How To Be Your Own Valentine Through Mindful Self-Care Workshop
Overeating, mindless eating, and using food to numb out are all contributors to weight gain.
In this workshop, you will learn a variety of mindfulness tools, tricks, and tips so that you can go from distracted and mindless eating to enjoying meals with greater awareness and presence while slimming down at the same time.
Session #1:
ThinWithin Life’s TASTE Mindfulness Formula™
Notes for Session #1
Today, we are going to talk about going from mind-LESS-ness to mind-FULL-ness through a kind and loving lens.
When it comes to our behaviors around food, you may have gotten into the habit of judging yourself all the time.
Food and meals become a place for judgment and pain, which makes sense why you’d want to go unconscious and not be present with your meals.
When there’s so much judgment in your head, you just want the noise to stop.
This week I want to challenge you to face the noise through mindful awareness.
Take your life off autopilot and move into mindful awareness.
Brains – It’s not anyone’s fault or any type of malfunction; our brains are designed this way.
Harvard researchers found after looking at 250,000 data points that roughly 50% of the time, people are lost in their thoughts.
The problem with that is that when we are so distracted by our thoughts, we aren’t living in the present.
You lose the awareness of everything around you including –
- what you are tasting,
- whether you like the food or not,
- if you are hungry or satisfied
- and you miss the full enjoyment of the meal experience when your head is consumed with other thoughts.
When you unhook from your mind’s constant wandering you can access the wisdom of mindfulness in order to –
- Help you lose weight
- Help you feel better
- Feel more fulfilled by your meals
- Change your life by moving off default living and moving into intentional and mindful practices
The mindfulness definition that I am going to work with is Jon Kabat-Zinn’s definition:
MINDFULNESS IS…“paying attention in a particular way on purpose, in the present moment, and non-judgmentally.”
These incorporate intention, attention, and attitude, the 3 main components tied to developing and creating a mindfulness practice in your life.
In this workshop, I want to be clear that I am coming from these vantage points:
- You are amazing just how you are now.
- Kindness is more powerful than criticism.
- Patience with yourself is necessary as you observe and utilize mindfulness.
- Your body has amazing wisdom. Tap in and trust yourself.
- There are circumstances that you can’t control. Let go.
I have developed a formula for you to practice this week as you bring more mindfulness into your meal experience.
ThinWithin’s TASTE Strategy for Mindful Eating
T – Take 3 deep breaths to center and calm your mind
A – Assess your hunger level (1-4)
S – Sit, savor, and slow down while eating
T – Tune in to your satiety levels
E – End your meal with a calm and relaxed mind and belly
I want your meals to go like this:
- Take 3 big deep belly breaths. Then determine are you in fact hungry and how hungry are you.
- While eating, give your brain and body the gift of sitting down, savoring each bite, and slowing down by putting your fork and or food down between bites.
- Really slow down. BE with your food, your meal, and whomever you are around so that you can get the enjoyment with food that I know you crave.
- Relax.
- As you eat, tune into your body and how satiated you are becoming. When your satiety hits level 5, practice ending your meal with a calm and relaxed mind with your body around that level.
The practice this week is to print out the infographic and put it someplace where you will be reminded to use it. Use the T.A.S.T.E Journal/Tracker to see your mindfulness successes. By giving yourself the gift of mindfulness, you are really going to see some incredible results.
Action Plan for Session 1:
NOVICE LEVEL – Listen to this week’s workshop and record your progress on the T.A.S.T.E. Formula for Mindful Eating journal above for at least 2-3 meals. Consider printing out the Infographic and posting it someplace to remind you.
INTERMEDIATE LEVEL- Do the novice level assignment from above 4-5 meals this week.
ADVANCED LEVEL – Do the assignment above for 6-8 or as many meals as you can. Be sure to check into your accountability group or do a post on our private Inner Circle Facebook to inspire others. Also, you could listen to an extra podcast or class.
Session #2
ThinWithin Life’s Mindfulness LOVE Formula for Food Cravings™
Notes for Session #2
Keep practicing using the TASTE formula and if you have increased your mindful eating and are ready to move on, then get ready to enjoy this next mindfulness training.
One of the most effective ways to work with food cravings is MINDFULNESS.
Food cravings are a normal part of the human experience; studies show that more than 90 percent of people have them. (In fact, who are those unicorns who’ve never had cravings?)
Scientists are coming to understand the power of mindfulness through studies. This technique is a powerful and effective way to cope with cravings based on brain science.
“You don’t have to make cravings go away, but you also don’t have to eat because of them. It’s accepting rather than pushing away or suppressing them.”
Instead of telling yourself when you have a craving, it’s time to sit with the feelings that come up for you and hold your screaming 2-year-old’s hand.
Instead of judging that your desire for food is bad, wrong, or that you should “be better” and more in control, you can simply –
- accept that they exist
- allow them to surface and move through us
- breathe through the experience with compassion until it disappears
It’s not always easy to do, but if you can, take some time at this point to ask yourself:
- What is going on now?
