Bringing a meditation-like awareness to the food you eat will improve your relationship with food, help you to make smarter dietary choices, and even make you appreciate each bite even more. That’s the basis of mindful eating, as shown in the scripts below.
Below, I’ve shared many of the best scripts. And if you would like my help with these, you can always book an Zoom session or a lunch and learn with me.
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Basic Mindful Eating Script
- Choose an item of food you would like to eat. Make it something simple such as a piece of fruit.
- Tell yourself that while you eat the food you will only eat the food. In other words, you will not multitask. You will focus on eating.
- Pick up the food and observe it visually. Take a genuine interest in the visual appearance of the food, its shape, and colour.
- Feel the food in your hands and note its texture, whether it is hard or soft, and so on.
- Slowly take a bite. Move your mouth slowly as you eat, being mindfully aware of the movement of your mouth.
- Investigate the flavors of the food. You might find it helpful to describe the flavours to yourself.
- Swallow and note if it leaves an aftertaste.
- Continue until you have eaten the food.
- You may eat with other people, but make sure you are still being mindful and not discussing other things. In How To Eat, Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh says, “Refrain from discussing subjects that can destroy your awareness of the people around you and the food. If someone is thinking about something other than the food on the table, such as his difficulties in the office or with friends, it means he is losing the present moment and the food”.
2: Chocolate script
- To do this exercise, you will need a chocolate bar.
- Sit comfortably and take ten deep breaths through your nose, and out through the mouth. Calm your mind. Focus.
- Pick up your chocolate bar. Unwrap it. Now hold it in your hand.
- Before you bite into the chocolate, observe it. Notice it. Notice the shape, the weight, the texture… Simply be aware of the chocolate.
- Now go to take a bite of chocolate. But move mindfully. Be conscious of the movement of your mouth as you go to bite into the chocolate bar.
- Bite. Now focus on the sensations involved with the food. Meditate on the texture of the food, the way it feels in your mouth, the smell (if there is one)… Observe the entire process using your five senses.
- Now swallow and be mindfully aware of what happens in your body.
- Continue in this way. Again, it’s not about a precise process. It’s more about intent. It’s about being awake and aware of the process of eating.
3: Raisin Script
- Place a single raisin in front of you.
- Take a minimum of twenty breaths to calm and focus your mind.
- Look at the raisin. Mindfully observe the raisin visually.
- Now pick the raisin up. Notice what it feels like. What texture does it have?
- Now bite into the raisin slowly. Notice how the raisin changes as you bite into it.
- Meditate on the flavours of the raisin and on the way it feels in your mouth.
- Swallow and meditate on the aftertaste of the raisin.
This simple exercise trains the mind to be more appreciative of the experience of eating healthy food in small quantities.
4: For Kids
- Set a fun food plate full of bright colours, like various fruits, for instance. Now ask your kids the following questions:
- What do you see? Get them to observe the food with their eyes.
- Does the food make a sound?
- What do you smell? How about when you shake it?
- How does it feel in your hand and in your mouth?
- What does it taste like? Let them take a small bite of the food and ask them to observe the taste. Then after they swallow, get them to describe the flavours to you.
Tips
Here are some of the most important basics:
- Be mindful: Do not binge-eat and do not eat food while watching TV or doing anything else. When you’re eating, just eat. Make sure that is the only thing you are doing.
- Take time to appreciate food: Don’t wolf down your food. Take the time to notice and appreciate your food. This isn’t so much about eating slowly. Rather, it is about being mindful.
- Don’t calorie count. If you are aware of food and body signals, that will be enough.
- Eat when you’re hungry, not starving: If you are too hungry when you come to the dinner table, you will be tempted to scoff your food down too quickly. Eat when you get hungry, but before you are starving.
- Eat with your mind: Make sure your mind is actively engaged in the process.
- Cook mindfully: When cooking, take the time to notice the textures, scents, flavours, and other senses involved with the food. Also, observe the transformation process from oven to plate.
- Remember this mantra: “I will be mindfully aware of all the food I eat.”
