Sunday, April 12, 2015

"Mindful eating" is not always a helpful concept

I've been having the following thoughts and feelings for a long time, but I think due to handling things better lately, I'm finally at the point where I can articulate them more clearly.

Here they are, in short:

When I first started working with a nutritionist, I didn't understand the point of mindful eating at all. I'm not sure what I thought the reasons for it were -- I guess partly it's so often used to try to get people to eat *less* (which is the opposite of what I need) that I was wary of it for that reason; and also, just a sense that it's part of a "culture of spiritual 'virtue' / perfectionism" that I feel very suspicious of in general (which to be clear I do not think is intrinsic to the Eastern religions from which the concept of mindfulness emerged -- but I do think it's intrinsic to the way the Western world has appropriated it for its own Protestant-Ethic purposes).