If you’ve heard about mindful eating but aren’t sure where or how to
start, here are instructions for a brief mindfulness eating exercise.
The following exercise is simple and will only take a few minutes.
Find a small piece of food, such as one raisin or nut, or a small
cookie. You can use any food that you like. Eating with mindfulness is not
about deprivation or rules.
Begin by exploring this little piece of food, using as many of your
senses as possible.
First, look at the food. Notice its texture. Notice its colour.
Now, close your eyes, and explore the food with your sense of touch.
What does this food feel like? Is it hard or soft? Grainy or sticky? Moist or
dry?
Notice that you’re not being asked to think, but just to notice
different aspects of your experience, using one sense at a time. This is what
it means to eat mindfully.
Before you eat, explore this food with your sense of smell. What do you
notice?
Now, begin eating. No matter how small the bite of food you have, take
at least two bites to finish it.
Take your first bite. Please chew very slowly,
noticing the actual sensory experience of chewing and tasting. Remember, you
don’t need to think about your food to experience it. You might want to close
your eyes for a moment to focus on the sensations of chewing and tasting,
before continuing.
Notice the texture of the food; the way it feels in your mouth.
Notice if the intensity of its flavor changes, moment to moment.
Take about 20 more seconds to very slowly finish
this first bite of food, being aware of the simple sensations of chewing and
tasting.
It isn’t always necessary to eat slowly in order to eat with
mindfulness. But it’s helpful at first to slow down, in order to be as mindful
as you can.
Now, please take your second and last bite.
As before, chew very slowly, while paying close attention to the actual sensory experience of eating: the sensations and
movements of chewing, the flavor of the food as it changes, and the sensations
of swallowing.
Just pay attention, moment by moment.
Using a mindfulness eating exercise on a regular basis is only one part of a mindfulness approach to
your diet. The liberating power of mindfulness takes deeper effect when you
begin to pay mindful attention to your thoughts, emotions, and bodily
sensations, all of which lead us to eat. Mindfulness (awareness) is the
foundation that many people have been missing for overcoming food cravings,
addictive eating, binge eating, emotional eating, and stress eating.
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