Beyond Mindless Eating
You’ve probably heard the term “mindless eating” before. Sitting at your desk munching on Hershey’s Kisses while you work, and WHOA, I ate the WHOLE BAG?! Or watching a movie in the theater while crunching a large sized popcorn, and then realizing that you’ve managed to eat HALF THE TUB and the previews aren’t even over yet! This has happened to everyone I know, myself included (barring Hershey Kisses - an abomination of chocolate!).
There are dozens of books on mindless eating, how to curb your cravings, and how to learn to listen to your bodies hunger and satiety cues. These can be great tools in learning how to stop mindless eating which can ultimately lead to excess weight, and is often associated with guilt (”Oh my god, I can’t believe I ate that!”) But what I want to talk about is not so much mindless eating as mindful eating.
Mindful eating has many layers and can be as simple or as complex as you choose to make it. I encourage people to go big and wide with the scope and complexity of their mindfulness around food, and here’s why:
When most people discuss mindful eating, it’s done on a micro-scale, focusing on the individual body and it’s senses. This type of mindful eating encourages you to see, smell, feel, hear, and taste your food with intention. It highlights the importance of appreciating your food, treating it with respect by not overeating it, or adulterating it. It teaches you to savor what you have, and to be fully present while eating it. This means no movies, TV or newspapers. No sitting in your car, or at your desk… nowhere but at your table, fully present and focused on the meal, its ingredients, and the pleasure it will bring you.
While this is a hugely important aspect of mindful eating, I ask people to go further. Go macro! Where was your food grown? And by whom? Under what conditions? Who harvested it? Were they paid well and treated fairly? How far did your food travel to get to you, and how might that impact it’s quality? If your food came in a box, how did it get in there, and how was it made?
Asking questions like these forces you to really connect with food on all levels, from the micro sensory level, to the macro environmental/ethical/social level. The point of a mindfulness exercise is to expand your consciousness. If you suddenly found out the that family of migrant workers who harvested the beans for your morning cup of coffee that you paid $2.25 for was forced, out of no other options, to work soul crushing hours akin to slave labor, only to earn pennies a day - hardly enough to feed themselves, would it taste the same? Or what about a local tomato, picked and grown by a farmer who’s hand you can shake, and who’s eyes you can connect with, and that wasn’t grown with earth polluting chemicals? How might that change the sweetness of the fruit?
If things like plate size, and presentation can impact what we eat, and how much, I argue that the same goes for honesty, integrity and ethics that go into really good food.
In Buddhism, as in many other Eastern religions, the concept of the interconnectedness of all things is fundamental. Whether you subscribe to any religious or spiritual beliefs or not recognizing that we are all connected by the air we breathe, by the land we live on, and by the streams, rivers, lakes, and oceans that surround us, is the first step towards becoming truly healthy in mind, body, and spirit. Doing right by all of these things automatically mean doing right by ourselves.
Yet again, I end by giving you a gentle push to visit your local farmers market. If you don’t know where yours is, click HERE to find it!
