Russell Mariani, Digestive Wellness Expert and Author of Healing Digestive Illness
Mindfulness: Practicing Mindfulness
(Excerpt from the Healing Digestive Wellness book, pages 166-171)
It's not just what you eat, but how, when, where, and why you eat that makes all the difference in the world! Imagine that.
In the early years of my nutrition counseling career, I was consistently surprised with the number of clients who would tell me something like the following: "I don't know why I am not getting better. I do all the right things. I eat organic whole foods, I don't eat any junk food, I don't drink alcohol, I don't smoke, I exercise a lot, I do yoga, I meditate. What am I missing?" And I would think to myself: "Where is Sherlock Holmes when you need him?" I would answer in the only way I knew how. I would tell them that it didn't make sense to me either. It didn't make sense that they were actually doing all the "right things" and not getting better. Then I would ask them some questions about their diet and lifestyle. Questions designed to elicit their relationship to their diet and lifestyle.
Most of us grew up around the cliché, "You are what you eat." And there is definitely a lot of truth to this statement. However, the more I learned about the digestive system, the more I became convinced of a more expanded version of this truism: "We are what we digest, absorb, and assimilate." You could eat the best quality food in the world, prepared with love by the very best organic whole foods chef in the world. All the food could be in perfect balance and proportion, but if you ate too much, or ate too fast, or ate standing up, or ate too late at night, you could end up creating a nightmare of indigestion and all the adverse symptoms related to indigestion. It was very clear to me early on that how we eat was as important, and many times, more important than what we eat.
So, I would ask my clients a few simple questions: Do you chew your food thoroughly?
Do you always sit down when you eat? Do you overeat? Do you eat too fast? To which, more often than not, people would answer yes, yes, no, and no, because they knew that these were the correct and preferred answers. I became increasingly suspicious of the stories I was being told by my clients. I wanted to believe they were telling me the truth, but it was becoming abundantly clear that something was being lost in the translation between their perception of
their own reality related to eating, and the real thing.
I call this something an integrity gap . An integrity gap happens when you know you should do something but you don't do it. An integrity gap happens when you know you shouldn't do something, but you do it anyway. Some people can easily admit to their integrity gaps but do not perceive the negative influence they exert. Some people are in complete denial about their integrity gaps. They actually know what they are doing, or not doing, but they just won't admit it
and make the necessary corrections. And some people are just totally clueless and unconscious of many of the habits they employ and how they affect the digestion, absorption, and assimilation of their foods and beverages.
Helping someone address, correct, and ultimately transform their integrity gaps into useful complementary habits are the keys to an effective counseling relationship. It's easy to say, but not always easy to accomplish. For some strange reason, many people seem to resist the transformation of their health and life. Understanding this point is the key to your effectiveness during this program and more importantly for the rest of your life. Your effectiveness is the result
of your becoming more proactive in your own self-care.
When I was a new student of natural healing in the mid to late 1970s, I was always conducting "experiments" with everything I was learning about. I felt a powerful need to prove things to myself. To find out for sure what worked and what didn't work. To find out for sure, what were the most reliable foods, the most reliable recipes, the most reliable remedies, and the most reliable habits. I would often conduct experiments focused on one thing; like chewing each mouthful 100 times. I would do this for seven days, or fourteen days, or twenty-one days. No one had to encourage me to do these things. I was completely self-motivated. I wanted to discover the truth about the real impact of these habits on my digestive system and on my overall health and energy.
When I started counseling others, it did not occur to me to demand that my clients conduct similar experiments on themselves. I think I just naturally assumed that people would do these things on their own, as I had done. And if not, then I would conclude that they just weren't serious enough about getting well. But this was a very unhelpful conclusion on my part. In fact it was a complete lose-lose situation. My client lost out because they simply did not get well. And I lost out, because I did not experience the joy that comes from successfully coaching someone to a condition of better health.
One day something happened to change all that forever. I had been working with a woman in her early fifties, who complained of having indigestion and chronic fatigue. I'll call her Cindy. Cindy was one of those puzzling, well-educated clients I was referring to earlier. She knew everything about nutrition and health. She read all the books. She tried all the diets, all the meditation techniques, and all the bodywork therapies. She claimed that nothing had worked. Who was I to doubt her? I believed her. Her case baffled me for months. One lazy Spring afternoon, I got out of work early and drove into town to do a little shopping. I was stopped at a red light, and gazed out the open passenger side window as another car pulled up along side me. It was Cindy. My impulse was to call out to her and say hello, but something stopped me. I kept my mouth shut and just sat and stared at her. I stared because I couldn't believe my eyes. Cindy was sitting in the driver's seat of her car, eating her lunch. I don't know exactly what it was, but it was healthy and wholesome for sure. It was some kind of sandwich. There was big bread involved, with sprouts dangling from the sides. The light changed, and Cindy drove off into the sunset.
