Eat with your mind

Mridula Wattas 

In this fast-paced world of today where we spend most of our waking hours in multi-tasking, we end up neglecting our most precious asset — our health.

God has given us amazing bodies with such intricate cellular structure, a miracle in its every micro subdivision. Our body can tell us exactly what it requires to be healthy if only we spend some time to listen and to be aware of its needs.

One of the ways in which we can achieve this is by practising “mindfulness”. 

This concept has its roots in Buddhist teachings. Just as there are forms of meditation that involve sitting, breathing, standing and walking; many Buddhist teachers encourage their students to meditate with food, expanding consciousness by paying close attention to the sensation and purpose of each morsel. 

WHAT IS MINDFUL EATING

“Mindful eating is eating with intention and attention”.

Eating with the intention of caring for yourself.

Eating with the attention necessary for noticing and enjoying your food and its effects on your body.

You learn to pay attention to:

• Why you feel like eating.
• Whether you’re eating a healthy food or not.
• The look, smell, taste, feel of the food you’re eating.
• Your emotions during and after eating.
• Where the food came from. If it was a plant-based food, who might have grown it, whether it was seasonal, organically grown or sprayed with pesticides. In case of cooked food, you learn to pay attention to whether it was fresh or stale, the kind of oil which was used and the cooking practices involved.

Lately, many experiments of the mouth and mind have been done right from Harvard School of Public Health to the California campus of Google. Experts say that eating slowly and genuinely relishing each bite could be the simple remedy needed in our fast-paced lives and avoid endless weight reducing fad diets which usually steer people towards obesity.

HOW MINDLESS EATING HARMS  HEALTH

Distracted, hurried eating may be termed as mindless eating. If you eat too quickly, you will definitely end up overeating.

 There’s also reason to believe that eating while you are distracted by activities like driving or working or watching TV may slow down or stop digestion. And if we’re not digesting well, we may be missing out on the full nutritive value of most of the foods we’re consuming.

Distracted eating leads to addiction to unhealthy snacks and fried and fatty food. As we are anxious and stressed we tend to find solace in comfort foods leading to binge eating. This may cause obesity and other lifestyle diseases like diabetes and heart diseases. 

HOW TO ACHIEVE 

Eating is a natural, healthy, and pleasurable activity for satisfying hunger. However, in our food-abundant, diet-obsessed culture, eating is often mindless, consuming, and guilt-inducing, instead. Mindful eating is an ancient mindfulness practice with profound modern implications. Mindful eating is not a diet, or about giving up anything at all. It’s about experiencing food more intensely — especially the pleasure of it.

Mindful eating includes noticing the colours, smells, flavours, and textures of your food; chewing slowly; getting rid of distractions like TV or reading; and learning to cope with guilt and anxiety about food.

Take out at least 20 minutes of your time to sit down and have at least one meal a day in a leisurely manner. Make an effort to have a relaxing atmosphere in your dining room put on some slow and relaxing music. You can put some flowers on the dining table and lay your table artfully.

For these 20 minutes keep away all the stressful thoughts away from your mind. You can deal with these later on. Make sure that this activity of eating is pleasurable.

Eat silently for five minutes.Take small bites and chew well. To slow down, you may use your non-dominant hand while eating. Before eating anything; ask yourself, “Am I really hungry”. 

This is a skill, a form of meditation  that you don’t acquire overnight. It takes practice, and there will be times when you forget to eat mindfully. There will be starts and stops. But with practice and attention, you can become good at this.

BENEFITS 

• You learn to eat when you’re hungry, and stop when you’re satiated.
• You learn to enjoy the taste of healthy food.
• You slowly start to realise that unhealthy food isn’t as tasty as you thought, nor does it make you feel very good.
• You begin to sort through the emotional issues you have around food and eating. 
• You learn how food affects your mood and energy throughout the day.
• You learn what food best fuels your exercise and work and play.

All these benefits lead to reduction of anxiety and stress, stop emotional and binge eating and lead to weight reduction and a healthy and happy body and mind. 

The writer is a former Head of the Department of Dietetics, PGIMER, Chandigarh