Zen Bender

by Stephanie Krikorian

  4.Also, the Posh Pescatarian encouraged, as her name suggested, a plant-based diet rich in fish. I’d finished her book proposal the previous year and thought I’d throw that concept into the mix as well, eating seafood for half of my protein intake. And then plants and good fats, like oil, avocado, and nuts, as per the Mediterranean Diet.

  5.In the book Lose Weight Here, the authors said you can eat more and exercise more, or eat less and exercise less, but never eat less and exercise more. So that meant intake adjustments needed to be made on workout days.

  6.I, of course, started a food journal, as per the road rules of every nutritionist I’d ever paid or written for, and I planned to cross-check everything by plugging my food into the Weight Watchers app. I downloaded one additional calorie-counting app to further cross-reference so that I could hit thirty points (Weight Watchers program, since updated to twenty-three points and unlimited chicken and veggies) and 1,250 calories each day.

  7.I’d also use my measuring cups from Beachbody’s twenty-one-day challenge to make sure that my portion sizes would be perfectly on mark so that, during that eight-hour eating window, I wouldn’t overeat.

  8.And no multi-pronged diet would be complete without probiotics. Or so said the book GUT.

  9.As I started to realize how restrictive my list of rules was getting, I decided I needed to leave myself some flexibility with Item 1, so I enacted a safety rule for myself that stipulated that if I really needed a drink, I could have a maximum of two per week. Civilian-size pours, not professional ones like my friends and I usually consumed. One to two drinks per week would be allowed, but I would try not to use them. Willpower is, after all, finite. So I didn’t want to say never, because that stressed me out. Deprivation, as I’d learned from You Are WHY You Eat, created inevitable benders. That had been my experience as well. But: If I didn’t opt in to drink my two drinks, they didn’t carry over. Meaning, not four drinks the following week if I did a week dry. #UseItOrLoseIt. If I did have a drink, that meant no starch with that meal. (From Urban Skinny.)

  10.When I worked on The Loving Diet, Jessica encouraged meditation. When I listened to her wisdom years earlier, combined with other adjustments, weight loss had followed.

  I had a plan. And I love a good plan. It had been a productive bus ride into the city.

  New Year, New Obsessive Behavior

  At the crack of dawn on January 1, I got back on the bus after a long night of cake and champagne. Upon arrival, I went to the fish market, the health-food store, the organic butcher, the chicken farm, all of it. I decided that, at least for the first two weeks of my plan, I’d lock myself inside and make zero social plans. There was no other way to do it, or at least no other way to start. I went home and soaked beans (breaking the starch-free plan for a good cause just once). I’d gotten them from my farm share because I read that, if you eat beans on January 1, you are in for a year of good luck and prosperity. Of course, later that evening, I read that eating pork was really the key to having a stellar year, but it was too late. By the time I learned that important life lesson, I was well out of my eight-hour eating window and therefore basically screwed for luck and prosperity for 2018. I felt briefly defeated and contemplated running out for bacon, but then remembered my favorite mantra: Start where you are. I let it go and went to sleep. At seven.

  And that highlighted for me the major downside of No Diet Left Behind, specifically that eight-hour feeding time. I needed my food early, when I woke up. And I live alone. My friend who told me about her success on that plan didn’t wake up until nine. She could wait to eat until ten and then finish dinner by six. Me: On day one, I found I was essentially finished shoveling it all in by three in the afternoon. By the time prime time rolled around, I was too bored to even watch Law & Order SVU (at least No Diet Left Behind had quickly cured me of one bad habit). Early sleep left me waking up even earlier and eating earlier and so on and so on and so on. It was a vicious cycle that never got kicked. It only got worse.

  Much to my surprise, the least difficult part of my plan turned out to be skipping the red wine. I got a little twitch on the first couple of days, but otherwise it was fine. I didn’t even resort to the rip cord emergency drink I’d penciled into my plan. Not once. Also, I was surprisingly full, minus the first time I worked out. That time I almost dropped to the ground, I was so starved. As in, I could barely function. That issue eventually worked itself out with some adjustment in the food choice and the timing of consumption on the days I went to my trainer. Bottom line: I needed a grain or a bean on those days, or I wouldn’t survive the workout.

