In This Chapter
Defining the practice of mindful eating
Discovering ways to incorporate mindful eating into daily life
Crafting more appetite awareness and mindfulness
Exercising mindfulness with a hands-on approach
Being mindful in our fast-paced society is counterintuitive — it seems like we have no time to stop and smell the roses. But mindful opportunities are everywhere, if you pay attention. Mindful-based practices have been around for centuries and modern science has shown mindfulness to be an effective tool for disease management, weight loss, and mood enhancement. Mindful eating is not a diet — it’s a way to promote total body wellness that extends beyond the plate into your everyday life.
In this chapter, you get the comprehensive scoop on mindful eating and living and see where it can fit into your own life. I highlight the art of savoring your food, eating objectively without judgment, and getting to know your appetite. Did you know that you can get intimate with your appetite? Yes, you can (and will!).
Mindful Eating 101
With mindful eating, your world is your learning landscape. When you get the gist of it, you can be off and running! What I love about mindful eating is that you don’t need to spend a lot of money on prepared meals and supplements or memorize a laundry list of rules and regulations or deprive yourself of foods that you enjoy. All you need is your mind and the desire to focus on the act of eating and all that it encompasses. As simple as it sounds, it can be a hard act to follow every day.
Imagine a world where you were only allowed to eat one food — you had no choices or variety. Day in and day out, you ate and drank the same thing. Not only would that be boring, but it wouldn’t be nourishing for your body or spirit. Fortunately, we have a myriad of food choices every day. Research by Brian Wansink, PhD, author of Mindless Eating: Why We Eat More Than We Think, reports that the average person makes well over 200 decisions about food every day! So it behooves us to be mindful when choosing what, when, and how to eat.
Mindful-based practices have been around for centuries to alleviate stress, insomnia, overeating, depression, and many other health-related issues. By focusing on the positive, nurturing aspects of food, mindfulness allows you to foster a healthier relationship with food. You’ll gain an understanding of what you’re hungry for versus eating excess calories to fill an emotional void. Is it food or a hug you’re seeking?
Mindful eating allows you to answer the following questions:
· Am I hungry for food, or is there some other reason I feel the urge to eat?
· Am I enjoying the food I’m eating?
· Am I savoring my food by eating slowly?
· Am I eating something that is nourishing and nurturing to my body?
· Am I satisfied after eating this meal or snack?
By being present in the moment and asking yourself these types of questions when you eat and make food choices, you’ll build a greater intimacy with food — and you’ll be healthier and happier, too. In the following section, I explain how to be more mindful with what you eat and drink.
Minding what goes into your mouth
There is no doubt that mindful eating takes practice. It’s not easy to forgo the homemade cookie on your co-worker’s desk or the last slice of pizza sitting in the box calling your name. Your mindful voice can get easily muffled among the chatter in your brain. Many times, instant gratification overrides mindfulness. How do you combat this? It’s about shifting into the eating moment, according to Susan Albers, Psy.D., author of several mindful eating books, including 50 More Ways to Soothe Yourself Without Food.
So, how do you get into the eating moment? Eating is fun and enjoying every moment of eating (and drinking) is a challenge. Taking time with the process is a large part of it. Think about how refreshing and soothing a glass of cold water tastes when you’re hot and thirsty. If you pay attention to the cold sensation of the liquid on your tongue and then it hitting the back of your throat and plunging down your esophagus like a waterfall cooling you off internally, depositing into your stomach to aid in digestion, as well as hydration of every cell in your body, that gulp of water becomes magical! It takes on new meaning when you’re in the moment. You begin to feel more fulfilled by the nourishing aspects of foods and beverages when your attention shifts there.
To get into the eating moment, stop and listen. If you’re physically hungry and your stomach is rumbling, that’s a sign to eat or drink. But if you just ate an hour ago and food looks appealing because you have a hungry heart and want to fill an emotional need or void, take a walk, take a bike ride, or call a friend.
Savor, savor, savor
One of the best things about mindful eating is that it’s not about depriving yourself of your favorite foods. When I tell you that you can still have chocolate or potato chips or a hunk of crusty artisan bread with butter, do you read this in disbelief? It’s true and it works! It’s all about being satisfied on less — because your taste buds are actually programmed to enjoy less.
