Life TherapyTM
Psychotherapy & Coaching + Mindfulness & Meditation

Conscious Eating: HOW you eat is as important as WHAT you eat (Tip 2 of 3)

Here’s the second tip about conscious eating.

 
When you feel like eating, there’s one question to ask yourself: “Is my mouth hungry, or is my stomach hungry?”
When your mouth is hungry that means you just want to taste something. You either see something and it looks delicious, or you’re procrastinating and you just want to put food in your mouth, or there’s some sort of oral stimulation that you want to get from eating, but it has nothing to do with your real hunger. There’s nothing wrong with that, it’s just important to understand that it’s your mouth that wants food, not your stomach.
If you’re going to eat because your mouth wants food, pay a lot of attention to tasting, enjoying, and experiencing the food. You will notice that, when you start eating food and you’re tasting it, the first bite is more intense than the next few bites. Because of that, a lot of times we start taking bigger bites to get the same satisfaction as we got from the first bite. But if you pay attention, and you notice that your taste buds are desensitizing, and you’re not getting as much satisfaction from them, don’t take bigger bites. Take that as a sign that you’re done, you got all the satisfaction you need from that moment.
On the other hand, if your stomach is hungry, then pay attention to that. In addition to enjoying the food, which is always the best part, pay attention to your stomach, and when your stomach is full, stop eating.

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