Mindful Eating

Mindfuleating1

New Year, New You

One of the top New Year’s Resolutions is to eat healthier and lose weight. This week starts a new year, a chance for a new beginning, a new you. It’s time to rewrite your script. How your life will look is up to you! For those looking to make a healthy lifestyle change, here’s your prescription for success.

The first step to making permanent healthy lifestyle changes is mindfulness. You may ask, what is mindfulness? Plainly stated, mindfulness is awareness. More specifically, mindfulness is a mind-body approach to well-being that can help you change the way you think about experiences and reduce stress or anxiety. Do you rush around moving from one task to another? Are you mindful of your everyday tasks or do you often eat so fast that you hardly taste your food? Mindfulness allows you to find stillness in the middle of a frantic world. It allows for better focus and concentration on the task at hand.

The concept of mindfulness is often applied to food. Mindful eating is an approach that involves bringing one's full attention to the process of eating—to all the tastes, smells, thoughts, and feelings that arise during a meal. Whether you are overweight, suffer from an eating disorder, or just want to get more out of life, the simple task of mindful eating can dramatically change your relationship with food.

Mindful eating is not a diet, or about giving up anything at all. It’s about experiencing food more intensely — especially the pleasure of it. You can eat a cheeseburger mindfully if you wish. In fact, you might enjoy it a lot more. Or you might decide, halfway through, that your body has had enough. Or that your body really needs some vegetables instead.

Mindful Eating Exercise

Try This Exercise With Your Next Meal: Place a forkful of food in your mouth. It doesn’t matter what the food is, but make it something you love. Now comes the hard part. Put the fork down. This could be a lot more challenging than you imagine because that first bite was very good and the next bite is calling your name. Nonetheless, leave the fork on the table. Chew slowly. Stop talking. Tune in to the texture of the food, the flavor, the bright colors, the aromas. Eat with your senses. Continue this way throughout the course of a full meal, and you’ll experience the pleasures and frustrations of mindful eating.

Interestingly enough, when people practice mindful eating they tend to eat smaller, healthier portions and as a result, lose weight. “This is anti-diet,” said Dr. Jan Chozen Bays, a pediatrician and the author of “Mindful Eating: A Guide to Rediscovering a Healthy and Joyful Relationship with Food.” “I think the fundamental problem is that we go unconscious when we eat.” Instead, we need to be coming back to ourselves and saying, “Does my body need this? Why am I eating this? Is it just because I’m sad or stressed out?”

Mindful Eating 2020

For 2020, set a resolution to introduce mindfulness into your life each day. Whether it’ taking time to appreciate the beautiful surroundings, voicing gratitude to others, speaking/listening from the heart, or exercises in mindful eating. Be mindful, be present.

Dr. Jameelah Gater
Integrative Medicine Physician

************************************************

Posted by Jamgater

 

 About Me

I am a board-certified family physician with a focus on Integrative Medicine. I received my medical doctorate at the University of Michigan and completed a family practice residency at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia. In 2009, I completed an Integrative Medical Fellowship at the University of Arizona under Andrew Weil, M.D. who is well known for pioneering the field. Integrative medicine is healing-oriented medicine that takes account of the whole person (body, mind, and spirit), including all aspects of lifestyle. It emphasizes the therapeutic relationship and makes use of all appropriate therapies, both conventional and alternative. I am a resident of Lake Oconee and enjoy traveling and spending time with my husband Dr. Eddie Richardson, Jr.  

Main Goal

To stay healthy and active. As an Integrative physician, my goal is to help people focus on health and wellness. The cornerstone of integrative medicine is nutrition and a healthy lifestyle. I would much rather teach patients self-help skills and provide the tools to transform their life rather than prescribing them medication.

Source: Fatwars