Research shows that taste buds are chemical sensors that tire quickly — the first few bites of a food taste better than the latter ones. After you eat a large amount, there is very little taste experience left at all. Which is precisely why it’s important to savor and enjoy taking slow, deliberate bites to get the most satisfaction!
The primary driver of mindful eating is slowing down and savoring taste and flavor. As you move to a more mindful, slow eating place, you’ll eat “from freedom instead of compulsion,” as Michael Pollan explains in his book In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto. “Eat slowly” is one of Pollan’s eating tenets. He describes how slowing down your eating is about more than just the speed at which you eat; it cultivates knowledge for where food comes from, as well as gratitude for the bounty of nourishing food around us. Miracles unfold when you become a more mindful eater and savor food in a new way!
Looking in from the outside: The art of eating objectively
One of the best skills that comes from mindful eating is objectivity (basing perceptions on facts and logic instead of emotions and personal experience). You can stand and look at yourself from far away and determine your reactions to what and how to eat.
For example, you’re dining out with friends and they order appetizers and you feel compelled to eat the fried calamari because it looks and smells delicious. You know from past experience that it tastes good, too! Let’s explore how the art of eating objectively can come into play here. If you don’t look at yourself from the outside in, you may wind up overeating mindlessly. You can look at it from afar in a couple of different ways (and neither one is right or wrong):
· Pass on the appetizer because you planned to eat an entrée and share a dessert — your plan prior to entering the restaurant.
· Take a small amount of calamari on your plate and savor it. Enjoy!
You can feel just as satisfied with either choice you make. Whether you stick with the plan you made prior to going into the restaurant or take a small amount and savor it (and decide to not have an alcoholic beverage or forgo bread or dessert). As a mindful eater, you have choices!
Every eating experience offers an opportunity to tap into yourself and trust your inner food guru. Step outside, look in, and view your available eating (and drinking) choices. It’s liberating to be nonjudgmental with your choices by allowing all sorts of thoughts and emotions into your mind — the good, the bad, and the ugly. The goal is to notice the thoughts and not react to them. You don’t have to give power to every thought you have. It’s okay to “disobey the thought,” as Susan Albers puts it in her book Eat, Drink, and Be Mindful.
Use the following examples to practice being nonjudgmental — it takes a lot of practice. Think about how you would talk to a friend — in a compassionate, kind way — and use that same tone with yourself.
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Judgmental Thought (Black-and-White Thinking) |
Nonjudgmental Thought (Compassionate, Kind Thinking) |
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My mother is overweight, so I always will be, too. |
I am not my mother. I can control my weight. |
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I shouldn’t eat this chocolate cake because I’m overweight and this will make it worse. |
It’s okay to have a small piece of the cake. I’ll enjoy it and feel satisfied on less. |
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I can’t wear shorts. My legs are stocky. |
I prefer to wear skirts. They enhance my figure. |
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I can only eat organic apples. They’re better for me and the environment. |
If I can only find conventionally grown (nonorganic) apples, I’ll rinse and scrub them well under cold water. |
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If I eat the full-fat ice cream, I’ll blow my diet today and might as well eat whatever I want. |
A small bowl of full-fat ice cream will satisfy me and keep me from overeating later (because I’ll be full longer). |
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I feel bigger in my jeans after a night out of eating and drinking. |
My jeans are a good gauge of my weight. I know to cut back if they’re getting tight. |
Developing Appetite Intimacy
So, you’re beginning to understand that self-talk can help or hinder your mindful eating journey. You wouldn’t be friends with a person who talks negatively about you or to you — so you shouldn’t treat yourself that way either. Developing compassion and intimacy with yourself is important to total body wellness. This holds true for your appetite awareness, too. What is your appetite telling you? Are you listening to your hunger and fullness cues or can you not even hear them?
One of the first questions I ask my clients is: Do you feel hunger on a regular basis throughout the day? It’s a good thing to feel hunger because it means your metabolism is working and your body is burning and churning through calories. If you don’t feel hunger, it could be that you’re ignoring it, your metabolism is sluggish, or you’re eating so frequently that you don’t get hungry.
