Blog
Mindfully eat chocolate. An exercise in mindful enjoyment.
As a follow-up to a previous post on the basics of mindful eating, I'm sharing a mindful chocolate meditation. Chocolate tends to bring up strong associations and sometimes strong emotions and/or cravings for individuals. What do you think of when you hear the world "chocolate" or are reminded of chocolate? How does it make you feel to eat chocolate? Chocolate may be associated with pleasant events or pleasant feelings. Or it may be associated with guilt, overeating, and overindulging. Perhaps it can bring up both for you.
The willingness to crave. TED talk by Jonathan Bricker.
I have followed and modeled some of my own work on Jonathan Bricker's research on tobacco cessation. Dr. Bricker recently did a TED talk on "The willingness to crave" which illustrates how Acceptance and Commitment Therapy is an effective intervention for quitting smoking and tobacco use. This also applies to food cravings! I wanted to share this here, as I think he does an excellent job demonstrating what Acceptance and Commitment Therapy looks like in the context of addictions and cravings.
What is mindful eating? An adaptive way to manage the modern food environment.
It's the holiday season and food is everywhere! How does one navigate the modern food environment without gaining weight? This is a tough question to answer, as we have evolved in an environment where food was scarce. In order to survive, it was best to eat anything and everything available. Our world has evolved too quickly for us to keep up - in terms of keeping our bodies healthy. For many people in the developed world, food is too available given our biological predisposition. Food is also designed to hit the "need more" and "want more" triggers, as it's particularly sweet and fatty - good things for beefing up before the next food shortage.