Mindful Eating; Love Your Self, Love Your Food

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Let’s approach eating differently this year and lead as a positive example for our children. Stop apologizing, stop making promises to yourselves that after this meal you will start your diet. Stop setting the intention to deprive yourself. Instead approach food with an open and mindful state. Do not feel bad for your own choices, do not let others make you feel bad. Instead, embrace your life. Laugh, smile, love, and approach how you nourish yourself in a loving way.

Mindful Eating; Love Your Self, Love Your Food

Life is about experiences, happiness, personal growth, and love 

Let’s live our lives, lose the negative relationship with food, and become mindful of how we are treating ourselves. Let’s be happy and celebrate. If you feel the need to indulge, indulge. Yes, attempt to make your drinks and snacks more health-conscious, but never get into a spiral of deprivation or unhappiness.

Savor each bite

Love food and the beauty of it. When someone has taken the time to prepare a lovely dish, savor every part of it. The beauty of the appearance of the food, the variety of colors, and the smells that make us salivate are all part of the experience. Not only are you showing more appreciation to the chef, but you are actually setting your body up for a successful digestion of the meal. 

Mindful Eating; Love Your Self, Love Your Food

Enjoy the site and smell of your food 

This allows your brain to go into a parasympathetic state, which will make the digestive process work as designed. By smelling your food, your salivary glands start to activate and the enzyme salivary amylase starts to produce. Salivary amylase breaks down carbohydrates. It is incredible how the digestive system is already working and you haven’t even taken a bite yet!

When you do take a bite of that delicious food, chew, and really chew. Chew until the food becomes liquid, and make sure that it is liquid before you swallow your food. By taking the time to really chew, you will taste so many delicious flavors and you will love the food that you are eating even more. Eating will become an experience, instead of something that has to be done. Eating becomes about quality, not quantity. 

It all starts in the mouth

Mindful Eating; Love Your Self, Love Your FoodThink of your mouth as the gateway to the digestive system, so make sure that the gateway is open by liquid, not by large chunks of food. When you swallow, bolus (the chewed food/vitamin/drink) enters the esophagus and heads on it’s passage to the stomach. Our stomachs then begin their process of breaking down food; the stomach churns the bolus and mixes with our gastric juices, and then the food breaks down even more and forms a paste called chyme. The chyme is then released into the small intestines where the intestinal walls are secreting secretin and cholecystokinin (two essential hormones) which stimulate the pancreas to release pancreatic juices. Cholecystokinin stimulates the gallbladder to release bile, which helps complete the digestion of carbohydrates, proteins, and fats. The leftover chyme from the small intestines gets passed to the large intestines, where any lost nutrients are captured and then anything the body does not need is then deposited through feces.

This is a much abbreviated version of how the digestive system works, and there is science behind the reasoning of mindful eating. When we slow down and thoroughly smell and chew our food, the the digestive system has to work less. When our food is eaten too quickly we end up with undigested clumps of food rotting in the intestines or in the ileocecal valve, it can lead to stomach problems, yeast build up, and other diseases. 

One of the best things you can do this year is to really love and enjoy the site, smell, and taste of your food. Really love each bite. Most importantly, really love yourself!