Taking Pleasure in Your Food

“It’s amazing how many pretzels you ate before you realized you weren’t eating the kind you wanted,” I laughed as Mike returned to the cupboard to exchange bags. After snacking on Cinnamon Sugar Pretzel Crisps for about 10 minutes, he realized they were NOT Honey Mustard & Onion! Oops.

Mindless Eating is that hand-to-mouth movement, stuffing your face while your mind is elsewhere. We all do it. We’re wired that way. Being able to eat while we travel, plan, care for children, and stay aware of our surroundings is often necessary. But with unlimited snack foods at our fingertips, mindless eating has become a real problem for some of us.

Despite proclaiming a love for food, I eat a lot of unsavored calories.

Even with ICE CREAM, I would often get lost in my negative thoughts and miss out on the whole experience. Shortly after the first bite, I would start to anticipate feeling sad when it was gone, and I would wonder how much ice cream was still in the freezer. While eating an enormous bowl of ice cream, I’d be debating having ANOTHER enormous bowl. I thought about my lack of self-control, how gross I felt, and how I wish I had the motivation to go on a diet. Then suddenly I’d be scraping the bottom, thinking, “If I’m going to eat better tomorrow, I better finish up that ice cream today.“

I didn’t enjoy it.
I would waste the entire tub of ice cream worrying about where and when I was going to get my next fix and dreading a diet I would never actually go on.

Just yesterday, I scooped myself a cone of cherry chip and it wasn’t an ideal time to enjoy it, but I didn’t want to wait. So I walked around the kitchen, texted, put things away, and set my kid up on a zoom lesson, all while licking a cone of ice cream. Why didn’t I just wait? Worst case scenario, I miss out on some half-enjoyed nutrient-poor calories, and my body thanks me.

So what’s the alternative?

Mindful Eating

Mindful Eating is focusing your thoughts on the tastes and textures of your food. It’s slowing down. It’s using your senses to fully experience your food.

In a class for people wanting to lose weight, a behavior specialist walked me through a mindfulness exercise with a Hershey’s Kiss. “Look at it. Look at the shiny wrapper. Feel the weight of it in your hand. Now slowly remove the wrapper. Smell it. Put it in your mouth, but don’t chew it. Close your eyes. Feel the shape of it in your mouth. Hold it there. Taste it as it starts to dissolve.”

This simple exercise was quite challenging. My primitive brain wanted to devour that kiss and quickly seek out another source of chocolate. But I pushed through the awkwardness and temptation, and I discovered that it’s possible to be MORE satisfied with LESS.

Finding the Balance

Realistically, we can’t consume all our calories with that much intensity. But we could take some small steps in that direction, especially with the foods we eat purely for pleasure. The next time you approach a donut or a hamburger, pause. Feast your eyes. Breathe in that intoxicating smell. Feel grateful, and take slow bites.

If you train yourself to be more sensitive to the pleasures of eating, you’ll simultaneously become more sensitive to the moment when that food is NOT as delicious because it’s not lighting up your brain anymore. You might choose to close the bag or put your plate in the fridge. Maybe the solution to binge eating is actually learning to take MORE pleasure in your food, not less.

Feature Image by StockSnap from Pixabay