Mindful Eating… and how bad I am at it.
I grew up poor. Many nights food was rationed.
My mom would make up the plates, normally have a little left over, and then tell us we had to eat everything on the plate before we could get more.
Dinner became a competition to see who can eat fastest in order to get first dibs at whatever was left over.
My competitors happened to be my four siblings. . . and my dad.
It’s not quite fair to call him a competitor though. As head of the household 6'4, large framed, and larger build he really enjoyed his food and in the moral system in which I was raised he had the rights to take as much food as he wanted. . . as long as it didn’t risk mom’s ire.
Dinner became an obstacle course. You had to eat faster than everyone else while looking like you weren’t eating too much and choosing your alliances in such a way that you didn’t risk your second serving.
This wasn’t every night but it was enough for me to develop a magic trick.
I see food and it disappears.
I couldn’t count how many times someone has looked at me like I’m bending space and time to make my sandwich vanish.
This is great as a survival mechanism at the dinner table but it’s not the best when we’re looking at the health of our body.
Eating slow is good for you.
The only way to eat fast is to barely chew.
The problem with this is that chewing is healthy. Saliva is a digestive aid and when we chew we break down the food so our stomachs and intestines don’t have to do so much work.
There is also the mental shift that comes from eating slow. We’re better able to recognize when we’re full and we’re more involved in the process of eating.
Mindful eating.
Eating mindfully is a lot more than just eating slowly.
It’s paying full attention to our activity and using the experience of eating as a meditative focus.
For me, it’s incredibly hard to do.
I planned this entire article while eating dinner tonight. . . it’s easy to get distracted.
I’ve never really eaten while watching television, that wasn’t allowed when growing up but I’ve always had plenty else on my mind.
I find however when I eat slowly and mindfully I am much more aware of what I am eating and how it affects my body. I personally believe it is also useful in teaching the body.
When we’re focused on the food we’re eating the brain has an easier time creating associations with its nutritional state, it knows the flavors, tastes, and environments that bring about surges in nutrition that are good for it.
I notice the more I pay attention to eating the more I am able to intuit what my body needs through feeling out its subtle cravings.
If we’re rushing through our meals though, distracted with a half dozen other things the body never has the chance to learn what is affecting it for good or ill.
How do you eat mindfully?
First, we need to remove any unnecessary distractions. Don’t try to multitask work or watching Netflix. Like any other meditation we want to create a setting that helps us rather than distracts us.
Like any other meditation practice, we start by trying and “failing.”
The trick is to understand that it isn’t actually a failure, every time we get distracted and recognize this we’re actually learning and growing.
Like any skill it takes practice.
The perk here is that mindful eating is one of the more pleasurable meditations we can practice.
You simply focus on the act of eating. Every motion of your fork, spoon, hand or chopstick, every bite, the taste, the smell.
You focus on the act of eating and you notice when your mind drifts to thoughts of tomorrow or the days past, to people watching or imagining your next meal.
The mind will drift but the goal here is simply to bring it back to the act at hand. I had to do that a dozen times or more tonight with dinner and that’s only after I got halfway through my meal in less than half a minute and realized I hadn’t even thought of being mindful.
What about you?
How mindful are you of the act of eating?
Do you know what conditioned this trait? Do you want to change it?
Love and share.
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