What is always speaking silently is the body.
—Norman Brown
Because mindful eating doesn’t put rules on what you eat, many people evade personal responsibility for their choices and use it as an excuse to eat junk (no nutritional value) type foods all the time, and try to be mindful while eating them. Then, they will say that mindful eating caused them to gain a lot of weight.
This is an incorrect understanding of mindful or intuitive eating. If you’re truly listening to your body, and learn the difference between a mental craving and true physical hunger, your body, through how it feels, will tell you it prefers healthier foods. It runs better on premium grade fuel. It will repay you in the form of more energy, better moods, clearer thinking, less cravings, better sleep, and less anxiety.
Action Step
Next time you eat, take time to notice how certain foods make you feel after you eat them. Are you sluggish or energized? How do they make you feel a few hours later or even the next day? Keep a food journal and begin to note what foods make you feel vibrant and energetic and which foods are weighing you down.
The same goes for eating when hungry and stopping when satisfied. It takes a while to relearn your body’s signals but the payoff is that you quickly learn it takes far less food to feel satisfied than you thought. As the saying goes, “Our eyes are often bigger than our stomachs.”
The greatest tool we possess for weight loss is our own body’s instinctual wisdom. Constant dieting robs you of your ability to trust your body’s signals of hunger and fullness. Dieting tells you what to eat. If you listen to your body, it will tell you what foods makes you feel vibrantly alive and what robs you of vitality. Are you listening?
Are you ready to learn to eat in a way that honors your body’s wisdom?
Contact me for a free consultation.