Everyone has a different appetite — some people feel like they have an insatiable appetite, while others fill up fast regardless of their size and shape. The key with tuning into your appetite is listening to how hungry you are before you start eating and how full you are when you stop eating, according the Appetite Awareness Workbook by Linda Craighead, PhD. Discerning your appetite may be challenging at first, but it’s based on your intuitive feelings, feelings that are unique to you.
Getting intimate with what I call your tummy talk (your stomach’s rumbling and grumbling) is vital. Of course, there are other, less obvious signs of hunger:
· Lightheadedness
· Fatigue
· Nausea
· Headache
· Muscle weakness
· Low stamina
· Irritability
· Bad mood
· Poor concentration or lack of focus
Appetite awareness training, which encourages letting your stomach be your guide, encourages monitoring of appetite versus actual food and beverage consumption. Created by Linda Craighead, PhD, in the mid-1990s, appetite awareness training proved to be just as effective a treatment for eating issues (such as binge eating, reducing pre-occupation with food, and weight management) as any other treatment available.
What about the other side of the appetite coin, fullness? Discerning when you’ve had enough to eat may be easier, but getting past the point of fullness to that stuffed state is what you want to avoid (or lessen the incidence of), if possible. It takes 20 minutes for your brain to register that your stomach is full, which is another reason to eat slowly!
Look for the following signs of fullness (before you’re stuffed):
· Slight sensations in your stomach
· Food no longer tasting as good
· Taking longer pauses between bites
· Finishing a portion-controlled plate of food (check in with yourself before you reach for seconds)
· A burp or two (in some cultures that’s a compliment to the chef meaning you ate enough and are satisfied)
Are you really hungry for food?
Hunger can hit at random times in the day, but as you become more attuned to your appetite, you need to ask yourself if it’s genuine physical hunger or whether you’re just thirsty. When my two children were babies, it was fairly simple to ascertain physical hunger because they would cry, squirm, or start to root on my chest looking for breast milk. Many times, it made sense with their eating schedule, too. Now that they’re in elementary school and have more autonomy (they can reach into the fridge or cabinet whenever they want for a snack or drink), when and what they’re hungry for are two different things. If they’re just hungry for something sweet — and didn’t finish the majority of their dinner because they were “full” — that’s not legitimate hunger. That’s a craving. There’s nothing wrong with cravings, but like Pavlov’s dogs, if they get a sweet after every meal, they begin to crave it, even if they aren’t really hungry. That’s classical conditioning at its best!
Think about it, are you hungry at regular times of the day? Do you eat at regular times of day? My stomach unleashes hunger pangs at 7 a.m., noon, 3 p.m., and 6 p.m., like clockwork. I guess you can say that I’ve trained my hunger and appetite response. That’s why it’s helpful to stay on a schedule of eating and drinking — this way your body and mind expect to eat at certain times. Of course, sometimes your eating schedule can get derailed with work, school, family, and other commitments — and with all that comes emotional highs and lows. Many times, food becomes the scapegoat, the comfort zone, or safe haven in the turbulent sea of life, and listening to internal hunger cues goes out the window!
Your healthful eating pattern may get hijacked by external cues or signals that occur in your natural environment. Linda Craighead, PhD, author of Appetite Awareness Workbook, sites the following as the most common external eating cues:
· Food: When there’s candy in the jar by your desk, you walk past it and take one.
· People: Your colleague is eating a dessert after lunch, so it cues you to eat one, too.
· Places: A hot dog and beer at the ball park. Need I say more?
· Advertising: Commercials can whet your appetite for a juicy steak or burger, even if you just ate.
Just because these external cues exist, that doesn’t mean you have to give in to them and eat, if you aren’t hungry. Knowledge that these cues exist is important because you have the freedom to think about the eating signal that’s occurring and politely dismiss it.
