Vail Daily column: Change your life with mindful eating

VAIL, Colorado – On Friday The Vitality Center at Vail Mountain Lodge will offer a mindful eating breakfast session in Terra Bistro. Led by Mary Horn, M.S., The Vitality Center’s nutritionist and exercise physiologist, mindful eating involves bringing more to the table than just hunger.

“If you have eaten when you are not hungry, continued to eat after you were full, stopped eating prior to satiety, or allowed guilt to guide your food choices, you have experienced mindless eating,” Horn said. “Mindful eating is eating in the moment … this can and will change your life.”

Friday’s mindful eating breakfast will begin with a short conceptual introduction, after which participants will choose their breakfast foods from Terra Bistro’s buffet. The group will eat together thru 10 minutes of silence, placing their knife, fork, or spoon down after each bite. After the silent 10 minutes, conversation with breakfast will resume, while participants share their experience and join into Horn’s guided discussion.

When offered in July, the mindful eating breakfast encouraged participants to pay attention to the task at hand: simply eating breakfast. But beyond that, paying attention to the sensual gifts of food (taste, texture, sight, sound), practicing gratefulness for the food and who and where it came from, and honoring satiety as it came. Participants shared recognition of their body’s intuitive sense of fullness, and deep gratitude for the preparation and enjoyment of the food they’d eaten, sensations they had typically glossed over in a meal.

Call 970-476-7960 in advance to reserve your spot.