During a typical trip to Pinterest, you might see a meme telling you to “Keep calm and love your curves” countered with another one saying, “What you eat in private, you wear in public.”
How about “Real men like curves, only dogs go for bones”?
Okay, but “My body is a temple. Not a trash can.”
“Sexy comes in all sizes.”
“What if I told you, being 300 pounds doesn’t make you curvy, you’re just obese.”
“Eat for the body you want, not the body you have.”
Or my personal favorite:
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| Tumblr / Creative Commons License 3.0 |
I have found that after a national obesity epidemic coupled with tabloids filled with airbrushed models and erased flab, women across America are ganging up on each other, on men, and most importantly, on food. Yes, food has become our worst enemy—the adversary during a diet, the creator of fat, and the ultimate temptation. But I don’t think food is the problem; it’s the way we think about food. The solution to stressful or mindless eating is not dieting, but rather mindful eating, a method that focuses on training the body to choose what will satisfy and nourish it without establishing a right or wrong way of eating. Although mindful eating is more difficult to control and monitor than dieting at first, adopting it will not only provide immediate health benefits, but will also continue to benefit Americans for the rest of their lives.
What is mindfulness? The Center for Mindful Eating, a website dedicated to teaching this method and providing support for those who are interested in it, defines its principles:
· Mindfulness is deliberately paying attention, non-judgmentally, in the present moment.
· Mindfulness encompasses both internal processes and external environments.
· Mindfulness is being aware of your thoughts, emotions and physical sensations in the present moment.
· With practice, mindfulness cultivates the possibility of freeing yourself of reactive, habitual patterns of thinking, feeling and acting.
· Mindfulness promotes balance, choice, wisdom and acceptance of what is.
Learning and practicing the principles of mindful eating will put into perspective the difference between the restrictions of a diet and the freedom of feeling confident in your unique nutritional decisions. I encourage reading more from the website here and putting them to practice.
I experienced firsthand how eating can change from a stressful and addictive activity to a nourishing and peaceful one. Until a counselor pointed it out to me, I didn’t even realize that my relationship with food was so dysfunctional. When I talk about my relationship with food, I am referring to my thoughts and feelings towards the food around me and toward myself when I eat it. I became aware of the names I called myself when I overate, like “fatty” and “gross.” I realized that I was constantly aware of my stomach and how I thought everything I ate affected its size. I realized that I would turn to food in my emotions, and then feel guilty for it. By being aware of these things, I became aware of my emotional state and what my body really wanted for nourishment. These are things that a diet could not have provided me with because dieting is like giving a man a fish: if you give a man a diet, he’ll lose some weight; but if you teach a man mindfulness, he will be healthy for life.
Dr. Michelle May, physician, mindful eating expert, and recovered yo-yo dieter, wrote a book called Eat What You Love, Love What You Eat. In this book, she teaches how you can eat mindfully and, in turn, live vibrantly. Her advice comes in seven steps, all of which I’ve been able to experience through this program:
1. “Stop obsessing about food and start loving it.”
Every time I go on vacation with my family, we have one objective: find the best restaurants in the area and devour them. With both parents being great cooks, my family is especially fond of food. But I had harmful thoughts about it, so that when I binged on a great meal, I constantly thought of how it was harming me and of how I was overdoing it. This didn’t stop me from bingeing; it just attached more guilt to the experience. When I started mindful eating, my first assignment was to put the fork down in between every bite. That was it. When I started doing it, it seemed tedious, but I soon realized that before this assignment, I was wolfing down almost every meal. By doing this physical thing, I was able to really love and enjoy every morsel of my food. I actually tasted it more, and slowly brought awareness of what I was eating, and how much of it I really wanted and needed.
2. “Resolve mindless and emotional eating.”
Hi. My name is Sophie, and I’m a procrastinator. When I have something to get done, my body has a physical reaction in protest…and that reaction is walking to the pantry and distracting myself with chocolate chips, cereal, or peanut butter. After learning mindful eating, I knew I had to be mindful of this ritual and figure out why I was doing it. I wasn’t facing the problem. The same goes for emotional eating. Once I stopped and asked myself why I was munching on chocolate chips, I realized that I was distracting myself from a school paper, or I was feeling a little down on myself. Instead of utilizing food as a distractor, now I try to face my problems and get things done.
