Blogs About 'Mindful Eating'
Take “control” of your food with Mindful Eating
Filed Under: Mindful Eating
Is this story familiar to you? You start each day with the best intentions, determined to “be good” and stick to the rules. By evening, you find yourself staring at an empty bag of chips, overwhelmed with guilt and frustration. You promise yourself tomorrow will be different, but the cycle repeats, and food feels like an endless battle you can’t seem to win. The back-and-forth between restriction and overeating leaves you feeling desperate. You are disconnected from your body’s...
Listen To Your Body
Filed Under: Mindful Eating
Do you ever have that nagging feeling that you’re not doing enough to care for your body? Isn’t it sad how often we find ourselves at odds with our own bodies, caught between wanting to care for ourselves and the messages out there that we aren’t doing enough? Everywhere you look there are messages about how we “should” and “could” be treating our bodies that lead to guilt about what we’re not doing. How often do you ignore your body’s nudges, pushing through hunger, pain and...
4 Ways To Be Kinder To Yourself When You Eat
Filed Under: Mindful Eating
When you start being kind to yourself, ending your struggles with food becomes so much easier. There are certain things we can do to bring an attitude of compassion to our relationship with food. Before I discovered Intuitive Eating, my experiences with food were fraught with tension. Food was the enemy. Even though it relieved pain, it also caused pain. So what would compassionate eating look like? Let’s start by looking at the opposite: unkind eating. When we are filled with contempt...
S.T.O.P
Filed Under: Mindful Eating
S. T. O. P is a mindfulness tool I often use in my daily life and it’s one of the most effective tools I share with my clients. It was created by Jon Kabat-Zinn, the founder of the Center for Mindfulness in Medicine at the University of Massachusetts Medical School, and founder of Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction. (MBSR) I find this informal mindfulness practice to be very grounding and it can be done in a minute. It’s always available and it’s short and practical. Practiced regularly,...
The Gifts of Pleasure
Filed Under: Mindful Eating
One of the very nicest things about life is that “we must regularly stop whatever it is we are doing and devote our attention to eating”. Luciano Pavarotti One of our basic gifts is the pleasure we get from the simple act of eating. Sadly, in our culture, many people experience guilt when what they eat is pleasurable – heard the phrase “guilty pleasures”? When someone tells us what to eat, how much to eat and when to eat, we lose touch with what we truly want and what is pleasurable....
Dieting vs. Mindful Eating: Know The Difference
Filed Under: Mindful Eating
I must confess, I am not a big fan of January. It’s simply too hectic and there’s too much pressure to make this “your best year yet”. January is full of diet talk of going Keto, giving up carbs and sugar. I find it tedious. One of the reasons I like January this year is we are celebrating World Mindful Eating Month. Come visit us on Facebook – we have a lively discussion going on the benefits of Mindful Eating. People are becoming more aware of Mindful Eating and I see the term used...
The A to Z of Food and Eating Mindfully
Filed Under: Mindful Eating
People often ask me “what exactly is mindful eating”? Many think mindful eating is healthy eating but it’s so much more than that! Here is the A-Z of Mindful Eating. A — Awareness and Attention When eating pay attention to the food in your mouth. Become aware of the flavours, textures and tastes. Through awareness we can address our eating challenges, by noticing our triggers to binge or overeat. B — Breathe and Body Before eating, take a breath and...
Dieting versus Mindful Eating
Filed Under: Mindful Eating
Mindfulness is a buzzword. Mindfulness is applied to stress, depression, anxiety, illness and eating. And there are many interpretations of Mindful Eating. When I tell people I am a Mindful Eating Coach they often say they don’t eat “mindfully” at all, implying healthily. But mindful eating isn’t just about WHAT we eat, WHERE we eat, it is also about WHY we eat, HOW we eat and WHAT is going on for us while we eat. Traditionally, when people have eating challenges they turn to dieting...
The Difference Between Mindless Eating and Mindful Eating
Filed Under: Mindful Eating
“When walking, walk. When eating, eat.” — Zen Proverb Have you ever eaten something and when you look down it’s finished and you don’t remember eating the food? This often happens with chips, nuts and popcorn but it can also happen with a plate of food! This is typical mindless eating. Mindless eating essentially, is eating on auto-pilot... Let’s look at some of the characteristics of Mindless Eating: The classic form of mindless eating is eating while multi-tasking. We...
What Exactly IS Mindful Eating?
Filed Under: Mindful Eating
“Mindfulness is the aware, balanced acceptance of the present experience. It isn’t more complicated than that. It is opening to or receiving the present moment, pleasant or unpleasant, just as it is, without either clinging to it or rejecting it.” Sylvia Boorstein Many people ask me what exactly is Mindful Eating? Let me start by explaining what Mindful Eating isn’t…. Mindful Eating is NOT a diet, a fast or a detox. Although, if you need to fast, you can approach the fast in a...
