Mindful Eating

I continue to strive for mindful eating. To me, this means paying attention to what (and how much) I'm eating, how I eat it, and trying to be fully aware of eating while I'm doing it.  I assume everyone who reads this knows about the raisin mindfulness experience.  If you don't, I strongly suggest you give it a try.  Here is a decent, 3 minute youtube version. It is ubiquitous - not just as a way into mindful eating, but mindfulness in general. Allow yourself to be fully engaged in every aspect of a single experience at a time.

I would submit that food logs, food tracking, is one aspect of mindfulness, the first one. It is so easy to eat and not think of it. I now almost always pause, either before or, too often, just after grabbing something, and saying to myself, "I am choosing to eat this." But the pause and the noting is not enough. It needs to be thought of in the context of everything else I've eaten for the day. My memory is faulty and too generous to myself. So tracking is vital.

Tracking is also incredibly tedious. I've used Weight Watchers and I've used My Fitness Pal.  The latter requires more detailed input, but gives more detailed accounting, by traditional measures of calories and macro-nutrients (carbs, fats, protein). While the apps are designed to simplify the flow (two taps to get to the screen for one swipe to say "same as yesterday") it's still simply tedious. My latest hack is not to get to detailed stats, but simply a stark and clear accounting of what I am eating. I am doing this because I am not eating well. So my hack is a picture of everything that goes in my mouth.

Even this is hard to remember to do. My first two days, and I forgot two meals and a snack. However, I'm moving forward to turn it into a habit. I'm considering posting to instagram if it doesn't make it more onerous, but not certain if I want to bollux up the feed.

To focus on the how and being fully present, I've tried, and am re-trying, a number of mindfulness support aids.  I did a week-long group "challenge" conducted by my favorite Summer Tomato.  I got a daily email, encouraging choosing in advance one solo meal to be the mindfulness meal of the day, and then suggesting a certain aspect related to eating to focus on during that meal. It was coupled with a facebook group, and I followed through for the five days of the course, and found it made me slow way down, and focus on the food, which I enjoyed more. No noticeable impact on what I chose to eat nor how much, which is probably not to be expected after five days.  The idea, of course, is to incorporate the noticing what and how you are eating into all of your eating. It has bled through to other meals, though it takes reminding myself not to gobble.

From there, I went to a course offered by my mindfulness app, 10% Happier.  This is a subscription site I am using to keep plugging away at inner peace, where I found a 12-episode course by Dr. Judson Brewer on Mindful Eating. Brewer has had a lot of success using mindfulness training to address addiction and smoking cessation, so I'm guessing he realized how much more money is to be made in the diet industry. (This cynical comment in no way is meant to disparage the scholarly expertise and usefulness behind this program, and the genuine desire to help.) The episodes consisted of video interviews between Dan Harris (the 10% happier guy) and Brewer, each one followed by a guided meditation by Brewer.  Much much focus on body scan, body awareness, in the meditations.

This led me to Brewer's own app, Eat Right Now.  This is a 30-day course, based on his successful addiction treatment course. It consists of videos of him explaining and giving exercises, daily body scan meditation, daily mindful meal approaches, a mindful approach to ride out a craving, and a couple of amusing phone tools (the Want-O-Meter and the Stress Test) to help you analyze whether you are really hungry and why you might be eating what you eat. I did this, way back in April, and wrote about it here. Now, six months later, I'm on day 4 of repeating the whole 30 days. The problems I noted back in April are still problems. But I continue to feel this is the key, this is one of the master hacks, that will make a difference.