Written by Registered Dietitian and Certified Mindfulness Teacher Nishti
Many books and techniques for changing our eating try to impose change from the outside. Sometimes this may work but for most, it doesn’t.
Mindfulness on the other hand brings about long-lasting change from the inside and out. Mindful eating is not directed by calories, menu plans, food pyramids, or a nutrition expert. Mindful eating is directed by you.
In this blog post, you are going to learn 3 ways to eat more mindfully and to finally make peace with food. If you prefer to watch a video then please check out Nishti’s Choice on Youtube.
This blog is inspired by the book ‘How To Eat’ by mindfulness teacher Thich Nhat Hanh
Own Your Feelings, Don’t Eat Them.
The behavior of binge eating, overeating, or seeking comfort in food is a mask for a deep feeling which is often fear or anxiety. The reaction (overeating) is a disguise for the trigger (feelings of anxiety).
Never have we learned to sit with our feelings and listen to them, question them. Rather, we eat our feelings, drink our feelings, dump our feelings on other people, etc.
With mindfulness, we learn to allow feelings to arise and we learn to notice them as they arise. Because feelings arise from the mind, we may even start to question our thoughts.
Unfortunately, many people aren’t even aware that they are anxious. This can change as we build more self-awareness through mindfulness.
The first step towards change is awareness and we build this muscle through mindfulness.
Chew Your Food and Not Your Worries
Often, when we eat, we think about everything else but the food in front of us. We either think of the past or the future and most of this thinking is worrisome! Our food and our thoughts are equally important when we eat and hear is why.
Food is physical and made mainly from water. Through observation, we can see if the food we eat is nutritious or not, right? However, although our thoughts are invisible, they carry an energy field that may alter the molecular structure of water as shown in the water experiment by Masaru Emoto. Emoto showed that water molecules change their structure depending on whether it was exposed to hateful or loving comments. I highly recommend watching this video as it is rather profound. With mindfulness, we learn to be present in the moment. We also learn to become aware when our mind takes us into the past or the future. We learn to be with whatever is happening in the moment, fully and completely. This is How to Eat.
MINDless Eating is Part of the Journey
Mindful eating includes mindless eating. With mindfulness, we become aware when we have eaten mindlessly or we become aware before we are pulled to eat mindlessly (rushing our meal, eating when we aren’t hungry, restricting our diet excessively because we feel guilty we had cake the day before, etc.).
The whole point of mindfulness is to become aware of how we are feeling and what we are doing and how often we are doing it. We learn to flow with the moment, sometimes it’s perfect and sometimes it isn’t and that’s ok. We learn to accept the moment for what it is. As our awareness expands, we may even start to question things such as the concept of good and bad food and calorie counting. That’s because mindful eating is not directed by calories, menu plans, food pyramids, or a nutrition expert. Mindful eating is directed by YOU.
Your wants and your needs (not from an emotional point of view).
The question is. Do you know you?
If you enjoyed this blog please like or share it. To book a no-obligation chat about our mindfulness or nutrition consultations please visit the booking page.