Healthy Brain, Happy Life (14 page)

I fully admit that I was an anxious, agonizing, agitated, and stressed-out assistant professor trying my best to make tenure in 2004. I was working for what I hoped would be a spectacular result from a challenging experiment that took several years to develop. In the end, it worked out fine, but I had many a sleepless night worrying about the speed at which my research was progressing and how interesting my findings would be to my peers.

I waited until after that positive tenure decision came down to really dig my heels in and tackle those excess twenty pounds with better control of my food portions and a drastic reduction of carbs in my diet. While my motivation to get fit was my Peruvian river-rafting adventure, my motivation to lose weight was that picture of me with my parents at the Troland Research Award ceremony in Washington. In 2004, I was plenty fit, but my outside body didn’t reflect my inner strength, and that just didn’t feel right. Inspired by how my body had immediately responded to my strength training and cardio routine as designed by Carrie, I decided I was going to tackle my food issues solo. How hard could it be?

I started by planning all my meals and took careful note of my portion sizes. I researched fun and easy recipes to cook to adhere to my new diet and significantly decreased my take-out and restaurant going, except for special occasions. The cooking part was fun, but the biggest challenge was to get comfortable with a feeling of hunger—all the time. I hated it. I especially hated it late in the afternoon just past the midway point between lunch and dinner, when I would start thinking about heading down to the vending machine to get that crispy, gooey Twix bar. I got grumpy. I got cranky. I could not concentrate well and started to tell myself that eating a sugary snack was okay because it would make me more productive at work, and I needed to be maximally productive at work. But I had set my food rules, and I muscled through.

This was particularly hard because my weight loss seemed to go so much slower than my muscle buildup. It took many weeks to start to see an effect on the scale. But there were results—slow but steady. When I saw those first two or three pounds disappear from the scale, I felt newly motivated. That made me realize that the feeling of being hungry that I hated so much was actually
good
and it translated to
results
, however slowly. That hungry feeling was also helping me change my body’s set point for food intake, for the better. What do I mean by that? It probably took me years to get myself to the level of food intake that my body needed to feel satisfied, without overeating. I realized my diet was too high in calories and too full of carbs, without enough veggies or fruits. I knew it was going to take time and some determination to slowly ramp down as I started to gradually change the composition of what I ate every day. I got more creative with my cooking, looking up healthful low-carb recipes online, and the truth was, with my new focus on more nutritious cooking, I didn’t even miss my old unhealthy take-out regime. My trainer had shown me that I could strengthen my body with regular smart workouts. Now I was learning how to get my eating, and therefore my weight, back in control with the same kind of slow, steady, and smart food choice changes.

EXPLORING THE FOOD SET POINT IN . . . MY CAT

Experiencing hunger but then seeing the number on my scale go down as my own eating set point changed had another unexpected positive benefit—with my overweight cat, Pepper. Pepper has no brakes on his brain’s hunger center but his brother, Dill, before he passed away, was always very thin and a picky eater. To make sure Dill ate enough, I would leave food out all the time. I was so worried about Dill getting what he needed that I didn’t notice Pepper’s expanding middle until friends started commenting on the size of my cat! Well, I realized, a little too late, that Pepper (like his human, just a few years before) was in great need of a diet, and I knew what I had to do. I put him on a very regimented (and vet-approved) low-calorie diet on which he got fed only twice a day with special low-calorie cat food. He was uncomfortable at first. Very uncomfortable. He was
so
hungry, he would start running around like a mad man before mealtimes, but I knew from the vet that he was getting proper nutrition, and his body just had to get used to this amount of food, and then his brain would settle down. Like me, he had to change his set point. I didn’t waiver and just kept to his feeding schedule for weeks and weeks. I could see not only his waistline slowly whittle but his set point shift as well. Early on he would inhale his food and lick the empty bowl. Now, for example, he leaves about a third of the food for a snack later. He always finishes, but he can now spread out his eating in a leisurely way. I sometimes wished someone would just feed me the prescribed amount at the prescribed time too. The greatest thing to see was Pepper’s energy skyrocket (just like mine did) when that massive waistline started to get smaller. He still runs around the apartment—but for fun now, not because he is crazy hungry.

I remember the day I went to a jazz dance class and a guy whom I danced with pretty regularly for at least a year but had not seen for a few months did a double take when I walked in. He said he hardly recognized me because of my weight loss. That right there was all I needed to hear to know that all those months of that hungry feeling were totally worth it. Talk about immediate gratification. I was ecstatic! Over about a year of combining my new diet with my regular gym workouts (by this time I had graduated from Carrie’s care and did my own workouts, mainly focusing on different classes at the gym) I ended up losing a total of twenty-three pounds. Woo-hoo!

That should have been enough, right? Plenty even. But there was something even more in store for me.