I like to think of internal cues (signals that come from with you) as your little voice inside. You know, the one that says, “That piece of cake would taste so good, especially after losing the school election” or “I deserve that other glass of wine for getting through that stressful week.” Here are the most common internal eating cues (which can be related to appetite or not):
· Thoughts: Your kids’ macaroni and cheese looks so good (even after you ate lunch already).
· Rules: You tell yourself that you don’t eat dessert during the week.
· Beliefs: Maybe you tell yourself that you can have an extra serving of pasta, if it’s whole grain.
· Feelings: You feel terrible today, and you think ice cream will make it all better.
· Physical sensations: You feel a pit in your stomach after a breakup (which can lead to a hungry heart).
· Routines or habits: You eat when you’re tired after a long day while relaxing in front of the TV. You may not even be hungry, but you eat mindlessly because you’re destressing — and that’s what you habitually do.
For true appetite awareness, according to appetite awareness training, it’s important to get in touch with hunger and fullness cues — also called internal appetite-based cues. However, your body, mind, and spirit are sneaky — you may feel physical hunger, but it’s a psychological hunger (for example, loneliness, sadness, anger, and so on) that can’t be filled with eating or drinking. As you monitor your appetite, you’ll get more in touch with your different hunger hankerings.
Appetite revelations: What your appetite is telling you
You can’t go anywhere without your appetite, and the more you get in touch with what it’s telling you, the better. You may be able tune out hunger pangs, especially if you’re busy with work, school, or family obligations, but when you eat, your appetite comes back with a vengeance (because your body needs nutrients to live!). I encourage you to embrace physical hunger and understand where it’s coming from and the ultimate reason for it.
It’s easier to feed psychological hunger with food instead of addressing the underlying reasons. Food will never satisfy a hungry heart.
Your appetite — whether physical or psychological — is signifying a need for change. When biological hunger hits, it means your brain, blood, and other organs have churned through the available fuel and are in need of more nutrients to continue your day in a healthy way. So, you have to change your focus from whatever you’re doing to make time for a meal or snack. For this reason, meal and snack times offer a reprieve in the day to savor, enjoy, and nourish your body and mind. Plus, you can accomplish tasks better when your appetite is satiated.
In a similar vein, psychological hunger is call to action or change. The trick is tuning into the need to make a change. You may be among the many people who lose their appetite when under stress, depressed, lonely, or tired. Or you may overeat to compensate for these feelings or procrastinate getting stuff done due to the psychological demands. Neither extreme is good — the former can cause unhealthy weight loss, and the latter can lead to overweight or obesity, which brings with it a whole host of other health problems.
Every day, make the following affirmations for success:
· I am going to …
o listen to my body and mind’s hunger pangs.
o try my best to discern between physical and psychological hunger.
o eat and drink at regular times.
o not eat when I am not hungry.
o be kind to my body and mind’s natural hunger.
o consider my emotional ebbs and flows and not try to feed them right away.
Every time you eat or drink, keep a log of the time of day, your hunger rating on a scale of 1 to 10 (where 1 is famished and 10 is stuffed), how you felt before eating, and how you felt after eating. If you don’t want to do this with paper and pencil, use your smartphone or computer. Just make sure to do it when you’re eating — it’s too hard to remember at the end of the day how hungry you were before you ate at 10 a.m.
Jotting down your hunger rating may seem difficult in the beginning, but when you get the hang of it, you’ll find that it works to assess your appetite before, during, and after eating and drinking.
Creating an appreciation for your changing appetite is a complex craft that takes time to master. Just as living the principles of the Total Body Diet is a continual practice that evolves over time, so does an appreciation for your unique appetite needs.
Your appetite fluctuates regularly — every meal brings a new appetite experience; each passing emotional tide shifts your appetite waves; and even your circadian rhythms (the way your body, mind, and behaviors respond to lightness and darkness over about a 24-hour cycle) affect your appetite. Think about dark and gloomy days when all you want to do is eat or the dog days of summer when food is not appealing at all.
