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How to Meditate: Meditation 101 for Beginners
10 Science-Backed Benefits of Meditation
What is Meditation?
How to Meditate: Meditation 101 for Beginners
10 Science-Backed Benefits of Meditation
What is Meditation?
Benefits of Mindfulness: Mindful Living Can Change Your Life
Mindfulness 101: A Beginner's Guide
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Duration
Learn about the five eating styles and how to listen to your body's cues by using the 'hunger fullness scale'.
Hi, my name's Melli O'Brien
and a warm welcome to you to
the Mindful Eating course.
This course will teach you how to
use mindfulness based skills to
give you a more healthy, enjoyable,
and empowering relationship with
both food and with your body.
So maybe you've arrived here because
you've tried dieting and ended up
feeling frustrated or too restricted.
Or perhaps you're feeling
confused about conflicting
messages about how you should eat.
Or maybe you'd just like to try bringing
more awareness into your relationship
with food as an aspect of mindful living.
Whatever brings you here, this course
can help you bring more awareness to
the thoughts, impulses, sensations, and
emotions that drive your food choices.
Ultimately, leading to a more intentional
way of eating, a greatest sense of
appreciation and satisfaction with
food, and a more positive way of
relating to your body and its cues..
Research shows that when people eat
more mindfully, there's a reduction
in binge eating, emotional, eating,
overeating, and eating in response to
external triggers like advertising,
visually displayed food or other triggers.
Mindful eating, though, is not
a diet or an attempt for you to
change, fix, or improve yourself.
Instead, it's a journey into discovering
how to be more connected to yourself and
how to nourish yourself in a sustained
and balanced way so that you feel better
overall in body, mind, and spirit.
I really look forward to
taking this journey with you.
So on one practical note, some of these
sessions will involve you actually
eating as part of the session and
some wont, such as today's lesson.
At the beginning of each lesson, if there
is food involved, I'll let you know.
And by the way, don't worry if
this is the first time you've
tried anything like this before.
Everything I'm going to teach you
is really simple and accessible,
and I'm going to guide you
through every step of the way.
So, ready to get started?
Today, I'm going to talk
about the five eating styles.
So I like to categorize the way
we eat into five basic styles.
Fog eating, feast eating, storm eating,
strict eating, and natural eating.
So fog eating is when we're
just on autopilot mode.
So maybe we're distracted or
we're really busy multitasking,
and we just start eating without
even realizing what we're doing.
So maybe this is when you are shoving
a breakfast bar in your mouth on
the commute to work or eating some
toast or leftovers while you're
on the phone or managing the kids.
And so you're kind of lost
in a distraction during this
time and lost in thinking and
just eating without awareness.
Feast eating is eating just for fun.
This is like when we have popcorn at the
movies or an ice cream on a sunny day.
Maybe we're eating a bit of birthday
cake at a party or enjoying a
delicious meal with friends.
So we're eating more for enjoyment
than for fuel or for hunger.
We all enjoy feasting sometimes.
And when it's done in balance, it's
a really wonderful part of life.
Storm eating is emotional eating.
So storm eating mostly happens in
response to unpleasant emotions or
urges that we really don't want to
feel such as emptiness, loneliness,
sadness, frustration, dissatisfaction,
or feelings of low self-worth.
In these times, we might
binge eat, overeat or eat
comfort foods or junk foods.
So there's a feeling that you want
to stop eating often when you're
storm eating, but you just feel
like you can't control yourself.
And this is often followed by
feelings of regret or shame.
Strict eating is when you relate
to food and your body in a way
that can be really self-critical,
overly controlled or depriving.
While being focused on a healthy diet
is a great thing, when we become rigid,
perfectionistic and depriving, we often
end up feeling at war with our own bodies.
And this often ends up feeling really
draining rather than nourishing.
It doesn't tend to make
us happier in our lives.
Sometimes strict eating and storm eating
become locked in an unhelpful downward
cycle where we deprive our body and
then we binge over and over again.
Natural eating is when we
have a really instinctive and
balanced relationship with food.
We probably all know someone who has
this kind of relationship with food.
