The Stress of Mindful Eating

I do a lot of my eating alone, and I am well aware of the benefits of mindful eating. It sounds like a great concept. It sounds like something we all should practice. It sounds Zen and cool, and purposeful and  well, mindful. I remember a weekend when I was in high school going to visit my boyfriend and his family, and being shocked that the TV was not only on all the time, but that they all sat at the table watching it during mealtimes. There was little to no conversation, we all just sat there eating. The food wasn’t really very good, though I did enjoy the Quaker Oats Granola they had (we didn’t have that at my house). This family was brilliant, both parents had PhDs, and his sister was working on hers. You’d think they might have some interesting things to say to each other, but this was a household of serious introverts, and I guess the TV removed the pressure for conversation. This was certainly not mindful eating!

In my twenties I started going to Kripalu Center in Stockbridge, MA, and there meals were silent. At first I was uncomfortable, but I learned to love it. I was able to relax, without the pressure of making small talk with people I didn’t know, and could just sit and eat and enjoy my food. I was silent, I had no interruptions, but I was not really practicing mindful eating, just quiet eating— not the same thing. My friend Sarah Ruddel Beach writes about teaching ourselves and our children about living a mindful life, and her post about mindful eating certainly points to the many ways we allow choices of what to eat set us up for a “gobble and go” way of eating.

Mindfulness in anything takes practice, and attention, and a willingness and ability to be in, and stay in the moment. It is tough for many people, and it stresses me out! Mindful eating is the exact opposite of how most of us are taught to eat. I was raised in a house where we sat down together, in the dining room, every night to a full on dinner, salad, main dish, a starch and a vegetable. Shoes (for some reason) were obligatory, unless we were eating on the porch, then things were a bit more relaxed. Conversation, not mindfulness was what we practiced. On good nights we’d have spirited debate or discussions about politics and  current events, on bad nights my parents glared at each other from opposite ends of the long table as my mother drank glass after glass of Almaden wine from a jug, and my father chewed his tongue and got meaner and meaner. Neither scenario particularly mindful, more like mind f&*ks but we all have our stories…

Now I spend a lot of time alone. Even when my daughter is with me, she has school, and plans and though we do eat together a few times a week we’re often rushed, she has come home late from a school activity, and still has mountains of homework to complete. I think this might be a good time for me to practice mindful eating, during those quiet meals alone, but it’s just so hard. Geneen Roth recommends eating without any distractions, including music. I can manage this at breakfast and lunch. I find I eat more slowly, and do manage to stay present for some of the time. I understand that this will get easier, and I will be able to stay present for longer time. I also understand that this requires patience and time, that I am learning something new, and that requires practice, hence the practice of mindful _____ (you fill in the blank).

Mindful eating is a real thing. There are numerous websites and books devoted to it. Mindfulness is about stopping everything else you are doing, and doing and giving full attention to the thing you are doing in the present moment. As for mindful eating, it starts before you even stuff that handful of Cheetos in your mouth. It starts by assessing what you’re feeling, in your body, and more specifically, in your belly. Are you hungry?  We’re all accustomed to eating at certain times, and so we anticipate hunger, and rarely wait until we actually feel it before we stave it off. Or, we run ourselves far beyond hunger, ignoring the signals from our bodies telling us it is time to stop, to take a break, and to feed ourselves. All of us hit different points on this spectrum depending on how we manage our lives. For me, working from home it’s been a long time since I hit the wall of waiting way to long between breakfast and lunch, but it was something I did frequently when I worked at Whole Foods Market when I would often find myself making poor choices when at 3:00 I finally had to stop and eat because my hunger had just become too insistent, and I was getting light-headed.

When I fall down, or apart, or out of mindfulness, is at dinner. I have not once been able to bring myself to eat dinner in quiet. Eating dinner alone seems like the loneliest thing you can do. And I haven’t once been able to bring myself to do it without at least the company of music. I have no rational explanation for why a quiet lunch is fine, but a quiet dinner is terrifying. it may be the dark, it may be all those years of social (albeit hostile) family dinners, it may be that by the end of the day I want some company, even if it’s Stephen Colbert or Jon Stewart. Contemplating that food and all that silence just stresses me out! I don’t believe it is in my DNA to eat dinner alone! I haven’t even tried; just the thought of it makes me anxious! 

If it didn’t involve cleaning my house more often I’d be happy to have company over for dinner every night. I understand that my anxiety won’t really hurt me, and taking it on will probably be helpful, and yet, I continue to put off that solitary, quiet, mindful dinner.