Eating Mindfully

This is always seems like the hardest part of getting ready to do something like speak or write an blog.  How do you start with it being interesting?  How do you grab the person right at the start?  These are things that take some thought.  I am going to brew another cup of coffee and listen to some music while I think about how to start this blog.....

Now that I am back, let's start to dig into our last skill to better eating habits.  This habit is eating mindfully.  What does this mean?  This means that we should think about how we feel before, during, and after we eat.   Think about things like, am I actually hungry? how full am I?, how do I feel about what I ate?

Before we even go to get food we need to think about it first.  Ask yourself questions like, I am actually hungry?  If I wait for a few minutes will I no longer be hungry?  We want to stop and think simply because we may be eating out of boredom.  It is really easy to overeat if we are eating due to a lack of anything else to do.  The next time you go to eat something that is not a meal at our normal eating time, wait for a few minutes then ask yourself, am I hungry?

While we are eating we really need to be thinking about how we are feeling.  How much is the food filling you up?  If you remember from our last blog we only want to eat til we are 80% full.  Taking a bit and thinking about how full we are while chewing is a easy way to stop ourselves from eating to much.

When we are doing eating we need to think about how we feel about the food we ate.  This will be several times after we ate.  We will want to do this right away, a half hour later, and even an hour later.  Ask things like, how do I feel about what I ate? do I feel guilty?  If you feel guilty about what you ate or the amount what do we need to do to not feel guilty about our choices?  We should never feel guilty about something we ate. 

We always want to be mindful about what we do.  Eating is no different and it is simple to put into our normal habits.  Before your next meal ask yourself am I hungry?  During ask how full am I?  After your meal ask, how do I feel about what I ate?  Being mindful about what we are about to eat, are eating, and have ate are great ways to keep from eating to much.