The More You Dough...
BY BETH RICANATI, MD
The secret to wellness may just be in loaf of white bread. Seriously! And this from a doctor, no less. My name is Beth Ricanati, MD and I am an internist/author/challah baker. I am also a mother of three. Like most of us, I tried for years to do it all. And like many of us, sustaining my place on that hamster wheel became too much.
Hence, the challah.
When our kids were much younger, and I was busy with my work at the Cleveland Clinic, a friend suggested that I make challah one year for the Jewish New Year. I thought that challah just came from the bakery, those perfect braids machine-made. I didn’t know anyone actually made the actual bread, nevermind that I had never made homemade bread in the first place. I tried it by myself later that week, and the experience was transformative.
Making challah has changed my life.
I found that in taking time each week to make this special bread, I was not only nourishing my family with fresh, homemade challah for Friday night dinners, but I was also nourishing myself. Pausing at the kitchen counter, making a mess more like it, allowed me time to reflect, to be present, to consider getting off that hamster wheel.
I have continued to make challah since then.
It has become such an integral part of my life that I wrote a book about my experience, Braided: A Journey of a Thousand Challahs, and I now conduct (virtual for now) challah-making workshops with individuals and schools and businesses and other organizations around the country. It turns out I am not the only one trying to do too much, and finding myself overwhelmed. Having an outlet – and it doesn’t have to be making challah, though of course I think that’s the best! – can be so healing. We need to take care of ourselves, after all, so that we can continue to take care of everyone else and everything else that we were doing in the first place. I learned the hard way that running on empty does not sustain you, and comes at a cost. It was only once I stopped and stood at my kitchen counter every Friday making challah that I fully appreciated this.
Some of the simple lessons that I’ve learned making challah:
Self-Care Matters
We have to take care of ourselves. This isn’t selfish; it’s self-care. It’s so easy for us to keep taking care of others, even when we don’t take the time to take care of ourselves. This can be problematic, though, as we can ultimately find ourselves ‘running on empty.’ The irony, of course, is that then we can’t take care of everyone else as well as we’d like! So, the benefit of self-care is twofold: we take care of ourselves, which is so important for our own health and well-being, and this then allows us to better take care of others.
Rituals Matter
Rituals are behaviors that have meaning to them. For example, making challah for me is a weekly ritual with many different small behaviors wrapped up in the overall activity. Conversely, taking out the garbage is not a ritual…it’s a chore! There is no special meaning attached to it; I take out the garbage whenever it needs to go out, and there are no special behaviors wrapped up in the activity. Having rituals in our lives adds meaning and richness to our lives.
Food is Medicine, and it Matters
What we eat matters for our health and wellbeing. We can stay healthy with our food choices; on the other hand, we can make ourselves sick. At its’ simplest, the more fresh fruits and vegetables, whole grains, lean proteins, nuts and seeds are good for us. Packaged and processed foods are not good for us in general. While we know this for heart disease risk, we are now learning about the intersection of food and mood through research in nutritional psychology. For me, making challah each week from scratch with just six ingredients that I can name reminds me each week of the importance of real food.
ABOUT BETH RICANati, MD
Beth Ricanati, MD, is a physician and author who advocates for increasing wellness activities in peoples’ lives.
She received her undergraduate degree from the University of Pennsylvania and her MD from Case Western Reserve University and then completed her internal medicine residency at Columbia Presbyterian in NYC. She then practiced at the NY-Presbyterian/Columbia University Medical Center’s Center for Women’s Health and the Cleveland Clinic’s Women’s Health Center. Dr. Ricanati was the founding Medical Director of Lifestyle 180 at the Cleveland Clinic; a structured program of stress management, nutrition, and exercise that delivered demonstrated results in improving the lives of chronically ill patients. She now sees patients at the Venice Family Clinic; one of Los Angeles’ leading community health clinic systems that provides care for those in need.
In addition to the recent publication of her first book, Braided: A Journey of a Thousand Challahs, her writings have appeared in peer-reviewed medical journals and many online publications. Her book advocates for the importance of a meaningful ritual and being present in our daily lives as an important component of a well lifestyle.