The Benefits of Mindful Eating
Filed Under: Mindful Eating
There are many benefits to eating mindfully and I would like to share some of them with you! Connection and trust with your body Mindful Eating connects us to our body’s hunger and satisfaction cues. We learn to become aware of physical signs of hunger and fullness in our stomach and look for those signs to guide us to start eating and the signs of comfortable fullness or satisfaction to stop eating. Awareness of different types of hungers Eating mindfully creates awareness around the...
The 8 Types of Hunger
Filed Under: Mindful Eating
I have just finished reading a very worthwhile and instructive book by one of the world’s leading experts on Mindful Eating, Jan Chozen Bays – “Mindful Eating – A guide to rediscovering a healthy and joyful relationship with food”. In the book she talks about the 7 hungers, she later added an 8th hunger. I am finding her very valuable teachings so helpful with my clients and in my practice. Let’s have a look at the 8 hungers... EYE HUNGER Eye hunger is triggered by food that...
Playing
Filed Under: Mindful Eating
When was the last time you played an innocent practical joke or prank on someone? When was the last time you were having so much fun that you forgot to eat? We used to do this a lot as kids, but somewhere between childhood and becoming adults, we stop playing and become more serious... Lately the only playtime I have had is with my dogs and I notice that when I am not playing, my fun turns into jelly tots and M&M’s. As we get older with more responsibilities, we lose our ability to...
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“From our first meeting - two faces on Zoom across the world from each other, there was a sense of familiarity and comfort that was a healing balm for a lifetime of food struggles and dieting. Without realizing how much damage I had done to myself by adhering, for decades, to restrictive food plans and rigid diet programs, Xen had a way of redirecting the harsh and negative self-talk and sending me forth each week with compassion, mindfulness and a new way of seeing myself in the here and now. Gone are the maybe somedays, and if-only, and when-I’m-smaller thinking. Now I am committed to the imperfect and rocky path to listening to my body, accepting my perfect imperfections, and rejecting diet mentality. Those negative voices will revisit me from time to time, I know, but Xen has offered valuable tools for meeting each day as a fresh start - another choice, another chance. Her devotion to this work and her belief in her clients is a remarkable gift; I am so fortunate to have found her. It is never too late to let go of the drama and embrace joy, ease and self-acceptance.”
“I felt hopeless and helpless in my daily struggle with mindless eating for many years. Then I found Xen which is exactly what I needed! My decision to work with her helped me to finally repair my relationship with food. It's changing my life for the better, one day at a time. Now I have control over the food, instead of it having control over me, which is the way it should be. I highly recommend Xen to anyone who has a desire to overcome similar food struggles. Xen, thank you from the bottom of my heart!”
“I reached out to Xenia because 2021 started on a tumultuous note for me. Between deaths, businesses suffering, hospitalizations, and job losses in our personal circle, I felt depleted and found myself being available for everyone but myself. Then I was hit with an unexpected health diagnosis, which was the last straw as it meant giving up “healthy foods” and workouts that I leaned on for my well-being and stability. Despite working in wellness (Yes, coaches and healers are vulnerable too!), I found myself reaching out to desserts for comfort. I like to live a life of permissions (not labels or deprivation leading to bingeing), so I wanted to work with someone who approached healing from a place of mindful compassion. I didn’t want to be my own client. Xenia was great in reminding me to be kind to myself. Working with her, brought me peace and helped shift my mindset. I love how desserts and I look at each other now.”
“Working with Xenia was amazing. She armed me with a bunch of tools to help me through difficult times. Xenia is the kind of person who really cares for helping you in the long run. Her work will forever have an impact in my life.”
“Working with Xen was a game changer for me. After working together for a few months my relationship with food radically changed. I no longer felt like a failure. I now have the tools to nourish my body with foods that feel good in my body. I don’t feel guilty about eating cake or chocolate, I also don’t overeat cake and chocolate. I no longer feel the need to exercise to compensate for my eating. I feel much more free around eating and I am more accepting of my body. Xen has a nonjudgmental and compassionate approach to coaching and really supports you in the process.”
“Working with Xen has been very empowering. Her approach is so refreshing from the usual. I have learned that I am in charge and that I get to choose what I put in my body and how to move my body in a way that I like! I get to make my own choices. It’s so liberating. Once you get a taste of freedom with food, there is no turning back to old ways! Thanks Xen for guiding me along the way to freedom.”
“This is the answer for those of you that struggle with food and all that surrounds it. Xenia said that I could make peace with food and it seemed at the time like an impossible dream. Turns out it isn’t. I recommend Xen and the mindful eating / intuitive eating approach unreservedly. If you have any questions about my experience, please get in touch. Thank you Xen. My rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐”
“Xenia was a walking, living, breathing example of what can be done. I laughed and cried my way through a short course in this fascinating and invigorating programme with her, and have gained a designer tote full of coping skills that go way beyond containing kilogrammes. I feel infinitely lighter. I am doing this for me and, yes, you can do this for you too! And believe me, I’m cynical!”
“I don’t obsess about food like I used to. I am thinking differently about food and feeling so much more relaxed around all types of food. It’s wonderful to have pleasure and satisfaction from eating.”
“I learned a new way of thinking about food. I have learned that food is not the enemy and that it can actually be enjoyed with no guilt.”
