Eat less, enjoy more, with mindfulness
By focusing on the clementine she is about to savour, the Star’s food critic deepens her connection to what she eats
I never truly ate a clementine until I tried mindfulness.
Guiding me is the video series Practicing Mindfulness: An Introduction to Meditation, available through the Toronto Public Library.
Taking a Moroccan clementine in hand, I close my eyes and feel it with my fingers and palms. For the first time, I consciously notice the bumps in the skin.
American host Mark W. Muesse instructs viewers to hold the fruit up to their nostrils, feeling it with their lips and philtrums. The increased awareness of sensation is like going from seeing the world in monochrome to full colour.
I’m trying mindful eating in order to truly savour what I’m eating. By doing so, studies show we are less likely to overindulge.
“Spreads at Christmas parties can be dangerous — you’re so busy chatting with everyone, you’re not paying attention to the food,” behavioural psychologist Scott Leith of GoodLife Fitness told the Star.
The Buddhist-derived practice of mindfulness has gained much traction in recent times as stressed-out North Americans seek to quiet their buzzing minds.
Mindfulness means paying attention to our thoughts, emotions and bodily sensations. This includes acknowledging when we no longer feel hunger.
Registered dietitian Abbey Sharp says while babies and toddlers innately know when to stop eating, “perhaps as children we were coerced into joining the ‘clean plate club,’ ” Sharp writes in the new The Mindful Glow Cookbook.
Awareness can start with a single clementine.
In Practicing Mindfulness, Muesse flashes to a photo of a woman wolfing down a hamburger in her car. Instead of devouring mindlessly, he suggests eating slowly — and at a table.
He instructs viewers to sniff the clementine’s citrusy fragrance.
“Does it arouse your desire to eat? Does it bring back memories?” he asks.
Yes and yes, even if it is a memory of clementine juice squirting into my eye.
Muesse tells us to open our eyes. I focus on the clementine’s subtle shadings, reflections of light, where the fruit was attached to the tree.
He asks us to ponder how the fruit came to be in our hand. We must think of the tree, where it grew. We reflect on the person who planted the tree, all the sunshine and water necessary to nourish it, the bees that pollinated it. Imagine the harvester, who has friends and families like us, along with the transporters and retailers. Soon, the clementine will be part of us.
It’s a welcome lesson on connectivity.
I break open the clementine with my thumbnail, newly aware of my thumb exerting pressure and tearing into the skin.
As I remove the peel in pieces, Muesse instructs to notice the interesting shapes they make. Further to his suggestions, I look at a piece of skin before setting it aside. Never have I noticed the marbled pattern inside.
I pry a section of clementine loose and rest it on my tongue. Muesse is asking us to savour it for 90 seconds. This is where I lose patience. I go straight to chewing and swallowing, knowing I am missing key sensations.
“Does it leave you wanting more? Does it generate other thoughts?” Muesse asks.
Yes and yes. The three-minute exercise has convinced me eating mindfully is worth trying again to get the most out of every mouthful.
I thought I paid attention to my food as a professional restaurant critic, but not like this.