2016-06-30

Here's a sampling of quotes on mindful eating from many of our health-conscious readers.


Becoming Conscious

"Solving the problem of obesity is about becoming conscious of your eating and activity patterns, of what healthy eating is, human relationships, and most importantly--about God being present and available always."

--NorrisChumley

"I think overall you have to be ready in your heart and in your mind or it will never work. You can't diet forever!!! so it has to be a eating habit you can live with. You start eating good things consciously and eventually it becomes unconscious!"

--free2bme

Discovering Color

"While practicing a little mindful eating today I discovered a glorious source of gratitude--colors! While I was concentrating on a potato mindfully, the thought suddenly arose--how would you describe the taste of a potato...and from there my monkey mind jumped to...how would one describe a color, like blue. ('Monkey mind' is a mindfulness term which describes how the mind jumps from thought to thought the way a money jumps wildly from branch to branch in a tree.)

Suddenly I became--for the first time--really aware of all the colors in the food court of the mall where I was eating and realized for the very first time in my life I was actually AWARE of and grateful for all the colors in our life...."

--digital843
Talking With God

"How can I ask God to bless food that is so obviously unhealthy?! 'Lord, bless these deep fried potato chips that are saturated with partially hydrogenated vegetable oil and layered with salt!' Boy, doesn't sound too good does it?!"
--foursweetbabes

"What works for me some of the time is offering the feeling to God, telling God I want to binge, writing down both the feeling and the physical sensation in my body, and telling myself I will find something else to do, just for a few minutes."
--lgreen515

"I've been asking God to help me for years to lose this unhealthy fat, but I've never let Him take the fork from my hand and feed me. It's time for that now. To say Lord, Feed Me. Spiritually...

SO that's another thing I'm allowing God to help me work on. Fully experiencing each bite. Not thinking of who or what is bothering me, but rather how at that particular moment in time that one bite tastes, feels, and what it can do to help me become healthier physically."
--foursweetbabes


Food Journal

"The recommended Mindful Eating and Food Journal are powerful and time-honored tools in the goal of weight management. I never actually started a journal before because I was afraid of having to set down all my failures in black and white. Yet this is the precise value of the journal--being able to recognize where we need to make more effort."

--digital843

"I read somewhere that nearly all people who are overweight consume 2/3 of their total calorie intake after 5pm. It's true for me. Food logging helped me discover that."

--Teka

"I am...writing down everything I'm eating--though not what I'm feeling when I eat it. Still I'm finding that exercise quite useful in terms of becoming conscious of my eating pattern. And I'm getting some ideas about how to slowly cut back. Also, I've become acutely aware that I eat well past my point of feeling full. So what I'm trying to do is simply not eat unless I'm truly hungry. But that's where it gets really interesting, because a lot of the time I still want to eat even though I'm feeling full."

--recovcath

Free Your Mind

"I too have recently started focusing on the tasting of my food. And I have been so surprised that without having distraction (TV, radio, etc), these foods that I have thought were so wonderful...weren't.

The sweet cereals are too sweet, and the processed mashed potatoes tasted, well, processed. I think I had a 'taste image' and I honestly thought that these foods were so pleasing. Finding out that they are not has been such a release for me. I do not desire them as much."

--monet01

A Full Experience

"Yesterday I had an intense craving for a candy bar and before I knew it I'd hopped in the car, driven to the market and bought a king sized one! Once home I...decided to be thoroughly conscious of that candy bar as I ate it....

I first concentrated on the wrapper as I opened it, which I did very slowly. I thought about how it was made and wondered what the people in the factory were like. What THEY thought about. Do they get sick of chocolate since they are around it all day?

That led me to think of a candy-store owner I met once that told me after 30-some years in the business he could no longer taste or smell chocolate at all. His senses were numb to it. How tragic that would be!

But perhaps the smell and taste of say...fresh strawberries were somehow heightened by that as a result? How wonderful THAT would be!

So I began to think of all the GREAT things that could happen by letting go of some of my culinary crutches....

What all this "conscious" eating did was nothing short of a miracle for someone like me. Someone who can be licking her fingers before even realizing she'd eaten the Kentucky Fried!

I realized after I'd eaten only half of that bar, that I was full. I was "satisfied" after ONLY half! It became such a full experience that not only my tastebuds were happy, but my mind was too. I'd given it a little spark."

--foursweetbabes

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