Ever heard of "emotional eating"?
We all know how much nutrition influences our health, fitness, and overall appearance. Nevertheless, there are often psychological and emotionally driven behaviors that get in the way of a healthy diet. In the hustle and bustle of everyday life, the conscious experience of our senses—taste, smell, and touch—is often neglected.
Therefore, we are especially pleased that Dr. Antonie Danz, nutritionist, sought-after speaker at congresses and successful author, provides us with an exercise on food meditation (duration: approximately 10 minutes):
This short food meditation trains your mindfulness and perception, not only in the area of nutrition. Other areas of life also benefit, and you experience greater presence and intensity.
Choose a food item, such as grapes or a sweet apple, and pick it up. Examine it from all sides. What is its shape, color, size, and surface texture? Smell it. Does it smell sweet, spicy, bitter, or sour? Once you have sufficiently examined, felt, and smelled the food, wash or peel it if necessary, then put it in your mouth and chew it slowly and thoroughly. What is its consistency? Hard, soft, dry, moist? What is its taste? Sweet, sour, salty, spicy, bitter? Do you notice any changes in taste while chewing? Does it make any noises when you chew it, and if so, what are they?
How do you feel during and after eating? Comforting, joyful, relaxed, focused, unfocused, full, tired, dull? Does your stomach and lower abdomen feel cold or warm? Pay attention to your physical and emotional sensations and any thoughts and memories that come to mind. You can perform this meditation for as long and as often as you like.
Choose a different food each time. You can also do food meditations with drinks, for example, hot water compared to mineral water or different teas.
Sensitivity is usually strongest in the morning, even before you've eaten or drunk anything. However, mindful eating or drinking meditation can also be practiced at any other time of day when you can focus completely on the food, drink, and your sensations for a few minutes in a state of calm. Mindfulness can accompany you anywhere and anytime!
Dr. Antonie Danz has been working as a nutrition expert in Cologne for over 25 years, specializing in women's health, Traditional Chinese Medicine, and resilience. She combines ancient, traditional wisdom with current health science findings. She offers individual consultations and coaching in her own practice, holds seminars and lectures, is an author, a lecturer at the University of Witten/Herdecke, and a consultant for the Federal Centre for Health Education (BZgA).