Blog

posted by Lydia Daphne Olivier, My Food Coach

Mindful is the New Approach to Healthy: What Do You Think When You Eat? It seems that we have this “healthy eating” thing backwards. The moment we recognize that we want to change our eating habits we automatically focus on what we are doing wrong. What specific changes do we need to make? Should I change my grocery list? Should I clean out all snacks and restock the pantry? Usually, very little thought is put into what influences us to eat the way we do. Actually, our daily food selection is brought on by an array of influences going all the way back to young childhood. We are also taught all about the “should” and the “should-nots” along the way. We seldom think about what we really want for ourselves in the process.

When it comes to food, we often get caught up in the ideas of good and bad, should and shouldn’t, and right and wrong. These thoughts lead to judging our actions, thus leading to demoralizing our self esteem and self confidence. These judgments are deep-rooted, society-driven concepts which drive decision making regarding food intake. Rather than using judgment in your eating experience, let’s shift the paradigm. Take out the judgment of good and bad, and categorize the experience as it relates to pleasure. In each experience, you may take a pause and consider how much enjoyment it is bringing you.

Becoming more mindful of the choices you make is a great way to learn about your inner cues that stimulate your eating patterns. In fact, there is a growing trend to replace dieting with mindful eating. One explanation of mindful eating is to eat with attention and acceptance. Eating with attention allows you to discover and pay attention to hunger and satiety. You can become aware of the present moment. Acceptance allows us to eat with a lack of judgment. You can eat based on your food preferences and allow yourself to eat foods that you enjoy.



Some of the basic principles of mindful eating are:

• Allowing yourself to become aware of the positive and nurturing opportunities that are available through food preparation and consumption by respecting your own inner wisdom.
• Choosing to eat food that is both pleasing to you and nourishing to your body by using all your senses to explore, savor, and taste.
• Acknowledging responses to food (likes, neutral, or dislikes) without judgment.
• Learning to be aware of physical hunger and satiety cues to guide your decision to begin eating and to stop eating.

To begin the process of mindful eating, you may consider asking yourself these questions at the beginning of each eating experience.

1. Am I hungry?
2. What am I hungry for?
3. Is this what I’m wanting for myself right now?

While these questions are very simple, they can lead you on the direction of listening to what your body has been trying to tell you for a lifetime.