Mindful Eating and Your Total Body Diet
So, you may be asking, how does mindful eating connect to the Total Body Diet? In this section, I show you how to put your mind into eating. It takes practice. As Malcolm Gladwell describes in his book Outliers: The Story of Success, becoming a pro at anything takes at least 10,000 hours of practice. Amazingly, in every area of expertise from sports to music to writings to chess, this magic number of 10,000 hours of practice holds true. The reason noted in Gladwell’s writing is that the brain requires this length of time to assimilate all that it needs to know to achieve true mastery. Even Mozart’s concertos were not works of mastery until he logged in the hours!
That may seem like a lot of work, but the good news is that mindful eating can happen anytime, anywhere — soon, you’ll be racking up the hours. In our seductive eating environment, where food is a constant temptation, you have an ideal landscape for becoming a mindful eating pro. Think about it: If you start today and practice mindful eating over the course of a year that’s 12 hours awake most days times 365 days, or 4,380 hours of mindful eating and living!
The Total Body Diet is about making healthful, mindful choices most of the time. Yes, there will be times when you mindlessly munch or eat on autopilot because you’ve chosen to do that. The key is that the majority of the time you’re aware of what, when, and why you’re eating. Keep in mind that the more mindful eating you practice, the better you’ll get at it.
Mindful eating, like anything else that you want to excel at, takes practice, practice, and more practice. Ten thousand hours is the magic number of greatness to adequately train your brain.
How to eat and drink mindfully every day
Start small on your mindful eating adventure. It always helps to not bite off more than you can chew (no pun intended!) when you start a new practice. Because this isn’t a typical weight loss diet, but a mindful way of living. you don’t even have to tell anyone that you’re doing it. When you begin to change your attitude and put more mindful intentions forward, you’ll see results begin to happen.
Here are some simple tricks to start practicing minding your eating and drinking today:
· Give your body good food first. Think healthy foods like vegetables, fruits, whole grains, beans, and lean protein before cake, cookies, candy, and chips. Eat nutrient-rich foods first and you’ll have no room for other stuff.
· Wake up with water. After seven to nine hours of sleeping, hydrate your brain and body with an 8-ounce glass of water. This will not only wake up your brain, but it will also replace fluids lost overnight through your normal metabolic processes. And be sure to drink throughout the day because drinking water can help curb appetite.
· Fill up on fiber. Naturally found in plant foods, fiber is not digested in your body; instead, it imparts many health benefits, and can help promote a feeling of fullness, which can help with weight loss and maintenance. Strive for more fiber — women should ultimately aim for about 25 grams a day and men should aim for 38 grams. However, be sure to increase fiber gradually and drink plenty of fluids in the process to avoid distressing intestinal symptoms.
· Eat and drink small. Instead of thinking big, think small. Using small bowls, plates, and cups gives you the illusion that you’re eating more than you really are.
· Make time for tea. Tea, especially green tea, is jam-packed with antioxidant compounds called catechins, which can defend your cells against free-radical damage. Sipping tea also helps you slow down, take a breath during the day, and alleviate stress. Plus, it displaces caloric beverages like soda, coffee drinks, and sports drinks.
· Make a mental note every time you eat and drink. Become more aware of everything you’re eating and drinking. The goal is not to elicit guilt if you eat a cupcake, cookie, or French fries, but to create awareness around the quality and quantity of your calories.
The most important thing with mindful eating is to never feel shame, guilt, or anger toward your eating choices. Food is neither good nor bad — what matters is how much power you give it in your life. Mindful eaters don’t label foods; they outweigh the positives and the negatives and choose to eat less of rich, high-calorie, fatty foods and more vegetables, fruits, lean proteins, beans, whole grains, and lowfat dairy products.
