Pray It Off 01/13/11 Mindfulness Part One

INSANITY:

“Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.”

Albert Einstein



Mindful Eating Questionnaire - Are You A Mindful Eater?

By Doug Hanvey

How mindful of an eater are you? Take the following quiz to find out. While mindfulness can't be measured with complete objectivity, this mindful eating questionnaire will deepen your understanding of yourself, and of how mindfulness can begin to liberate your relationship to eating and food.

INSTRUCTIONS: Answer each question with the number that best matches your experience:

1 = Almost always / 2 = Frequently / 3 = Infrequently / 4 = Almost never

1. I'm unaware that I'm hungry, or full, until sometime after the fact.
2. I am stressed out.
3. I don't really taste or appreciate my food.
4. I force or control what or how much I eat.
5. I eat when I'm not hungry.
6. I avoid eating even though I am hungry.
7. I rush when I eat.
8. I eat without being aware that I'm eating.
9. I eat when I'm stressed out.
10. I believe that I can only succeed by controlling or being rigid about my diet.
11. I am unaware of thoughts that precede my eating behaviors.
12. I find it difficult to remain focused in the here and now.
13. I don't love and accept myself and my body as it is.
14. I don't regularly feel a desire to exercise.
15. My body image is negatively impacted by media exposure to the "thin ideal."
16. My exposure to media stresses me out or lowers my moods.
17. I am living or eating "on automatic."
18. I am stuck in mental and/or behavioral patterns that I would like to change.
19. Emotions "take me over" and I am not aware of what has happened until later.
20. I eat to manage strong or uncomfortable emotions.

SCORE YOURSELF: Add up your answers and divide the total by 20 (or if you didn't answer all the questions, by the number you answered). Your score will be a number between 1 and 4.

ANALYZE YOUR SCORE: A higher number (closer to 4) reflects more mindfulness (and freedom) in your eating behaviors. A higher number also reflects a more mindful and freer relationship to the many forces, particularly bodily sensations, emotions, and thoughts, that (usually unconsciously) precede and influence eating behaviors.

How did you do? Don't worry if you didn't get a perfect 4.0. Nobody is perfectly mindful all the time (including the author of this article!). Yet the more mindful you are, the freer you will be. This mindful eating questionnaire has given you a taste of how mindfulness can transform and liberate your relationship to eating, exercise, your body, your mind, your emotions, and your very self. Mindfulness (awareness) is the foundation for positive change and transformation in any area of life - but particularly in your relationship to food.

Doug Hanvey teaches mindfulness at Indiana University, and is the author of The Mindfulness Diet, a comprehensive program that goes to the root of troubles related to eating behaviors, dietary choices, and weight management. Want to learn more? Download a free 10-page eBook packed with additional information and tips.

Doug Hanvey, M.S.
Copyright © 2010 Doug Hanvey.
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This report is written to provide accurate and authoritative information in regard to the subject matter covered. However, this report is for educational purposes only and is provided with the understanding that the publisher and author are not engaged in rendering a professional service. The advice and strategies contained herein may not be suitable for your situation, and the use of any information provided herein is solely at your own risk.

You should not rely on the information in this report as a substitute for, nor does it replace, professional medical or psychiatric advice, diagnosis, or treatment. While the publisher and author have used their best efforts in preparing this report, they make no representations or warranties with respect to the accuracy or completeness of the contents of this report and specifically disclaim any implied warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose. If you have any concerns or questions about your physical or mental health, you should always consult with a physician or other healthcare professional. Do not disregard, avoid or delay obtaining medical or health-related advice from your healthcare professional because of any content contained within this report.

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by Doug Hanvey, M.S.*

The Light of Mindfulness

Emotional eating. Binge eating. Stress eating. Food cravings. Disordered eating. Food avoidance or restriction. Compulsive eating. Chronic dieting. Preoccupation with food. Weight concerns.

Why do the majority of approaches to these problems either fail, or work poorly or inconsistently? Is there a commonality that can be discovered among these issues that would explain such failure? There is, and it’s one that has been rarely addressed in traditional solutions – including nearly every kind of diet and weight loss program on the market!

*Doug Hanvey, M.S., teaches mindfulness at Indiana University Bloomington and Indiana University – Purdue University Indianapolis. He has written about mindfulness for national publications including Spirituality & Health Magazine, and is the author of The Mindfulness Diet, a mindfulness program for overcoming food fixations of all kinds.

A mindfulness approach to food fixation (by whatever name you call it) means much more than “not eating mindlessly.” Mindfulness transforms your entire experience of food, body, and self – not just relatively superficial eating behaviors, but those aspects of your inner experience that lie at the foundation of those behaviors – your relationship to body, thoughts, and emotions. Only an approach such as mindfulness that addresses the gestalt or “whole” of our inner being can lead to true eating liberation!

This commonality is awareness – mindfulness – or more accurately, lack of mindfulness. By whatever name you wish to call the problem (I’ll be grouping all the terms above as “food fixation”), the cultivation of mindfulness can provide the foundation for long-term success that is missing from most approaches.

Mindfulness is an ancient and simple practice that – much like the practice of physical “hatha” yoga – is becoming more popular with each passing year. In corporate boardrooms, hospitals, schools, and homes, more people than ever are practicing mindfulness and discovering its benefits. This increasing popularity has been boosted by the increasing pace of research on the physical and psychological benefits of mindfulness at institutions such as Harvard, Duke, and the National Institutes of Health.

