Stop Your Cravings: Satsify Your Tastes Without Sacrificing Your Health - Softcover

Jennifer Workman, M.S., R.D., has written for many health and fitness publications, including Mademoiselle, American Spa, and Harper's Bazaar, by whom she was rated "one of the top ten experts to help you revamp your diet." She practices in Colorado and New York City.

Introduction: East Meets West: The Best of Both Worlds

If you're reading this book, it's probably because you already have four or five diet books on your shelf, you've tried them all, and none has worked for you over the long haul. Either you didn't lose the weight the book promised you would or the food you were "allowed" to eat was so restrictive and boring that eventually, sooner or later, you simply couldn't stick to the plan. Many of those books probably contain good, accurate, useful information. The problem, as I've discovered during my seventeen years working in the health and fitness industry, is that there's now so much information available, and so much of it appears to be contradictory, that everyone -- from competitive athletes to doctors to weekend warriors to couch potatoes -- is confused and frustrated.

The weight-loss industry -- including diet books, diet plans, diet pills, and diet supplements -- is now a $50 billion industry in the United States, yet more than 50 percent of Americans remain overweight. According to the most recent National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey, 26 percent of those are considered obese or grossly overweight, a figure that has nearly doubled in the last two decades. We're bombarded daily with nutritional information, most of us think we know what we "should" or "shouldn't" be eating, yet nothing, so far, has worked for the average American who steps on and off the diet merry-go-round three to four times each year.

A "nutraceutical" is defined as any food or part of a food that has a medical or health benefit -- from dietary supplements to herbal products to processed foods. Nutraceuticals World, the trade magazine of the nutraceutical industry, noted in 1999 that "nine out of ten shoppers (90%) understand the relationship between nutrition and health. In fact, more than half of primary shoppers feel that just eating healthfully can greatly reduce the risk of developing certain diseases." If that's the case, there is still a piece missing from this puzzle, because we're more overweight than ever yet our diets are lacking in many nutrients, including the good, monounsaturated fats and essential fatty acids. We suffer from an overabundance of poor-quality food and a lack of activity despite the billions spent on health club memberships, exercise equipment, and personal trainers. The big question, obviously, is why, despite our apparent understanding of the issues, can virtually no one stick to a diet or an exercise plan. Why is it that, whatever the diet -- whether it be for health or fitness or weight loss -- Americans simply are not complying, even though we all think we know what we're "supposed" to be eating? Why are we the most diet-crazed country in the world and yet also the most overweight, and apparently the most frustrated by our failure?

My experience has shown me that the answer lies, at least in part, with our cravings for foods we think we shouldn't be eating. As soon as we become stressed or overwhelmed, those cravings take over and we "blow" our diet. We're all living with enormous amounts of stress, and those cravings are our way of trying to get some relief. But why do we crave what we do? And why is it that a food like chocolate can have so much power over us? I have found that the combination of Eastern medical practices, such as Ayurveda, with the modern science of Western nutrition, finally provides the answers to these continually frustrating questions.

Even so mainstream an organization as The American Dietetic Association, in a recent journal article, states that traditional approaches to weight loss simply haven't worked. "For many years, research and practice in the field of weight management has been based largely on a unidimensional, simplistic, weight-loss paradigm. The long-term success rate for persons using this paradigm has been low...the literature indicates that few dieters actually reach their goal weight....Very few of those who do lose weight sustain their new weight; thus, they increase their risk for the development of a pattern of weight cycling." The "experts" are frustrated too.

The fact is that there is no one magic formula to satisfy everyone's individual nutritional needs. Only by satisfying our individual needs on a daily basis, as part of our everyday lifestyle, will we be able to stop the cravings that have, so far, prevented us from maintaining optimum weight and optimum health. Only Ayurveda takes into account all aspects of our physical and emotional individuality and offers a comprehensive program for daily living that allows each one of us to recognize the foods we crave as something our body needs (in a nonaddictive situation) and that we are -- fruitlessly -- denying. To quote one of my teachers, Pat Hansen, M.S., a co-founder of the Rocky Mountain Institute for Yoga and Ayurveda, in Boulder, Colorado: "Only Ayurveda asks the key nutritional questions -- for whom? under what conditions? at what time of year?" Once you understand how to answer those questions for yourself, you will find yourself eating the foods that are appropriate to your specific physical and emotional type, under particular environmental and emotional circumstances, as dictated by the changing seasons. You'll understand how to nurture and nourish your body's needs in ways that are satisfying and healthy, by incorporating herbs and spices in simple ways that will help satisfy your taste buds, improve your digestion and energy, and even help to cut body fat, without adding additional calories, carbohydrates, or fat.

