Mindful Eating |
Foreword
IT IS HARD TO THINK OF A BIOLOGICAL FUNCTION more essential to sustaining our life than eating, since, unlike plants, we don’t photosynthesize sustenance out of light and air. Breathing happens on its own, thank goodness. Sleeping too. But eating requires some deliberate engagement on our parts in either growing, gathering, hunting, shopping, going to a restaurant, or otherwise acquiring a range of life-sustaining foodstuffs that often need some kind of preparing and combining by us or others to be maximally beneficial. As mammals, we have complex circuitry in the nervous system to insure that we are motivated to find and eat food (hunger and thirst) and to know when those urges have been satisfied and the body has gotten what it needs for the moment to sustain itself for a time (satiety). Yet, it is all too easy for us in this postindustrial era to take eating so for granted that we engage in it with huge unawareness, and also freight it (all puns intended) with complicated psychological and emotional issues that obscure and sometimes seriously distort a simple, basic, and miraculous aspect of our lives. Even the question of what food really is takes on whole new meanings in an age of industrial agriculture, factory processing, and continual invention of new “snacks” and “foods” that our grandparents wouldn’t recognize. And with a huge and sometimes obsessive preoccupation with health and eating in this brave new world, it is equally easy to fall into a certain kind of “nutritionism,”1 which makes it difficult to simply enjoy food and all the social functions that revolve around preparing, sharing, and celebrating the miracle of sustenance and the web of life within which we are embedded and upon which we depend.
On a parallel note, mind-states of unawareness, addiction, and delusion sadly abound in this world and, we might say, function as equal opportunity destroyers of sanity, well- being, and authentic relationship at every level of the body, mind, and world. Every single one of us suffers from them to one degree or another, not simply around food and eating, but in many different aspects of our lives. It is part and parcel of the human condition, perhaps made worse in this era by the particular stresses and pressures of our nonstop,24/7 connectivity, attention-deficit hyperactivity, celebrity-obsessed culture. But the good news is that the inner and outer pressures on our minds and bodies and the suffering that comes from these sometimes unhealthy influences can be recognized and intentionally worked with to the benefit of anyone willing to undertake the cultivation of even a bit of mindfulness and heartfulness. This book is a gentle invitation to engage in that healing,and a wise guide to accompany you on the journey of a lifetime into your own wholeness.
Nowhere are the elements of the human condition we call unawareness, addiction, and delusion more poignantly and tragically manifested nowadays than in widespread disregulations and disorders in our relationships to food and to eating. These pathologies of imbalance are driven by many complex factors in society itself. Sadly, they have resulted in cultural norms that support particular brands of delusion, obsession, and endless preoccupation with how much the body weighs. It manifests as a gnawing and pervasive, if sometimes submerged and disguised or overcompensated-for, discomfort and dissatisfaction with how one’s body looks and how it feels inwardly. This pervasive dissatisfaction nests itself within ordinary concerns about one’s appearance, but is compounded by desires to fit into an idealized model of how one should look and the impression one’s appearance should make on others that shape and trump the authenticity of one’s own interior experience. This dissatisfaction in the mind lends itself to pathologies associated with body image, distortions in how one perceives oneself inwardly and outwardly, and with deep issues of self-worth. Catalyzed in large measure by ubiquitous media exposure, it is prevalent even in children and adolescents, and is pervasive across the life span and right into old age. The sadness of it all is immense and needs to be met with boundless compassion and self-compassion, as well as effective strategies for restoring balance and sanity in our world and in our individual lives.
It is well known now that these pathologies of imbalance are manifesting as never before in a number of epidemics in both children and adults, in both males and females. One might say that the entire society suffers from disordered eating in one way or another, just as, from the perspective of the meditative traditions, we suffer from a pervasive attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. As is made clear in this book, the one is intimately related to the other.
One manifestation of our disordered relationship to food and eating is the obesity epidemic of the past twenty-plus years in the United States. This phenomenon is driven by a host of complex factors and compounded by increasingly sedentary lifestyles in adults and children, coupled with a ubiquitous availability of processed foods and by a farming and food industry that is the admiration of the world in some ways, and which runs amok in others.2 The extent of the epidemic in obesity can be gauged from graphic displays of the rates per state in the United States, starting around 1986.3 It is now spreading to other countries, particularly in Europe. This epidemic has been driven in part by the phenomenon of supersizing, as so graphically illustrated in the movie Supersize Me, in the ever-expanding notion of a reasonable portion size (and even plate size) for one person, by increasing inactivity, and by the endless availability of high-calorie, low- nutrient foods. Many medical schools are developing research and clinical programs to better understand and deal with this growing phenomenon in both adults and children, and some are even reaching out in imaginative collaborations with forward-looking elements of the food and restaurant industries.4 Clinical programs for children abound.5
Another manifestation of our disordered relationship to food and eating is the tragedy of anorexia and bulimia, particularly among girls and young women. These disregulations in eating behaviors are often driven by distortions in self-image and body image, shaped by subterranean and often unacknowledged feelings of shame, inadequacy, and unworthiness. In many, they arise following horrendous but often hidden trauma experiences and histories. In others, they arise as poorly understood but complex reactions to familial, social, and societal dynamics, compounded by the fashion, advertisement, and entertainment industries, an obsession with celebrities, and the sexualization of appearance starting in childhood. Here, any impulses to restrict food intake are life-threatening and need to be met with a huge degree of professional understanding of the tortured web of pain that people can be caught in, huge acceptance and compassion for their suffering, as well as recognition of and unfailing support for the interior strengths they possess but may not recognize, including their potential for healing.
