Imagine this – savoring your food with all of your senses: taking a moment or two to “feast your eyes” and breathe in the aroma of your food before ever taking a bite, feeling and appreciating the texture and flavors of each bite in your mouth, allowing your ears to add to your pleasure by noticing the crunch of your apple, the voices of the people you’re with, the light “tink” of utensil against plate. Think of the difference it would make in our eating if this type of experience were our aim.
How different is this from how you usually eat?
My guess is we may enjoy meals like this every once in a while. What impact could it have if we let most of our eating experiences be sensual and deeply satisfying? What and how would we eat? How much would we eat if we ate like that? (most likely less than we do now) How much more nourished and genuinely filled might we feel, instead of just fed?
This is so opposed to the “food is fuel” and the dieting mentality of American society that even thinking about eating in such a pleasurable way may bring up feelings of resistance, guilt, or at the least confusion. I believe part of the purpose of the earth and the bountiful food it provides is to please the eye, gladden the heart, strengthen the body, and enliven the soul. When you stop and think about it, it’s heartbreaking to realize how often we're far from that in how we eat.
Regaining pleasure in eating
In Intuitive Eating, Evelyn Tribole and Elyse Resch offer five steps to learn or relearn how to take pleasure in eating.
Ask yourself what you REALLY want to eat. – Remember the importance of giving yourself unconditional permission to eat all kinds of foods. Trust yourself enough to provide your body what it truly wants and savor every bite.
Discover the pleasure of the palate. – Pay attention to which flavors and textures excite your mouth.
Make your eating experience more enjoyable. – Time, place, the company you keep, engaging all your senses, all these can contribute to an eating experience that’s as satisfying as possible.
Don’t settle! – If you don’t love it, don’t eat it. If you do love it, savor it.
Check-in: does it still taste good? – The law of diminishing returns applies to food, too. Even with the most satisfying of foods, we reach a point when we’re satiated, and each bite after that doesn’t taste quite as good as the one before. Pausing mid-meal or snack to check-in helps us recognize that point.
Of course, we’re not going to reach some magical point when we live from there on out in a mystical food Utopia where every single bite we eat fills us with blissful satisfaction. But the more we embrace the practice of allowing, even expecting, ourselves to take enriching pleasure in our food, the closer we come to our food and our bodies fulfilling a significant part of the reason for their creation.
Pleasure = Satisfaction & Contentment
When we’re satisfied and content, we’re filled with so much more than just food.
THIS WEEK’S CHALLENGE – Allow yourself to take deep pleasure in your eating experiences.
Week 2 – What is Intuitive Eating?
Week 3 – Honor Your Hunger
Week 4 – Make Peace With Food
Week 5 – Get Sassy With Your Food Cops
Week 6 – Feel Your Fullness