How Your Eating Environment Can Positively Affect Your Appreciation of Your Food

How often do you actually take the time to appreciate the food that is on the plate in front of you or in your mouth? The food that is giving you fuel to power through your day and energy for your workouts?

For most of my clients, not often at all. Until they start working with me:)

That used to be me too. I would schedule clients throughout my workday, barely leaving time for me to take a lunch and/or dinner break. When I could squeeze the time in, I would hurry and eat something and get right back to work.

For those of you who know me well, I work with clients both in person and online. I have a home office which is separate from my house (we constructed the lower level with a side entrance into an office), so when I go to work in the morning, I am really “going to work”. There are many days when I don’t step foot back into my house until the evening. This means, I would eat lunch at my desk.

Here’s the problem with that scenario. At my designated lunch break, my assistants would give me work to review, phone calls to return and emails to respond to. I would eat my lunch and quickly get to the tasks that needed my attention before I started seeing clients again for the afternoon. Well, I was not appreciating my food at all. There was so much going on around me, that I wasn’t able to take the time to really savor and be mindful.

I quickly realized this has to change! As I started teaching intuitive eating and mindful eating to my clients, I too began practicing these principles. The first change I made…to go upstairs to my kitchen and sit down at the table and eat my lunch. I look out my beautiful bay windows at the trees, focus on each and every bite and achieve great pleasure in my food.

Wow, what a difference this has made in my mind and my body.

Many people tell me “I don’t have time to do that” or “mindful eating takes too much time. I have so many things I need to do”.

Ahem, excuse me. I am just as busy. And, you know what? Eating lunch in this manner doesn’t take me any more time than eating at my desk while multi-tasking. I still start my afternoon client sessions on time. BUT, I appreciate my food much more, and my body is energized and fueled and happy!

Try it. And, let me know how you feel afterwards.

And, for added fun, snap of photo of your eating area and share it with me on Facebook.