Mindful, Sensual Eating: How to Develop Food and Eating Awareness

Begin Mindful Eating by Preparing Yourself for Food

Mindful eating is a practice that has existed for centuries, but few practice it in our culture. In fact, we are rarely mindful at all when we eat. For example, you may have seen someone walk into the kitchen, fill a plate with a few things (or grab a bag of snacks) and begin eating before sitting down at the table. Being mindful when eating first means being aware that you are about to eat--being aware that food is before you and that you will soon be eating it.

If this sounds mundane or unnecessary, take a look back over the last 24 hours. What have you eaten? Can you describe it with any accuracy? We often go on autopilot when eating, because we have done it enough that we don't have to pay much attention to get the food into our bodies.

Practicing Mindful Eating: Becoming Aware of Food

Be aware as you go to the kitchen or to the table that you are preparing to eat.Take an inventory of what has been prepared. You may benefit from saying the names of different foods aloud, if possible. Recognize how much is available of each kind, and how large your plate is.

Recommendation: Use dishes and silverware that are enjoyable. If you are having some chips, put them in an attractive bowl rather than eating from the bag. Put away the plasticware and eat from dishes that you enjoy seeing. Pour drinks into glasses or mugs (also, if you're getting coffee at a coffee shop and you're going to drink it there, ask for a mug rather than using the paper cup).

Benefit: You will have a better idea of what you want from the food available after taking a full inventory. And identifying everything verbally will force you to be concrete. This can help to reduce anxiety around food.

Mindful Eating Means Eating With Your Eyes

Your eyes will tell you a good deal about the food in front of you. What does it mean to use them with purpose--to eat with your eyes?

Take in your food's shape. Is it flat, like a cracker? Roundish and bumpy like cauliflower? Or does it look smooth, shiny, or dull?

Examine color. Notice variations in color on the skin of a piece of fruit or in grill marks on a steak. Is the color appealing? Bright? Deep?

You may notice spices in or on your food. There could be some oregano in a tomato sauce, or perhaps some pepper dusting a chicken breast.

Benefit: Chefs go to great lengths to prepare food attractively because they know it can add excitement and satisfaction to the experience. We eat in order to become satisfied and often to pursue pleasure. The more we pay attention to what our eyes tell us, the more satisfaction and pleasure are available.

Mindful Eating Means Enjoying the Smells of Food

Most of us don't take the time to lean over a dish and take in the smells of the food intentionally. And we miss out.

When you enter a kitchen in which preparation for a good meal has begun, your sense of smell knows right away. But if you've been preparing the food or if you've been in an adjacent room, you can get "numb" to the good smells.

Don't be shy. When etiquette allows, bring your nose close to your food and see if you can pick out what's in it before you take a bite. Breathe in slowly, searching through the scents for a preview of what you're about to eat.

Benefit: Your sense of smell is tied to your sense of taste. You get to begin your enjoyment of the food's flavor without eating it. Being intentional here will give you a greater willingness to be intentional in later steps.

Hearing the Sounds of Eating

For most of us, eating does not really involve the sense of hearing. But the sounds of food and eating have a lot to tell us.

There is no mistaking the sound of a piece of silverware making contact with a plate, or a beverage being poured over ice. Biting into a carrot makes a different sound than biting into any other food. And passing a spoon through macaroni and cheese or a casserole is recognizable even without seeing it happen.

Pay attention to sounds prior to eating. And remember that when you begin to eat, the sounds continue. Tune in to food sounds like the crunch of a tortilla chip. Recognize the sounds of your food being moistened in your mouth. And hear yourself swallow.

Benefit: Just as music can please us through our sense of hearing, so can eating, in its own way. As you hear what you are eating, you become more aware of your participation, which helps you to know how much you've eaten.

Feeling Your Food to Increase Satisfaction

Touch is such an important part of eating that it would be impossible to eat without it.

Sensual Eating, Outside the Mouth

Touch is present in eating in many ways. The sense of touch informs us from the moment we reach for a fork (or, if eating finger food, the moment we reach for the food itself). And the experience can be bad as well as good. For example, if you are trying to cut into food with a fork that digs into your finger, guess what? Your enjoyment will be less.

