Practice Greater Awareness of Self to Honor Your Body

If  you've ever read a page of a book and quickly realized you didn't comprehend one sentence of the page you just finished reading, you'll know how easy it is for our minds to wander and for distraction and mindlessness to rob us of the joy of a book.
When it comes to eating, it is so easy to become distracted and unaware as we eat that we end up missing all the pleasure of each mouthful.
When we eat mindlessly like this, we end up physically full, however strangely unsatisfied and often wanting more food.
Often, what was missing, was simple awareness as we eat. After all, our taste-buds are in our mouth, not our stomach. If we wolf down our food, without chewing, really tasting and thoroughly enjoying every mouthful, then overeating is almost inevitable.
Mindful eating allows us to fully appreciate the sensory delight of eating and to be more conscious of the amount and nature of all that we eat and drink.
When we practice greater awareness around eating and drinking, it breaks the emotional attachment link to food.
What I love about mindful eating is that it replaces self-criticism with self-nurturing. It replaces shame with respect for your own inner wisdom.
The truth is, we are all born with the innate wisdom of knowing how to eat. Just like animals and kids, the intuitive sense we are born with is a natural gift that somehow gets lost along the way. We are all born with an intuitive sense of what our bodies want and need. 
Sadly, due to outside influences such as family, friends, media and the diet industry, we learn to distrust this natural instinct.
Greater awareness of self is the way we can reclaim it. Bringing our minds back to our bodies, consciously, as we take each bite, is the first step.
Having a healthy relationship with food means you are not morally superior or inferior based on your eating choices.
Food is just food. It is the meaning we give it that can possibly cause people a lot of heartache.
It is good to be flexible with your food choices. In fact we never get it wrong. We only think we do based on conditioned beliefs we have around food and eating.
I often get asked how to practice mindful eating. The simplest place to start is awareness. Every time you eat, be sure to pause first, consciously bring your mind back to your body and notice the food in front of you.
Take your time to really notice it. The texture, the color, the ripeness, the taste. Swirl it around in your mouth, really taste it. Every. Single. Bite. It feels good doesn't it?
Remember this. You don't need a reason to eat the foods you like and want. Mindful eating is a way to become reacquainted with the guidance of our internal cues of hunger and fullness.
Start listening intently to your body and youll be amazed to find that "enough" is as good as a feast.