How To Introduce Mindful Eating
Increase Your Self-Awareness Around Your Eating Habits And Behaviours
Becoming more mindful about your eating habits and behaviours can be incredibly powerful in helping you to create and sustain long term change with your health and your body.
Awareness is always the first step to change. And the best diet in the world doesn’t mean shit if your sabotaging behaviours keep on cropping up and leaving you feeling powerless in actually sticking with it for the long term.
Mindfulness is about deepening your relationship with food and indeed your relationship with yourself. Increasing your self-awareness and empowering you to continue to make the positive changes that you want for your health.
I’m a huge fan of journaling (you can read about how to start a journaling practice here) and it can be a supportive tool when you first get going with mindful eating. Take the time to write out the answers to these questions rather than just think them in your head, you can go much deeper when you commit to putting pen to paper.
Take your time with it as starting out you may not know some of the answers so allow yourself to sit with them a little longer if you need to.
Here are some questions to start this process of exploration. You don’t have to do them all at once.
- Describe your relationship to/with food?
- List your beliefs or associations about food in general? To the side of each belief or association, write down whether your beliefs or associations empower or dis-empower you.
- How do I eat? What are my patterns or behaviours with food?
- What secret behaviours do I have with food?
- What are the thoughts, feelings, or associations connected to my behaviour when I’m eating?
- What am I telling myself internally, or what thought am I supporting by my behaviour with food?
- What are the Top 5 Foods I sabotage with? What thought, memory or feeling do I have that associate or connect it with that food?
- When do sabotaging feelings come up?
- What is the link, association or connection to that time frame or event?
- What FEELING am I trying to “FILL UP” on or FEEL with the FOOD during that time or event?
Starting to question your behaviours around food will allow you to begin breaking the patterns that aren't supporting you, and to develop the ones that will help you improve your health and feel good in your skin.
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