What is Mindful Eating?
Mindful eating only the single most powerful exercise I’ve discovered for helping people transform their relationship to food.
- It’s ridiculously simple to understand.
- It can be done anywhere, on ANY diet, at any meal.
- The only thing it requires is patience and awareness.
You’ll notice I didn’t say “it’s easy to do”. Because sadly, most people are lacking patience and awareness these days. That’s the bad news. Digestion is a parasympathetic state, in other less fancy words, it’s not “fight or flight”. You need to chill to fully digest; that’s fundamental to the brilliant design of your body.
The great news is that if you do it, it WILL work. And mastering your relationship to food is REAL medicine (and just like with movement medicine, no prescriptions are required).
So How Do I Eat Mindfully?
Step 1: Chew all of your food until it is liquid.
Step 2: Swallow once it is liquid, not before.
Step 3: Notice how you feel.
How Could Something So Simple Be So Radical and Powerful
It’s the subtle that always has the most power. Ever think about light, how subtle it can be, yet it changes our perceptions radically. Same deal with gravity.
Well, awareness is like that: radically transformation.Ā Specifically, awareness of how your digestive system is feeling and reacting to the foods you eat. Sadly, most of us have a digestive system that is chronically inflamed, desensitizes, and craves the very things that keep it imbalanced š
I’m Busy! I Don’t Have Time to Eat Slowly.
Yeah, right.Ā Just consider for a moment all the time you lose from feeling gross in your body, indigestion, anxiety about what to eat, guilt about your food choices, plus all the disease and dysfunction you can avoid from mastering your relationship to food.
This is cheap, quick, direct way. It only seems slow in the beginning.
The Apple Vs the Cookie
I’ve been sharing this mindful eating exercise with people for over a decade now, so of course I’ve got some funny and insightful stories to share about it.
Is an apple good, and a cookie bad? It totally depends on the situation. Watch the video to find out how you can turn a sugar food cookie into a tool for health š
Any questions, hit me up in the comments, and thanks for watching!
Your ninja,
Jonathan