Transform Your Life Through Mindfulness-Based Eating Practices

Are We Eating How We Should?

We all lead busy lives where eating is a mindless process taken for granted—we eat while watching TV, working, playing games, partying, driving, on phone calls, and amidst a lot of noise and distraction. The toll that these eating habits take on our health is often overlooked. In the long term, these practices can cost you dearly and degrade your total health and well-being.

Mindfulness-Based Eating

The digestive capacity of each one of our guts differs. People always complain about bloating and stomach upset caused by various foods. Nobody is sure what causes these stomach problems specifically to them. In the life that we live, often full of unnecessary routines and pressures, you do not even remember what you ate for your breakfast, and in the evening, if you are asked how you ate it, you will have no clue. Change this and be aware of your eating habits and see how it makes a huge difference in your health and well-being. Your digestive and gastric problems will get greatly reduced. A really enjoyable food experience will dawn upon you.

Mindfulness-Based Eating is a Philosophy

The philosophy of mindfulness applies to eating too. It is not sufficient that you practise mindfulness while walking or exercising or studying but mindfulness-based eating must be given the top priority. Mindfulness-based eating in simple terms means that you use all your physical senses to experience food. You look at the food with attention and take in its texture, shape, smell, and related sensations. You try to be aware of the flavour and smell of it as you put it in your mouth and find pleasure in its touch inside your mouth; you chew it by extending this touch sensation to your entire mouth, and you enjoy the taste of the food, and when you swallow food, do it slowly, and be aware of the sensation of your stomach getting filled up. And don’t hurry at all.

Take the time to eat your food. Be in the moment and do not think about some pending work or some angry or disturbing events of the day. Take a moment to feel gratitude for nature and the people who brought this food to your plate, and humbly thank them in your mind.

Think about the fields where these food items were grown, the people who tended them, the soil, rain and water and the earthworms that nurtured them, and the long journey that food made finally to reach your plate. You will gain awareness of the interconnectedness of all things and your being part of the planet and its multitudinous elements and organisms.

The knowledge of these connections will make your life more meaningful and less complicated. You will find out that such thoughts add quality to your eating experience. Be happy that you have that food and that you are not going hungry.

William Blake wrote,

“To see a world in a grain of sand

And a heaven in a wild flower

Hold infinity in the palm of your hand

And eternity in an hour”

In your relationship with food, if you practise mindfulness, this is exactly the philosophy that you begin to understand. You can see the world reflected in you and yourself mirrored in it.

Eating while socialising with your friends is not completely ruled out here as it has many emotional benefits. Yet, giving silence some space during meal time, while keeping the time before and after it for good cheer and conversation, could be the better middle path.

Understanding the philosophy of mindful eating can help us recognize and address the opposite behavior—binge eating

Binge Eating

Binge eating is the opposite of mindful eating. Gulping down food without paying attention to its shades of taste, the touch of food on your tongue, the way the food interacts with your mouth and stomach, the delectable fragrances that accompany the tastes..all these eating habits play an important role in how your body receives and digests food. Mindless eating is often a manifestation of larger problems such as anxiety and depression and can result in overeating and weight gain.

Chewing is Paramount

Chewing food is an unavoidable step in the process of eating but we are often in the habit of skipping it, whether the reason is real and immediate work pressures or a general, perceived hurry in life and in everything you do.

• Our guts can digest properly only well-chewed food or what a waste of saliva and teeth in a human body and what a burden on your gut!

• When you send un-chewed food down into your stomach, it gets stuck there for a long time, creating all kinds of problems for the metabolism, and giving you a sensation of unease, tiredness and lethargy.

• As any philosopher or life advice expert will tell you, small bites are easier to chew.

• Keep your mouth shut while chewing. This prevents the problem of swallowing air. No wonder many societies have a meal rule of not talking while eating. Silence goes well with food like nothing else and it helps mindfulness.

• Slow chewing also enables you to experience the flavours of food at full capacity. Eating slowly reduces your food intake as you will feel full even as you eat smaller portions than usual.

• Do You Excessively Swallow Air While Eating?

Swallowing big chunks of food without proper chewing, eating in a hurry, and talking while eating can all cause you to swallow a lot of air, increasing the chances of bloating. There is a name to describe it- aerophagia. This habit often comes out of nervousness and chewing gums are known to make this problem worse. Anxiety and depression are also seen as causes of aerophagia. Aerophagia causes belching, bloating, and stomach ache. The positive thing about this condition is that it is reversible without any medicine; you just need to do mindfulness-based eating without opening your mouth often, while you chew.

Who is Controlling the Way We Eat?