If you could follow a mindful eater and a mindless eater around for a day, here’s what you would find:
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Mindful eaters … |
Mindless eaters … |
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Plan balanced meals and snacks to bring for the day ahead. |
Pop into quick-service restaurants for breakfast, lunch, and snacks during the day. |
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Check the Nutrition Facts labels on foods for nutrient content as well as ingredients. |
Don’t read the Nutrition Facts labels, but may read what’s on the front of the package, which doesn’t give the whole story. |
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Eat sitting down and slowly. |
Eat quickly while doing other things. |
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Find joy in cooking and creating healthful meals for them and their families and friends. |
Don’t enjoy cooking or find it challenging to put a healthful meal together. |
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Share meals and dessert when dining out. |
Order large portions when dining out and don’t always think to share. |
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Drink mostly water, tea, and coffee throughout the day, rarely a sugary, caloric beverage. |
Drink whatever they want at the time, from sports drinks to energy drinks to gourmet coffees to soft drinks. |
This gives you a snapshot into the opposing actions of being mindful versus mindless. This is not to say that sometimes the mindful eater doesn’t fall into the mindless camp, and vice versa. Mindfulness is an art that has to be practiced over and over again. There’s no perfect way — it’s all about creating awareness around eating behaviors that you want to change, and sticking with it. Soon you’ll see your total body respond with renewed health, vitality, and joy!
The benefits of mindful eating for your total body
There’s a reason why mindful eating has stood the test of time. It’s a kind, compassionate practice that welcomes everyone into the fold. Mindful eating experts contend that there’s a higher degree of emotional intelligence that comes from minding your meals — and with that comes a healthier relationship with food. So you can temper emotional eating when you become more knowledgeable about how food choices affect your total body health and wellness.
I was struck by Dr. Susan Albers’s concept called Eat. Q. No, it’s not based on your IQ score, but there is intelligence that goes into it! In her book, Eat.Q. Unlock the Weight-Loss Power of Emotional Intelligence, Albers makes an outstanding case for Eat. Q., defined as aligning your intellectual knowledge of food and nutrition with your emotions, so you can make food choices that support your intentions and goals. Eating with intention is a mantra in many cultures — particularly in Buddhism where mindfulness was first established.
There’s no doubt food is emotional — and it always will be as long as you have feelings associated with food. Think about it: There are foods you absolutely adore, foods you could take or leave, and foods that you flat out do not like. Taste preferences are part of the human, emotional condition — and research reveals that babies in their mothers’ wombs have early taste experiences because flavors like cumin, garlic, and curry have been detected in the amniotic fluid of pregnant women. So, food preferences are established early!
Mindful eating is one of the tactics that I recommend you employ for total body wellness. Buy why? Mindful eating is a great prevention tactic — many areas of your body reap the rewards. From your cardiovascular system to your waistline to your blood sugar, mindful eating can come to the rescue.
Mindful eaters eat less, about 300 calories less a day — according to research in the Journal of Nutrition Education and Behavior. That can add up to gradual weight loss over time. Not only does weight loss come with mindfulness, but the science shows that it can help alleviate chronic diseases, anxiety, depression, and improve overall quality of life and well-being, which all bodes well for your total body!
The science behind mindfulness
Mindfulness, in the form of meditation, has shown to be an effective tool for managing disease states like diabetes. Anxiety and depression can ensue with a diabetes diagnosis and mindful meditative practices have been found to be helpful in transferring focus from the outside into the mind, brain, and body — the seats of the anxiety and depression. A randomized control trial in the Journal of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics, comparing a three-month group-based mindfulness-based eating awareness training for diabetes with a diabetes self-management education intervention in 27 and 25 people, respectively, ages 35 to 65, who had type 2 diabetes, non-insulin dependent, for more than a year revealed positive findings and a drive forward for future research this area.
In the mindfulness treatment group, participants engaged in guided mindfulness meditations, which involved feelings, experiences, and thoughts associated with food. There were no specific diet or physical activity goals set. They were encouraged to meditate at least six days a week — and do smaller or mini-meditations in between to create awareness of internal cues like hunger and stress, as well as outer cues, such as personal food knowledge and diabetes needs.
The other group received the goal-based behavioral program called Smart Choices. These participants were given total carbohydrate, calorie, and fat goals with an emphasis on food intake primarily.
In the end, comparison of the two groups showed reductions in weight and average blood sugar numbers called hemoglobin A1C (HA1C) in both groups. The researchers proposed that a mindfulness-based eating awareness training protocol, in conjunction with a goal-setting diabetes self-management education program, can be constructive for diabetes management. While both protocols offer different methods of treatment, people may do better if they can select which treatment or combination of treatments are most effective for them.
