I am reading Jan Chozen Bays' Mindful Eating, and in it she critiques the method of calorie restriction and the consequent checking to see if one can "afford" to eat something. Since I subscribe both to the concept of mindful eating and the practice of calorie restriction, it seems to me worthwhile to comment on their intersection.
Mindful eating as a formal practice means quite simply never eating mindlessly; smelling, seeing, and tasting every morsel. As a daily practice, it is about eating without distractions and, to the best of one's ability, eating with full attention or, at the very least, recognizing when one is not doing so. It is Bay's thesis that we have moved so far away from our instinct to eat what and how much we need that simply the act of fully paying attention would go a long way toward healing our depredations around food. She recognizes that the way we were raised, societal input, and other factors of our environment have skewed our attitudes toward food; that we have lost the ability to discern what is healthful eating and what is not.
I have done quite a bit of mindful eating and as a meditation have found it very useful. On retreat, this is the only way I eat, and I have done many retreats. I have also done some of this at home, largely following my reading of another wonderful book about eating, Women, Food, and God, which I will write about in a different post. But what Bays seems to be advocating is that we do this with nearly everything we eat.
My past experience with this is my everyday life, though, leads me to three objections:
--I find it a rather common experience for the mind to take this process over and tell me that I am OK eating this whole pint of ice cream as long as I do it mindfully. (Of course, I realize that if I was truly doing so mindfully, I would never eat it all, but the mind is tricky). The mind can also quite easily convince me that after all that nice mindfulness, I deserve a little snack.
--Even when I am mindful, I can still eat a whole lot of calories.
--Perhaps most important for me is the fact that I really enjoy eating while I am working at the computer or reading. Yes, I can be more conscious of what I am eating if I do nothing else, but it takes quite a bit of pleasure out of it for me.
I have found that calorie restriction can be quite mindful. When I need to make a choice between one food and another because I don't have enough calories for both, I must come face to face with everything that motivates me to eat excessively, which is precisely what Bays seems to be advocating. I also like the fact that calorie restriction is entirely unambiguous, so there is no room for the mind's blandisments and excuse-making. When I reach 1800 calories, I either have to stop eating or make a conscious choice not to. As I have said before, I agree with the mind that I deserve good things, but one of the characteristics of mind is that it appreciates only the short-term gain. If it truly placed my well-being first, it would be able to grasp that, of the things I truly deserve to have, my long-term good health is paramount.
I am not at all dismissing mindful eating, I hope that is clear. But as I write this I have my nine cherries in a bowl--all that I had calories enough for--and am thoroughly enjoying both the writing and the cherries. And I am quite certain I wouldn't have enjoyed either of them quite so much if I had not done them together.
(I will write more about Mindful Eating in future posts).
Mindful eating as a formal practice means quite simply never eating mindlessly; smelling, seeing, and tasting every morsel. As a daily practice, it is about eating without distractions and, to the best of one's ability, eating with full attention or, at the very least, recognizing when one is not doing so. It is Bay's thesis that we have moved so far away from our instinct to eat what and how much we need that simply the act of fully paying attention would go a long way toward healing our depredations around food. She recognizes that the way we were raised, societal input, and other factors of our environment have skewed our attitudes toward food; that we have lost the ability to discern what is healthful eating and what is not.
I have done quite a bit of mindful eating and as a meditation have found it very useful. On retreat, this is the only way I eat, and I have done many retreats. I have also done some of this at home, largely following my reading of another wonderful book about eating, Women, Food, and God, which I will write about in a different post. But what Bays seems to be advocating is that we do this with nearly everything we eat.
My past experience with this is my everyday life, though, leads me to three objections:
--I find it a rather common experience for the mind to take this process over and tell me that I am OK eating this whole pint of ice cream as long as I do it mindfully. (Of course, I realize that if I was truly doing so mindfully, I would never eat it all, but the mind is tricky). The mind can also quite easily convince me that after all that nice mindfulness, I deserve a little snack.
--Even when I am mindful, I can still eat a whole lot of calories.
--Perhaps most important for me is the fact that I really enjoy eating while I am working at the computer or reading. Yes, I can be more conscious of what I am eating if I do nothing else, but it takes quite a bit of pleasure out of it for me.
I have found that calorie restriction can be quite mindful. When I need to make a choice between one food and another because I don't have enough calories for both, I must come face to face with everything that motivates me to eat excessively, which is precisely what Bays seems to be advocating. I also like the fact that calorie restriction is entirely unambiguous, so there is no room for the mind's blandisments and excuse-making. When I reach 1800 calories, I either have to stop eating or make a conscious choice not to. As I have said before, I agree with the mind that I deserve good things, but one of the characteristics of mind is that it appreciates only the short-term gain. If it truly placed my well-being first, it would be able to grasp that, of the things I truly deserve to have, my long-term good health is paramount.
I am not at all dismissing mindful eating, I hope that is clear. But as I write this I have my nine cherries in a bowl--all that I had calories enough for--and am thoroughly enjoying both the writing and the cherries. And I am quite certain I wouldn't have enjoyed either of them quite so much if I had not done them together.
(I will write more about Mindful Eating in future posts).
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