Coffee anyone?

Increasing the peace within...

A friend was over for a visit one afternoon and during our kitchen counter chat, I opened the cupboard to retrieve a jar of dates, plucked a few out and removed the pits.

“Have a craving?” she wondered.

“No…just getting my coffee ready for tomorrow.”

Her quizzical expression prompted an explanation of my preparation practice, mainly because I’m too groggy in the morning to undertake the task - it’s a multi-layered process best done on a full tank of energy. First, there’s the brewing of the espresso, followed by pouring it into a saucepan to distill uncovered. The dates are tossed into the hot liquid to macerate overnight in the brew. In the morning, the uber-strong espresso is mellowed with a cup of unsweetened hemp milk and a generous spoonful of ghee. Then it’s gently heated and poured into a Vitamix with a scoop of collagen powder and dusting of locally sourced mushroom tea and blitzed to velvety perfection to render my own person version of bulletproof coffee.  If it all sounds like too much trouble, I can assure you it’s worth every single step. And not just because this rich latte tastes amazing.

Raised in the nutritional dark ages of the 70’s, all the tap-dancing I do for a morning cup of coffee is my active manifesto that I no longer have to succumb to Monsanto’s marketing of, well, utter crap. What else can you call overly processed carbs laced with pesticides? No more bowls of insipid dehydrated rice with 2% milk (skim when I was dieting), rounded out with an uncomfortably cold glass of orange juice from concentrate. (I may need a minute…I’m having flashbacks).

This daily coffee thing that I do, even on the road, is also a stand taken for pleasure that massages the ‘I deserve muscle’ which lay unused and atrophied for most of my life. How I don’t long for the days when I laced coffee with low-fat cream replacements and sugar substitutes. I knew they were vile then like I know they’re vile now. But I was too far down the rabbit hole of mandate influence to pull out.

You know the mandates:  those unwelcome directives that say we should look younger, weigh less, stay submissive, and ruminate over daily sugar grams.  Nowadays the mandates come at us faster than ever. Remember olden times when all we had to choose from on the self-improvement buffet were flimsy exercise contraptions and untenable celebrity-endorsed diets on those painfully dishonest infomercials?  Now, med spas with their laundry list of fat and wrinkle eradication remedies plus a calvary of GLP-1 injectable drugs tempt weight loss while hinting we’ve still got miles to go till we might finally exhale and think we’re OK (spoiler alert: they never want you to believe you’re OK).

I don’t have to tell you that the bait is being swallowed whole by some. Too many public figures to count, who once ranged from average-sized to resplendently zaftig, now look gaunt and under the weather. “They all look like junkies now,” observed a friend who lives in Los Angeles and sees the fallout from sudden thinness firsthand. There’s also the inconvenient truth that the possible side effects are ghastly, and consumers have signed on to be real-life big pharma Guinea pigs for these relatively new drugs. Believe me, I’m completely aware of how amazing it feels to be at a lower weight. I wish I were back at my ideal again; but surgeries and injections are a bridge I’m not willing to cross.

I’ve seen too many people achieve svelteness in a fast and furious manner. It’s not only hard on the body, the heart and mind get left in the dust and they MUST be cared for and paid attention to. Which brings me back to morning coffee. It’s Exhibit A for pulling out of a critical mindset into an entirely different lane. Being kind and generous to myself has served me better than any fear-based self-improvement practice ever could.  

Years ago I was fond of writing affirmations, Bart Simpson-style, over and over, to cancel out embedded negative messages. That practice organically evolved into random and planned acts of kindness for myself. If we don’t undertake these for ourselves, it’s likely no one else will - at least not with the regularity needed.

There’s no right or wrong ritual – whatever speaks to you is the road to take: maybe it’s paying homage to your family’s beloved pancake recipe. Or candlelit baths, or mani-pedis. Or keeping that favorite childhood book handy for that noise-free journey down memory lane. For my part, every homemade meal made with love and flavor is reparation for every Weight Watchers and Lean Cuisine frozen dinner I subjected myself to.

Two things helped me as I began this new and unconventional practice: not measuring my choices against what others were doing, and not making those pseudo-virtuous choices in order to cling to the good label.  I began paying more attention to what truly satisfies me; hence, the three dates in my coffee instead of a low-glycemic sweetener. I’ve tried ‘em all and they taste terrible, so why would I do that to myself? Aside from their irresistible sweetness and the fact they’re not factory-created, dates contain nutrients and fiber…take that, sugar substitutes. 

In the beginning, there were rounds of existential arm wrestling with the veteran dieter in me who insisted I go the route of less pleasure in a judgement-centric world where everything from the color and formation of our teeth to the shape and circumference of our calves is scrutinized. It takes discipline and practice, but it is possible to reach the point where invitations to ‘improve’ bounce off you the way Superman’s chest repels bullets.

So tell me, what would you rather have reverberating through your head: the howling echo of the mandates, or the sweet equilibrium from the positive reinforcement that blossoms with each self-directed act of kindness?  Who knew shrapnel removal could feel so good?