  Otherwise, I was in check. All systems were go. I didn’t meditate at all (not until six weeks later). I fell down on that front. But other than that, I didn’t miss a beat and was certain that, by the time I stepped on the scale after week one, I would be down at least five pounds. By June, if I could keep this up, I was certain I would be emaciated-supermodel thin.

  News flash after week one: I wasn’t down at all. Okay, half a pound. But that was far from fair. I felt good, though. Eating clean definitely made me feel lighter.

  With barely a budge on the scale, it was time to enact emergency measures. It was war.

  There wasn’t much more I could remove from a dietary standpoint, as I was literally doing the very best I could do, intake-wise. But I could add another fail-safe: Keto sticks—the ones you pee on that measure ketosis. Ketosis is basically shorting yourself of carbs, which makes way for your body to burn fat. That’s a Stephanie-esque definition, but my understanding of it.

  I’d done a radical diet, maybe a decade earlier, which required doctors’ visits and peeing on those sticks to prove you were adequately starving yourself. I got B-12 shots for that diet, too. I lost a ton of weight, but I do firmly believe that my metabolism took a hit from which it never recovered. Still, those sticks don’t lie. And my compulsive research revealed that the point of the fasting diet was reaching ketosis.

  As a next-level weapon, every day, I peed on those things, almost hourly during week two. I learned something interesting: I dipped ever so slightly into ketosis with my plan. But, if I only ate chicken and fish and oil and no veggies, I hit that dark burgundy point on the pee stick—Atkins style—full-on. Eating only chicken and fish was too extreme even for me, given all the other limitations I was facing. So, while it would have been an efficient addition to my proprietary protocol, I didn’t do it.

  I made it through all of January on my rather ambitious and radical plan. And I didn’t stop there. I went for two more weeks into February. Locking myself in, while fully unreasonable and not sustainable, didn’t faze me in any emotional way. It was cold and gray outside, which on some level I love, and I’m not a person who feels lonely. Bored, sure. But not depressed, as far as what I understand depressed to be. I felt okay being in solitude for those weeks, maybe because it was a self-inflicted sentence and therefore my choice, or maybe I’m just okay sitting with myself. I’m not sure. But I was there with myself the entire time, and that was okay.

  For forty-five days I consumed no flour, no fried food, no booze, no sugar, no joy…and sadly, saw almost no results. A couple of pounds, maybe, but wow, not the expected payoff.

  I broke on Valentine’s Day, which fortunately has a new hashtag—#GalentinesDay—so sad single women have an excuse to have fun that day, rather than hide inside their apartments and eat Pad Thai alone. I went to dinner at my friend Jennifer’s apartment and drank champagne and ate cake. (Same single-friend apartment as New Year’s Eve, in case the menu sounds familiar.) Having not hit the sauce in a while, that night I couldn’t drink much—one glass and I was half-lit.

  The Ohm Spot

  There I was, with little to show for six or so weeks of hard work. The coat: it still didn’t zip up.

  That’s what led me to talking things through with Alexis, the acupuncturist. I was frustrated. Deservedly so. I had played my die
t A-game. Flawlessly. Period. End of story. There was no room for any improvement because I had striven for and achieved diet perfection. She asked me why I would try so hard on every other front, but not meditate. Why not add that to the mix?

  It was a fair point. I told Alexis about my meditation history. Years earlier, Jessica had talked to me about how even thirty seconds of meditation would have benefits. And that thirty seconds, as many times a day as one could muster, would add up to real time. She had said that whenever I could, to close my eyes and breathe in and out. Her mantra was “Bring more loving into my life.” I tried it. For the period during which I worked on her book, I walked and did yoga and didn’t do much dieting per se. But I meditated in thirty-second spurts. I lost some weight. I did. Jessica partly attributed my weight loss to the fact that walking acted as meditation for me, in addition to exercise, and so did yoga, and that perhaps I had unlocked something important.