- What does my body feel like now?
- Is there tension anywhere in my body?
- What am I feeling?
- Where do I feel it in my body?
- What do I see around me?
You may still be working through your TASTE formula to use during your meals to become more mindful and connected to your meal experience.
Now, you also have an opportunity to take some time to stop before unconsciously stepping into the hailstorm of your cravings. Watch your thoughts. See them and notice if they are supporting you. Also, how they feel in your body and brain.
The Mindfulness LOVE Formula for Food Cravings™
L – Listen to what the voices in your mind are saying about your food craving without judgment.
- No blame. Be curious. Just hear what it is telling you without going to food first.
O – Observe what is happening and relax your breath.
- It may help to tell yourself, “It’s okay.” or “Relax.”
V – Voice what this craving feels like.
- For example, is it….Warm? Tight in a specific part of your body? A certain color? Is there movement?
E – Examine your body.
- See if you can relax your breath and body to release the craving. Let it move through you and out.
Action Plan for Session 2:
NOVICE LEVEL –
Listen to this week’s workshop. Choose to continue recording your MINDFUL EATING progress on the T.A.S.T.E. Formula for Mindful Eating journal (tracker) above for at least 2-3 meals. OR start tracking your MINDFUL REACTIONS TO CRAVINGS with the Mindful L.O.V.E. Formula for Food Cravings journal (tracker). If you haven’t already, consider printing out the Infographic and posting it someplace to inspire you.
INTERMEDIATE LEVEL-
Do the novice level assignment from above 4-5 meals this week. You could do either tracker or both.
ADVANCED LEVEL –
Do either or both assignments above for 6-8 or as many meals as you can. Be sure to check into your accountability group or do a post on our private Facebook to inspire others. Challenge yourself to listen to an extra podcast or class.
Session #3
ThinWithin Life’s FEEL Process for Feeling Your Feelings Mindfully™
Notes for Session #3
Our awareness journey starts with the TASTE formula from session one. If you have increased your mindful eating and are prepared to move on to “feelings,” then you’re ready to jump into this workshop.
EMOTIONS…Starting with the basics, science has taught us that everything is made of atoms. These atoms are made of subatomic particles that vibrate at certain frequencies.
Since everything has a vibration, it’s been proven that human’s thoughts and feelings produce energy, which is intrinsically vibrating.
Now let’s get into the fun!
What the vibrations of our emotions mean:
Higher vibrations are associated with typically positive feelings and emotions, such as
- Happiness
- Joy
- Excitement
- Peace
Lower vibrations are typically negative feelings, such as
- Fear
- Anger
- Shame
- Frustration
Let me dispel a misconception:
Emotions are not “good” or “bad.” They just are.
There can be an intrinsic desire to avoid the negative vibrations that don’t feel so great, a desire to only be someone who feels the positive vibrations of life.
What to feel and how to feel is shaped by your environment and who you are. If you had parents that didn’t want you to feel anything but happy – you learned that lower vibrational feelings were bad and you most likely tried to avoid them.
But the truth is that the emotions you feel are not good or bad. They are just vibrations that “FEEL good” or “FEEL bad.”
Being human, it’s beautifully normal to have positive and negative vibrations circulating in your body. It’s your emotions giving you information about what is going on through sensations.
When you avoid certain vibrations in your body, you can create destructive patterns by pushing down or numbing these feelings.
Using a variety of substances, including food, to distract or offer up a state change is quite common. However, this shift negates your feelings.
Let me clarify the difference between THOUGHTS and FEELINGS in case you are unsure:
- Thoughts = language
- Feelings = sensations
Now that you know the difference between a thought a feeling, you can process any feelings that might come. Here are the 4 steps to process a feeling:
The FEEL Formula for processing a feeling
- Feel the physical sensation in your body
- Explore the sensation so you can name it
- Examine what your natural instinct is to do with the sensation
- Let it BE and reveal what it might need
This is a useful way to fully process a feeling. You can give any emotion the time and attention it needs to play out and leave your body. With the FEEL Formula above, once you’ve let the emotion go you do not have to worry about it lingering.
Let me discuss each one in detail so you can go through the steps on your own and fully process feelings!
- Feel the physical sensation in your body
You feel a feeling. Maybe you don’t know what it is. What is the sensation that you are experiencing in your body?
What does it feel like?
- Sharp pain in my chest
- Hot and flushed in neck and face
- Something in the pit of the stomach
- Hard knot
- Warm moving sensation
- Explore the sensation so you can name it
If you’ve been numbing your feelings and avoiding them for a while, you might not know what the feeling you are experiencing actually is. Examining the emotion in order to start giving it a name can be very helpful.
“Positive” and “Negative” are the first ways to begin labeling an emotion.