3. “Rediscover when, what, and how much to eat without restrictive rules.”
When I began learning this step, I kept a food log. I didn’t count calories or amounts; instead, I logged how I felt before and after the meal. I wrote down, on a number scale, how hungry I was before the meal and how full I was after. I also began writing down if the food was a good match for my body—if it made me feel energized, sluggish, satisfied, or unsettled. I began paying attention to how my body actually reacted towards different foods. For me, meals got smaller, but more nutritious. Without deciding, “I’m going to start eating healthy foods”, I ended up choosing more varieties of food. Usually, I prefer not to eat a lot of meat. But I discovered that as I added meat to my meals, I was more satisfied and didn’t snack as much on bread and candy. This step taught me independence and confidence when I ate my meals. I now have a good idea of what amounts of food are best for me, and the ingredients that I should be incorporating into my meals.
4. “Learn the truth about nutrition in clear and practical terms.”
I’m not a genius when it comes to nutrition. I know the basics: eat fruits, vegetables, grains, dairy, and protein; drink a lot of water; and exercise often. Yes, those are the very basics. But I’ve realized that this very basic knowledge of nutrition is not a bad start. The truth is that eating when you’re hungry, stopping when you’re full, and following a regular exercise schedule brings a person to a healthy weight and a healthy lifestyle. Learning more about nutrition is helpful and vital, but it starts with simplicity. Eating—a most basic need for human survival—is simple and instinctive. We can learn this from child rearing. In the article Parental influence on children’s food preferences and energy intake, researchers discuss ways to teach a child how to self-regulate—“to pay attention to one’s own physical and internal cues of hunger and satiety.” They conclude that when parents restrict their children’s diets too much, it can have a reverse effect and may even lead to obesity. Parents who are active during meals, but not restrictive, more often rear healthy children (Parental). Activeness during mealtime is a way to model mindfulness and awareness to children. Because this has a better effect on the health of children, we can conclude that it will have a better effect on training ourselves in nutrition.
5. “Stop using exercise as punishment for eating.”
I didn’t think that I did this, but after reading this short article by Dr. May, I realized that this is often my mindset. “If I eat X amount of food, I have to do X amount of exercise.” Have you ever done this? This turns the act of eating into something that needs to be punished, and exercise into the punishment. Exercise should be something we love—something fun! This past summer, I started running 5ks with my sister. We didn’t set any super crazy goals; we just made it fun, training on our own, and pushing each other during the races. There are other ways to make exercise a treat rather than a punishment. I also joined a yoga studio and made friends there. We motivate each other to go, and sometimes give each other rides. Competitive sports, gym memberships, zumba, workout videos—the list goes on. Of course listening to your body doesn’t just stop at eating; listening to your body and doing what it needs brings us to exercise.
6. “Experience the pleasure of eating the foods you love—without guilt or bingeing.”
I remember going to an incredible Italian restaurant near San Diego and eating the best dish of my life: cheese, carbs, and creamy vodka sauce—the whole enchilada (or ravioli, in this case). I know that before I understood my relationship with food, I would have eaten the entire plate and licked it clean. Then I would’ve hated myself, ordered dessert, and then hated myself again. No, once I understood that this food wasn’t “bad” and that I could stop eating when I was full, I enjoyed this meal completely and ate only half, taking the other half home and eating it for lunch the next day. I even had chocolate lava cake! No self-hatred. I was satisfied. Without restrictive rules like calorie counting or eliminating carbs, I discovered how much I could really enjoy a meal without the guilt AND without overeating.
7. “Develop powerful patterns of thinking to live the balanced, vibrant life you desire.”
I mentioned earlier that I used to call myself names when I was unhappy with the way I ate. Now, I’ve taught myself thoughts to counter the negative ones I get. These thoughts are never focused on what I should have done, and definitely not focused on starting over on Monday. They always bring me back to the present moment: “I may have eaten more than my body wanted, but I can stop now and eat again when I’m hungry.” This takes away the unhealthy guilt and punishment that I tend to put on myself, and I am able to help myself in the moment. This taught me the importance of being present.