As Cindy drove off into the sunset, my mind was buzzing with a thousand realizations! Ok, it was really only one realization, but it felt like a thousand. My realization was this: What we eat is not what matters most. What matters most is how we eat; and when and where and why we eat. In order for the digestive system to work properly, from start to finish, it has to be relaxed. In order for the digestive system to be relaxed, the person has to be relaxed. In order for the person to relax, he or she must consciously disengage from any stressful activity before consuming any food or beverage. I knew this was true from my own personal experience. I knew this was true for all the people I had worked with in the past. I just didn't know how to apply this knowledge more effectively in my current counseling sessions. That all changed the next time I met with Cindy.
Let me make a long story short. The next time I saw Cindy, I gave her an elaborate song and dance about how we eat is more important than what we eat , and I could tell that she was getting annoyed and bored. "I know all this!" She insisted. Finally, I was ready to lower the boom. "I know you know all this, Cindy. I am simply concerned that you are not practicing what you know." She was miffed. I then asked her if she ever ate when she was driving her car. She answered immediately: "Never." She said never because she knew this was the correct answer. I then explained to Cindy, that I had caught her red-handed driving her car and eating her lunch the previous Friday afternoon. After we both exchanged glances of mutual embarrassment, and perhaps a little guilt and shame, my face broke out into a huge smile and we both started laughing.
As you have probably already guessed, eating food while driving her car turned out to be the most insulting habit in Cindy's diet and lifestyle. Before she left my office that afternoon, I made her promise not to eat anything while driving her car, for at least the next 7 days. In fact I made her sign a piece of paper that said: "I will not eat while driving my car for the next seven days." We both signed it. One week later she sat in my office, smiling. "I never would have imagined that one simple, quirky lifestyle habit could have such a powerful effect on my digestion and health. I feel the best I have in years! No more indigestion and no more chronic fatigue. Thank you very much."
This was the first of many similar experiences that were to unfold in the next few years of my nutrition counseling career. Let me summarize a few of my other favorites:
A young woman in her early thirties wanted to get pregnant. I'll call her Beth. She and her husband were happily married and looking forward to starting a family. Beth was about thirty pounds overweight and wanted to lose the weight before getting pregnant. I looked at her diet and could not find any major problems. What she was eating seemed fine and how much she was eating was also not a problem. In fact I was amazed at how little she ate. Where was all this weight coming from? By this time in my counseling career I had developed a short list of important habits that I would rely upon in these types of situations. I referred to my list as: the seven habits of highly effective eaters. (with kudos to Stephen Covey.)
I went down the list as I always did back then, one item at a time, with a brief explanation for each, looking for a thumbs up or thumbs down from my client. When I got to number four, there was a big thumbs down. Beth started to explain to me about her habit of drinking ice-water. I was amazed. She had a big 24 ounce plastic mug filled with ice in her freezer at all times. Her jug of cold drinking water was always in the refrigerator. She drank ice-water all day long. I knew this was insulting to her digestive system. I did not know it was a contributing factor in her inability to lose weight. I advised her to experiment for a few weeks and only drink room temperature water. In the first 14 days, she lost 15 pounds! After Beth's experience, I knew I was onto something important.
What I learned from Beth's experience was that no habits related to digestion are neutral. I learned that all habits are either complementary and helpful, or they are insulting and harmful in some very specific and measurable ways. I learned that when the digestive system is complemented and functioning normally, it will effectively transform food into nutrients, and then turn the nutrients into useable energy. I learned that when the digestive system is insulted and stressed it becomes inefficient. And one of the adverse effects of digestive inefficiency will be to convert otherwise good food into fat and store it away. And no matter how hard you try to lose that weight, you won't be able to. That is, until you correctly identify the insulting habit and transform it into a complementary habit. Imagine that.
Then there was David. David called me one night in the middle of the worst sinus congestion he had ever had, and I had ever heard. He was completely stuffed up and very uncomfortable. He was forced to breathe through his mouth. He didn't have any other symptoms, so it was easy to rule out anything too serious, like a viral or bacterial infection. He said he felt fine, he just didn't understand where all the congestion was coming from. David was another one of those well-educated, eco-friendly, holistic-oriented clients, like Cindy. He was a vegetarian by choice. He meditated and did yoga. He was an experienced whole foods cook. All the normal questions about what he was eating and how much he was eating checked out fine. The causative insult was going to be found somewhere else in his diet and lifestyle. I went down my list of seven habits. David announced that he had just started a new job and during the last three weeks, he was getting home much later than usual and not sitting down for dinner until 9 pm , unlike his normal 6 pm. Aha. I simply suggested that for the next seven days, David not eat anything past 4 pm . He said he would do it. Four days later, he called me on the phone and sounded very different! All the congestion had cleared up completely. This was another big lesson.
