Everyday Systems

This is a bit unrelated to NoS but I've started counting my bites while eating. I started doing this a few days ago because my mom was telling me about how in Buddhism, it's considered good to be 'mindful' and an example of doing this was counting how many bites you took in with a meal.

I tried it out just from curiosity and I find it helps me enjoy my food more as I'm aware of every time I put my fork/spoon into my mouth. Of course it also makes you more aware of your portions. For example, I had a normal good-sized dinner at home last night ( about 30 mouthfuls) and when I ate lunch out today ( restaurant portions are huge!), I was mindful of my tummy starting to get full around the 30 mouthful mark. So I stopped and felt much better as a result.

Obviously, for some people, the counting may seem a tad obsessive. I googled this and apparently somebody has already made this into a diet! ( as you knew they would). It's called the 5 bite diet and is based on only eating 5 bites each for lunch and dinner and skipping breakfast which just sounds like starvation to me.

Anyway thought I'd share.

Ooh - that 5 bite diet sounds like extreme deprivation to me! But I have heard of counting the number of chews you take for each bite! Sounds very similar to being mindful of each bite of food you take.
The recommended number was 20 chews, or something in that ball park, for each bite. The benefit of that would be to slow down the folks that tend to wolf down food at a meal. Take more time to eat - don't eat as much...makes sense!
Mimi

I eat too fast, my husband eats too slow.

I can do the five bites thing, just need a really BIG fork.

Enjoy your holiday weekend all,

SR