What is Mindful Eating and Can it help towards weight loss? Use These 5 Steps to help you be present while eating.

Food has always been a challenge to me. When I was around seven years old my mom weighed over 400 pounds. My father made fun of my mom for eating so much which just caused her to eat more. I learned as a child that eating a lot of food could be shameful. I would eat quickly so not to be seen eating or I didn’t eat at all.

In college I had a professor that pointed out to me that I might have an eating disorder. I was shocked. My Anorexia made me realize that I had deep mental issues from my childhood, but I have been dealing with those my whole life. How do you let go of them?

Later in life, because I didn’t deal with my childhood issues the food monster came up again, but the opposite way it did before. I started eating to cope with all sorts of issues that were rooted from my childhood. Eating disorders like other addictions, don’t just go away. It takes therapy and mindful meditation practices to help keep eating disorders at bay.

Mindful eating is a way to enjoy the present moment while eating. You use all your senses and enjoy your food more. It can help in a weight loss program, but it alone is not a weight loss solution. I recently got gastric bypass surgery and mindful eating is essential for me to practice. I have to make sure I chew my food well or I will throw up.

Here is 5 steps to eating mindfully:

1. Smell- Take a moment to smell the food you are about to eat. Take a couple of whiffs and a deep whiff. What kind of herbs can you smell? What smells do you recognize?
2. See- Look at the colors in your food. It’s good for you to eat colorful foods. Think about the sun ripening the vegetables and plants that go into your food. Visualize it’s growth to harvest.
3. Touch-If you are eating something that you can touch, feel the texture. Is it rough, smooth or hard?
4. Taste- Finally! Put a small bite of food in you mouth and mull it around your mouth without chewing yet. Try to pick out the different tastes and compare to when you smelled your food. Is it sour, sweet or bitter?
5. Chew- Start chewing your food. Now this is key to the start of the digestion process. It is very important to chew your food 30 times. Count to 30 the first couple of times you do it and notice the texture of the food before you swallow. I know it seems a lot but the more broken down your food is in your mouth, the easier it is to digest.

This whole process helps you to feel connected to your food and can make you fuller sooner. It is also important to have a moment of gratitude for where your food came from and it’s journey to your plate.

Here is an exercise you can do to practice mindful eating:

1. Get a strawberry.
2. Smell it. Does it smell sweet? Can you smell the earth it grew in?
3. See the deep red color and imagine the strawberry ripening.
4. Touch the strawberry and feel the bumps and seeds.
5. Take a bite of it and mull it around in your mouth. How does it taste? Sweet or sour?
6. Chew the strawberry until it is mush. Swallow and imagine all the goodness that grew into that one strawberry.

Now I know it is not realistic for you to do this every time you eat. Just try to do it as much as you can. Maybe try doing it 1 or 2 times a week. Have fun with it and try different foods you haven’t tried before.

Be Mindful. Just Breathe. Just Be.

Lisa, The Mindful DaVinci