If you can go deeper than that, then you can use The Feeling Wheel pdf designed by Gloria Wilcox. This graphic will help you hone in on subtleties of your emotions. If it is too overwhelming to be precise, practice by saying “This seems positive, warm, and/or happy.” or “This seems negative, stabbing, sad, and/or scared.”
By labeling any feeling you give it attention and start to get to know it.
Once you have defined it at least a bit, repeat your conclusion to yourself. For example, “This is me feeling hurt.” or “Worry feels like this.”
Even if you aren’t sure what it is, test it out by guessing.
If sitting with your first choice doesn’t feel right, name it something else and see how that feels.
- Examine what your natural instinct is to do with the sensation
Watch for what your instinct is. Do you try to:
- Dodge it?
- Hide from it?
- Distract from it?
- Dwell in it?
- Run from it?
- Be with it?
- Eat or something else to escape it?
- Let it BE and reveal if it needs anything
What might it need? Often just attention and acknowledgement will do the trick. Sit with it for a few minutes. Shine a light on it. See it.
Imagine just shining some light on this feeling in a kind and loving way to see what it wants.
By Letting it be and revealing what it needs, you can stop your old programming and transform in a powerful way.
No emotion is there to hurt you, it just wants your attention. Once you see it properly, it dissipates (much more quickly than you expect).
There’s really no ACTION to take here.
Just sitting and BEING with emotions is all that is required.
Action Plan for Session 3:
NOVICE LEVEL – Finish listening to session 3. If you are still working on Mindfulness while eating, stay where you are. It is the building block to being conscious around food and your hunger.
If you feel drawn to go on to processing feelings, print out the F.E.E.L. Process for Feeling Your Feelings™ Worksheet, make a copy in google docs, or simply make a gird for yourself on paper. At least 2-3 times this week, stop when you experience an emotion and guess or figure out what it is. Repeat it to yourself. If you are able, fill out at least one column of the F.E.E.L. tracking sheet so you can notice patterns.
INTERMEDIATE LEVEL- Do the novice level assignment 3-4 times this week. Bookmark or print out Gloria Wilcox’s graphic of The Feeling Wheel to ascertain your emotions more clearly when it feels safe.
ADVANCED LEVEL – Do the assignments above, attempting to capture as many emotions as clearly as you can on the F.E.E.L. tacking sheet. Declare to your accountability group or do a post on our private Inner Circle Facebook to inspire others with what you are shifting this week. If you feel called, listen to an extra podcast or ThinWithin Life Workshop session.
Session #4
What is Your Next Best Step Toward Mindful Self-Care?
Discussion after Breakout Sessions
Notes for Session #4
It’s been a great 3 weeks of self-care through mindfulness! The truth is you can choose to be your own Valentine any time of the year. Really…at any time you can choose to love yourself and honor your emotions by being present.
Getting out in front of temptations, cravings, and the desire to numb out is vital to becoming natural when dealing with food. When you connect better with your true needs, you will make better choices around food.
Because these ideas of being present with ourselves while wanting to engage with food can be foreign I wanted to review the methods I created for this workshop. Take some time to review the formulas below so they can become easier to remember in the moment you need them.
TASTE Formula for Mindful Eating™
Mindfulness LOVE Formula for Food Cravings™
When you have a food craving, instead of acting on your food craving right away, see if you can practice the LOVE formula to mindfully get in front of your cravings.
L – Listen to what the voices in your mind are saying about your food craving without judgment.
O – Observe what is happening and relax your breath. It’s okay.
V – Voice what this craving feels like.
E – Examine your body and see if you can allow your breath to release the craving and let it go.
FEEL Formula for Feeling Your Feelings Mindfully™
One way of numbing out and not feeling your feelings is using a variety of substances, including food to distract or offer up a state change to change your negative feelings to more positive ones or to numb the negative ones.
F – Feel the physical sensation in your body
E – Explore the sensation so you can name it
E – Examine what your natural instinct is to do with the sensation
L – Let it BE and reveal what it might need
Questions to reflect on:
- Name one thing you accomplished in being MINDFUL around food during this course. Remember, even just being here listening to this recap is a win.
- Name two small action steps toward your self-care through MINDFULNESS that you are willing or excited about doing.
- What support do you need from yourself or others to take these steps?
- What will be the impact on your health and body if you can do at least one of these small steps for the rest of your life?
- Take a moment to embody that change. See yourself there. Let your brain practice being there already.
Action Plan for Session 4:
NOVICE LEVEL – Finish listening to session 4. Answer the questions from the breakout group in the notes. Decide what your next best step is. You may choose to do the TASTE, LOVE, or FEEL tracking from a previous session. Complete the tracking or your next step at least 1-3 times this week.
INTERMEDIATE LEVEL- Do the novice level assignment at least 4-5 times this week.
ADVANCED LEVEL – Do the assignments above as many times as you are able to this week. Check-in on the Monday accountability post and let us know what you are working on and inspire others. Maybe you’d like to listen to a podcast or one of the previous 3 sessions?