Are
you a mindful eater right now? Or mindless stress eater?
Take the following assessment to find out. While
mindful eating can’t be measured with complete objectivity, this brief
questionnaire will deepen your understanding of yourself, and of how mindful
eating can begin to liberate your relationship to eating and food.
INSTRUCTIONS:
Answer each question with the number that best matches your experience. Answer
as you think you are, not how you think you should be. Treat each question as a
separate question. If you don’t know how to answer a question, leave it blank.
2 = Frequently
3 = Infrequently
4 = Almost never
1. I’m unaware that I’m hungry, or
full, until sometime after the fact.
2. I am stressed out.
3. I don’t really taste or appreciate
my food.
4. I force or control what or how much
I eat.
5. I eat when I’m not hungry.
6. I avoid eating even though I am
hungry.
7. I rush when I eat.
8. I eat without being aware that I’m
eating.
9. I eat when I’m stressed out.
10. I believe that I can only succeed by
controlling or being rigid about my diet.
11. I am unaware of thoughts that
precede my eating behaviors.
12. I find it difficult to remain
focused in the here and now.
13. I don’t love and accept myself and
my body as it is.
14. I don’t regularly feel a desire to
exercise.
15. My body image is negatively impacted
by media exposure to the “thin ideal.”
16. My exposure to media stresses me out
or lowers my moods.
17. I am living or eating “on
automatic.”
18. I am stuck in mental and/or
behavioral patterns that I would like to change.
19. Emotions “take me over” and I am not
aware of what has happened until later.
20. I eat to manage strong or
uncomfortable emotions.
SCORE
YOURSELF: Add up your answers and divide the total by 20 (or if you didn’t
answer all the questions, by the number you answered). Your score will be a
number between 1 and 4.
ANALYZE
YOUR SCORE: A higher number (closer to 4) reflects more mindfulness (and
freedom) in your eating behaviors. A higher number also reflects a more mindful
and freer relationship to the many forces, particularly bodily sensations,
emotions, and thoughts, that (usually unconsciously) precede and influence
eating behaviors.
How
did you do?
Don’t worry if you didn’t get a perfect 4.0. Nobody is perfectly
mindful all the time! Yet the more mindful you are, the freer you will be.
This
mindfulness questionnaire has given you a taste of how mindfulness can transform and liberate your relationship to eating, exercise, your
body, your mind, your emotions, and your very self.
Mindfulness is the foundation for positive change and transformation in any area of life – but particularly in your relationship to food.
Adapted
from Fall Awake Publishing
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