But how are you supposed to decipher all the weight loss and nutritional information that's available when even with a master's degree in nutrition and exercise physiology, and seventeen years in the fitness industry, I too have struggled with my weight and obsessed about everything I ate, as have so many other fitness and medical professionals? Although I've never been severely overweight, and I've always been active and fit, my weight has fluctuated from a low of 115 to a high of 157 pounds. Food was always an issue for me, just as it was for everyone else I knew; I was always either "watching it" or on a diet. I also suffered from digestive problems I thought were normal, and my energy and moods would fluctuate, depending on what I'd been eating. I sensed there had to be a connection, but I was as frustrated as everyone else about how to fix it, and I tried every diet out there.

Over the last five or six years, after discovering Ayurveda and "integrative" medicine, I've come to realize that food should not be an issue; it should help you manage stress, not create more, and food cravings are a signal that something is wrong, either physically or emotionally, and your body is trying to bring the problem to your attention. But it's been a long road to enlightenment.

When I received my undergraduate degree in nutrition and business from Queens College in 1982, fitness was not the flourishing industry it has since become. While I was still an undergraduate -- actually starting when I was in high school -- I had begun teaching aerobics and strength training at a well-known East Coast fitness center. I was seventeen years old, in great shape, and I loved the fitness business. I tried other fields, but I never felt I belonged in "corporate America." Helping overstressed executives get out of the office and into the gym made me happy. I then began dating a competitive natural (steroid-free) bodybuilder, learned a lot about strength training and sports nutrition, and started working toward my master's degree in nutrition and exercise physiology at New York University. As part of my coursework, I was required to complete a year's medical internship working as a clinical nutritionist with patients at Beth Israel Hospital in Manhattan. It was an eye-opening experience. All the interns at the hospital were, of course, young, and a lot of them were good-looking, but they were almost all overweight, they smoked, drank too much coffee to stay awake, didn't have time to exercise, and never got enough sleep. The people I'd met in the fitness industry weren't all perfect examples of a healthy lifestyle, but their lives revolved around health and fitness, and at the time, they appeared to be light-years ahead of the medical profession when it came to diet, exercise, and preventative health. Ironically, Beth Israel Hospital in New York City has opened an "integrative" medical division run by many prestigious medical doctors who understand the benefits of bringing both worlds together.

That year of internship cemented my determination to direct my skills in the areas of nutrition and fitness toward preventative health and teaching basic stress management and lifestyle modification. As I now explain to my clients, Western medicine is at its most brilliant in emergency situations, but the goal should be to try to avoid those emergencies.

In 1991 I accepted the position of sales and marketing director at the then brand-new Peninsula Hotel/Spa -- the first day spa of its kind to open in New York City. Our clients were the high-stress, high-energy, top executives and CEOs from many of the Fortune 500 companies in midtown Manhattan. It was a great learning experience to see them rush in like madpeople and leave ninety minutes later, after a massage, or a workout, or a yoga class, purring like pussycats -- more focused, centered, and grounded. During my five years at the Peninsula, I gained enormous insight into the benefits obtained by combining stress management and fitness -- something that many Eastern and European cultures have known for centuries. The International Spa Association has been trying to educate Americans about the health benefits of stress management for years. Many studies show that modalities such as massage, yoga, aromatherapy, meditation, and other such techniques are not mere indulgences but preventative medicine. In the late eighties and early nineties, all this was very new. "No pain, no gain" was still the prevailing mantra of fitness enthusiasts. Now yoga, meditation, visualization, and Pilates are a common part of the fitness world.