  But something else unbelievable happened, too.

  I was sitting on my home office floor, doing my thirty-second meditation as per the book, to see how it would help and how best to help her describe it in her book.

  When I finished, I did a favorite yoga pose of mine, which was lying on my back with my legs up the wall. I used to do that a lot, and I felt like it was good for multiple reasons: It helped me hit pause and take a quick break in the middle of the day that didn’t involve food or TV or the iPhone (I would leave it on the desk, out of reach), it helped my back feel less tight, and I suppose, in some form, it was meditative.

  (If you’re getting the feeling that I try a lot of new things for a short period of time and then forget about them or am inconsistent, you’re right.)

  Anyway, that day, when I sort of checked back in on reality after a brief meditation and some staring at my ceiling, I started to right myself. The first thought that went through my mind was I wish I could write like David Carr, the Media Equation columnist for the New York Times. It was a super random thought, that’s for sure. But that’s what I thought: how much I loved reading his work.

  When I got up and grabbed my phone (why let the calm sink in?), I learned that he had just died that afternoon.

  As these words shoot from my fingers onto the keyboard and onto this page, I realize that I might sound like a lunatic, but I weirdly believe I had a psychic moment. Cuckoo, I know. I’m ashamed to even say that out loud. But that story is 100 percent true.

  Okay, so back to my over-the-top, some say rock bottom, self-improvement bender du jour… Alexis had registered to do a thirty-one-day meditation class. As she put little needles in my ears and shoulders, she pushed me to sign up for the meditation class as well.

  Despite my David Carr moment, I just didn’t feel like it. At all. Sometimes, when I tried to meditate, I felt like I was wasting a lot of time, like there were things waiting for me to get to them that I didn’t want to put off any longer. This class, given how rule-oriented I was, felt like a major commitment that would leave me struggling to skip it. There were only so many hours in a day and, by the time I walked, went to yoga or the gym, got groceries, read self-help books, and then tried to squeeze in socializing, and oh, yes, work, I felt like there was no time to meditate.

  Plus, it had gotten to the point where I had trouble detaching from my iPhone. Like, insert the chip in my arm so I can text or scroll through dumb things just by thinking. It’s weird to say, but when I felt edgy, I flipped through the phone for distraction, which ultimately made me feel edgier—though I obviously made it through yoga class sans phone. Meditating alone, however, I could see myself slipping.

  I hemmed and hawed. I made excuses. We’d had this conversation before. I got the meditating thing, obviously I’d had a moment with it. But first thing in the morning, when all I wanted to do was drink my coffee. That was my ritual. That was meditative. Wasn’t it?

  Alexis explained how simple it was to sign up for the course and how much of a fan she was of the woman offering the course. And that it was with a group—so it would be easier to get into. It was live every day in March at six in the morning.

  “You just log in,” she said.

  Ha! Perfect. I couldn’t do it.

  “I’ll be in LA for the entire month of March and I can’t get up at three in the morning to meditate,” I said, certain I had my out.

  “It’s also recorded,” she said. “You can do it on your own time. Just try it. I even have a discount code.”

  Alas, I do love a good discount code. She had a point. I’d tried everything else. So, I signed up.

  I’d butchered the March 1 class thanks to my need to watch MSNBC. But! Even though I had a seven o’clock flight to Los Angeles on March 2, I did the first three-minute meditation live before leaving for the airport. I almost missed my flight. It was the most rushed I’d ever been at an airport, ever, in twenty years as a globe-trotter. And I never, not once, in 800,000-plus miles flown, had almost missed a flight. So that was calming.

  The month-long meditation course and the concept of meditation in general, admittedly, had its moments. I liked the meditation lady’s voice. It was soothing. Some days, she just ohm’ed, and that was enough. And the sound of the gong she rang to open and close the practice was magical to me.

  A folded towel beneath an extra bed pillow, along with a tiny candle, became my little meditation corner in my Venice bungalow rental. Even though I was trying to kick the habit of reaching for my phone when I woke up, I had to reach for it to play that day’s meditation. That irked me, but I got over it by being diligent about not turning on a light or looking at anything else on the phone.

