This post is part of a series of posts on mindful eating. The Introduction contains links to the entire series.
It’s the fourteenth day of my mindful eating trial and I’ve read 84 pages of Jan Chozen Bays’ book. I’ve learned a six new things from the book, my own experiences, and the experiences of the other two people participating in this trial.
- I understand my hunger better if I evaluate my hunger before I eat. When I sit down with my plate of food, I take a minute to scan my various types of hunger and rate each hunger on a scale of one to ten. The easiest way to remember all the types of hunger is from the top of the head down: mind, eyes, nose, mouth, heart, stomach, cellular. I sometimes scan again during and after the meal to reevaluate my hunger. Bays says it’s important to scan at every meal because you’ll better understand your reasons for eating. I agree. After awhile, I think scanning will be quick and automatic.
- I learned certain types of hunger may make us overeat. Bays discusses how most obesity is caused by reacting to eye, nose, mouth, mind, and heart hungers. If you automatically eat whenever you feel these normal hungers, you’ll become overweight. You must consciously choose how you’ll react — you may or may not decide to eat. On the other hand, you should eat when you feel stomach and cellular hunger. These hungers indicate your body needs food.
- I eat more mindfully if I focus on the food on my plate. I’m also more mindful if I watch my fork or spoon deliver food to my mouth. This may sound weird, but it works.
- I’m more interested in eating again. In my last post, I was becoming bored with eating. Gwynn from Serene Journey predicted that I was going through a withdrawal phase that would pass. He was correct.
- I like to mindfully eat comfort food. Both Bays and Nadia at Happy Lotus agreed that occasionally eating comfort foods is all right as long as you do it mindfully. Nadia and I both like and mindfully eat chocolate. Of course, comfort food satisfies heart hunger and if you always respond to heart hunger by eating, you’ll become overweight. There are other ways to satisfy heart hunger such as emotional or physical intimacy.
- I taste food differently than I expected. Some food tastes different when I eat mindfully. For instance, I usually like potato chips, but I realized I only like the salty taste and the crunchy feel. Otherwise, the potato chips are tasteless. Other foods like apples with peanut butter taste better than I expected. In general, I find food more flavorful when I eat mindfully.
There is small danger of being starved in our land of plenty; but the danger of being stuffed is imminent. – Sarah Josepha Hale
What’re your thoughts? Gwynn and Nadia, any suggestions or advice?
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Tags: Diet, Mindful Eating, Mindfulness
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Hi Roger,
You raised a really good point in number six regarding the taste of food when you are eating mindfully. I noticed in the past that sometimes I would want to eat something because my mind told me I should eat it and I never really cared how it tasted.
I think we are so bombarded with having to be healthy that we forget that eating healthy also means eating food that tastes good too.
I once read that the reason why people in France may be thinner than here is because they take their time to eat. I have family who lives in Paris and when I go to visit them, their lunches (even during the work week) are about two hours long. They have wine with lunch and the food is rich but everyone seems so healthy thin.
Granted they walk everywhere but still, lunch is two hours and they have these nice conversations while they eat and they slowly eat. So maybe because here in America, our lunch breaks are so short, we are forced to eat fast and therefore, we don’t have the time to focus on how things taste?
Just some thoughts!
Thanks again for this series!
Nadia,
I think you’re right - when you eat food fast it’s hard to pay attention to taste. Fast eating also makes it difficult for you to detect when your stomach is full.
I noticed point 6 as well. It surprised me to find that a chocolate chip cookie I recently ate had very little flavor. It was a homemade cookie with oatmeal, cinnamon, and chocolate chips so it should have been quite tasty.
Eating that cookie after it has been dunked in coffee then gets rid of the texture of the cookie as it just becomes mush. The subtle cookie flavor is then replaced with the flavor of coffee.
I still enjoy eating chocolate chip cookies and I still enjoy dunking them in my coffee but it’s not because of flavor. I’m not quite sure what that means or why I do it though. Why do I enjoy it that much if the flavor is so subtle?
Aside from that, I’ve also noticed that breathing is a huge part of tasting. I somehow knew this already but it’s different when you’re paying very close attention. It’s almost like you don’t experience the taste at all until you breathe.
This is a very interesting experiment!
Gwynn,
>> “Why do I enjoy it that much if the flavor is so subtle?”
Good question. I’ve been wondering the same thing because I still like to eat potato chips. My theory is that my mind remembers the taste and I’m still “tasting” the memory. I know that sounds strange, but it’s the best explanation I have.