Dr. May’s methods come with many success stories because mindfully eating goes beyond what dieting could ever do. It establishes a lifestyle change by developing understanding of your own body. People who discover mindful eating see patterns of restriction, punishment, and guilt in their diets and exchange it with the pleasure of eating.
Consultant Psychotherapist and author of the book, Mindfulness and Mental Health: Therapy, Theory and Science, Chris Mace acknowledges the weaknesses concerning mindfulness. He writes, “…a state of consciousness such as mindfulness is both silent and invisible when it is active, [which] is likely to complicate attempts to demonstrate independent clinical effects that can confidently be attributed to mindfulness and nothing else” (152). It is true that mindfulness is difficult to monitor and varies between people. Because of this, dieting seems to be the better life-changing, figure-trimming option. While mindfulness in eating is difficult to understand, it not only has physical benefits, but lifestyle benefits: learning mindfulness helps us to understand our relationship with food, with exercise, and with our own bodies.
Dieting has been tried. It has been tested, and the infomercials and advertisements offer inspiring success stories. I do not discount the people who have reached a goal weight or established a healthier lifestyle. They’re out there; but they are the minority. In 2007, UCLA researchers analyzed numerous studies that followed people on diets and found that for the short term, dieting may seem successful. However, in the long term, up to two-thirds of people on diets regain more weight than they initially lost within about five years (Wolpert). Because of this, dieting creates what some people call “yo-yo dieters”—people who lose weight during a diet, then gain it, and lose it again and gain it back. This can go on for a lifetime, and the effects are harmful. In this study, the researchers found that “Evidence suggests that repeatedly losing and gaining weight is linked to cardiovascular disease, stroke, diabetes and altered immunefunction” (Wopert). These findings suggest that, although dieting may seem like the easy-to-follow, step-by-step solution to a better you, it causes more problems without permanently keeping the weight off.
Dieting can also cause problems with young and physically healthy people. A well-intentioned emphasis in schools and home life on “healthy” eating can lead to a very dangerous mindset. In a study recorded in the Journal of School Health, researchers found that “healthy weight management behaviors, such as dietary and [physical activity] practices, are correlated with [disordered weight control behaviors] among boys and girls” (Wang). These are not extreme diets influencing children to develop eating disorders. They are, in fact, “healthy weight management behaviors.” Like food, these behaviors aren’t bad in and of themselves, but an unhealthy mindset leads to unhealthy thoughts and unhealthy actions. This unhealthy mindset about food, which tells the dieter that he or she must follow a certain health plan, can cause thoughts that lead to eating disorders.
Let’s take this on a more global scale. While the American people are known for the quantity of their food, the French people are known for the quality. Julia Child, “The French Chef,” showcased that very French obsession with cooking and eating when she introduced and popularized French cuisine in the States. The artical, "Broad Themes of Difference between French and Americans in Attitudes to Food and Other Life Domains: Personal Versus Communal Values, Quantity Versus Quality, and Comforts Versus Joys", compares the eating habits of the two cultures and finds that, indeed, obesity and heart disease are lower in France than in the United States. Yet, the French “spend more time eating daily than any other country” (Rozin). In other words, they spend more time with each meal. It is all about the way the French think about food. The researchers found that compared to Americans, the French may eat less food, but they enjoy it more. The article states, “These findings indicate that there are certain cultural values and practices that allow the French to separate food and the pleasure of eating from the drive to be slim” (Rozin). As a country, the French people do not limit what they eat according to how much weight they want to lose; instead, they treat themselves with nourishing food, enjoy it, and avoid the guilt and stress that comes with both overeating and dieting. In the chart below, twenty high-income countries were ranked according to obesity. While the United States was ranked number one, France is number twenty.
