Wednesday, February 8, 2012

Week 5, Zanna: When Eating Just Eat

The Exercise: This week, when you're eating or drinking, don't do anything else. Sit down and take time to enjoy what you are taking in. Open all the senses as you eat or drink. Look at the colors, shapes, surface textures. Attend to the smells and flavors in your mouth. Listen to the sounds of eating and drinking.

For some reason, I thought this would be relatively easy.  I knew it would be challenging to go out to lunch or dinner with anyone, so except for a few exceptions, I mostly ate by myself.  I know I should have kept up the exercise while eating with people, but after several half-hearted tries, I decided that recognizing failure could be part of mindfulness, and not answering my meal companions' pleas for conversation was rude. What I didn't expect was how difficult it would be to "just eat" by myself.  Normally, I use my breakfast time to work on my puzzles (back to doing them with my right hand now) or check what the denizens of the interwebs are talking about or sometimes I even work!  When I forgo the social lunch, and eat lunch at my desk, I generally do the same.  I eat dinner, I frequently watch the news.  I feel like I must do something other than just eat lest I fall behind and lose the plot of the epic saga of the "World".   Hi. My name is Zanna, and I'm a mediaholic.
A few mealtimes during the week, I did actually manage to sit, take time, and "enjoy".  I have a few observations based on the few successes.  A) The sounds of people eating have always made my skin crawl.  The smacking of lips, the sucking of teeth, the teeth-shattering crunches.... it turns out, that this also holds true for the sound of myself eating if I have nothing else to focus on.  B) I didn't eat as much.  Whether it was because I was bored or my stomach was too turned by the terrible noises to finish is still unclear, but I ate about half as much as I normally do in a sitting.
This second observation is worth holding on to, regardless of the reason I ate less.  I think I need to keep up with this particular practice, at least somewhat, in the weeks and months to come.


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