I had also just begun to implement the nutrition program at The Peninsula and had started to introduce the concept to many of the editors of health and fitness magazines. Although it was clear the program would be successful, I knew in my heart that something was still missing -- I just didn't know, at the time, what it was. We had all the information about sports nutrition, stress management, and fitness, but our clients still couldn't seem to get off the diet merry-go-round.

It was in 1994 that all the information started to come together. When I was working at the Peninsula I had the unfortunate but serendipitous experience of "blowing out" the anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) in my knee while skiing. Because I had been working out for so long, my legs were very strong but also very tight. After the accident, I had difficulty getting back my full range of motion, and physical therapy was extremely painful. Up to that point, I'd had no desire to try yoga or felt I needed any kind of stress management because, as a typical type A New Yorker, I had always considered such nonstrenuous exercise a waste of time when I could be really working out. I, too, belonged to the "no pain, no gain" school of fitness. Eventually, upon the urging of one of the Peninsula's yoga instructors, and against the advice of my orthopedic surgeon, who was simply unfamiliar with the therapeutic benefits of yoga, I did finally wind up in a yoga class for the injured and elderly at the Integral Yoga Center, simply because I couldn't stand the physical therapy any longer. I was amazed by the difference it made in a very short time.

Although it was very gentle, it was also extremely effective. My physical therapy was no longer so torturous, and my range of motion came back much more quickly. The effect on my mind was dramatic as well, and I began to understand the benefits of "calming down" my driven personality. I can actually remember hobbling out of my first or second class and realizing that even though I was standing in the middle of Broadway, I simply didn't hear the traffic noise. I just "floated" home. It's amazing to me now to see how we all receive the lessons we need in life, even if we don't recognize them in the moment!

A lot happened that year. At about the same time, my very dear, twenty-eight-year-old friend Janine was diagnosed with leukemia, and a while later, my grandmother fell and broke her hip. For three years, my friend fought valiantly through two bone marrow transplants and three rounds of chemotherapy. Although her doctors tried their best, her body continued to deteriorate, and the treatments were very difficult for her to endure. In the end, when there was nothing left for the doctors to do, she and her family sought out a nutritionist who specialized in a holistic approach to cancer. I watched her energy and color begin to improve a bit as he attempted to help rebuild and "detoxify" her system using organic fruits and vegetables and herbs. It became a proactive experience and something positive she and her family could participate in after all the treatments. She also began to work with the yoga teacher and reiki instructor who had helped me to rehabilitate my knee. I watched Janine gain some peace spiritually, and even her physician noted that he had never before seen a patient manage pain so well at that end stage of leukemia. Even though Janine did finally pass away, it was a very sad but profound experience. It helped me to understand the power and benefits of a more "holistic" approach to life and death and of treating the "whole" person. My grandmother died three months after Janine, and I wish she had been able to receive the same kind of help, but she was never offered these complementary therapies. Her treatment followed strictly traditional, old school paradigms, and as frustrated as I was, I simply had to let her go.

After my experiences with my friend, my grandmother, and my knee, I decided it was time for me to leave the spa and fitness world and return to the medical community, but this time I wanted to be in a place that combined Eastern and Western medicine. It was in 1996 that I moved to Colorado and found work in a newly opened medical center in Denver where they were doing just that. The facility combined traditional and complementary medicine, and seeing how the two could work together was another enlightening experience. I was convinced this was the direction in which the health industry ought to be moving.

At the same time, I began working as a nutritionist with Wild Oats natural markets, where I got an astounding on-the-job education in herbal and natural medicine. It was the perfect complement to my work at the medical center. Then I met Sarasvati Buhrman, Ph.D., who holds a doctorate in anthropology and is a skilled Ayurvedic practitioner and herbalist. She is, with Pat Hansen, co-founder of the Rocky Mountain Institute for Yoga and Ayurveda in Boulder, Colorado. I wanted to learn more about yoga and meditation, and when Sarasvati found out I was a nutritionist, she suggested I take a class she was teaching in Ayurvedic medicine for Westerners. That class changed my life and my career. I finally saw the vital connections between the medical profession, the food and nutrition industries, the fitness industry, and the spa industry. Ayurveda provided the key that allowed me to understand why so many Americans were having so much trouble with weight management, digestive disorders, and the many chronic, nagging complaints that were sapping their energies and keeping them from feeling really good. And it pr...