{FREEBIE!} Mindful Eating Journal
If you’re anything like me when I was in a committed relationship with My Fitness Pal, you may be feeling at the thought of not relying on your ride or die app to tell you if you’ve had the calories you were allotted for each meal or the day.
I hear from women everyday who want to learn how to be more mindful about how and what they’re eating. But, its nearly impossible to truly strengthen your mindful eating skills if you’re still relying on counting and tracking to dictate what you can vs. can’t or should vs shouldn’t be eating.
Because when we continue to rely on external measures of judgement and control, we continue to diminish our ability trust in ourselves.
Mindfulness is a tool to help you tune into awareness of yourself- mind, body and feelings.
And in order to truly learn how to eat mindfully, you have to lean into your discomfort of letting go of *complete control* by increasing your awareness of how and why you’re eating.
→In a nonjudgmental, kind and compassionate way.
What does a mindful journal look like?
No, it doesn’t look like tracking cups, grams, calories or judging good vs bad 🚫
Give yourself permission to move away from that for now, even for a short time (*because if it truly worked, wouldn’t you have a better relationship with your body and food right now?)
What it does look like is a reflecting on 4 primary components.
→Your mind
→Your body
→Your thoughts
→Your Feelings
After each meal and snack.
🔸Mind- Were you focused on the act of eating while you were engaged in it? What was on your mind? Did you pay attention to your hunger/fullness?
🔸Body- How did your body feel before, during and after eating? Did the food feel too heavy or just right? Did you feel sluggish after? How do you anticipate your body feeling a couple hours from now?
🔸Thoughts- What judgements about the food you were eating came up? Did you get stuck in a good vs bad mentality? Did you consider eating more or less than what you had prepared? Were you tempted to pull out MyFitnessPal to check in on how much you *should* be eating?
🔸Feelings- What specific feelings did you experience before, during and after you ate? Did they influence your decision to eat, or to stop eating? Did these feelings make you feel better or worse about yourself and your current situation?
I want to encourage you to give this a try for the next week, each and everyday.
See what patterns and habits you notice. How did different foods make you feel physically and emotionally? How did you respond to physical and emotional hunger? What can this information tell you about why and how you’re eating?
To help you out, I created a PDF to give you a head start on journaling for the next 7 days!
Head to here to grab it >> http://www.subscribepage.com/7dayjournal
Stay tuned, we’ll be talking more about Mindful Eating over the next couple of weeks and putting lots of new tools into practice!
I'm a self-love, body image and eating disorder therapist in Horsham, PA.
I help women and teen girls to make peace with their minds, bodies and food and learn how to see, appreciate and love all that they are.
I specialize in treating anxiety, binge eating and helping women learn how to stop dieting and really start living.
Questions? Get in touch here!