Week 3

by Susan on May 19, 2010

We have gotten a little behind here. The site got hacked, and Challenge 21 completely disappeared! Everything has now been taken care of including passwords that are now about 300 characters long. Ok..not 300 but much more secure. We got hit by a bot, so this wasn’t a personal attack, none the less, it created an entire day’s worth of work for the tech department and a lot of headaches around here.

Over the weekend, I picked up a book called, “Women, Food and God”. It is an amazing book that I would recommend to anyone that is “mindlessly” eating. We have spent two weeks working on identifying when we are mindlessly eating, trying to figure out what is triggering it and then working to connect with our food. “Women, Food and God” looks into what motivates the mindless eating in the first place. And without that piece, I don’t believe that we can truly overcome it.

I actually spent the weekend going back into my life, my childhood, adolescence and young adulthood. There is some stuff in there that isn’t pretty. I learned to use food to calm myself, and also as a reward. It became my friend, one of the few things I could control. I stopped being present with food at that point and brought that forward into my adulthood. Geneen Roth talks about compulsive eating (mindless eating) as being a way of leaving when life gets hard.

We tend to carry the messages that we got while growing up and applying them to ourselves as adults. “Staying (being present) requires being curious about who you actually are when you don’ t take yourself to be a collection of memories”. I have been spending some time learning which of those memories (most) don’t apply anymore. It has been very enlightening.

For Today: When you find yourself falling into mindless eating, stop and try to see what you are really feeling emotionally. Can you identify the emotion that is driving it?

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Mindful Eating-Week 2

by Susan on May 14, 2010

We have been experimenting with becoming aware of what is driving our hunger. So many times, we reach for food to try to quiet that hunger without even really realizing where it is coming from. Our eyes are often the biggest culprit for driving us towards food when we are not hungry. But what about smell? Have there been times when just the smell of food starts you salivating? Or should the question be, when doesn’t the smell of food put you in the mood to eat?

If you are trying to establish healthy eating patterns, just the smell of food, especially if it is associated with your comfort food can make you weak at the knees. Your will power goes right out the window and you find yourself waist deep in pigging out before you even know it.

Smell is a powerful sense. There is a smell, of melon lip gloss that can take me right back to the 6th grade. Smells go right to our subconscious. They take us to places, bring back memories and drive us into our unconsciousness. Smell is also associated with taste. In fact smell is about 95 percent of our taste. Think about when you have a cold and can’t smell. You lose almost all of the taste of food. Smell drives us.

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Mindful Eating Week 2 Day 2

May 11, 2010

What are the different types of hunger that you experience? Let’s look at our senses. We see food, we smell food, we taste food, we can feel food and yes, we hear food, think snap, crackle pop. All of these senses can trigger cravings or hunger. One of the most powerful is our eyes.
Think about [...]

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Mindful Eating Week 2

May 10, 2010
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I hope you all had a wonderful, mindful weekend. Sunday was Mother’s day. As my daughters are in Colorado, I decided to have a mindful Sunday. Meaning, going through the entire day with mindful intention. I started at the farmer’s market, with camera in hand. I love going into a deeply mindful state as I [...]

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Mindful Eating Day 5

May 7, 2010
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It’s Friday…the end of the week, a great time for reflection. Thinking back on this week we have tried to come more in touch with what drives us to eat. Situation, hunger, stress, being bored, these are all things that can subconsciously motivate us to eat. Once we start paying attention to what our own [...]

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Mindful Eating Day 4

May 6, 2010
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Usually when I start a challenge, it is because there is something in my life that I know needs addressing. I am a pro at eating mindlessly. And I want that to change. Even though most of my day involves creating super healthy recipes, I frequently am eating on the fly. Last night I had [...]

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Mindful Eating Day 3

May 5, 2010
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So far, we have been taking a few little steps to start engaging our awareness around food. What is one of the most powerful tools we have available to us as far as being aware goes? Checking in. And it is so simple. You just have to remember to do it.
How it works: The next [...]

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Mindful Eating Day 2

May 4, 2010
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What exactly is “mindful eating” and why do we want to learn about it? Mindful eating is about changing our relationship to food from the inside. It is about paying attention, being here in the present moment, being aware of what is happening and doing that in a non-judgmental way.
Mindful awareness vs non-awareness. You are [...]

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Day 1 Mindful Eating

May 3, 2010
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This challenge is for me as much is it is for you. I spend a lot of time researching food.  How it affects our bodies, the nutrient content, and the best way to get the nutrients, but not so much research into why we eat what we eat.
I start by looking at an apple. I [...]

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Mindful Eating Challenge

May 3, 2010
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Getting ready for the Mindful Eating Challenge! We will be starting tomorrow. Come with a journal or notebook!!

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