Category Archives: Mindfulness

Mindfulness for All

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A few words today on the “rest and relaxation” pillar, encouraging you to be mindful, to care for yourself, to be kind to yourself, and to help yourself remain centered, especially in the spinning vortex of ceaseless activity that continues to characterize recent weeks of change and chaos.

My word of the year is mindfulness. It’s the exact opposite of multi-tasking, which is not at all what it sounds like. To multi-task is not to get a whole bunch of different things done all at once, but rather to switch your attention incessantly from one project to another, giving none your full consideration. To multi-task is to invest heavily in attention-switching at the expense of your focus and goals. All told, it is a supreme waste of your precious energy.  Continue reading →

Your Health is in Your Heart

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Good morning, and happy Sunday. Today I am sharing a conversation I had with a patient once some years ago. She was someone I had never met before, and was, like many before her, completely flummoxed about what to try next. With a personal goal of weight loss, she had already done everything she could think of, and then some. I know you know this story. I myself have told it many times before. There is a good chance you may even have experienced it yourself. Maybe you have experimented with practically every diet, including the dreaded cabbage soup diet, denied yourself your favorite foods, carved out time you didn’t really have to get more exercise than was comfortable at the time. Of course none of this is sustainable. You can’t eat cabbage soup for breakfast forever. So what comes next?  Continue reading →

Old-Fashioned Gratitude

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Many years ago, when I was eleven years old, my parents bought a Corning Cooktop stove, a fancy new appliance whose coils remained white even when they were hot. You simply had to take it on faith — or not. No matter how long I stared at that new stovetop, I could not convince myself that the white coils were hot. And that is why I still remember so clearly, this many years later, the perfectly oval burn on the tip of my right index finger. I touched it only once, but that was enough. It was all it took. I couldn’t take anyone else’s word for it.  Continue reading →

There Is So Much You Can Do To Make It Better

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Sometimes I think this blog should have a category called “It’s worse than you think” or “I’m really not exaggerating,” or maybe just “More scary news.” Sometimes I even get the feeling that people think I may be overstating the urgency of the diabetes epidemic. So I gathered together a few statistics for you. Continue reading →

Strategies for Improving Your Blood Sugars

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This week I’d like to talk about the concept of diet-controlled diabetes. Sometimes, when a patient’s most recent bloodwork demonstrates a mild elevation in their blood sugars, their doctor offers them an opportunity to try to improve their sugars without medication. If the patient is able to bring their blood sugars into the normal range through changes in the way they eat, perhaps along with increasing their activity levels to some extent, the doctor diagnoses this patient with what they term “diet-controlled diabetes.”  Continue reading →

Mindfulness

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Mindfulness is my own personal word-of-the-decade. Mindfulness is the polar opposite of multitasking, which is not at all what it sounds like. Despite popular opinion, multitasking does not enable you to get a whole bunch of different things done all at once. When you multitask, what you are actually doing is switching your attention incessantly from one focus to another, and giving none your full consideration. To multitask is to invest heavily in attention-switching at the expense of learning. A waste of your precious energy, multitasking frazzles your nerves and impairs your ability to focus. 

The antidote to multitasking is mindfulness. Continue reading →

Meditation is My Happy Place

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Last week I said a few words about my own meditation practice, how I started with an approach that I call one-minute meditation, and how I had no idea where it might lead. I just knew that I liked listening to what regulator meditators said about their own experiences. So I thought I would try it out. One-minute meditation is just what it sounds like. It’s great for starters. It’s hardly much of a commitment. I mean, it’s one minute. You won’t be late for the sake of a single minute. Continue reading →

Words of Thich Nhat Hanh

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I have had a daily meditation practice for just over six years now. I started with one-minute meditation, which I have taught to many people over the years. I like to think of it as a good way to start. One minute is not very much time, and I have generally found that just about everyone is willing to dedicate a single minute to meditating. It’s really just a minute: you breathe in for 5 seconds, and then breathe out for 5 seconds. That’s your warmup; now do it 5 more times. That’s it. One minute. You’re done.

When I first started meditating, I did not really know the reason or the purpose. I just did it to see what would happen. I only knew that I liked listening to what people who meditated regularly said about their experience. So I thought I’d try it for myself. I don’t know what I expected. Next time I’ll talk more about how those first years went. This week I want to talk about the words of a man named Thich Nhat Hanh. Continue reading →

Remembering What You Want

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In the weeks prior to starting medical school, my brother-in-law gave me a small card with a calligraphied message: Discipline is remembering what you want. I soon affixed it to the wall of my new study carrel, where it remained for a long time until, years later, I passed it along to a friend who needed it more than I.

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Your Health is Where You Want it to Be

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Good morning, and happy Sunday! I want to tell you about a conversation I had with a patient this week. She was someone I’d never met before, and, like many before her, she was absolutely flummoxed about what to try next. She had already done everything she could think of to lose weight. I think you know this story. I’ve told it many times before, and you may even have experienced it yourself. Maybe you’ve been on practically every diet, eaten cabbage soup, denied yourself your favorite foods, carved out time you didn’t really have to get more exercise than was comfortable at the time. Of course none of this was sustainable. You can’t eat cabbage soup for breakfast forever. So what’s next? Next comes balance. Continue reading →