Take this short quiz to test your knowledge of mindful eating.

True or False?

1. Mindful eating means paying attention to what and how much you eat, and that’s about it.

2. Mindfulness can be applied to any diet or approach to eating.

3. Mindful eating is difficult.

4. “Mindful eating” is just the opposite of “mindless eating.”

5. The essence of mindfulness is “allowing.”

6. If I allow myself to eat whatever I want, I’ll gain weight!

7. Mindful eating will help me lose weight.

Scroll down for the answers.

1. FALSE. Mindful eating means paying attention as you eat, but also includes being aware of the deepest drives and motivations that shape your relationship to food. If you’re unconscious of how much you eat, how often you eat, what you eat, and the inner drives that fuel your eating behaviors, then no healthy approach to eating will last long. Ninety-nine percent of weight and diet programs don’t even begin to address these deeper issues. Mindfulness does.

2. TRUE. Mindfulness (awareness) is the foundation for making fundamental changes in your relationship to food, because mindfulness helps you change your relationship to your body, emotions, and thoughts – your very self. Mindfulness healthfully supports any dietary program, whether one like Atkins or Weight Watchers, or your own personal diet.

3. FALSE. Most of us are, to some extent, roller-coasting through our meals and lives mindlessly. While it’s our choice to live our lives unconsciously if we wish, mindfulness offers a new way. While it may seem challenging at first to overcome the momentum of mindlessness, and the mindless influences of our culture that are all around us, it is entirely possible to do so. And while it may seem challenging, what could be easier than simply deciding to pay attention to your next bite? Take it moment by moment, bite by bite.

4. FALSE. Mindfulness is sometimes called the “path of purification.” Mindfulness gradually purifies you of the repetitive thoughts, stuck emotions, and mechanical behaviors that lead to acting out with food and other forms of suffering. Mindfulness does mean paying attention, but it goes much deeper than that. The allowing attention of mindfulness is transformative at the deepest levels of body, heart, and mind.

5. TRUE. Mindfulness is accepting, allowing, awareness.

6. FALSE. Allowing doesn’t mean acting out your impulses or following every desire. It means feeling into the energy of your impulses – allowing them into awareness. Previously, you probably weren’t fully allowing the impulses that preceded eating, because you did one of two things – you either (1) immediately gave into the impulse and ate, or (2) followed a mental rule that stopped you from acting on the impulse. Either way, you were still reacting to the impulse, so in a sense, the impulse was still in control. You weren’t actually allowing it! As your mindfulness deepens, the less you’ll act out the impulses, and the more you’ll realize that you no longer need mental rules to restrain yourself. A deeper wisdom, beyond the false choice of these opposites, begins to present itself. You will naturally find yourself making healthier choices, not because it’s a good idea, but because the mind is connecting with the body’s innate wisdom and what it really needs.

7. IT DEPENDS. Cultivating mindfulness will help you lose weight if the natural and healthy direction for your body is towards losing weight. As mindfulness penetrates the thoughts, emotions, and automatic behaviors that have caused you to overeat, or to avoid exercise, your weight will gradually normalize. You may find yourself spontaneously drawn to healthier foods, or to eating less, or to exercising more, or to all of these. On the other hand, if your body is already at an optimal weight, mindfulness will reduce the influence of the cultural messages that insist you be, look, or weigh other than what is truly healthy and natural for you. Thus, whether you lose weight or not, mindfulness allows you to find deeper freedom in relationship to food, and peace of mind with yourself as you are.