Prior to taking a bite, you will be aware of other touch-based information. You will feel a food's weight--a bite of dark chocolate is heavier than a kernel of popcorn. A spoonful of peanut butter weighs more than a spoonful of rice.

Sensual Eating, Inside the Mouth

Of course, touch tells us about the texture of food once we begin to eat it.

Here are some possibilities, with an example of each:

• Smooth (yogurt)
• Bumpy (cracker)
• Creamy (pudding)
• Grainy (hummus)
• Gritty (some nuts; also noticeable in pears)
• Chewy (dried fruit)
• Crunchy (snack chips)
• Crumbly (coffee cake, certain kinds of cheese)

Temperature also is an important piece of information to the brain. Foods taste different depending on their temperature, and their textures change as well (think of a cold hunk of cheese versus the same cheese heated and melted).

Further, touch helps us to push food to the various parts of our mouths for chewing and to orient it so that we can swallow.

Recommendations: Make sure your food is at the right temperature to allow you to enjoy it--no half-heated food!

Awakening to the Taste of Food

Flavor is perhaps the most powerfully sensual information we get from eating. The variations are endless and intriguing. Our taste buds (actually working with the sense of smell) can bring us great pleasure as well as great disgust.

Usually, however, only a small part of our consciousness is aware of the flavor of food we eat. It's just enough to keep us eating. What if we really paid attention to all the data that taste can bring?

When you have taken a bite of food, check in to see what flavors are there--both bold and subtle:

• Salty
• Sweet
• Bitter
• Acidic
• Earthy
• Bland
• Spicy
• Sour
• Toasted/Roasted
• Minty
• Woody
• Floral
• Smoky

Recommendation: If it's hard to focus on flavor, closing the eyes can make things easier.

Don't Forget to Be Mindful of the Stomach

There's so much going on in the senses registered through the eyes, nose, ears, and mouth that it can seem unnatural to include the stomach as well. But real satisfaction would be impossible without input from the stomach, which tells us when we have completely fulfilled the need to eat.

You may recognize a delay between the time you are full and the moment you know you are full. To reduce the effect of this phenomenon, check in with your stomach every three or four bites. Don't start checking in halfway through the meal; you are more likely to forget to check at all. Further, starting early in the meal allows you to compare later feelings of moderate fullness to feelings of having a relatively empty stomach.

Take a deep breath as you check to clear your head and help you tune in. Compare your feeling of fullness with the level of satisfaction in eating your last bite. In general, pleasure associated with eating a bite of food lessens as the stomach becomes more full.

If you do feel comfortably full, stop eating for now. This may seem obvious. But many times we believe we must finish our plates to avoid wastefulness or because we fear we won't get any more of that kind of food later. It's better to refrigerate what you don't eat. And where there is a concern that a certain food is too special to stop eating, get some more. Make sure you know that there is plenty on hand so you don't worry about running out. If you continue to eat with high awareness, your chances of overeating are much less than they are otherwise.

Enjoying the Self as Well as Food

When you stop eating when you are comfortably full and begin some other activity, ask yourself how you feel about you. What is your self-opinion?

If you are like most, being aware of the body's amazing ability to respond to food sensually is very satisfying. And knowing that you have treated your body well--honored your body--throughout the meal or snack helps in developing a culture of self-care that can extend to other areas of your life (exercising in a healthy way, for example).

You may also have a strange psychological reaction to treating yourself well: "I don't deserve this. I'm uncomfortable doing this because it feels good, and I'm not supposed to feel good." And there is a real challenge. It takes a lot of courage to exist outside your comfort zone, whether the "extreme" place is much better than your normal way of being or much worse.

Living in a new and better place, and staying there, can be a big adventure.

If you have had difficulty working your way through this exercise, don't worry. It will take some practice to eat with real awareness, particularly in a culture that works so hard to take your attention away from what you are eating, how much you are eating, and how satisfying it is (or isn't). Continuing to eat mindfully will make all those distractions very, very boring!

Sources:

DayOne Publishing. "Mindful Eating." http://www.mindfuleating.org/MindfulEating.html 2 May 2007.

EatWithUs.com. "Wine Glossary." http://www.eatwithus.com/interact/wine_glossary.html 2 May 2007.

Tribole, Evelyn and Elyse Resch. Intuitive Eating: A Revolutionary Program That Works. New York: St. Martin's Press, 2003.