“The final messenger of God, Prophet Muhammad (pbuh) mounted the pulpit, then wept and said, “Ask Allah (swt) for forgiveness and health, for after being granted certainty, one is given nothing better than health.”
Related in Tirmidhi

Dear Readers,

I was in middle of responding to s sufferer in Amman, who suffers from compulsive eating. He said:

“It’s sickening, but for for past few years, I’ve been eating mindlessly and on the go, and non-stop. Most of the times, I’m stuffed and I still tend to eat. It’s not in my control anymore, if I don’t eat I feel a deep void in my life, I feel almost empty. I’m always snacking on high processed foods and take outs. I feel I no longer know the taste of food. It all has to be overly seasoned and overly greased. I’ve tried BED therapy, but I can only stick to a tailored meal plan for two days the most. I do want to break free as it’s really causing problems in my personal life. . Please advice how I can reconnect with eating and eating sensibly.”

25 yr old male Amman

I was sent this brilliant article by Catrina Bengree.

She shares a brilliant article with us by Paula Goodyear:  “Want to eat better? Try closing your eyes.”

According to Catrina Bengree:

The article is excellent, as it relates to a study done by Swedish Scientists back in 2003, where they blindfolded people before they ate. They told them to eat until they were full, and the results showed that participants ate 24% less than what they did when they could see the food. This is because they relied totally on how they felt, not what they could still see on their plate – therefore they stopped when their body told them they had had enough.

This is exactly what eating “naturally” or “mindfully” allows us to do. We learn to tune back into our body’s natural instincts, eating only when we are hungry, and stopping when we are satisfied.

In my own experience, after eating naturally for almost 20 years, I can truthfully say I eat half the amount of food I used to as a teenager at each sitting. However, I now eat 6 – 8 times a day, so the amount of food I eat over the course of the day is far more than I used to eat. Now my body can process it correctly, as it is not going through the highs and lows of being starving, and then over full. My stomach has shrunk naturally, and now I am satisfied far sooner. It means I now eat every 2 – 3 hours, instead of every 5 – 6, and my body loves it. My blood sugar levels are balanced, I have heaps of energy, I am fit, active, and healthy, plus I also eat chocolate every single day!!

So I encourage you to close your eyes or blindfold yourself when you have dinner tonight. Eat slowly, really focus on enjoying every mouthful, and then stop when you feel comfortable.

Ensure you eat without distractions every time you eat. This will allow you to focus on the food, eat slowly, and gain enjoyment and satisfaction from every meal. Ultimately this means you will stop when you are satisfied, not when the plate is empty.

This is a lovely affirmation from Louise Hay, which you might like to focus on this month:“I listen with love to my body’s messages. My body is the picture of total health”

Learn to love food by listening to your body.

 

Back in 2003, Swedish scientists blindfolded a group of people and told them to eat until they were full – and found they ate 24 per cent less food than when they were not blindfolded.

It is an experiment Dr Helena Popovic repeats at weekend retreats that teach people how to eat more healthily – not by reducing carbs or whipping up kale smoothies, but by learning to reconnect with both the feeling of real hunger and the signs the body has had enough to eat.

Like the people in the Swedish experiment, most of Popovic’s blindfolded eaters don’t finish everything on the plate – with fewer distractions, they’re more tuned in to the body’s “I’m full” signals.

The blindfold is a way of driving home the importance of focusing on the food, rather than on the other tasks that often  accompany eating in the 21st century: working, texting, checking Facebook or watching a screen. According to Popovic, a  Sydney-based doctor specialising in lifestyle health and weight management, this loss of connection to the body’s hunger and satiety signals contributes to our weight-gain woes – and one of the drivers of this disconnect is our time-poor, multi-tasking way of life.

“Eating has lost its value – it’s not so much something to be savoured, as something you squeeze in between other things,” she says. “I see people who feel guilty for taking half an hour for lunch – we are valuing productivity over our health.”

Many of the people Popovic sees have forgotten what true hunger feels like. Some have become used to eating until their stomach feels stretched, which can happen when we eat too quickly, or because we equate “stretched” with “I’m satisfied”.

“When you slow down and eat mindfully, you become more sensitive to the signals that are telling you to stop eating and you can detect the messages sooner.” she says.” When you eat until you’re 80 per cent full, but not ‘stuffed’, it also enhances your enjoyment at the end of the meal. You feel comfortable, because your stomach hasn’t been overstretched.”

Non-hungry eating is part of the same disconnect with hunger. It happens when we keep eating in response to stress or boredom or because we’re procrastinating – or because it’s mid-morning and we always eat something. Do this often enough and eating in response to these triggers can become so hard-wired that it’s easy to do it without thinking, she says.

Popovic’s approach, set out in her book NeuroSlimming​ , is to help people retrain the brain to eat in response to internal body cues – not external situational cues, such as stress, anger or wandering into the food court. But first, it helps to know what real hunger feels like.

The first clue is that hunger is a sensation, not a thought – it’s your body signalling that it needs to top up on fuel and nutrients, Popovic says. A rumbling stomach is an Physiological hunger comes on gradually, while emotional or psychological hunger tends to hit suddenly. If you’re uncertain, ask yourself: did anything just happen (either positive or negative) to trigger anxiety or bring on an emotion?

If the hunger sensation comes with fatigue, irritability or mental fog, it’s often a sign of hunger.

Physiological hunger can be satisfied with a range of foods. Sometimes we want something specific, but generally any number of foods will hit the spot. A craving, on the other hand, is more specific and won’t be satisfied by an alternative or a healthier substitute,

But non-hungry eating isn’t the only way we can lose touch with real hunger – restrictive diets can have the same effect if they teach us to habitually ignore hunger pangs. This is where Popovic has an extra qualification – her own teenage attempts to diet led to years of problem eating.

“I see people who are afraid of hunger and believe that if they give in to their hunger, they will eat too much,” she says. “But not eating when you’re hungry can lower your levels of the hormone leptin, which tells you you’ve had enough to eat and can also slow down metabolism. Eating when you’re hungry assists in kicking your metabolism back into gear, so the key is knowing when you’re truly hungry.”