  My coffee habit was a sticking point and not easy to shake. I did meditate before caffeinating; however, my routine on half the days included wandering into the kitchen in the dark and flicking the switch on the coffeemaker before feeling my way back to my meditation corner. I never drank my coffee before meditating, though I later learned I could have.

  During this month, there was one profoundly strange experience that happened approximately fifteen days into the program. One morning, I got really into a meditation, mostly because of the meditation coach’s words on that day. The prompt she suggested was to send some good thoughts to someone I knew in need.

  Next, the coach said, send them to someone I had some issues with.

  Then, someone I had just met. The first person that popped into my mind on the just-met front was a guy I had sat next to two nights earlier, at an Oscar party at someone’s house. He spoke to me, which was basically enough to make me interested in him. So, sitting there, back in my meditation corner, cross-legged in the dark, he immediately popped into my head. Just then, I ever so slightly opened my eyes—barely. And I don’t know if I got motion-sick, or if the guy I thought of was a serial killer, or if I was just coughing up an emotional hairball, but I started dry-heaving so fiercely I had to crawl back to the bed and lie down, wrapped in my puffy white duvet. I kept the meditation recording going, but I needed time to collect myself. It was a strangely violent reaction. I emailed the meditation coach later that day, who said it could have been one of many things, but likely, I’d just “dislodged some emotional gunk” and that meant that the meditation was working.

  I pretty much stuck to the thirty-one days of the course. There were no more gunky moments. I surprised myself by getting right into the sessions that offered up five to ten minutes of meditation. In fact, I got lost in that time. I could even get behind twelve or fifteen minutes of meditation. But, as I started to see in the program outline that, in the final days, twenty minutes were coming up—twenty minutes awake without coffee—I began to get a little anxious. All I could think was that twenty minutes could be spent doing so many other things. And then I would get myself stressed out. I would still turn on the meditation each morning but infrequently made it through. I would do as much as I could, and then my mind would turn to coffee or work or my chance to ta
ke a walk before my workday needed to start. And I would turn off the recording.

  Admittedly, meditation took the edge off. I didn’t slow down or alter my eating habits, not in any documentable way. And I didn’t lose weight because of it. Having said that, it seemed to have helped in other, secondary ways: The many deadlines I faced suddenly seemed less urgent. Normally, everything needed an immediate answer and held the same level of weight. It was all house-on-fire urgent. But after thirty-one days meditating, I had a clear picture of what needed to get done when and how I could schedule my time in a way I hadn’t quite had the focus to do previously. I was better able to prioritize the juggling of a couple of things that were on my plate.

  Dieting is Science, Not Magic

  The meditation gave me clarity on many things diet-related, too: Dieting in general is deeply personal and often a no-win battle. I learned a few things with my all-in plan about the dark side of the fad diets. No one diet works for all people. Obvious statement, I realize. But I hadn’t come to that conclusion previously.

  But after having helped pen so many of these excellent books, I admitted that each had a nugget of wisdom that I’ve held and used. There was good information out there. But there was no quick fix.

  Also, obviously, for me, losing weight was going to continue to be my lifelong struggle. This wasn’t a six-week thing. And if my waistline wasn’t going to shrink, my confidence over this issue needed to grow. It had held me back on several fronts for too long, and perhaps obsessing about it as I had with No Diet Left Behind made it all worse. Dieting using one diet was stressful. Throwing them all into one attempt was exceedingly overwhelming, and there’s no losing weight while overwhelmed.

  Additionally, I finally came to the conclusion that it wasn’t good to have a diet buddy. When your diet buddy breaks, they encourage you to break, too. I had held fast and strong through my six weeks, but I noticed fellow January dieters had in fact encouraged a break. I noticed something else somewhat alarming, too: People don’t like to watch you portion-control when they’re not portion-controlling themselves. And that resulted in several “Is that all you’re eating?” comments. If you have resolve, this may not seem like a big deal. But constantly having my diet announced to other people at a table grew rather tiresome and humiliating for me. Misery clearly loved company.