Mindful Eating
Every time you pick a magazine, a book, an article on nutrition, it leaves you more confused on what should one really eat! Every day there is a new scientific research and study about food and some have contradictory conclusions to each other! I like to give away the conclusion of this blog though and make it simpler for you all -Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants. That, my friends more or less, is the short answer to the supposedly incredibly complicated and confusing question of what we humans should eat in order to be maximally healthy. But then, this is just your first step towards eating healthy and that is where Health & Wellness Coaching comes into play. Unless we look at it from a 360 degree holistic perspective, considering all contributing factors, we will never be able to gauge why we are eating what we are eating and how it is related to our body and mind. This heightened sense of awareness helps us to know ourselves better and to know how we perceive food whether as a friend or an enemy.
One important lesson that we all need to take note of is that we are more than just a body; we are a spiritual force and that our relationship with food teaches us a great deal about who we are and how we live. For instance, as adults we eat food not to nourish ourselves, but to avoid pain, loneliness, and depression. We adopt beliefs about the right and the wrong foods to eat and stand in judgment of anyone – including ourselves- who eats” incorrectly”. This will adversely affect our health, only through the Coach approach can we realise the underlying root causes that has catapulted us to where we are today, how we reached here, and what is to be done going forward. Hence mindful eating via retrospection is necessary because when we don’t do that on a regular basis, the mind busily chews on its fears, insecurities and fantasies about food. For instance, alcoholic expresses his hunger through alcohol, an anorexic or bulimic expresses it through food and a drug addict through drugs. Health & Wellness Coaching explores these causes with a non judgemental approach, all the while keeping the personal agenda in mind, as at the end of the day, it is you who can come up with your personalised solutions.
So how can you practice mindful eating? All that is needed is that you step away from your laptops, from your work, from your television sets or IPods and create the time to sit down and eat. Follow the golden rule that I gave away right in the beginning -Eat food. Not too much, mostly plants. And if you have company to share your food with, that’s even better. Take away all the stress of the day and any negative thoughts and focus on your meal and enjoy what you are eating. Know that you are not just feeding the body but you are feeding the souls longing for life through the vehicle of food, know the triggers that have been pushing you to make unhealthy choices, and why now are you choosing the healthy options? Coaching will help you achieve this heightened sense of awareness.
This is a new way of eating for me as well and I have started practicing it on a regular basis. I step away from everything that I have going on in my life or my day. I can see that I enjoy my food better. I am more aware of what my food tastes like and how my body reacts right after eating certain foods. The later part is something I will to focus on in following blogs and those facts will reiterate that everyone is made differently and a diet or food that can may work for one, may not work for another. Everyone have their own routine, own rules and own agendas as to why they are eating a particular food at a certain point in the day, how is that food significant to their thought process, and what happens when he/she brings about the valuable changes while the Coaching sessions. For now, let’s just begin our practice of ‘mindful eating’.