Welcome to another episode of the Secular Buddhism Podcast. This is episode number 63. I am your host Noah Rosheta.

And today I'm sharing the audio of an interview slash discussion I had with Paige Smathers on the topic of mindful eating.

Paige is a registered dietitian nutritionist. She has a degree in diatetics and she's the host of a popular podcast called Nutrition Matters.

And I wanted to speak to her on the topic of eating, specifically mindful eating. Because eating, like breathing, is one of those things that we just have to do.

And we do it oftentimes without really thinking about it. Because it becomes a mundane process. And where we can access breathing as a tool to become more mindful, something that we do every day, all day non-stop, we can focus our attention on it and gain tremendous insight.

That's why there are meditations all about breathing, focusing on your breath. Well, the same is true with eating. It's one of those things that we have to do. We do it all the time. And we have a relationship with eating, whether we're aware of it or not. Sometimes it's unhealthy or an unhealthy relationship.

And these are some of the concepts that Paige and I talk about in this podcast. So we talk about mindful eating, what she calls intuitive eating, and the concept of weight neutrality, the idea that body image is something that is conceptual.

We have an image in our mind that tells us this is how I should look, this is how I shouldn't look. And I'm going outside of health here, not just what is healthier, what is not healthy. But I'm saying what is ideal, what is not ideal. And these are concepts. And we talk about concepts a lot in Buddhist teachings.

Because the moment we have a concept, an idea, a belief, it blinds us to all of the alternative possibilities. Because now we're focused on this thing that we think is how it how things should be, how life should be, how I should be, how I should look. Right.

So we talk about these concepts in this podcast interview. We talk about healing our relationship with food, how we have relationships with everything that we interact with. And food is not an exception to that.

There are beyond eating just to survive there. There is an actual relationship that we have with the process of eating.

So we talk about what, you know, for some people enjoy the process. So there's don't. So we'll talk a little bit about that. And how we can gain insight about our relationship with food.

And overall, how we can be more mindful as we eat. You know, eating, I've had this experience. I'm sure all of you had where you're when you eat, sometimes you just eat to because you know you need to, but you're not focusing on it.

You're on your phone, you're thinking about what's going to happen later in the day. It's just something you get done and out of the way. And then you move on. But how often do we really pause and think about what's happening while we're eating the process, the flavors, the texture.

It's a lot like what we do with breathing, right? We just take it for granted and we do it. But we don't pause and really experience what is happening as we breathe or in this case, what is happening as we eat.

So these are some interesting topics and we talk about this in the podcast. And then towards the end, we talk about how we are partnering to do a mindful eating workshop, April 7th in Salt Lake City. It's an all day workshop.

And you can learn more about that workshop by visiting mindful eating workshop.com. In that workshop, we will be addressing a couple of specific topics, the concept of suffering and dieting, the topic of impermanence and all or nothing thinking when it comes to food and learning how to practice eating meditation or mindful eating will go over specific techniques will practice it there because lunch is included.

In the workshop, we'll talk about interdependence and connection and we'll finish off the workshop with a module on the art of living, the art of eating and essentially the healing or gaining insight into our relationship with food.

So it's going to be a neat workshop that couples the concept of eating something that we all do every day with mindfulness. So it's a mindfulness workshop, but it's centered around concepts like intuitive eating and mindful, mindful eating.

And so if that's a topic you're interested, you can learn more learn more about that on mindful eating workshop.com. And you can take $50 off of the registration for that workshop. If you use the coupon code secular Buddhism, all lowercase all one word to check out when you check out for purchasing the ticket for this workshop. So this is a workshop that's done by page smathers host of nutrition matters.

I'm a podcast and I am partnering with her. So we will both be teaching and presenting at this workshop. And I'd love to see some of you there mindful eating is a topic you're interested in learning more about. So without further ado, enjoy the audio of the interview I had with page smathers. I think you'll find some useful information in this exchange and in this discussion. Thank you.

Oh, Noah, thanks for having me. This is so this is so fun. I love it.

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