Because this method has changed the way I think about food, and because it has worked in others’ lives, and in an entire culture, I believe that it can help our country’s food dilemma. Evaluating and improving my relationship with food by understanding and listening to my body changed my life in a small but significant way. Yes, I still overeat every once in a while. But when I do, I don’t fail a diet or punish myself with more “bad food.” Instead, I come back to the basics: my body. If we understand our own bodies, they will be a rock to fall back on. Society can push and pull, but your body is a perfect machine. I know that this is not an easy place to arrive at, and that’s why we may rely on diets and labels. But I believe that if we, as citizens of the United States, can stop focusing on “good food” and “bad food,” body image, and dieting, and start being mindful of how we feel and what we need, we will be able to trust our bodies, which will naturally lead us to a friendly relationship with food. Let’s be mindful eaters and love our nourishing food and our miraculous bodies.
“Countries Compared by Health: Obesity. International Statistics at Nationmaster.com”, OECD Health Data 2005. Web. 7 Dec. 2014.
“Eat Mindfully, Live Vibrantly.” Am I Hungry? 2014. Web. 25 Nov. 2014. <http://amihungry.com/marketplace/eat-what-you-love-love-what-you-eat/>.
Mace, Chris. "Mindfulness in Psychotherapy: An Introduction." Advances in Psychiatric Treatment 13.2 (2007): 147-54. Web. 6 Nov. 2014.
May, Michelle. “Don’t exercise to punish yourself for eating.” Am I Hungry? Web. 7 Dec. 2014.
Rozin, P., A. K. Remick, and C. Fischler. "Broad Themes of Difference between French and Americans in Attitudes to Food and Other Life Domains: Personal Versus Communal Values, Quantity Versus Quality, and Comforts Versus Joys." Frontiers in Psychology 2 (2011): 177. Web. 6 Nov. 2014.
“Parental influence on children’s food preferences and energy intake.” Food Today. 20 Sept. 2012. Web. 7 Dec. 2014.
The Center for Mindful Eating. Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License. Web. 6 Nov. 2014. <http://www.thecenterformindfuleating.org/>.
Wang, Monica L., et al. "Dietary and Physical Activity Factors Related to Eating Disorder Symptoms among Middle School Youth." Journal of School Health 83.1 (2013): 14-20. Web. 6 Nov. 2014.
Wolpert, Stuart. “Dieting Does Not Work, UCLA Researchers Report.” UCLA Newsroom: Science and Technology (2007). Web. 6 Nov. 2014. <http://newsroom.ucla.edu/releases/Dieting-Does-Not-Work-UCLA-Researchers-7832>.
What is mindfulness? The Center for Mindful Eating, a website dedicated to teaching this method and providing support for those who are interested in it, defines its principles:
· Mindfulness is deliberately paying attention, non-judgmentally, in the present moment.
· Mindfulness encompasses both internal processes and external environments.
· Mindfulness is being aware of your thoughts, emotions and physical sensations in the present moment.
· With practice, mindfulness cultivates the possibility of freeing yourself of reactive, habitual patterns of thinking, feeling and acting.
· Mindfulness promotes balance, choice, wisdom and acceptance of what is.
Learning and practicing the principles of mindful eating will put into perspective the difference between the restrictions of a diet and the freedom of feeling confident in your unique nutritional decisions. I encourage reading more from the website here and putting them to practice.
I experienced firsthand how eating can change from a stressful and addictive activity to a nourishing and peaceful one. Until a counselor pointed it out to me, I didn’t even realize that my relationship with food was so dysfunctional. When I talk about my relationship with food, I am referring to my thoughts and feelings towards the food around me and toward myself when I eat it. I became aware of the names I called myself when I overate, like “fatty” and “gross.” I realized that I was constantly aware of my stomach and how I thought everything I ate affected its size. I realized that I would turn to food in my emotions, and then feel guilty for it. By being aware of these things, I became aware of my emotional state and what my body really wanted for nourishment. These are things that a diet could not have provided me with because dieting is like giving a man a fish: if you give a man a diet, he’ll lose some weight; but if you teach a man mindfulness, he will be healthy for life.