- Diet: It’s best to practice on a diet like the Mediterranean Diet–fruits, vegetables, whole grains, seeds, nuts, and vegetable oils.
- Shopping list: Make an intention of filling your shopping list with items that will make it enjoyable to eat mindfully. I recommend nutritional, healthy foods with a variety of textures and colours.
- Pay attention to body signals like hunger and fullness. Observe and accept these sensations rather than judging them.
- Eat in the right place: In the dining room. At the table. Not in front of the TV.
- Note that you can also use mindfulness to quit drinking
Why Bring Meditation To Food?
Mindful eating is basically a mindfulness meditation exercise based on food and drink.
Jan Chozen Bays, M.D. states that it is about “paying full attention to the experience of eating and drinking, both inside and outside the body.”
The scripts are based on the concept of mindfulness, a Buddhist term. Translated from its Sanskrit origin, mindfulness means “Awareness”.
Studies show that mindfulness helps to promote the parasympathetic nervous system to produce feelings of relaxation. However, it is also helpful for controlling food cravings and making us more aware of our food.
Mindfulness has evolved recently and now includes therapies like the Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction course created by Jon Kabat Zinn, Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Behavioural Therapy, and indeed, Mindful Eating exercises.
Conscious Eating
According to psychotherapist Karen R Koenig M.Ed, LCSW, “Mindful eating means paying exclusive attention to appetite cues and our mind/body relationship to food.”
Eating too fast and mindlessly interrupts communication between the brain and gut [1]. In turn, this can cause problems for the glycemic index (GI), as well as gas and bloating.
Mindless eating can also stop us from experiencing the fullness signal. And in turn, this could cause overeating. Indeed, mindless eating can lead to binge eating, emotional eating, external eating, food cravings, and weight gain.
The solution is mindfulness.
When we eat mindfully, we train the mind to eat when hungry and to pay attention. This improves communication between the brain and gut and can improve digestion and GI. It also reduces stress, which is a cause of obesity.
4 Benefits of Mindful Eating
1: Weight Loss
Research from Harvard Medical School shows that we are more likely to lose weight when we eat mindfully.[2]
For more, read, Weight Loss Meditation Techniques.
2: Improves nutrition
When you are aware of food you are more likely to eat healthy, nutritious meals
3: Helps diabetics
Research shows that it is equally as effective for managing Type 2 Diabetes as traditional nutrition-based diet approaches. Plus, it is effective for managing blood sugar levels and weight according to a scientific study by Ohio State University. [4]
4: Aids Digestion
It improves digestion according to Harvard Medical School.
Digestion involves complex hormonal signals between the nervous system and the digestive system. It takes approximately twenty minutes for us to get that feeling of being full. If we eat too quickly, we often overeat before we get the message telling us to stop. This can cause digestion problems.
Mindfulness helps.
Nutritionist Lilian Cheung and Zen monk Thich Nhat Hanh say that it reduces food consumption. In turn, this gives the body enough time to produce the feeling of fulness. And this prevents overeating.
Mindful Eating Courses
The scripts we have looked at above will help you to get started. But you might like to take things further. There are a lot of different teachers around the world. One good place to find a course or teacher is via The Center For Mindful Eating.
Download our PDF here
CONCLUSION
Above we looked at the best scripts. And you saw how beneficial they can be.
Not only are they beneficial, they are also enjoyable. We get to improve our health and well-being through an amazingly easy and relaxing practice. It doesn’t get much better than that.
Paul Harrison BSc is a qualified meditation teacher who believes in genuine, authentic meditation. He has more than 15 years experience in teaching meditation and mindfulness both to individuals and to corporations and is the author of four books on meditation. He has been featured in Psychology Today, Breathe Magazine, Healthline, Psych Central and Lion’s Roar.
Paul studied meditation in beautiful Oxford, UK, and Hamilton Ontario Canada, and earned his degree at Staffordshire University.
Paul’s biggest inspirations include Thich Nhat Hanh, Jon Kabat Zinn, and Jack Kornfield.
“My goal is to provide the most authentic meditation sessions so you can harness the power of your own mind for personal transformation” – Paul Harrison