It didn't take me long to realize that everyone had at least one or two (or more) of these kinds of insulting habits working against them, actively preventing them from getting well. Every day these same habits would reveal themselves in my counseling sessions and more often than not, turn out to be the critical piece of information that allowed everything else to work, and opened the door to the successful self-healing of my clients.
It didn't take me long to realize that learning the difference between the complementary and insulting habits (and influences) in our diet and lifestyle represents one of the most important things we will ever learn. Practicing the complementary habits and avoiding the insulting habits is the difference between healing ourselves and staying sick. Imagine that.
Mindfulness: The Importance of Practicing the Habits
Step 5 of your Intestinal Regeneration Program is the most important step of all. If you fail to identify your most insulting habits (and then avoid them) you may not experience the success you desire and deserve. If you fail to avoid your most insulting habits during the Phase One recovery period, you may not recover your normal intestinal functions. However, if you take this step seriously, and practice the complementary habits while avoiding the insulting ones, you will
be astonished at how rapidly your intestinal regeneration will proceed. Step 5, in my opinion, is what makes my program different and more effective than any other. Step 5 integrates your biochemical individuality with all your dietary and lifestyle idiosyncrasies. Step 5 customizes and personalizes your program making it unique and special. Other books and programs and practitioners give lip service to some of these habits but generally overlook their primary
significance. These habits aren't just important: they are transformational. In my experience all the habits listed below provide the keys to your self-healing journey. Separate the complementary habits from the insulting ones, practice the complementary habits and minimize or avoid the insulting ones, and you will dramatically increase your recovery time. Please read this next section very carefully. Please read this next section as if your entire digestive system health depended on it. It does.
"We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence then, is not an act, but a habit." - Aristotle
©Copyright 2008 Center for Functional Nutrition All Rights Reserved
For more information feel free to Contact Us
It's not just what you eat, but how, when, where, and why you eat that makes all the difference in the world! Imagine that.
In the early years of my nutrition counseling career, I was consistently surprised with the number of clients who would tell me something like the following: "I don't know why I am not getting better. I do all the right things. I eat organic whole foods, I don't eat any junk food, I don't drink alcohol, I don't smoke, I exercise a lot, I do yoga, I meditate. What am I missing?" And I would think to myself: "Where is Sherlock Holmes when you need him?" I would answer in the only way I knew how. I would tell them that it didn't make sense to me either. It didn't make sense that they were actually doing all the "right things" and not getting better. Then I would ask them some questions about their diet and lifestyle. Questions designed to elicit their relationship to their diet and lifestyle.
Most of us grew up around the cliché, "You are what you eat." And there is definitely a lot of truth to this statement. However, the more I learned about the digestive system, the more I became convinced of a more expanded version of this truism: "We are what we digest, absorb, and assimilate." You could eat the best quality food in the world, prepared with love by the very best organic whole foods chef in the world. All the food could be in perfect balance and proportion, but if you ate too much, or ate too fast, or ate standing up, or ate too late at night, you could end up creating a nightmare of indigestion and all the adverse symptoms related to indigestion. It was very clear to me early on that how we eat was as important, and many times, more important than what we eat.
So, I would ask my clients a few simple questions: Do you chew your food thoroughly?
Do you always sit down when you eat? Do you overeat? Do you eat too fast? To which, more often than not, people would answer yes, yes, no, and no, because they knew that these were the correct and preferred answers. I became increasingly suspicious of the stories I was being told by my clients. I wanted to believe they were telling me the truth, but it was becoming abundantly clear that something was being lost in the translation between their perception of
their own reality related to eating, and the real thing.
I call this something an integrity gap . An integrity gap happens when you know you should do something but you don't do it. An integrity gap happens when you know you shouldn't do something, but you do it anyway. Some people can easily admit to their integrity gaps but do not perceive the negative influence they exert. Some people are in complete denial about their integrity gaps. They actually know what they are doing, or not doing, but they just won't admit it
and make the necessary corrections. And some people are just totally clueless and unconscious of many of the habits they employ and how they affect the digestion, absorption, and assimilation of their foods and beverages.