On top of all of these problematic elements in our relationship to food is the even more pervasive disregulation, pointed out earlier, in our relationship to our own lives as they are unfolding in the present moment. It doesn’t take much in the way of attention to realize that much of our lives are caught up in a preoccupation with the past and future at the expense of the present moment, the only time any of us ever have to nurture ourselves, to see, to learn, to grow, to change, to heal, to express our feelings, to love, and above all to live. If we are always on the way to someplace else, to some better now, when we will be thinner, or happier, or more accomplished, or whatever it is, then we can never be in wise relationship with this moment and love ourselves as we actually are. This too is a pervasive tragedy…that we might miss the actuality of the life that is ours to live because we are so distracted, preoccupied, and driven by attempting to attain some mind- constructed ideal in some other time that is often also, sadly, shaped by unexamined desires, aversions, and illusions. Of course, this has huge relevance in terms of eating and to how we might be in relationship to our bodies and to all the forces that might carry us into these whirlpools of addiction, disregulation, and sorrow. This is a practical choice that we can have a major personal say in, no matter what the rest of the world is doing, thinking, or selling. However, it does require a motivation to break free of deep and longstanding conditioning and habits of unawareness and addiction that weigh us down, sometimes both literally and metaphorically.
What we might characterize as a condition of endemic mindlessness in our society is something we can do something about and take personal responsibility for, as described so effectively in this book in regard to eating and to food in all its guises and manifestations. And who better to offer this path to greater sanity and balance than Jan Chozen Bays, who is a seasoned pediatrician specializing in childhood trauma, a long-time leader of mindful eating groups, and an exceptional mindfulness teacher steeped in an ancient and profound tradition of wisdom and compassion?
Mindfulness is all about paying attention, and the awareness and freedom that emerge from that present-moment gesture of profound relationality and consciousness. It is the antidote to addictive preoccupations and indeed, preoccupations of all kinds that carry us away from the actuality of the present moment. When we start to pay attention in an intentional and nonjudgmental way, as we do when we cultivate mindfulness, and thus
bring ourselves back into the present moment, we are tapping into very deep natural resources of strength, creativity, balance, and yes, wisdom—interior resources that we may never have realized we even possess. Nothing has to change. We don’t have to be any different or “better.” We don’t have to lose weight. We don’t have to fix any imbalances or strive for any ideals. All we have to do is pay attention to aspects of our lives that we may have been ignoring in favor of various idealizations that have unwittingly carried us further and further from our intrinsic wholeness (the root meaning of the words health, healing, and holy) that is already here, available to us in this very moment, and in any and every moment, a wholeness that is never not present.
This book emphasizes that, with practice, it is possible to have mindfulness become a reliable foundation for holding and healing one’s entire life. This optimistic perspective suggests that if you commit yourself to engaging in this program of bringing greater mindfulness to the whole process of eating, you are taking a major step to giving your life back to yourself, and in the process, freeing yourself from the imprisoning and deadening habits of unawareness, obsession, and addiction in regard to eating, body image, and even more, one’s own mind and body and its/their relationship to the world. This engagement has the potential to restore your intrinsic and original beauty, as you befriend yourself as you are. It is an invitation to balance of both mind and body, and to a deep interior satisfaction that goes by the name of happiness, or well-being.
In the Stress Reduction Clinic at the University of Massachusetts, the first formal meditation we usually engage in is to eat one raisin slowly and mindfully. With guidance, it can take up to five minutes or even longer. The clinic participants, for the most part medical patients, don’t expect meditation, or stress reduction for that matter, to be associated with eating, and that alone is a useful and cliché-dispelling message that meditation is not what we usually think it is. Actually, anything can be a form of meditation if we are present for our experience, which means if we are wholeheartedly aware. The impact of this strange and somewhat artificial exercise is driven home immediately, just in the seeing of the object we are about to take in, the smelling of it, the observing of how it actually gets to and then into the mouth, the chewing, the tasting, the changes as the raisin disintegrates, the impulse to swallow, the swallowing, the resting quietly for a moment in the aftermath of it all, all held in an exquisite awareness that seems to come effortlessly. People exclaim: “I don’t think I have ever tasted a raisin before.” “This is amazing.” “I actually feel full.” “I feel warm.” “I feel whole.” “I feel calm.” “I feel peaceful.” “I feel like a nervous wreck.” “I hate raisins.” (There are a lot of different responses, and no right answers—just what people are experiencing.)
But just like Blake’s grain of sand and his wild flower, you can see the entire world in one raisin, hold the universe and all life in the palm of your hand, and then, of course, in your mouth too, as it soon becomes a source of nurturance on so many different levels, energy and matter and life itself enlivening and replenishing the body, the heart, and the mind. And in community no less, in this instance, since there may be thirty or more people in the room, all new to mindfulness, all newcomers to this eight-week clinical program we call MBSR, or mindfulness-based stress reduction. One raisin can teach you a lot.
You will find this raisin exercise, and many more, in this book. If you give yourself over wholeheartedly to the practices described here with a certain degree of discipline and commitment, yet leavened with kindness and gentleness so that you cut yourself enough slack not to force things to conform to some ideal, I am sure that you will be thanking yourself and Dr. Bays for recovering your life and for enjoying the blessings of food in ways that feel liberated and delighted.
—Jon Kabat-Zinn
Professor of Medicine Emeritus
University of Massachusetts Medical School
Stress Reduction Clinic
Center for Mindfulness in Medicine, Health Care, and Society
September 2008
Source: Mindful Eating: A Guide to Rediscovering a Healthy and Joyful Relationship with Food by Jan Chozen Bays