According to my instructors, my HS could also navigate the astral plane, connecting with the Higher Selves of other individuals, resolving differences, requesting information, even predisposing them toward being helpful to me and receptive to my ideas. (Handy for the night before business meetings!)

On a purely pragmatic level, issuing specific requests to my HS seemed like a great way to get clear about my own best intents and purposes, and to pre-program myself for success the next day. My instructors soon confirmed that what we were doing was in fact known as “sleep-state programming.” Whether a spiritual phenomenon, a neurological methodology or a nifty trick of consciousness-raising, sleep-state programming proved very useful for me (within a week, I got two clear answers, one surprising daytime “assist” and one very intriguing dream out of the deal). Sleep-state programming also served to put me in a calm, restful state that predisposed me toward peaceful slumber – a great tool for the occasional insomniac.

Anyway, among the many strange and valuable lessons I took home from my weeklong retreat experience, some of the most immediately applicable and far-reaching ones had to do with simply respecting the sanctity of the first and last 10 minutes of the day. And although while on retreat I spent anywhere from 20 to 40 minutes a day completing a wide variety of suggested a.m. and p.m. activities, upon arriving home I discovered that I could get similar and very worthwhile results from spending as little as five minutes in the morning and 10 at night.

In an overscheduled, overstressed and anxiety-ridden world, it is tempting to forego such simple “indulgences,” and it’s sometimes challenging to convince your body and mind to slow down long enough to enjoy them. Given what I’ve learned about the unique significance of our waking and drifting-off moments, however, I’ve concluded that it may be helpful to regard these slivers of time at the beginning and end of each day as distinct from other moments.

I now prefer to think of them not just as two more books on my shelf of things to do, but rather as two solid and dependable bookends that support the order, uprightness and stability of all that lies between.

Tips for Waking Up

Embrace

• Waking gradually
• Slow, gentle movements
• A few calm, deep breaths
• Waiting until fully awake to rise
• Positive affirmations
• Affirming gratitude for body and health
• Yoga or other gentle exercise
• Looking or going outside
• Reflecting on intent for day
• Reading a passage from an inspiring book or card deck
• Reflecting on compassionate commitments for self-care and self-discipline
• Light, healthy breakfast (easy on sugar, caffeine and refined starches)

Avoid

• Jolting awake to invasive alarm sound or jarring music
• Running lists (things to do, worry about, etc.)
• Jumping out of bed before body is primed to move
• Reading email or watching news

Tips for Going to Sleep

Embrace

• Quiet “wind-down” activities like inspirational reading, journaling or listening to relaxing music
• Warm baths or foot soaks
• Reflecting on sources of love, gratitude, appreciation, objects of affection
• Journaling about the day’s experience, thoughts, feelings, hopes, etc. (see article on Naikan)
• Visualizing best outcomes (no worst outcomes or what-ifs allowed!)
• Meditation, breathing, stretching or relaxation exercises
• Prayer and/or sleep-state programming exercises

Avoid

• Working or socializing right up to the moment you retire
• Falling into bed overexhausted
• TV watching
• Drinking and eating (in bed or just before bed)
• Talking on the phone
• Reading stimulating, dramatic or disturbing material
• Arguing or holding resentments (make peace or agree to disagree before you retire)
• Running lists (things to do, worry about, etc.)
• Self-criticism