What have you learned about yourself after becoming mindful of the sensations in your stomach as you ate a meal? Some people discover that their habit has been to eat upon first arising in the morning because that is what they were taught to do when they were kids. However, it is possible that the better time for you and your body to ingest food is much later on in the morning, like 11 or even 12.
Or, perhaps you always wait until 10:00 am to eat something. It is possible that the best strategy for you is to eat something immediately after popping up out of bed.
You will know the best time to eat first thing in the morning by listening carefully and connecting in with the sensations that your stomach sends out to you. Become mindful of your eating habits. It is possible that the your long established habits of eating are not in tune with the needs of your body. Some people need to graze throughout the day and the idea of having two or three full meals is simply not well-suited to the needs of their body. Every body is different.
Research clearly shows that the less that we eat, the longer we live and the happier our body actually is. There is a saying that if we stop eating when we are four-fifths full, we will maintain a state of continual balance and wellness. If we, as a habit, eat until we are full; that last fourth or fifth of food will guarantee that we are feeding our doctors and our healthcare professionals. We don’t need to eat until we are totally full, Our stomach – and the sensations therein – tell us when to stop eating. We just have to pay attention, to become mindful!
Being mindful of the sensations in the stomach, then, yields incredible insights about what our bodies need from us. Believe it our not, there are mindfulness workshops that involve the challenge of eating one single raisin. The task is to take time to connect in with the texture, the flavor, the aroma, the temperature and the color of the raisin. Many people who attend those workshops report a great surprise with the realization that they are full after eating one single raisin. Why is that the case? It’s because they have engaged the full experience of pleasure in eating rather than simply crunching down food mouthful after mouthful without being mindful of the full experience of the:
- colors
- smells
- temperature
- flavors
- textures
of the food we choose to eat and place inside our body.
A second most important reason to be mindful of the sensations in our stomach is that many people confuse anxiety and loneliness with being physically hungry. If we really connect with our stomach and the sensations that our stomach sends to us, we can disengage the feelings of anxiety from the sensations of hunger. Clearly, it’s not going to help the anxiety if we try to override that with eating when the body does not need to be fed. Similarly, it’s not going to help loneliness to over eat. The loneliness will still be present.
A resolution for both challenges is to be mindful of each and every bite that we take of the food that we choose to eat. To be mindful of the true essence of what it is that we put into our body, to acknowledge the difference between food that is live and food that is dead; to acknowledge and honor the difference between food that nourishes our body and food that damages our body. Once that food reaches our stomach, we know the difference because the sensations of our stomach will tell us what our body needs to nourish us back to health.
Many blessings and may you have a marvelous time as you continue to be mindful of the sensations in your stomach before you eat, during the course of eating and after you eat, always asking the questions –
- What’s there?
- Am I too full?
- Am I not full enough?
- Did I eat when I was hungry?
Or, did I eat for other reasons, because –
- I was anxious
- I was afraid
- I was lonely
Disengaging the motivation to eat out of fear from the motivation to eat because we are hungry will bring you a long way toward coming into full balance, health and wellness. Become mindful of the stomach and lo and behold, you will reap humongous rewards.
Robert
© Parkinsons Recovery