Science has proven that our gut is the most crucial organ in our body, a realisation that emerges when the root causes of many diseases are probed. Our work and social bonding circle around the need to eat, as they help put food on our table. Yet we are so oblivious to how important food is unless we stop having access to it or the money to buy it.

Thich Nhat Hanh, the Buddhist monk who wrote the famous biography of Buddha, ‘Old Path White Clouds’, and Harvard nutritionist Lilian Cheung have written a book titled, ‘Savor: Mindful Eating, Mindful Life’ that probes this topic all-round. In this book, they observe that the entire food industry and its advertisements try to push us towards eating more and they are succeeding too. The authors present mindfulness-based eating and mindful living as a solution for overeating and retell a Zen story-

“There is a Zen story about a man and a horse. The horse is galloping quickly, and it appears that the rider is urgently heading somewhere important. A bystander along the road calls out, “Where are you going?” and the rider replies, “I don’t know. Ask the horse!”

This story is a metaphor for the way we are eating all day, all life; and a metaphor for many other things too.

Most Human Cultures Used to Thank Nature Before Eating Each Meal

Almost all early human societies used to thank God or Nature before they ate their meal. One Christian prayer says,

“In a world where so many are hungry,

May we eat this food with humble hearts;

In a world where so many are lonely,

May we share this friendship with joyful hearts.

Amen”- Author Unknown.

Another Native American prayer goes like this,

“We thank the Great Spirit for the resources that made this food possible; we thank the Earth Mother for producing it, and we thank all those who laboured to bring it to us. May the wholesomeness of the food before us, bring out the wholeness of the Spirit within us.”

This is the traditional way of mindfulness that was there already in human cultures. We just need to rediscover it.

Mindfulness-Based Eating in Different Cultures

The tea ceremony in Japanese culture is a supreme example of mindfully consuming food. A Zen priest named Murata Shuko developed this practice during the 15th century and Zen Buddhist monks used tea ceremony for their Zen practices. In Christianity, Thanksgiving is an occasion to express gratitude to God for providing food all the time though the meaning of this as a mindful exercise has been lost in the progress of time. Buddhism demands of its disciples the highest level of mindful eating and Thich Nhat Hanh, the Buddhist monk says,“

When you put a piece of fruit in your mouth, all you need is a little bit of mindfulness to be aware: “I am putting a piece of apple in my mouth.” Your mind doesn’t need to be somewhere else. If you are thinking of work when you chew, that’s not eating mindfully. When you pay attention to the apple, that is mindfulness. Then you can look more deeply and in just a very short time you will see the apple seed, the beautiful orchard and the sky, the farmer, the picker, and so on. A lot of work is in that apple” (Thich Nhat Hanh, How to Eat)

Practising Mindfulness-Based Eating

Susan Albers (2009) has listed the “seven skills of a mindful eater” as,

• Awareness

• Observation

• Being in the moment

• Being mindful of the environment

• Non-judgment

• Letting go

• Acceptance

The questions you can ask yourself to develop the habit of mindfulness-based eating are,

• Do you often eat more than what you really want?

• Do you ignore physical hunger too often?

• Do you pay attention to the taste of food?

• Do you pay attention to how food smells?

• When you stop eating, are you always aware of how much you have eaten?

• Do you pay attention to how you really feel about food?

• Do you analyse what is causing your mindless eating?

• Do you pay attention when your body is ready to stop eating?

• Does your mind wander when you are eating?

• Do you multitask when you are eating?

• Do you feel guilty when you spend more time eating?

• Do you think our society and culture believe in and practise eating more than what is required?

• Do food advertisements tempt you into eating?

• Do you overbuy food?

• Do you eat more when you are emotionally disturbed?

• This self-assessment will help you to understand your specific eating problems and then help to practise mindful eating.

• Remember, it is not only hunger that makes us want to eat. There are many other unrelated factors such as

• The sight of food

• Memories of the eating experience

• Social pressure

• A wish for comfort

• Stress and disturbed emotions

Stop being too anxious about calories and good food and bad food. Mindfulness-based eating helps your body digest even food that is otherwise difficult to digest. It synchronises your food with your senses and with your whole body too. It helps food and nutrition flow through and into your body with more ease and effectiveness.

References

Prayer Before Eating, beliefnet.com

Auguries of Innocence, William Blake, poets.org

How to Eat, Thich Nhat Hanh, 2016, Ebury Publishing

Savor: Mindful Eating, Mindful Life, Thich Nhat Hanh and Lilian Cheung, 2010, HarperCollins

Eat, Drink, and Be Mindful: How to End Your Struggle with Mindless Eating and Start Savoring Food with Intention and Joy, Susan Albers, 2009, New Harbinger Publications