Change Your Life With Conscious Eating

Attentive eating, mindful eating, conscious eating, eating with awareness… can this simple habit radically change your life?

What we eat is important, but how we eat it is often overlooked. Even if you are following a healthy diet, you still may not be eating consciously.

What Is Conscious Eating?

Conscious eating is about being completely present and attentive while eating. It is about giving our full attention to the eating activity in the moment. It involves stopping to eat when the sensual enjoyment of the taste of the food begins to recede and disappear.

Why Do Humans Struggle With When To Eat and When To Stop?

Food Is Readily Available and Everywhere

We do not have to grow our own food. Food is ready to consume and easy to find. For this reason in modern society, more awareness is necessary to realize that we need to eat when we are hungry only and not fall into the consumer traps that are set for us to spend our hard earned money. We are meant to eat foods grown in harmony with nature and that are good for us. We are meant to enjoy these foods when hungry to nourish the body.

Conditioning: Three Meals A Day

We have been taught that we need to eat breakfast, lunch and dinner. Many people eat these three meals a day without thinking. The clock is telling people when to eat. We are not eating when we are hungry or according to what our energy level and body are telling us.

Stimulants In Our Food Make Us Eat More

Spices, salt, preservatives, flavorants, processed oils, sugar, sweeteners, syrups, starches, “natural flavorings”, etc. are added to our food which cause the food to be very stimulating to our palates and we tend to overeat because of the over stimulation we are receiving. By removing these stimulants from our food we can slowly bring our palates back to tasting the food itself on its own with its natural taste and aroma.

Not Being Attentive When Eating

Gulping down food in a hurry or sitting in front of a television or computer while eating has one’s attention not focused on the food but rather on getting somewhere fast or on another activity. Eating is almost an inconvenience and the goal is not nourishing the body, but putting out the hunger pangs, or alleviating boredom. It is often when we are eating unconsciously that we eat more because we don’t remember eating or the eating experience wasn’t satisfying. We stop eating only when the stomach feels full, distended or bloated.

Sitting down and eating with attention brings the body into the awareness that it has received nourishment. When you eat attentively nothing else should exist for you but the taste of the food. Respect for the food and for one’s own digestive system and paying full attention to the sensual enjoyment of the taste of the food and to stop eating when that sensual enjoyment of the food stops, that is the habit of conscious eating.

How to Recognize Emotional Eating?

Are you eating to fulfill an emotional need?

Sometimes we eat looking to find emotional satisfaction in the pleasure of food. Oftentimes people are not aware that they are eating for emotional fulfillment. Emptiness, lack, boredom and painful memories can all subconsciously drive emotional eating.

Practicing awareness can help to identify the reasons we are motivated to prepare food and eat. If we observe out actions and thoughts we may be able to recognize if we are motivated by reasons other than hunger and need to nourish the body.

It is possible that we are addicted to being drugged by our food. Overeating and poorly combined meals causes most of the blood to leave our brain and enter the stomach area to digest the food. According to Dr. Stanley Bass, “this dulls and drugs the mind and effectively shuts off the thinking process, acts as an emotional anesthesia, effectively allowing us to escape from thoughts and feelings of inferiority, sorrow, loneliness, regret, boredom, guilt, pressure, fear, low self-esteem, self-hatred, etc.” Like all drugs using food to escape from emotional problems is only a temporary solution and the problems will reappear when we emerge from our food coma.

Chewing Food Properly

As we all know digestion starts in the mouth. Chewing food properly is vital for good digestion. Saliva excreted in the mouth contains several enzymes: amylase, lipase and protease. The chemical breakdown of the food begins in the mouth. The more one chews the more coating of the food with the enzymes secreted in the saliva occurs and the easier it will be for the digestive breakdown of the food to continue once it is swallowed. This simple habit of taking more time to chew the food we eat can bring more energy and ease our digestive function. Try it for yourself.

And chew well your food with your teeth, that it become water, and that the angel of water turn it into blood in your body. And eat slowly, as it were a prayer you make to the Lord. – The Essene Gospel of Peace

Cultivating Conscious Eating Habits

Slow Food

Slow Food is an international movement founded by Carlo Petrini in 1986. Promoted as an alternative to fast food, it strives to preserve traditional and regional cuisine and encourages farming of plants, seeds and livestock characteristic of the local ecosystem. It was the first established part of the broader Slow Movement. The movement has since expanded globally to over 100,000 members in 150 countries.[1] Its goals of sustainable foods and promotion of local small businesses are paralleled by a political agenda directed against globalization of agricultural products.[from wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slow_Food]