It is officially springtime in September! From an Eastern medicine perspective, this season supports new beginnings. Perhaps you are ready for a new way of springtime eating that doesn’t involve a diet?
Where to start with springtime eating
The practice of mindful eating encourages you to tune into your experience of eating and health right now.
How do you feel after winter?
Sometimes we feel a little heavy after the colder weather and having spent more time indoors.
Also winter food, whilst nourishing, tends to be warm and heavy e.g. casseroles and slow cooked meals.
As we move into spring and tune into the new season, mindful eating naturally draws us to lightly cooked foods.
Mindful springtime eating
Spring is a popular time for dieting, but I encourage you to consider mindful eating instead.
From an Eastern view point, springtime is the season for planting seeds. Whatever seeds we plant now we will harvest in summer and autumn, and beyond.
If we consider mindful eating to be a seed, if we plant it now, we will have a reliable and lifelong way of eating, or crop to harvest for every season.
However, a diet may not even deliver a crop to harvest. Diets don’t last and rarely deliver on their promises.
Mindful eating heals our relationship with food, where as diets tell us what to eat or not eat.
A diet sets the same rules for everyone, where as mindful eating guides you to eat in a way that suits your individual requirements.
Mindful eating focusses on habits, where as diets focus on food.
Mindful eating is a moment by moment experience of eating, where as a diet is mainly about the energy content of food.
Whatever seeds we plant now we will harvest in summer and autumn, and beyond.
How to start eating mindfully
As mindful eating is focused on your experience of eating and your purpose for eating, consider your answers to the following questions.
But remember, mindful eating is about observing what you think and do, rather than judging yourself or your choices as good or bad.
- Is health a priority for you? And why?
- What are your reasons or drivers for eating?
- Do you eat to satisfy your natural hunger level?
One of the biggest mistakes I see people make is that when they consider going it alone, they often think that they can just stop dieting and eat mindfully or intuitively.
But here is the thing, you have been either on or off a diet for the past 10, 20, 30, or more years.
Which tells me it is deeply programmed into you.
Dieting is part of your programming, almost like part of your DNA.
So can you see that we can’t stop that program and expect it to not start up again, so we have to remove it from your hard drive?
We remove your dieting software from your hard drive and replace it with a new one, so you can sustain a healthier way of eating.
We can’t just stop a program that has been running for years and decades and expect it to go dormant.
It doesn’t work like that.
Does that make sense?
That’s why I offer a free 15-minute Mindful Eating Discovery call.
In the call, I will provide a personalised tip to try out a new way of eating this spring that lasts.