Practice conscious eating

I want to make conscious choices about what I eat and when. No “zoning out” and eating on auto-pilot. I want to enjoy my food and be in the moment so I eat less of it and feel more fulfilled. I’ll eat when I’m hungry but won’t wait until I’m starving—It’s hard to make good choices when your body says “EAT NOW!”

It’s amazing to me, how the second anxiety hits, I want to stuff my face. It’s amazing to me how I can feel myself reach the point of satisfaction and just override that intelligence with my desire to eat. What is that? What is it doing for me. I don’t want to beat myself up, because I know I am working through it, but there has got to be something clearer.
I think I need a goal. Where am I trying to go with this? Do I want to loose weight? Yes, but I stopped weighing myself. It’s impossible. I think I want to have a six pack, or a very flat stomach, maybe that will indicate I am conciously eating and not eating when I am not hungry.
My god. It’s so abstract. This is a whole lifetime worth of work. Why is food so appealing. Why can’t I have no interest in food?
It’s got to be the tv that kills me. I really would like to train myself to eat without ANY distractions, just me and my food. The problem is I say this and then I dont’ do it. I get very resistive because it is so relaxing to sit in front of the tv and eat.
Oh Lordy. Keep trying. Every, every day.

I find I have a lot of resistance to eating without distraction. I don’t know. It annoys me to sit still and focus on what i am chewing, what I am tasting. I get bored and I feel like I’m wasting time. Haha. Ironic. That is because it is meditation. It takes just as much concentration and effort to sit still, chew and swallow for 20min as it does to sit on a cushion for 20 min. Okay. Maybe that will change things. I want to meditate more AND I feel like I have too much to do all the time. So eating and meditaing. Eating and Meditating. Huge goal. Try and try again.

Why not? Always looking for new ways to grow, to change. Sweet. I was hoping I would log on and it would tell me 43 ways to become a concious eater. Haha. But I am already on my way. I have made progress. Now I’m reaching out for support. So goal for tomorrow: record what I eat. Make a chart. Write what, when, how much, what it felt like. Notice. Breath. And…NO DISTRACTIONS. This one hurts. Pretty pleasent to eat and view at the same time. I can do this though. I want to do this. This is liberation.

And, you know, chew things.

After all most people claim its the little everyday thing and not the occasional big meal that matters most in terms of weight loss and not gaining weight.

Practice Mindful Consumption includes this. I saw it, liked it, added it, I support Flash on it, but I already have the goal.

I already know that eating while doing something else means I’m less likely to enjoy my food or even notice what I’m eating and how my body feels afterwards—there’s too much going on. I’d like to cut back on eating in the car, at my desk at home or work, in front of the TV… oh, eating while reading is going to be a tough one. Sometimes I really love to sit down to a good meal and a good book. Maybe I’ll just pick one of those easier ones and start with that.

I have moments of clarity, but I have difficulty being consistent. Today I splurged and bought a bag of Taro chips, the delicious kind that only have good fat in them. Then I ate the whole bag, minus a few I shared with coworkers. I think I enjoyed them… or maybe I was gobbling. I’m not sure I know what conscious eating feels like.

I ate sweets and forgot to enjoy them! My only excuse is that it was sweets masquerading as food: a Cliff Bar. I was running errands on the way home from work, and I ate it in the car totally without even noticing I had eaten anything.

I was fooled into thinking it was food, so I didn’t have to enjoy it—my goal is just to enjoy every bite of the sweets I consume, right?

Wait, maybe I should consider enjoying all the food I eat, not just the sweets!

Also I am noticing a pattern in my days: the 5pm trouble zone. Maybe I should be eating bigger lunches, or healthy afternoon snacks.