Intro
Are you a mother who barely gets to sit down to eat your meal before it gets cold? Are you jumping up to attend to the needs of your spouse or children? Do you eat lunch at your desk? Are you gulping down your food so that you have time to use the restroom before your 30-minute lunch break is over? Do you have indigestion or stomach cramps after eating? Can you remember what you ate and what it tasted like? Are you sleepy in the afternoon, after eating?
In this blog post, we are going to share “Want to Reduce Stress? Try This Surprising Technique Using Your 5 Senses.”
Welcome to Happy Half Hour. Club
I am Marcyline Bailey, a licensed clinical social worker with close to 30 years of experience. I created “Stress Talk” to help women over 40 live healthy lives through strategic stress management and solution focused self-care.
I know what it feels like to live with overwhelming stress. It feels like you are weighted down carrying a sack full of stuff. The problem is that you cannot put the stuff down and you keep being handed more.
“Stress Talk” is about showing you how to relieve stress and re-energize, so you have all that you need to meet the challenges you face daily.
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MAIN CONTENT
Benefits of Eating Mindfully
People who eat mindfully tend to eat less because they consume smaller portions. They give the brain time to catch up. It takes about 20 minutes for the brain to register satiety. Eating to satiety leads us to stop eating when we are satisfied. The feeling of satiety is different than having a full stomach feeling.
Drinking Mindfully to Cool Down
Let’s also talk about eating mindfully. Is it possible to drink mindfully? The answer is yes. Use the same techniques to drink mindfully. The 5 senses are useful when drinking mindfully. As yourselves the following questions. What do you see before you take a sip of your drink? Include the glass or container the liquid is in as well as the liquid itself. What does the liquid smell like? Some drinks have a strong or subtle fragrances.
Sweet tea for example may have a hint of lemon or lime. How does the glass feel in your hand? How does it feel when it touches your lips? Can you describe the sensations you experience when the liquid is in your mouth and when it flows down your throat?
Using 5 Senses to Mindfully Eat a Peach
Eating a food that you enjoy is an effective way to practice eating mindfully. Here is information about the 5 senses to help you accomplish this task.
Our five senses gather information to help us navigate the environment. We know them as touch, taste, sight, hearing, and smell. We probably rely on the sense of sight more than the others. This reliance, however, does not minimize the value the remaining four have relative to gathering information.
Touch (Tactile)
The sense of touch is experienced all over the body. Our skin collects information about whatever touches it. We know that we have clothes on because we feel them on our bodies. However, we have learned not to allow those sensations to distract our attention.
When eating mindfully we us our fingertips, lips, tongue and throat to experience food items. For example, if we eat fried chicken tenders, our fingertips experience the breading or coating. We feel the crispness before it touches our lips.
Taste
The tongue hosts thousands of taste buds. We experience sweet, sour, bitter, salty and umami. Each taste bud has 50 – 100 specialized taste cells.
Sight
Eyes need light to read, discern color and send info to the brain. The greater light allows more receptivity. The eyes process the brightness of light and differentiate colors. While eating, the eyes send signals about color, texture, ratio, comparisons to the brain through the optic nerve.
Hearing (Auditory)
Sound waves (vibration) with unique frequency create the sounds we hear. When this information is transmitted to the brain, the brain interprets what it is. The brain separates the different sounds of conversation, music, laughter and more. It also determines sounds made when we eat.
Smell (Olfactory)
The sense of smell is vital to eating in general. You will notice that it is impossible to taste food when you have a cold with congestion. I find that aggravating. The sense of smell is initiated by particles that enter the nose when we breathe. We notice odors or aromas and then send the information to the brain.
Strong odors send a strong signal to the brain. This creates a sense of unpleasantness or alertness. A softer odor sends a milder signal to the brain and causes us to feel at ease. Think about the smell of burning vs. the smell of your loved one’s perfume or cologne.
When eating mindfully, using the five senses has a profound impact on our enjoyment. Sight + Smell +Taste + Touch + Hearing = flavor and food satisfaction.
M.L. Bailey Consultants helps women live healthy lives through strategic stress management and solution focused self-care.