Dr. Michelle May, physician, mindful eating expert, and recovered yo-yo dieter, wrote a book called Eat What You Love, Love What You Eat. In this book, she teaches how you can eat mindfully and, in turn, live vibrantly. Her advice comes in seven steps, all of which I’ve been able to experience through this program:
1. “Stop obsessing about food and start loving it.”
Every time I go on vacation with my family, we have one objective: find the best restaurants in the area and devour them. With both parents being great cooks, my family is especially fond of food. But I had harmful thoughts about it, so that when I binged on a great meal, I constantly thought of how it was harming me and of how I was overdoing it. This didn’t stop me from bingeing; it just attached more guilt to the experience. When I started mindful eating, my first assignment was to put the fork down in between every bite. That was it. When I started doing it, it seemed tedious, but I soon realized that before this assignment, I was wolfing down almost every meal. By doing this physical thing, I was able to really love and enjoy every morsel of my food. I actually tasted it more, and slowly brought awareness of what I was eating, and how much of it I really wanted and needed.
2. “Resolve mindless and emotional eating.”
Hi. My name is Sophie, and I’m a procrastinator. When I have something to get done, my body has a physical reaction in protest…and that reaction is walking to the pantry and distracting myself with chocolate chips, cereal, or peanut butter. After learning mindful eating, I knew I had to be mindful of this ritual and figure out why I was doing it. I wasn’t facing the problem. The same goes for emotional eating. Once I stopped and asked myself why I was munching on chocolate chips, I realized that I was distracting myself from a school paper, or I was feeling a little down on myself. Instead of utilizing food as a distractor, now I try to face my problems and get things done.
3. “Rediscover when, what, and how much to eat without restrictive rules.”
When I began learning this step, I kept a food log. I didn’t count calories or amounts; instead, I logged how I felt before and after the meal. I wrote down, on a number scale, how hungry I was before the meal and how full I was after. I also began writing down if the food was a good match for my body—if it made me feel energized, sluggish, satisfied, or unsettled. I began paying attention to how my body actually reacted towards different foods. For me, meals got smaller, but more nutritious. Without deciding, “I’m going to start eating healthy foods”, I ended up choosing more varieties of food. Usually, I prefer not to eat a lot of meat. But I discovered that as I added meat to my meals, I was more satisfied and didn’t snack as much on bread and candy. This step taught me independence and confidence when I ate my meals. I now have a good idea of what amounts of food are best for me, and the ingredients that I should be incorporating into my meals.
4. “Learn the truth about nutrition in clear and practical terms.”
I’m not a genius when it comes to nutrition. I know the basics: eat fruits, vegetables, grains, dairy, and protein; drink a lot of water; and exercise often. Yes, those are the very basics. But I’ve realized that this very basic knowledge of nutrition is not a bad start. The truth is that eating when you’re hungry, stopping when you’re full, and following a regular exercise schedule brings a person to a healthy weight and a healthy lifestyle. Learning more about nutrition is helpful and vital, but it starts with simplicity. Eating—a most basic need for human survival—is simple and instinctive. We can learn this from child rearing. In the article Parental influence on children’s food preferences and energy intake, researchers discuss ways to teach a child how to self-regulate—“to pay attention to one’s own physical and internal cues of hunger and satiety.” They conclude that when parents restrict their children’s diets too much, it can have a reverse effect and may even lead to obesity. Parents who are active during meals, but not restrictive, more often rear healthy children (Parental). Activeness during mealtime is a way to model mindfulness and awareness to children. Because this has a better effect on the health of children, we can conclude that it will have a better effect on training ourselves in nutrition.
5. “Stop using exercise as punishment for eating.”
I didn’t think that I did this, but after reading this short article by Dr. May, I realized that this is often my mindset. “If I eat X amount of food, I have to do X amount of exercise.” Have you ever done this? This turns the act of eating into something that needs to be punished, and exercise into the punishment. Exercise should be something we love—something fun! This past summer, I started running 5ks with my sister. We didn’t set any super crazy goals; we just made it fun, training on our own, and pushing each other during the races. There are other ways to make exercise a treat rather than a punishment. I also joined a yoga studio and made friends there. We motivate each other to go, and sometimes give each other rides. Competitive sports, gym memberships, zumba, workout videos—the list goes on. Of course listening to your body doesn’t just stop at eating; listening to your body and doing what it needs brings us to exercise.
