The FastDay Forum

My translation is Know yourself and adjust your behaviour accordingly(or not-the choice is yours)

Perhaps we could call the unmindfull way of eating referred to by @wendyjane and @sallyo as mindfree eating.

Thus mindless eating: sit with large bag of crisps on sofa and watch tv. Transfer handfuls of crisps to mouth, chew and swallow. Repeat until bag is empty.

Mindful eating: sit on sofa with bowl containing predetermined portion of crisps. Put one crisp into mouth. Chew slowly, savouring flavour and texture. Swallow. Pause. Ask self if really, really want another. Repeat until answer is no.

Mindfree eating: sit on sofa with large bag of crisps and watch tv
From time to time put crisp in mouth, chew and swallow. At some point lose interest in crisps. Take the bag back to the kitchen at the end of the program.

My personal preference is mindfree.

Nicely summarised, but then there's my
considered eating... would I be wanting to sit with a bag of flavoured potato offerings. All things considered, no!
So many factors to take into consideration, then!

This was recommended to me in case anyone else is interested. I plan to give it a try http://palousemindfulness.com/selfguidedMBSR_week0.html

Yes, @wendyjane, that unmindfulness makes sense too. I think you are right about skinny people. They just eat when they're hungry and stop when they've had enough.

I just have to challenge this statement. I was married to a very skinny person for quite a long time. He was skinny at 21 he is still skinny in his late 50s. He ate (and eats) like a horse, with no particular attention to what he was eating. He wasn't physically active. He never went to the gym and always had scrawny muscles.

What he did have was a ramped up metabolism that wouldn't stop. At one point I noticed that the back of his neck got warm after he ate, from which I concluded (years ago, before this was the latest science fad) that he had abnormal amounts of brown fat.

I think we attribute much too much intention to most of the people we see who are skinny. I think that metabolic factors play a much larger role.

One thing that backs up this view for me is watching two of my relatives who were naturally skinny into their late 30s try to deal with middle aged spread. These people had always been skinny. But when they developed weight problems, they were unable to govern their eating at all. They had no experience of any kind of control as they had been able to eat whatever they wanted for all those years. They failed at diet after diet. One of them developed diabetes at a relatively low weight (the family gene, again) and is completely unable to cut back on carbs, again, because this person never had to think about what they were eating.

I think a lot of those naturally skinny people write articles about diet, too, because they never seem to be aware of any of the issues the rest of us contend with!

[wildmissus]

@wendyjane, your post gave me an ah! moment. Maybe mindfulness leads to unmindfulness.

When I did mindfulness I started by reading a book, I then downloaded a paid app which gave me a 10/15 min mindfulness programme each day. I probably did it for 3 months every day then I started fading away from it. When I first started I did question whether it was working, it certainly made me calmer immediately afterwards but was it affecting the whole of my life? In retrospect I probably faded away from it because it was working and I didn't need it any more. When I was in my early 20's I was a very laid back person (OH used to joke that I was horizontal) - I feel that mindfulness has given me some of that back as I find it so much easier to shrug my shoulders to things. Every now and then I have 'stresses' in my life that make me think that I should go back to mindfulness. So it is maybe something I should do every now and then.

I am hoping that mindful eating will lead to unmindful eating, ie. restore some sort of eating 'naturally' acording to what my body needs rather than what my mind wants. It reminds me of toddlers at a birthday party - they see all the buffet food put lots on their plates and take a bite out of eat item and leave the rest.

[Tracieknits]

I agree with Sallyo - I don't think the "mindfulness" you guys are talking about is the same thing as what Dr. Amanda Sainsbury-Salis recommends with journaling and a hunger chart. What you guys are describing sounds really, really intense! The basic rules are don't eat unless you're hungry and it's best your hunger be in a certain range. So when going to eat something ask, "am I hungry?" If the answer is "no" or "only a little" - don't eat! If your answer is "yes, actually I am" then eat. And make sure you eat before your answer is "wow, I'm really, really hungry!" (except on fast days, I do get to this point on fast days, of course).

Then you don't have to rhapsodize over every potato chip you've eaten and agonize over whether to have another. Serve yourself a reasonable portion and see how you feel after you eat that. Or eat half if you were given an unreasonable portion. Then ask yourself if you're satisfied or not before putting more on your plate. ETA: clearly, I have proven I can't be trusted to take the whole bag of chips to the couch. So I will judge a reasonable portion, put them in a bowl and take the bowl to the couch.

Clearly, we don't get overweight by doing things correctly or by properly estimating portion sizes. These are two tools people can use to help them learn normal behaviors - like stop eating when you've had enough, or don't eat if you're not hungry. I journaled for about two weeks until I felt like I got the hang of it. I haven't journaled since, although I may do it again someday if I feel I need help there.

And by all means, if you're in the minority where doing something like this makes you feel uncomfortable or makes you overeat, don't do it.

I think we attribute much too much intention to most of the people we see who are skinny. I think that metabolic factors play a much larger role.

I don't think we are in disagreement at all, @peebles. Metabolic factors play a huge role. I believe @Sallyo and I were saying that these thin people have no intention, they are oblivious to all the issues that we have. "We" meaning those of us who would like to be thinner, or need to be thinner, and have difficulty losing weight.
I'd also like to point out that some people who start out naturally thin develop the middle aged spread. And indeed, they either resign themselves to it, or they must develop strategies to deal with it. Others are blessed to never have weight problems. My brother and husband were both told as young men "just wait till you're middle aged - you won't be skinny anymore!" Neither has an ounce of extra fat now, at the age of 60.
And one more thing to add to the discussion: A lot of skinny people out there may appear to have metabolisms we envy, but subsist on a diet of McDonalds and the like, and I'm guessing they have some nasty visceral fat we can't see.

@wildmissus like the paradox you are writing about. Love paradoxes in general. The German word for mindfulness is Achtsamkeit. You can translate it also as awareness. That is the word I like best. Eating with awareness. Awareness is like our own camera that permanently "films" us living. It is the meta-level of our being alive so to speak.

What I do not like about the mindfulness or mindlessness/mindfreedom is the "mind" in it. (Like the pain in painless - another paradox because the full word is right there...) I find it so interesting to take things literally sometimes. The mind - for me and in my perception - is often so close to the ego. The ego blames me for eating all those crisps. No matter where and how fast. It judges. Awareness would just "film" me sitting there munching while doing something else. When I decide to see my own "movie" I can also decide: no more crisps on the couch. That is what I decided for myself. (I ate kilos of them during the WC.) I allow myself potatoe chips sometimes or yummy Papadam (Indian). I eat them fully awarely put on a plate at my kitchen-table. I weigh the amount before. It feels great to do that. Since I have started my chips-movie I have not eaten a quarter ot the amounts I used to...

Observing myself without judging helped me very much in my decision to eat awarely.

There is this metaphor of the three sides of a coin. For me that is full and pure awareness. While many people talk about the two sides of a coin, there is this third side. A coin standing on its small rim sets free boths sides at the same time. That makes us able to really and awarely choose... This approach I like very much in my life. When I am in remote control mode I can not choose anything. Things choose me instead.

Have a nice day - feast or fast
Mahalo