Building a Good Relationship with Food-Mindfulness Eating Script
The short mindfulness script I am going to provide you in this post is a very good practice to overcome your food cravings and improve your eating habits.
This post is a part of my article series “mind conditioning and weight loss” and here I am going to discuss the most important step to maintain a good health which is to have a good relationship with food.
Often the extra weight that people put on when their lifestyle changes and especially when they get too busy is due to their lack of awareness when they eat since the mind is too engaged in thinking about various other important stuff.
Overeating, binge eating, night eating, addiction to chocolate or sugar are all resulted from absent-mindedness while eating.
There is a very good solution available for all these problems and it is Mindfulness eating, using this method you can not only get rid of various unhealthy eating habits but it also helps you to make friendship with food.
By friendship I mean that you will be able to understand your body’s connection with food better and then..
-You will be able to discern what is good or bad for your health.
-You can then differentiate between false hunger and true hunger.
-You will be able to stop when you are actually full.
-You will enjoy food more.
One simple practice and so many benefits, I believe you must cultivate this habit whether you are in a good body shape or not because our relationship with food is not only limited to our physical looks or health condition, it also affects our emotional/mental health.
Mindfulness Eating
This is not something very difficult to understand or perform but, just an act of using all your senses when you eat.
Main purpose of mindfulness is always to bring your attention to the present moment so, all you have to do is to become completely aware of the NOW moment.
In mindfulness meditation, we actively focus on the various sensations received by our five senses in any moment and that’s what you have to do while eating also.
So, when you eat food first make sure that you won’t give thought to anything else no matter how important it is because it is necessary that you must keep in mind while eating that thinking about anything else is not going to give an instant solution.
Eat slowly with complete focus on each sensation generated by the food, bring your attention to the appearance, smell, touch and taste of the food.
Don’t let anything other than food to capture your attention let it be TV, a dominant thought, a conversation, phone, etc.
Many people eat so unconsciously that they don’t even know when they have started and finished.
Mindfulness eating is simple but it requires a lot of practice, gradually you will get better in doing this and it will start benefiting you in various ways.
The Script
So here is a small and simple exercise for mindfulness eating especially for those who are addicted to some specific food items.
If you are not a food addict, then also eating this way by being more attentive will benefit you in numerous ways.
This is a quite surprising method for the food addicts because rather than trying to make them quit that food item it makes them to eat it but, with complete awareness.
See, people having addictive eating habits don’t really enjoy food, when the craving arises they just keep on stuffing themselves to fulfill some other psychological need.
The short exercise I am going to share with you here will help you to gain more control over your obsession for any particular food.
Steps
1- Get the food to which you are addicted and doing this exercise at the moment when you feel the craving would be the best.
We are going to take “chocolate” as an example.
2- Contemplate on the appearance of the food for few seconds.
The color of chocolate, its shape the other ingredients present in it like dry fruits etc.
3- Smell your food and feel how it would taste.
Taste of food highly depends on its smell and that’s why chefs put various contents for aroma in it.
Virtually enjoy the taste of chocolate with its smell, get more aware of the feeling it brings. A chocoholic can easily detect the combination of bitterness and sweet in it for which they yearn but rarely enjoys while actually eating.
4- Feel the touch
You can close eyes for this and touch the food to know how it feels.
I am not having much idea for this in the case of chocolate but I can describe it using an experience I had when I took a spiritual course that promoted mindfulness meditation.
They made me to close my eyes and gave me something in hands asking to guess what it was, from touch I got to know that it was a grape then they made me to go through these similar steps and I would have to admit that I never enjoyed eating grapes like that ever before.
5- Taste
Now finally it is time to eat it but very slowly.
Take a small bite of chocolate and enjoy its taste, don’t take another bite till the previous one isn’t finished completely.
Before swallowing keep it in mouth for as much time possible, allow it to melt there and enjoy it completely.
These were some mindfulness eating tips I wanted to share with you, I strongly recommend you to try this and see how it benefits you.
If your find it difficult to differentiate between false and real hunger then read my post – Dealing with False Hunger-How to Stop Emotional Eating
Looking for an advanced solution for unhealthy eating habits and food cravings? I would suggest you to read the e-book by Kristin named End Binge Eating Now which has helped many people to overcome this problem.
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