Helping someone address, correct, and ultimately transform their integrity gaps into useful complementary habits are the keys to an effective counseling relationship. It's easy to say, but not always easy to accomplish. For some strange reason, many people seem to resist the transformation of their health and life. Understanding this point is the key to your effectiveness during this program and more importantly for the rest of your life. Your effectiveness is the result
of your becoming more proactive in your own self-care.
When I was a new student of natural healing in the mid to late 1970s, I was always conducting "experiments" with everything I was learning about. I felt a powerful need to prove things to myself. To find out for sure what worked and what didn't work. To find out for sure, what were the most reliable foods, the most reliable recipes, the most reliable remedies, and the most reliable habits. I would often conduct experiments focused on one thing; like chewing each mouthful 100 times. I would do this for seven days, or fourteen days, or twenty-one days. No one had to encourage me to do these things. I was completely self-motivated. I wanted to discover the truth about the real impact of these habits on my digestive system and on my overall health and energy.
When I started counseling others, it did not occur to me to demand that my clients conduct similar experiments on themselves. I think I just naturally assumed that people would do these things on their own, as I had done. And if not, then I would conclude that they just weren't serious enough about getting well. But this was a very unhelpful conclusion on my part. In fact it was a complete lose-lose situation. My client lost out because they simply did not get well. And I lost out, because I did not experience the joy that comes from successfully coaching someone to a condition of better health.
One day something happened to change all that forever. I had been working with a woman in her early fifties, who complained of having indigestion and chronic fatigue. I'll call her Cindy. Cindy was one of those puzzling, well-educated clients I was referring to earlier. She knew everything about nutrition and health. She read all the books. She tried all the diets, all the meditation techniques, and all the bodywork therapies. She claimed that nothing had worked. Who was I to doubt her? I believed her. Her case baffled me for months. One lazy Spring afternoon, I got out of work early and drove into town to do a little shopping. I was stopped at a red light, and gazed out the open passenger side window as another car pulled up along side me. It was Cindy. My impulse was to call out to her and say hello, but something stopped me. I kept my mouth shut and just sat and stared at her. I stared because I couldn't believe my eyes. Cindy was sitting in the driver's seat of her car, eating her lunch. I don't know exactly what it was, but it was healthy and wholesome for sure. It was some kind of sandwich. There was big bread involved, with sprouts dangling from the sides. The light changed, and Cindy drove off into the sunset.
As Cindy drove off into the sunset, my mind was buzzing with a thousand realizations! Ok, it was really only one realization, but it felt like a thousand. My realization was this: What we eat is not what matters most. What matters most is how we eat; and when and where and why we eat. In order for the digestive system to work properly, from start to finish, it has to be relaxed. In order for the digestive system to be relaxed, the person has to be relaxed. In order for the person to relax, he or she must consciously disengage from any stressful activity before consuming any food or beverage. I knew this was true from my own personal experience. I knew this was true for all the people I had worked with in the past. I just didn't know how to apply this knowledge more effectively in my current counseling sessions. That all changed the next time I met with Cindy.
Let me make a long story short. The next time I saw Cindy, I gave her an elaborate song and dance about how we eat is more important than what we eat , and I could tell that she was getting annoyed and bored. "I know all this!" She insisted. Finally, I was ready to lower the boom. "I know you know all this, Cindy. I am simply concerned that you are not practicing what you know." She was miffed. I then asked her if she ever ate when she was driving her car. She answered immediately: "Never." She said never because she knew this was the correct answer. I then explained to Cindy, that I had caught her red-handed driving her car and eating her lunch the previous Friday afternoon. After we both exchanged glances of mutual embarrassment, and perhaps a little guilt and shame, my face broke out into a huge smile and we both started laughing.
As you have probably already guessed, eating food while driving her car turned out to be the most insulting habit in Cindy's diet and lifestyle. Before she left my office that afternoon, I made her promise not to eat anything while driving her car, for at least the next 7 days. In fact I made her sign a piece of paper that said: "I will not eat while driving my car for the next seven days." We both signed it. One week later she sat in my office, smiling. "I never would have imagined that one simple, quirky lifestyle habit could have such a powerful effect on my digestion and health. I feel the best I have in years! No more indigestion and no more chronic fatigue. Thank you very much."
This was the first of many similar experiences that were to unfold in the next few years of my nutrition counseling career. Let me summarize a few of my other favorites:
A young woman in her early thirties wanted to get pregnant. I'll call her Beth. She and her husband were happily married and looking forward to starting a family. Beth was about thirty pounds overweight and wanted to lose the weight before getting pregnant. I looked at her diet and could not find any major problems. What she was eating seemed fine and how much she was eating was also not a problem. In fact I was amazed at how little she ate. Where was all this weight coming from? By this time in my counseling career I had developed a short list of important habits that I would rely upon in these types of situations. I referred to my list as: the seven habits of highly effective eaters. (with kudos to Stephen Covey.)