They just seem to know
how much and when to eat.
When their body needs
sustenance, they eat.
When the body's satisfied, they stop.
They don't seem to eat in an
obsessive way or a compulsive way.
And they maintain a healthy body that
mostly feels good after they eat.
And we were all born to eat like this.
But many of us have learned to override
the body signals through conditioning.
We see advertising telling us that we
should look a certain way or we just
get so busy we forget to prioritize
our enjoyment of food and our health.
Mindful eating brings us
back towards natural eating.
It does this by helping us to regulate
our emotions in healthy ways, work
with our thoughts more skillful, and
bring more awareness, compassion, and
appreciation into our approach to eating.
This doesn't mean we'll never
do the four other styles.
We will.
Even the most mindful eater will
enjoy a lovely meal or a sweet treat
just for fun or soothe themselves
with comfort food after a hard day.
They'll do it from time to
time, but just not all the time.
It's about finding a balance that
works for you and truly makes
you feel better after you eat.
So we'll be exploring how to
shift back towards natural
eating throughout this course.
And as a first step today, I'd like to
share the hunger-fullness scale practice.
So the hunger-fullness scale
helps us learn to listen to
our body's internal cues.
Just like a dry mouth tells us that the
body wants to drink and tired eyes means
our body might want to sleep, hunger cues
let us know that our body needs to eat.
This may seem really simple,
but many of us have become
out of touch with our bodies.
As we said, we may eat
for all kinds of reasons.
So when we listen to our bodies
and our hunger and fullness cues,
we can appropriately respond to
what our bodies are telling us we
need and eat in a more natural and
appropriate way for our body's needs.
So the hunger-fullness scale helps us
adapt and listen to our internal cues
so we can give our body what it needs.
Here's how you use it.
Think of a simple scale from one to
ten, where each number correlates
to a level of hunger or fullness.
One, you're absolutely ravenous.
Now, ideally you want to eat
when you're about a three on the
scale, hungry but not starving.
Five is neutral, neither hungry nor full.
And in terms of fullness about a seven
on the scale is where you feel satisfied,
which is ideally where you want to stop.
Nine is absolutely stuffed.
And ten is where you're feeling so full,
you're a physically ill from overeating.
Okay.
So let's take a moment right now to
tune in to how your body's feeling
and where you're at on the scale.
So take a moment now to close your
eyes, if that feels okay for you.
Begin to tune into your body
and take a deep breath in.
And letting it out.
And shifting your attention into
your physical body and all the
way down into your belly area.
And tuning in to any feelings of hunger.
Satisfaction.
Or fullness.
It might be feelings of
emptiness or digestion.
Bloating, fullness.
Just tuning into all the
sensations here right now.
Seeing, if you can be curious and
open to noticing both the pleasant
and the unpleasant sensations.
And it's important to note that hunger and
fullness aren't only felt in the stomach.
In the body as a whole, there may
be feelings of fatigue, shakiness,
anxiety, nausea, bloating.
If you're very hungry or very full,
there maybe some of these other symptoms.
So being attentive to any other
signals in the body as well.
And now pick a number on the
hunger-fullness scale that best
fits how you feel right now.
So if you're ravenous, at a one.
Or just a little bit hungry, at a three.
Neutral, at a five.
Maybe you ate a little earlier and
you're feeling satiated, maybe a six.
So choose a number that
feels right to you.
And then when you're ready,
you can open the eyes.
So the more you can get into the habit
of pausing and checking in with your body
around feelings of hunger or fullness, the
more you'll find yourself also tuning into
the other messages your body sends too.
But for now, just inviting you to
keep listening to your body and
its cues of hunger or fullness.
Remember, this is not a diet in disguise.
It's about bringing awareness to eating
and to your body and to your life.
So today, whenever you feel like
eating, pause for a moment, tune into
your body and ask yourself, where
am I on the hunger-fullness scale.
Wishing you well with this practice
and thank you for your practice.
I look forward to being back here with
you for Day Two of the Mindful Eating
course, where we'll be learning about
urge surfing, a way to become non-reactive
to our urges, impulses and cravings.
Till then, take care.
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