Intermittent fast and time restricted are popular trends, we recently held a seminar discussing the body’s natural biorhythms and how shortening the window of eating helps to aid digestion and optimize metabolic functioning. In addition to outlining the best timings to eat, we also delved into being mindful about why we are eating. Have you felt upset and reached straight for food to fill a void? The concept of ‘comfort food’ addresses the disconnection of mind and body, the need for our attention may be on a mental/emotional level but we suppress this by seeking comfort on a physical level instead.
The talk, hosted by Neelam Harjani, the founder of Inspire Yoga, highlighted the importance of self love and being aware of the root cause of binge eating or eating out boredom or out of distraction. When there is awareness we can consciously choose when we want to eat and select health promoting foods so we don’t trap ourselves in a cycle of guilt and self sabotage revolving the essential part of life- nourishment from our meals. Further more awareness of how our energy responds to certain foods will guide our choices towards more health promoting options.
Mindfulness also lets us celebrate the joy and pleasure of eating which we experienced through the sensory stimulation from mindfulness eating exercise. Authorexia is a disease that causes people to have eating disorders based around only eating the healthiest, cleanest, fad diet friendly approach- when there is too much information we run into ‘analysis paralysis’ causing some to be fearful of the harmful effect of food. The seminar highlighted the importance of intention, and setting a positive intention allowing us to enjoy the pleasures on our plate and yet being aware in our motivation and responses to our actions.