- Always say grace at mealtimes (before, during, and after).
- Always sit down when you eat.
- Always chew each mouthful completely.
- Avoid eating or drinking anything too cold.
- Avoid eating late at night.
- Avoid processed foods and junk foods and junk beverages.
- Select the highest quality organic whole foods.
I went down the list as I always did back then, one item at a time, with a brief explanation for each, looking for a thumbs up or thumbs down from my client. When I got to number four, there was a big thumbs down. Beth started to explain to me about her habit of drinking ice-water. I was amazed. She had a big 24 ounce plastic mug filled with ice in her freezer at all times. Her jug of cold drinking water was always in the refrigerator. She drank ice-water all day long. I knew this was insulting to her digestive system. I did not know it was a contributing factor in her inability to lose weight. I advised her to experiment for a few weeks and only drink room temperature water. In the first 14 days, she lost 15 pounds! After Beth's experience, I knew I was onto something important.
What I learned from Beth's experience was that no habits related to digestion are neutral. I learned that all habits are either complementary and helpful, or they are insulting and harmful in some very specific and measurable ways. I learned that when the digestive system is complemented and functioning normally, it will effectively transform food into nutrients, and then turn the nutrients into useable energy. I learned that when the digestive system is insulted and stressed it becomes inefficient. And one of the adverse effects of digestive inefficiency will be to convert otherwise good food into fat and store it away. And no matter how hard you try to lose that weight, you won't be able to. That is, until you correctly identify the insulting habit and transform it into a complementary habit. Imagine that.
Then there was David. David called me one night in the middle of the worst sinus congestion he had ever had, and I had ever heard. He was completely stuffed up and very uncomfortable. He was forced to breathe through his mouth. He didn't have any other symptoms, so it was easy to rule out anything too serious, like a viral or bacterial infection. He said he felt fine, he just didn't understand where all the congestion was coming from. David was another one of those well-educated, eco-friendly, holistic-oriented clients, like Cindy. He was a vegetarian by choice. He meditated and did yoga. He was an experienced whole foods cook. All the normal questions about what he was eating and how much he was eating checked out fine. The causative insult was going to be found somewhere else in his diet and lifestyle. I went down my list of seven habits. David announced that he had just started a new job and during the last three weeks, he was getting home much later than usual and not sitting down for dinner until 9 pm , unlike his normal 6 pm. Aha. I simply suggested that for the next seven days, David not eat anything past 4 pm . He said he would do it. Four days later, he called me on the phone and sounded very different! All the congestion had cleared up completely. This was another big lesson.
It didn't take me long to realize that everyone had at least one or two (or more) of these kinds of insulting habits working against them, actively preventing them from getting well. Every day these same habits would reveal themselves in my counseling sessions and more often than not, turn out to be the critical piece of information that allowed everything else to work, and opened the door to the successful self-healing of my clients.
It didn't take me long to realize that learning the difference between the complementary and insulting habits (and influences) in our diet and lifestyle represents one of the most important things we will ever learn. Practicing the complementary habits and avoiding the insulting habits is the difference between healing ourselves and staying sick. Imagine that.
Mindfulness: The Importance of Practicing the Habits
Step 5 of your Intestinal Regeneration Program is the most important step of all. If you fail to identify your most insulting habits (and then avoid them) you may not experience the success you desire and deserve. If you fail to avoid your most insulting habits during the Phase One recovery period, you may not recover your normal intestinal functions. However, if you take this step seriously, and practice the complementary habits while avoiding the insulting ones, you will
be astonished at how rapidly your intestinal regeneration will proceed. Step 5, in my opinion, is what makes my program different and more effective than any other. Step 5 integrates your biochemical individuality with all your dietary and lifestyle idiosyncrasies. Step 5 customizes and personalizes your program making it unique and special. Other books and programs and practitioners give lip service to some of these habits but generally overlook their primary
significance. These habits aren't just important: they are transformational. In my experience all the habits listed below provide the keys to your self-healing journey. Separate the complementary habits from the insulting ones, practice the complementary habits and minimize or avoid the insulting ones, and you will dramatically increase your recovery time. Please read this next section very carefully. Please read this next section as if your entire digestive system health depended on it. It does.
"We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence then, is not an act, but a habit." - Aristotle
©Copyright 2008 Center for Functional Nutrition All Rights Reserved
For more information feel free to Contact Us
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