Mindful Eating – Day 4

I continued this mindful eating process for a total of 10 days – taking photos of my food and then mindfully eating eat bite. After 10 days I experienced a lightness and increase in energy. I lost a couple pounds, and became aware of how I interact with food. I became aware of how much sugar affects me – how my energy peaks after eating foods containing high levels of sugar or carbohydrates and then quickly drops off to the point where I just want to sleep. Most importantly I noticed how much I don’t like preparing food. For me, my bad eating habits are in part due to my lack of interest in spending time preparing food. I am very driven in many areas of my life, but when it comes to food preparation I am fairly lazy. When I’m hungry, I want to eat right then and there. As a habit, I don’t pay very much attention to my body’s hunger signals either and I don’t plan well in advance for responding to these signals.  I usually wait until I”m light headed or my stomach is growling before I start looking for something to eat – then I eat whatever is convenient. For me, I need to make sure I have easy to prepare, quickly available, healthy food to eat on hand.  This was a wonderful practice for me and I hope you will give it a try yourself.

Mindful Eating – Day 3

Went to Snuffy’s today with Danny. Danny shared a bit of his malt with me and the first few bites were like delicious little explosions of flavor. I completely enjoyed those first three bites and then the pleasure diminished. I was glad I didn’t have my own malt because the first few bites were so good that I would have eaten/drank the entire malt – but I wouldn’t have enjoyed the last half of the malt and I would have felt sick.

Mindful Eating – Day 2

Lisa’s Mindful Eating Blog

Inspired by one of my students, Michelle Hovey Swerin, who wrote her master’s project on mindful eating, and my friend Selene Vega, PhD, who has created a beautiful healthy eating food blog, I’ve decided to create a mindful eating blog of my own. My initial intention is to simply notice what I am eating, when I am eating and why I am eating without trying to change my eating habits. My goal is to mindfully create healthy and satisfying eating habits, and to slowly and naturally return to a healthy weight. To accomplish this goal, each day I will photograph my food before eating it. I will slowly and mindfully eat my food, and I will also notice how I feel after I eat and how my mind, body and spirit respond to different foods. Below are the photos from my first day of mindful eating. My primary insight from day one is that the chocolate chip cookie was not very tasty and I felt sick after eating it – a slight head ache and stomach ache. I also felt a bit foggy. It was definitely not a satisfying food. It felt more like a drug. Why would I want that in my body? Interesting question.