DISCOVERING A WORKOUT WITH A MESSAGE

During one of my regular evening sessions at the gym when I had already attained most of my weight-loss goal, the list of possible classes caught my eye. I had a choice that evening between a cardio boot camp class and another class that I had never heard of called intenSati—with no explanation for what
intenSati
meant. I was not feeling all that energetic, and the cardio boot camp class just sounded too hard. So that’s how I ended up walking into my first intenSati class. Little did I know that this class was not only harder than cardio boot camp but would be the catalyst for upping the level of my workouts, improving my mood and my outlook on life, and eventually even shifting my neuroscience research.

At the beginning of that class, the instructor, Patricia Moreno, the woman who created this class, told us that the term
intenSati
, comes from the combination of two words.
Inten
comes from the word
intention
.
Sati
is a Pali word (a language from India) that means “awareness or mindfulness.” She told us that the goal of the practice of intenSati is to bring an awareness/mindfulness to our own intentions. She explained that we were going to be doing different movements from kickboxing, dance, yoga, and the martial arts, all the time shouting positive affirmations along with each move. I was not so sure about the shouting part, but Moreno was a completely riveting instructor so I stayed to experience this intriguing new class for myself.

That first class felt like an explosion of movements. Moreno started off showing us a simple yet energetic movement, such as alternating left and right punches. Once we got the movement down, she would then give us the affirmations that we would shout out along with that move. For example, with the punches, we said out loud, “I am strong now!” This move was called Strong. Each move had a specific name. We would do the first movement for a while, and then she would add a movement/affirmation combo, until we had strung fifteen or twenty different movements and affirmations together. Each particular set of affirmation/movement combos was written as a series with a specific message. The message was one of empowerment: The power of your mind, the power of positive action, the power of your body, and the power of positive thoughts over negative ones. It was a workout with a message.

Moreno told us that what we declare with our voices is powerful. And that when we start incorporating these powerful affirmations into our thoughts—that is, when we start to think and believe them—they become even more powerful still.

When we pushed our arms up in the air in an alternating fashion with our palms open and our fingers spread wide, we shouted, “Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes!”

When we punched up and down, we shouted, “I believe I will succeed!”

When we threw uppercut punches with alternating hands, we shouted, “I am inspired now!”

It was a workout for my body
and
my brain. Asking your brain to remember arm and foot work combinations, as well as affirmations to shout out, is asking your brain to work! There are also the words of the affirmations that the instructor is telling you, which you are also trying to remember—even before she says them. So your memory is also put to the test in an intenSati class.

Of course, I didn’t appreciate all of the brain–body connections being made by intenSati after just one class. I was trying hard just to keep up and remember the movements—never mind remembering the affirmations at the same time! And it was hard. Shouting those affirmations while doing all the moves made you more out of breath than just doing the movements alone and upped the level of the workout considerably. I was also definitely a little shy at first about shouting out the affirmations. But there were plenty of regulars in class that night shouting with abandon, and once I managed to get the movements down, I got caught up in the fun and started shouting along with everyone else.

Have you heard people say that people won’t remember what you say, only how you made them feel? I can’t remember the exact affirmations that I said that night in class, but I do remember how I felt: totally empowered, energized, and enlivened—in a brand-new way. And I could not wait to come back for the next class.

HARNESSING THE POWER OF THE BRAIN–BODY CONNECTION

What was so different about this workout? Remember, I was already in good if not great shape by the time I wandered into this class. I was really starting to feel great about both my overall cardiovascular and muscular strength as well as the outside package after I lost the weight. I loved going to the gym and had already made it a regular part of my life. I was already feeling great and energized and was sure that my workouts helped me through those stress-filled years as I was applying for tenure, but intenSati brought something brand new into my life. I would not have been able to articulate it at first, but I now realize that this workout was so special because it brought the power of the brain–body connection to life for me more powerfully than I had ever felt it before.

The first thing I noticed was that I pushed myself during those workouts more than I had in any other class I was taking. Why? It was the power of those positive affirmations and actually speaking them out loud that seemed to flip a switch in me. It was the difference between doing a class and getting a good, sweat-inducing workout and really feeling strong because I was declaring I was strong or empowered or confident or a million other positive affirmations we used in that class. I was pushing myself even harder because I started to really believe I was strong. And I started to really feel that strength, embodying it not just during class but also long after class ended, when I went back into the real world.

But this is where the power of the brain–body connection comes into play. This connection refers to the idea that the body has a powerful influence on our brain functions and conversely that the brain has a powerful influence over how our bodies feel and work and heal. While I had been going to the gym for some time, and I definitely felt much more fit and energized and happy, I really started to appreciate the true power of the brain–body connection only with this new class. And the first thing I noticed was how strongly this workout (
body
) boosted my mood (
brain
).