Jan Chozen Bays

by Char Wilkins and Jan Chozen Bays

A two-and-a-half-year-old boy weighed 79 pounds, three times normal weight for his age, and he suffered from sleep apnea.

One of the most common questions we get in our mindful eating events is how to teach mindful eating to children and practice it during family meals. The answer is for everyone to practice mindfulness while cooking and eating together as a family.

You've been working hard on a project on the computer, and it's time for a treat. You've been holding off, waiting for the delicious taste of __________ (please fill in the blank). Coffee ice cream? a piece of dark chocolate? a donut? an onion bagel? some fresh strawberries? For me, it would be a creamy, sweet‑sour lemon tart.

Well of course that makes sense! We leave work and drive too fast to get home so we can finally relax.  Between patients we scribble notes in the file, run to the bathroom, and make a phone call while slurping caffeine so that after the next patient we can catch our breath. We inhale lunch without looking at it while we order holiday gifts on online because we don’t want to waste time just eating.

Loneliness and boredom are often triggers for eating comfort foods, or for eating at inappropriate times. When we feel the impulse to eat at an odd time (such as an hour after lunch or when we can't fall asleep at night ) we can take a moment to investigate what is happening in our body, heart and mind.

One of the simplest ways to get more enjoyment out of eating while eating more appropriate amounts of food, is to deliberately slow down. Our digestive system sends “satiety” signals to our brain when we’ve had enough to eat. These signals take about 20 minutes after we begin eating to be activated.

Eating is one of our most enjoyable activities. And yet, even in this land of plenty, so many people come to our offices, asking for help with an unbalanced, unhappy relationship with food. Patients have come to me in despair, saying, “There’s nothing left that I can eat.

I found my way to meditation years ago out of necessity — not unlike how people come into therapy and the mindfulness-based courses I teach. Knowing how useful meditation had been in my own life, I began looking for a way to incorporate mindfulness and meditation into my psychotherapy practice for individuals and in groups. The intersection of abuse, body image and eating/food issues is insidiously woven together for many people. Each year I find myself sitting with an increasing number of women struggling with disordered eating borne out of stress and suffering.

Physician, Zen priest and mindfulness teacher Dr. Jan Chozen Bays is profiled in the Huffington Post for her work around mindful eating.