Blogs About 'Mindful Eating'

4 Ways To Be Kinder To Yourself When You Eat

When you start being kind to yourself, ending your struggles with food becomes so much easier. There are certain things we can do to bring an attitude of compassion to our relationship with food. Before I discovered Intuitive Eating, my experiences with food were fraught with tension. Food was the enemy. Even though it relieved pain, it also caused pain. So what would compassionate eating look like? Let’s start by looking at the opposite: unkind eating. When we are filled with contempt...

S.T.O.P

S. T. O. P is a mindfulness tool I often use in my daily life and it’s one of the most effective tools I share with my clients. It was created by Jon Kabat-Zinn, the founder of the Center for Mindfulness in Medicine at the University of Massachusetts Medical School, and founder of Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction. (MBSR) I find this informal mindfulness practice to be very grounding and it can be done in a minute. It’s always available and it’s short and practical. Practiced regularly,...

The Gifts of Pleasure

One of the very nicest things about life is that “we must regularly stop whatever it is we are doing and devote our attention to eating”.  Luciano Pavarotti One of our basic gifts is the pleasure we get from the simple act of eating. Sadly, in our culture, many people experience guilt when what they eat is pleasurable –  heard the phrase “guilty pleasures”? When someone tells us what to eat, how much to eat and when to eat, we lose touch with what we truly want and what is pleasurable....

Dieting vs. Mindful Eating: Know The Difference

I must confess, I am not a big fan of January. It’s simply too hectic and there’s too much pressure to make this “your best year yet”. January is full of diet talk of going Keto, giving up carbs and sugar. I find it tedious. One of the reasons I like January this year is we are celebrating World Mindful Eating Month. Come visit us on Facebook – we have a lively discussion going on the benefits of Mindful Eating. People are becoming more aware of Mindful Eating and I see the term used...

The A to Z of Food and Eating Mindfully

People often ask me “what exactly is mindful eating”? Many think mindful eating is healthy eating but it’s so much more than that! Here is the A-Z of Mindful Eating. A — Awareness and Attention When eating pay attention to the food in your mouth. Become aware of the flavours, textures and tastes. Through awareness we can address our eating challenges, by noticing our triggers to binge or overeat. B — Breathe and Body Before eating, take a breath and...

Dieting versus Mindful Eating

Mindfulness is a buzzword. Mindfulness is applied to stress, depression, anxiety, illness and eating.  And there are many interpretations of Mindful Eating. When I tell people I am a Mindful Eating Coach they often say they don’t eat “mindfully” at all, implying healthily. But mindful eating isn’t just about WHAT we eat, WHERE we eat, it is also about WHY we eat, HOW we eat and WHAT is going on for us while we eat. Traditionally, when people have eating challenges they turn to dieting...

The Difference Between Mindless Eating and Mindful Eating

“When walking, walk. When eating, eat.” — Zen Proverb Have you ever eaten something and when you look down it’s finished and you don’t remember eating the food? This often happens with chips, nuts and popcorn but it can also happen with a plate of food! This is typical mindless eating. Mindless eating essentially, is eating on auto-pilot... Let’s look at some of the characteristics of Mindless Eating: The classic form of mindless eating is eating while multi-tasking. We...

What Exactly IS Mindful Eating?

“Mindfulness is the aware, balanced acceptance of the present experience. It isn’t more complicated than that. It is opening to or receiving the present moment, pleasant or unpleasant, just as it is, without either clinging to it or rejecting it.” Sylvia Boorstein Many people ask me what exactly is Mindful Eating? Let me start by explaining what Mindful Eating isn’t…. Mindful Eating is NOT a diet, a fast or a detox. Although, if you need to fast, you can approach the fast in a...

The Benefits of Mindful Eating

There are many benefits to eating mindfully and I would like to share some of them with you! Connection and trust with your body  Mindful Eating connects us to our body’s hunger and satisfaction cues. We learn to become aware of physical signs of hunger and fullness in our stomach and look for those signs to guide us to start eating and the signs of comfortable fullness or satisfaction to stop eating. Awareness of different types of hungers  Eating mindfully creates awareness around the...

The 8 Types of Hunger

I have just finished reading a very worthwhile and instructive book by one of the world’s leading experts on Mindful Eating, Jan Chozen Bays – “Mindful Eating – A guide to rediscovering a healthy and joyful relationship with food”. In the book she talks about the 7 hungers, she later added an 8th hunger. I am finding her very valuable teachings so helpful with my clients and in my practice. Let’s have a look at the 8 hungers... EYE HUNGER Eye hunger is triggered by food that...

Playing

When was the last time you played an innocent practical joke or prank on someone? When was the last time you were having so much fun that you forgot to eat? We used to do this a lot as kids, but somewhere between childhood and becoming adults, we stop playing and become more serious... Lately the only playtime I have had is with my dogs and I notice that when I am not playing, my fun turns into jelly tots and M&M’s. As we get older with more responsibilities, we lose our ability to...