Conscious Eating – What do you think about when you are eating?

To continue on with the theme of you are what you eat. Have you ever paid attention to what you are thinking when you eating? - Why you chose to eat that double cheeseburger, cookie or even a salad? - What drove you to eat your lunch today (besides hunger)? - Have you ever stopped to pay attention to what your body is telling you? We are the experts of our own bodies, we know what it needs to be it’s best. Although often we do not treat our bodies with the respect and acknowledge that it has a great deal to tell us to help us make the better choices. Sometimes we forget that our bodies (not our minds) knows what fuel it needs. (food is fuel for the body) We have the responsibility of taking care of our bodies, to pay attention to what fuel it needs to get you through your day, to go to the gym, thrive during that meeting and dance till dawn! Often though, we make our nutritional choices based on what our brain wants, not what our bodies need. These choices are usually driven by our emotions, based on our beliefs, values and desires. For example, mum’s roast dinner conjures up all those warm feelings of Sunday evenings sitting around the table with the family. Or that ice-cream cone you had every summer day at the beach when you were a kid, or the chocolate to mend a lonely heart. How much to these feelings and emotions drive your nutritional choices? Even sometimes, we are so disconnected that despite having the best intentions of being healthy and nourishing our bodies, we have the mac’n’cheese (with extra sauce) or the chocolate (with whipped cream) to fuel our emotions, instead of fueling our bodies. How often do we stop and pay attention to what is driving our nutritional choices, is it our bodies or our emotions that we are fueling? Paying attention to the answers to this question can offer us invaluable insight into what is driving our nutritional choices and help us to increase our awareness and be more connected and in-line with who we truly are and can become? Tom Venuto of Burn the Fat talks about four stages of nutritional awareness to help you understand where your Conscious Eating level is at. Stage 1: Unconscious incompetence - you are eating the wrong foods in the wrong amounts and you’re not even aware of it. (You don’t know what you’re doing and you don’t know that you don’t know what you’re doing) Stage 2: Conscious incompetence - you are eating the wrong foods in the wrong amounts, but for some reason, you now become aware of it. This is often because of a “hitting bottom” experience or an “I’m not gonna live like this anymore” epiphany. (You don’t know what you’re doing and now you know that you don’t know what you’re doing!) Stage 3: Conscious competence - you educate yourself and begin to eat the right foods, but it takes a lot of thought and effort to eat the right things in the right amounts. (You know what you’re doing, but you have to think about it and work very hard to make it happen because you’re using willpower and still learning)

Stage 4: Unconscious competence - you’ve made the conscious effort to eat the right foods in the right amounts and you’ve counted calories and kept a nutrition journal for long enough and with enough repetition that these behaviors become habits and a part of your lifestyle. (You know what you’re doing and you do it easily and automatically without having to think about it).

Where would you say your awareness is at? Why not tomorrow or you next meal, take a moment and pay attention to how your body feels, what your mind is thinking, what is going on around you that is making you make the choice you are making? Increasing our awareness about what we are putting in our bodies, help us nourish our-selves on so many levels - physically, mentally, emotionally and spiritually. Once we start to raise our awareness and connect with our bodies, not only do we instinctively make healthier choices, but out bodies flourish and our minds become clearer. You are helping to create healthier, more vibrant you just by paying attention to the fuel you choice to nourish your body with. Next time, I will share some tips on HOW to eat consciously and improve your fuel.