Mindful Eating

This week’s goal was mindfulness eating. Total fail!

The plan. Eat mindfully. Pay attention to each bite. Savor my meals. Actually taste my food. Simple.

Not for me.

My Bad Habits

I shovel food like I am going for a world record. I am frequently putting a bite of food in my mouth before I have finished chewing the one before it. Which could be a discussion for the psychiatrist’s couch. I could blame my parents if I tried hard enough.

I simply don’t have sensitive taste buds. I know people who can parse out the individual flavors in a complex soup. When I eat food these folks have prepared for me, I gobble the first two bites at usual. Then it hits me and I stop. “Wow, this is really good!” It is like coming up for air and realizing, “Hey I like breathing.” I try to slow down my eating for these people in deference to their effort to feed me well. Still, it is a struggle. Sigh. I am such a work in progress

I like to read when I eat. And there is always something to read. Even if my phone is across the room, and the books are tucked safely away on the shelf, there will be words somewhere on the table – the back of the battery package for instance. Even though it is mostly a list of warnings not to do stupid things like eat the batteries.Ah-ha – maybe that is why I need to be mindful, so I don’t inadvertently eat batteries or other non-edibles.

Sandy is with me on this