 I'm here at Justice in the Body with Susan Labelle Young, author of Food Fix, to talk about mindfulness and health and her life story. Hi, Susan. Hi, thank you. It's great to be here. So Susan, how did you become mindful yourself and how has it affected your life? Oh my goodness, what a huge question. It was really out of necessity. I had really been struggling for a very long time with what I've come to call food frenzy, what's right, what's wrong, what's good, what's bad. I should lose 50 pounds or it was 50 pounds heavier than I am now. I tried all the diets and all the clubs and all the, and finally saw a person, a helpful spiritual director, who said you're looking outside yourself for answers and you have the answers inside of you. Just slow down long enough to learn to trust yourself and find ways that you can come into your own brilliance. And I know it's there and you don't. And I was at the time, I didn't really believe him, but I believed that he believed it. And so he kind of led me to books about mindfulness. That's how it started, by reading some books. And the content of the books was the exact opposite of how I'd been trained as a therapist. As a therapist, I'd been trained to look for the pathology and find a way to fix it. And in mindfulness, you look for the strengths, you look for what's right, and you try to build it and expand on it. So just what is mindfulness? Mindfulness is paying attention to what's present in the moment. And so sometimes that could be an inner voice. Sometimes it could be the smell of roses or the taste of a grape or the smile of a child or a horn honking at you that you have to stop quickly at. It's being really present where you are so that you don't miss the unfolding of life as it happens moment to moment. So tell us about your book, Food Fix. So Food Fix, the subtitle is Ancient Nursement for Modern Hungers. I was urged by these spiritual directors to write what was going on in me because I had so much of it in my head. This is right, this is wrong, what should I? But they said, if you get it on paper, you'll be able to really look at it. So I started writing and I was urged to write the honest truth of what I was struggling with, which was hard because I didn't want to admit to anybody that I was eating gallons of ice cream in my car. And people started saying, you know, if other people could read this, we might be able to heal our shame around this, that this food frenzy, I call it, is epidemic in this culture. And lots of people live in shame and in isolation with it. What's wrong with me? I must be crazy. So how does one begin with mindfulness, becoming a mindful person? Oh, such a good question. I would say to really see about paying attention to where the mind goes when you're trying to be where you are. Can you keep your mind where your feet are? Can you keep your mind in the present moment? So you're driving and your hands are on the wheel and your buttocks are on the seat and your foot's on the gas pedal, but your mind is already in the meeting that's 20 minutes down the road. Can you come back to just seeing what's around you, to feeling the steering wheel, to feeling your feet? When you're in a conversation with somebody, can you make eye contact and really listen to what they're saying without jumping ahead to what you want to say? And it's a practice because the distractions, the stuff that take us off, will pull us away from the present moment. Mindfulness is sometimes called traction, brings us back to the present moment. So the very first step to do it, is it one minute at a time, one thought at a time? Yeah, some people say, you know, I can't meditate, I don't want to meditate. And mindfulness can be learned one breath at a time, paying attention to this, just this, right now I'm inhaling, right now I'm exhaling. As soon as we pay attention to the breath, we come into the body. The body is always in present moment time. It's right here, right now. Breathing, beating, touching, feeling, sensing. The mind can time travel. The mind can go to the past, I woulda, shoulda, coulda, guilt, shame over the past, and it can go to the future. What if? Creating scenarios that haven't happened yet. Worst case scenarios. The body can't do that. So as soon as you come into the body in any way, feeling the dryness in your mouth, feeling the breath, most people start with the breath because it's always with us. And so you can notice, am I inhaling or am I exhaling right now in this moment? And is that a deep breath or a shallow breath? Not that either is right or wrong, just to notice. Mindfulness is the practice of noticing what we're doing while we're doing it. There are two ways to practice. One is called formal practice, where you set a time aside, a time, let's say a minute a day. I'm just gonna sit here and do nothing. There's an expression, don't just do something. Sit here. I'm just gonna practice being here for one minute and see how that goes. That's formal, that's where you put the sign out, do not bother, I'm busy, close the door. The other is called informal practice, which happens all day long, as many moments as we can remember. I'm driving the car, I'm obsessing about what that person just said to me before I got in the car and I realized I'm doing that and I come back to seeing the horizon and I'm more feeling my hands on the wheel. So, and they feed each other. Without formal practice, it's hard to remember to do the informal and that's one of the sayings in mindfulness, it's not hard to do, it's hard to remember to do. How can we be mindful in our relationship with food and our own health? It helps us to be in touch with, am I actually hungry when I start to eat? I take a breath into my body, I feel, no this isn't hunger, this is fatigue. Maybe I need a little break. Or this is thirst, or this is emotional upset. It helps us know whether we actually like the food that we're eating. One person I was seeing as a client was binging on Cheetos and couldn't stop. So I said bring them in, bring them into session. So she brought them in and we did this very slow and by the end she was like my hands are orange, my mouth feels greasy, this is way too much salt for me and she stopped eating them because finally for the first time she actually felt it. So it can help us, first of all know when to start eating when we're hungry, whether we like the food and then whether we've had enough. How do we know what's enough? And that's a huge inquiry. How do we know, is it when we don't feel hungry anymore? Is it when we reach a certain, like I've had two of these, I'm satisfied, it's not about fullness, it's about, oh I wanted a couple tastes. So mindfulness is a huge awareness practice. It opens our eyes and our hearts and it can hugely affect how we eat. So Susan, thank you today for all of this information. It's really wonderful. Thank you so much. It's been a pleasure to be here.