The good news is, mindful eating is receiving scientific recognition as an effective adjunct therapy to facilitate maintenance of lifestyle changes, which can be the most challenging part of diabetes management.
Getting hands on with mindfulness exercises
As a Total Body Diet enthusiast, there are many ways to get into the mindfulness mindset. It starts by using your body, mind, and senses differently. Mindful eating experts have discovered ways to slow down, savor, and sense your food better. Keep in mind, this all takes practice — and these exercises, although not very physical, are mental steps toward the mindful eating direction. If you practice them enough, you’ll become a mindful eating pro.
Before you begin, ask yourself some questions:
· Can you switch hands when you eat?
· How can you focus on chewing more?
· Can you eat in silence without distractions?
· Can you taste the different flavors: sweet, salty, or spicy?
· What does the food smell like?
· What are the textures on your tongue?
· What is your posture like when you’re eating?
· Are you open to try new foods and flavors?
· Can you take a smaller portion and savor it?
· What is the temperature of the food? Hot, cold, or room temperature?
· Are you enjoying this food or beverage? Why or why not?
· Is this a food you’d eat again? Why or why not?
· Does this food feel indulgent to consume? If so, why?
· Are you satisfied now that you’re finished?
· How could this eating experience have been made better?
· Can you stop at half and take the rest home?
· How do you feel before, during, and after eating or drinking this?
· Would you brag to a friend about the taste and flavors of this meal?
It takes your brain 20 minutes to feel fullness. If you eat too fast and go back for seconds before your brain and body connect on the firsts, you’ll have overeaten.
Now that you’re getting your mind into you eating, how can you get your body into the mix by truly tasting better? Your tongue’s taste buds sense five fabulous flavors: salty, sweet, sour, bitter, and umami.
Have you heard of umami? It’s the fifth taste sense, and it’s a Japanese word that means “savoriness.” Foods that are high in umami are tomato products, dried mushrooms, Parmesan cheese, and anchovies.
Taste is one the tenets of the mindful, slow-eating approach and it’s a fundamental part of good nutrition. It’s no surprise that taste is cited as one of the most influential factors in food choice decisions. If you don’t like how a food tastes, you aren’t going to eat it. And no two tongues taste food the same way. Your genes affect your ability to taste different flavors. According to the journal Proceedings of Nutrition Society, sweet and umami receptors help us discern carbohydrate and protein sources for energy, whereas bitter taste buds are highly sensitive and warn us of toxic foods entering the mouth — immediately your mouth’s security system sounds. That explains why many children (and adults) gag at broccoli, Brussels sprouts, and kale on their plates.
Some people are blessed (or cursed) with the ability to sense taste with a far greater intensity than the average person; they’re called supertasters. Supertasters typically taste bitter flavors more and don’t like it. Research into supertasters and their food preferences shows that children and adults who have a heightened sense of taste are usually more discerning eaters.
I love doing this exercise with groups — I borrowed it from Susan Albers, Psy.D. All you need is a chocolate kiss or a mini chocolate candy bar. (You can do this with any food — it works well with a small cheese round, nuts, raisins, or sliced apples.) Follow these steps:
1. Notice the weight of a piece of chocolate in your hand. Look at it closely.
2. Observe the shape and color. Use at least three words to describe it to yourself.
3. As you unwrap the piece of chocolate, listen closely to the crinkle of the foil or paper.
4. Bring the chocolate up to your nose, and inhale deeply. Notice what thoughts come in your mind as you do this. The smell of chocolate can bring up some powerful feelings and memories. Deeply inhale.
5. Do any critical thoughts come up like, “I shouldn’t eat this”? If so, let the thoughts come and go as if you’re letting go of a balloon.
6. Place the chocolate in your mouth. Notice the flavor, richness, and texture. Pay attention to how the sensations change as it melts and molds to your mouth.
7. Follow the sensations as the chocolate slips down your throat into your stomach.
It takes practice eating chocolate . Notice how different this is from popping pieces of chocolate mindlessly into your mouth.
Mindfulness is an evolutionary process. Any moment can foster a new opportunity for mindfulness, if you allow it into your life.