Mindful Eating, How a Contemplative Practice Could Change your Relationship with Food
By: Dr. Denise Renye
We all have intricate and long relationships with food. In utero, we relied on our gestational parent’s nutrients for sustenance. After birth, we relied on our caregivers to nourish us with food, love, attention, and care. It’s no wonder that our relationships with food are intertwined with love, attention, and care, self and otherwise. As I mentioned in a previous post, our relationship with food and even disordered eating has been affected by this pandemic and the subsequent shelter-in-place. Food is an easily available “substance” that people can use to escape reality, to comfort themselves, or to experience excitement (think about the feeling you have when you try a new recipe or buy yourself a treat).
However, it’s easy for these behaviors to become mind-less and automatic. Instead of consciously enjoying the food you eat, food becomes tasteless and something you put in your mouth regardless of whether you’re actually hungry or not. When people are home more, it’s easier to graze throughout the day. Grazing is when someone snacks a few times an hour or an entire afternoon. It’s also easy to overeat (or undereat) at mealtimes when there aren’t set schedules or when you may be seeing people less. Seeing others may help increase oxytocin, serotonin and dopamine chemicals in the brain, thus decreasing loneliness and the reliance on food (or starvation) for comfort.
Mindfulness is a practice that can be applied to many areas of life, arguably all, from sex to driving, to washing the dishes to walking, and yes, even and especially, to eating. Mindfulness is the awareness that arises from paying attention, on purpose, in the present moment and non-judgmentally, according to Dr. Jon Kabat-Zin, who bridges the world of Zen and Western psychology. Mindful eating is a practice I highly recommend to people with whom I work so they can create a better relationship with their bodies, and thus potentially enjoy eating in a more embodied way.
When speaking of mindfulness generally, it’s a state of being rather than doing and gives a person the chance to step back from automatic behaviors and thought patterns. Mindful eating then means incorporating the practice of mindfulness with food. For instance, contemplating how did the food make it to your plate or your hand? Reflecting on how the sun was a source for the energy needed to grow the food on your plate, how the farmer grew it, and how her workers picked the vegetables. Contemplate the folx involved in transporting the food and the grocery store workers who stocked the shelves. Think about how you or someone else prepared the meal.
Mindful eating also means focusing on sensations – the smells, textures, and tastes of food. Mindful eating can be a very sensual experience. One of my teachers, Thích Nhất Hạnh, mentions this in his book Savor: Mindful Eating, Mindful Life. He and Dr. Lilian Cheung published the following excerpt on the Buddhist website Lion’s Roar:
“Something as simple and ordinary as drinking a cup of tea can bring us great joy and help us feel our connection to the Earth. The way we drink our tea can transform our lives if we truly devote our attention to it. Sometimes we hurry through our daily tasks, looking forward to the time when we can stop and have a cup of tea. But then when we’re finally sitting with the cup in our hands, our mind is still running off into the future and we can’t enjoy what we’re doing; we lose the pleasure of drinking our tea. We need to keep our awareness alive and value each moment of our daily life. We may think our other tasks are less pleasant than drinking tea. But if we do them with awareness, we may find that they’re actually very enjoyable. Drinking a cup of tea is a pleasure we can give ourselves every day. To enjoy our tea, we have to be fully present and know clearly and deeply that we are drinking tea. When you lift your cup, you may like to breathe in the aroma. Looking deeply into your tea, you see that you are drinking fragrant plants that are the gift of Mother Earth. You see the labor of the tea pickers; you see the luscious tea fields and plantations in Sri Lanka, China, and Vietnam. You know that you are drinking a cloud; you are drinking the rain. The tea contains the whole universe.”
When drinking tea or eating food in the manner Hanh suggests, you’re not judging the food or drink as “bad” or unhealthy. Doing so, along with thinking about your day while you’re eating, or worrying about the past or future tripping, eating while standing up or while watching Netflix, likely means you’re not mindfully (or consciously) eating. Firstly, that’s OK. The last thing anyone will benefit from is judgment around the way they interact with food and the behaviors they practice around eating.
Oftentimes shame can arise when we talk about food, especially if someone has had a more complicated past with it. As you begin to practice mindful eating, be gentle with yourself as feelings such as shame or blame may arise. Remember, raising consciousness around behavior allows for more choice. Notice as you read this any sensations you may be experiencing in your body. And reflect on your current behaviors around food. I invite you to try mindful eating if it interests you.