6. “Experience the pleasure of eating the foods you love—without guilt or bingeing.”
I remember going to an incredible Italian restaurant near San Diego and eating the best dish of my life: cheese, carbs, and creamy vodka sauce—the whole enchilada (or ravioli, in this case). I know that before I understood my relationship with food, I would have eaten the entire plate and licked it clean. Then I would’ve hated myself, ordered dessert, and then hated myself again. No, once I understood that this food wasn’t “bad” and that I could stop eating when I was full, I enjoyed this meal completely and ate only half, taking the other half home and eating it for lunch the next day. I even had chocolate lava cake! No self-hatred. I was satisfied. Without restrictive rules like calorie counting or eliminating carbs, I discovered how much I could really enjoy a meal without the guilt AND without overeating.
7. “Develop powerful patterns of thinking to live the balanced, vibrant life you desire.”
I mentioned earlier that I used to call myself names when I was unhappy with the way I ate. Now, I’ve taught myself thoughts to counter the negative ones I get. These thoughts are never focused on what I should have done, and definitely not focused on starting over on Monday. They always bring me back to the present moment: “I may have eaten more than my body wanted, but I can stop now and eat again when I’m hungry.” This takes away the unhealthy guilt and punishment that I tend to put on myself, and I am able to help myself in the moment. This taught me the importance of being present.
Dr. May’s methods come with many success stories because mindfully eating goes beyond what dieting could ever do. It establishes a lifestyle change by developing understanding of your own body. People who discover mindful eating see patterns of restriction, punishment, and guilt in their diets and exchange it with the pleasure of eating.
Consultant Psychotherapist and author of the book, Mindfulness and Mental Health: Therapy, Theory and Science, Chris Mace acknowledges the weaknesses concerning mindfulness. He writes, “…a state of consciousness such as mindfulness is both silent and invisible when it is active, [which] is likely to complicate attempts to demonstrate independent clinical effects that can confidently be attributed to mindfulness and nothing else” (152). It is true that mindfulness is difficult to monitor and varies between people. Because of this, dieting seems to be the better life-changing, figure-trimming option. While mindfulness in eating is difficult to understand, it not only has physical benefits, but lifestyle benefits: learning mindfulness helps us to understand our relationship with food, with exercise, and with our own bodies.
Dieting has been tried. It has been tested, and the infomercials and advertisements offer inspiring success stories. I do not discount the people who have reached a goal weight or established a healthier lifestyle. They’re out there; but they are the minority. In 2007, UCLA researchers analyzed numerous studies that followed people on diets and found that for the short term, dieting may seem successful. However, in the long term, up to two-thirds of people on diets regain more weight than they initially lost within about five years (Wolpert). Because of this, dieting creates what some people call “yo-yo dieters”—people who lose weight during a diet, then gain it, and lose it again and gain it back. This can go on for a lifetime, and the effects are harmful. In this study, the researchers found that “Evidence suggests that repeatedly losing and gaining weight is linked to cardiovascular disease, stroke, diabetes and altered immunefunction” (Wopert). These findings suggest that, although dieting may seem like the easy-to-follow, step-by-step solution to a better you, it causes more problems without permanently keeping the weight off.
Dieting can also cause problems with young and physically healthy people. A well-intentioned emphasis in schools and home life on “healthy” eating can lead to a very dangerous mindset. In a study recorded in the Journal of School Health, researchers found that “healthy weight management behaviors, such as dietary and [physical activity] practices, are correlated with [disordered weight control behaviors] among boys and girls” (Wang). These are not extreme diets influencing children to develop eating disorders. They are, in fact, “healthy weight management behaviors.” Like food, these behaviors aren’t bad in and of themselves, but an unhealthy mindset leads to unhealthy thoughts and unhealthy actions. This unhealthy mindset about food, which tells the dieter that he or she must follow a certain health plan, can cause thoughts that lead to eating disorders.