While the apparent benefits of mindfulness are numerous (see The Benefits of Mindfulness below), in the realm of food fixation, mindfulness shows particular promise. When applied not only to eating behaviors, but also to one’s “inner experience” of bodily sensations, emotions, thoughts, and related mind/body states such as boredom, desire, and anxiety, mindfulness has the power to fundamentally transform and even uproot compulsive, repetitive, and unconscious patterns. Mindfulness can lead us towards a healthy and liberated relationship to these areas of our inner experience, and thus to eating and food.

It goes without saying (though it’s rarely admitted) that no diet or weight management program can succeed in the long run unless it tackles the deeper underlying causes for food fixation. While mindfulness may not be the only healthy approach to tackling these underlying causes, it is one of the most popular, most researched, and simplest approaches.

Mindfulness Is Not A Diet (In the Usual Sense)

Rather than tackle its root causes, most approaches to food fixation deal with its results. This is more popularly known as dieting.

The word “diet” is derived from an Ancient Greek word, di-ai-ta, which meant “way of life.” This root meaning of the word diet as a “way of life” reveals why most modern diets don’t work very well. Most diets are not intended or promoted as ways of life, but are instead quick, after-the-fact, symptom-focused fixes. A fix that is focused on the effects or results of a fixated relationship to food (effects such as binge eating, weight gain, and the like), rather than the root causes, can never be a lasting solution.
1Brief summaries of a selection of recent major studies related to mindfulness and food fixation are in the Appendix.

No diet or weight management program can succeed in the long run unless it tackles the deeper underlying causes for food fixation.

The Mindfulness Approach to Freedom from Food Fixation

Most typical (and popular) modern diets “work” like a bad doctor who, rather than prescribing Penicillin for an easily curable infection (treating the cause), instead treats the patient’s symptoms alone (the results of the infection). The patient may temporarily feel (and even seem to be) better, but remains ill.

From the perspective of a mindfulness approach to food fixation, diets don’t work because they ignore our human complexity – the thoughts, feelings, behaviors, and bodily signals that, when healthily synchronized, intelligently inform our eating habits, but when not synchronized, may lead us to ways of eating that are unhealthy and untenable.

Unfortunately, diets don’t even work so well even within their limited, symptom-oriented focus. According to a report entitled A 10-Year Longitudinal Study of Body Weight, Dieting, and Eating Disorder Symptoms, “Dieting is a notoriously ineffective means of achieving weight loss. Some 95% of those who lose weight will regain [it] within a few years, and many will gain more weight than they originally lost. [T]he data indicates that most diets are doomed to fail.”2 As far back as 1992, a National Institutes of Health task force declared that diets don’t work, period.

Any winning approach to food fixation will optimally approach the problem with the original meaning of diet in mind. Because the causes of food fixation are often deeply-rooted in our usual habits and ways, an approach that involves awareness (which is essential for fundamentally changing our habits and ways!) provides the best chance for lasting success.

How Mindfulness “Works”

What is mindfulness? And how does it “work”? Mindfulness simply means awareness. “Practicing” mindfulness means being as intentionally (and non-judgmentally) aware of what is happening in each moment, as best we can. Does it sound hard? It shouldn’t. Each of us is already aware of what is happening in each moment. At least we are aware of part of our experience, the part that we are willing to be aware of. But there are other aspects of our experience that we are often not so willing to be aware of. We may habitually or unconsciously block out aspects of our inner experience so that they remain largely unconscious and unknown to us.

These areas that we may not be fully or consistently mindful of include our eating behaviors, bodily sensations (including sensations of hunger and satiety), thought patterns (particularly those involving food, or stressful thoughts that lead to compulsive or “stress eating”), and emotions (that we may try to manage through “emotional eating”). Each of these areas – eating behaviors, bodily sensations, thought patterns, and emotions – contributes to our overall behaviors around food, and to other related behaviors such as exercise frequency.

A mindfulness approach to food fixation is a diet in the original meaning of the word (a “way of life”). Yet while it may seem unusual and possibly uncomfortable at first to anyone who is used to living by dietary rules, a mindfulness approach will not tell us what to eat or how much to eat. Mindfulness does not involve rules or deprivation. There’s no reason we can’t stick with our current diet or way of eating if it seems right to us at this moment. Mindfulness is not a substitute for a way of eating and exercising that is healthy and appropriate for a given individual. Instead, mindfulness provides the foundation for a natural and liberated approach to eating that may be unique to each of us.

So mindfulness can be beneficially practiced in conjunction with literally any diet, dietary program, or way of eating, whether it’s working well for us, or not so well. If our diet isn’t working well, than as our mindfulness deepens, we will naturally be drawn towards a way of eating that is healthier, less fixated, and more enjoyable.

A mindfulness approach to food fixation may not seem “sexy” and “exciting,” like the newest fad diet that promises rapid and nearly instant weight loss. But healthy, long-term, honest, and effective approaches to problems are rarely sexy or exciting. We can also be mindful of any predilections we have for the easy, painless, “quick fix” – a predilection which has reached its zenith in American consumer culture (particularly in the “weight loss industry”). Being mindful of our attraction for “painless” (and typically useless) quick fixes can finally free us from the bondage of opting for these futile approaches over and over!

Photo: theuspguy.com