Some of the benefits of mindful eating are you’ll know if the amount you’ve eaten is the right amount for your body. You’ll know this because mindful eating helps you listen to your body. And listening to your body increases the chances of knowing when you’re hungry as well as when you’re full. You’ll be in touch with what it means to be hungry on a physical level. And having an internal awareness of when you are full on a physical level can, and will with practice, translate to knowing when you are full on an emotional level.
Dr. Susan Albers, who wrote numerous books on eating mindfully, gives some guidelines on how to distinguish between two kinds of hunger, emotional and physical (as a side note here, they are many kinds of hunger such as spiritual hunger, sexual hunger, skin hunger, mental and intellectual hunger, as well as financial hunger).. Emotional hunger comes on quickly and intensely. It will increase with certain feelings such as stress or loneliness. With emotional hunger, it often doesn’t matter what you’re eating, as long as you’re eating. Or you’ll be driven by a strong craving for a particular kind of food (stromboli, chocolate, ice cream, bread, etc.).
The key component of emotional hunger is you don’t feel satisfied after eating because food was never the answer. And perhaps you feel worse after eating because you have guilt around eating something because you were trying to feed the emotional hunger with physical food.
Physical hunger is more predictable – it’s based on when and what you ate last. You’ll notice you become hungry three or more hours after your last meal – sooner if your meal was on the lighter side or if you are physically training hard. For most people (not all, but most), the need for food is gradual, meaning, as time wears on you become more and more hungry. Physical signs of hunger include a rumbling stomach or light-headedness. Some people get “hangry” or angry due to hunger. This may get tricky to distinguish when you are first starting your mindful eating practice. If anger is bubbling up, you may want to ask yourself: “What am I hungry for?” It may be time to physically eat and also there may be a deeper emotional craving that is trying to get your attention.
When you’re physically hungry, it’s less driven by a craving for a very particular food. Physical hunger tends to have less of a sense of urgency to it like emotional hunger does unless you’ve let too many hours go in between meals. Along those lines, you feel satisfied with the food you ate, there’s no sense of guilt because you recognized your body needed food. Plus, you were able to stop eating when you were full because you paid attention to your body’s cues and you respected them.
Having awareness of your body’s cues means you won’t overeat or undereat because you’re in touch with what your body needs. This will not always be a perfect science or execution thereof, especially in the beginning of your practice. Remember that any practice is about progress, not perfection. That can also translate into knowing when and how much to exercise because you can feel when your body wants to move versus rest, but that’s for another blog. Living in this way can lead to a healthy and sustainable lifestyle and may result in weight loss, or gain, depending on what’s best for your body.
If you’re interested in mindful eating, I invite you to try this mindful eating practice. Let me know how it goes over here in the comments of my Facebook page.
For ideas and ways to stay connected to and learn more about the unconscious through the body, feel free to stay connected.
References
Albers, Dr. Susan and Cheung, Dr. Lilian. Eating Mindfully: How to End Mindless Eating and Enjoy a Balanced Relationship with Food. Berkeley, New Harbinger Publications: 2003.
Baer, R.A., Fischer, S. and Huss, D.B. Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy Applied to Binge Eating: A Case Study. Cognitive and Behavioral Practice, 2005; 12: 351-358.
Bays, Dr. Jan Chozen. Mindful Eating: A Guide to Rediscovering a Healthy and Joyful Relationship with Food. Boulder, Shambala: 2017.
Ginsburg, Lynn and Taylor, Mary. What Are You Hungry For? Women, Food, and Spirituality. New York, Griffin: 2003.
Hanh, Thich Naht and Cheung, Dr. Lilian. Savor: Mindful Eating, Mindful Life. San Francisco, HarperOne: 2010.
Hanh, Thich Naht and Cheung, Dr. Lilian. “How to Eat an Apple.” Lion’s Roar. March 29, 2018. https://www.lionsroar.com/savor/
Kristeller, J.K. and Wolever, R.Q. Mindfulness-Based Eating Awareness Training for Treating Binge Eating Disorder. Eating Disorders, 2011; 19(1): 49-61.
Renye, Dr. Denise. “Having an Eating Disorder in the Time of COVID-19.” Wholepersonintegration.com. Accessed August 5, 2020.