Let’s take this on a more global scale. While the American people are known for the quantity of their food, the French people are known for the quality. Julia Child, “The French Chef,” showcased that very French obsession with cooking and eating when she introduced and popularized French cuisine in the States. The artical, "Broad Themes of Difference between French and Americans in Attitudes to Food and Other Life Domains: Personal Versus Communal Values, Quantity Versus Quality, and Comforts Versus Joys", compares the eating habits of the two cultures and finds that, indeed, obesity and heart disease are lower in France than in the United States. Yet, the French “spend more time eating daily than any other country” (Rozin). In other words, they spend more time with each meal. It is all about the way the French think about food. The researchers found that compared to Americans, the French may eat less food, but they enjoy it more. The article states, “These findings indicate that there are certain cultural values and practices that allow the French to separate food and the pleasure of eating from the drive to be slim” (Rozin). As a country, the French people do not limit what they eat according to how much weight they want to lose; instead, they treat themselves with nourishing food, enjoy it, and avoid the guilt and stress that comes with both overeating and dieting. In the chart below, twenty high-income countries were ranked according to obesity. While the United States was ranked number one, France is number twenty.
Because this method has changed the way I think about food, and because it has worked in others’ lives, and in an entire culture, I believe that it can help our country’s food dilemma. Evaluating and improving my relationship with food by understanding and listening to my body changed my life in a small but significant way. Yes, I still overeat every once in a while. But when I do, I don’t fail a diet or punish myself with more “bad food.” Instead, I come back to the basics: my body. If we understand our own bodies, they will be a rock to fall back on. Society can push and pull, but your body is a perfect machine. I know that this is not an easy place to arrive at, and that’s why we may rely on diets and labels. But I believe that if we, as citizens of the United States, can stop focusing on “good food” and “bad food,” body image, and dieting, and start being mindful of how we feel and what we need, we will be able to trust our bodies, which will naturally lead us to a friendly relationship with food. Let’s be mindful eaters and love our nourishing food and our miraculous bodies.
Works Cited
“Countries Compared by Health: Obesity. International Statistics at Nationmaster.com”, OECD Health Data 2005. Web. 7 Dec. 2014.
“Eat Mindfully, Live Vibrantly.” Am I Hungry? 2014. Web. 25 Nov. 2014. <http://amihungry.com/marketplace/eat-what-you-love-love-what-you-eat/>.
Mace, Chris. "Mindfulness in Psychotherapy: An Introduction." Advances in Psychiatric Treatment 13.2 (2007): 147-54. Web. 6 Nov. 2014.
May, Michelle. “Don’t exercise to punish yourself for eating.” Am I Hungry? Web. 7 Dec. 2014.
Rozin, P., A. K. Remick, and C. Fischler. "Broad Themes of Difference between French and Americans in Attitudes to Food and Other Life Domains: Personal Versus Communal Values, Quantity Versus Quality, and Comforts Versus Joys." Frontiers in Psychology 2 (2011): 177. Web. 6 Nov. 2014.
“Parental influence on children’s food preferences and energy intake.” Food Today. 20 Sept. 2012. Web. 7 Dec. 2014.
The Center for Mindful Eating. Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License. Web. 6 Nov. 2014. <http://www.thecenterformindfuleating.org/>.
Wang, Monica L., et al. "Dietary and Physical Activity Factors Related to Eating Disorder Symptoms among Middle School Youth." Journal of School Health 83.1 (2013): 14-20. Web. 6 Nov. 2014.
Wolpert, Stuart. “Dieting Does Not Work, UCLA Researchers Report.” UCLA Newsroom: Science and Technology (2007). Web. 6 Nov. 2014. <http://newsroom.ucla.edu/releases/Dieting-Does-Not-Work-UCLA-Researchers-7832>.
This is such a good post Sophie. It has inspired me all over again! Fifteen years ago I went on my first diet with the goal of losing 5 pounds, which actually led to me gaining 25 pounds over the years. I will never diet again! Mindful eating is freeing. Thanks for all of the reminders.
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