Eating Mindfully - 4 Rules For Conscious Eating

I have been using these "rules" for conscious eating from Paul McKenna's "I Can Make You Thin" for years and I have found that they have really changed my relationship with food for the better! Bonnie

 1. When you are hungry, EAT

Why would anyone eat if they weren't hungry?Because it is simply a habit. Many people are so desensitized to their body's messages that they've forgotten how to pay attention. Real physical hunger is different than emotional hunger (which we will deal with later). Physical hunger comes on gradually. Emotional hunger comes on suddenly, when you feel bored or upset. If you starve yourself you will end up binging. That's how your body gets thrown off balance. In future when you feel physical hunger, eat! When you starve yourself your body goes into 'survival mode' it slows your metabolism and your body starts to store fat. When you eat when you are truly hungry you tell your body there will always be enough food and it speeds up your metabolism.

The Hunger Scale

Take a few moments right now to look at the hunger scale and tune in to your body. How hungry are you right now? Each person is different, but as a general rule, you want to eat whenever you notice yourself between 3 and 4 on the scale – that is when you are fairly hungry, but before you become ravenous. If you wait until you get down to one or two your body will go into starvation mode and you'll wind up probably eating more than your body needs and storing the excess as fat. Ideally, you'll want to stop eating at right around 6 or 7 on the hunger scale – when you are feeling pleasantly satisfied or full but not yet stuffed or bloated. From now on never go into the RED areas!

Of course, if you have been a serial dieter you may be so used to overriding your body's signals that you may at times 'forget to eat' until you're ravenous or keep eating until you're full or even stuffed before noticing it's time to stop.

If you think this might be you, practice tuning in to your body once an hour until you begin to notice differences between different points on the scale. The more you practice tuning in to your own hunger, the sooner you'll be able to recognize your body's subtle signals long before your stomach growls and your brain starts to get fuzzy.
 
2. Eat what you want, not what you think you should.

As soon as you tell yourself to not eat certain foods, (usually because you've been told they're bad for you), you upset the natural balance of your relationship to them. Rather than wanting it less, that 'forbidden food' instantly becomes more attractive to you. The inner battle between your positive intention and your resistance to being controlled (even by yourself) can be exhausting. As you begin to make peace with food and learn to listen to the wisdom of your body, you experience freedom from the tension and guilt that comes from NOT following your intuition.Also, as you stop resisting and start to follow your natural intuitions about what to eat when, you may notice your tastes changing. You may even find yourself naturally attracted to the very foods you're 'supposed' to be eating now.



The problem is that even though they feel temporarily high from cramming in lots of food, they feel fat and guilty afterwards. In fact, they feel so bad that they repeat the whole ritual of unconsciously stuffing themselves again in order to anaesthetize the bad feelings they just created!
Here is perhaps the single most important key to success:
You can eat whatever you want, whenever you want, so long as you fully enjoy every single mouthful.
I cannot emphasize this enough. Put the knife and fork down whilst you are chewing your food and really enjoy it - savor the taste, and enjoy the wonderful textures and sensations as you thoroughly chew each mouthful of food at least 20 times!
If all you did for the next two weeks was to slow your eating speed down to about a quarter of what it used to be and chew each mouthful thoroughly, you will find it easy to leave food on your plate.

 4. When you think you are full, STOP eating

The natural design of the human body is to eat when we're hungry and stop when we're satisfied, but many of us are conditioned to eat until we think we're full - or even worse, until whatever food we put on our plate is gone. When you've eaten enough, your stomach sends a signal – a sensation that says "I'm satisfied – that's enough." Most people experience this gentle, clear, satisfied sensation in their solar plexus (the area below your rib cage but above your stomach).Of course, if you miss this warm feeling of satisfaction when it first occurs, you'll notice that each subsequent bite of food becomes a little less enjoyable than the one before. The more you pay attention to it, the more obvious it becomes. If you are not sure whether you are full or not, just guess. You will soon find it becomes easier to tell.
 Can it really be this simple?

Yes! Let's review the four elements:

1. Eat whenever you are hungry
2. Eat only what you want, never what you think you 'should'
3. Eat consciously and enjoy every mouthful
4. Stop when you even think your body is full 

3. Eat CONSCIOUSLY and enjoy every mouthfulPeople that are overweight often shovel food in to their mouths as quickly as possible in order to get high from the happy chemicals we release in our brains when we eat. Unfortunately, because they are eating unconsciously, they never notice the signal from their stomach that lets them know that they are full. So they keep on stuffing their faces, expanding their stomachs and putting on weight.