Week V: The Silent Treatment

Last week you savored and rated the taste, smell, temperature and texture of your food. This week you'll appreciate its sound. Snap, crackle, pop! The challenge is to eat in silence.

This exercise makes the meal a meditation, a mini retreat. You will take a moment each day to step away from a world where the pace of change frequently accelerates. Not only will you not talk while you eat, you'll not listen to anything else, just your own chew and swallow, no television, radio or other auditory stimuli. Silence.

Make it Real:
Not every meal may accommodate silence this week. You'll have to choose your battles, the meals in which you can realistically keep quiet. How many times per day, and on which days of the week, can you arrange to be silent in a place without auditory stimuli? Three meals a day in silence may be impossible for those of you who do business over lunch. Can you manage (commit) to two or even just one a day for five days? If not, decide ahead of time which meals on which days can engage this challenge.

Total silence may not be possible, but that doesn't mean you can't limit conversation or those sources of sound over which you have influence. The greater point is that you must make a change, assert  yourself and go beyond convenience. You could eat your main dish prior to a social meal or shortly after, and just enjoy an appetizer and beverage during the conversational rendezvous.

If breakfast and lunch require a noisy environment, and you typically eat with a family or spouse at dinner time, you may have to excuse yourself and eat alone in another room this week. Whether you explain your diet program or not, leaving the family table, or turning off the stereo or television, (even if it's only thirty-minutes to an hour), may prove to  be a helpful practice and demonstration of declaring your personal boundaries.

Food for Thought:

How will you find silent surroundings for your meals this week? The challenge becomes a threefold task. 1.You must endure a silent meditation. 2.You must consider potential pitfalls and plan ahead. 3.You'll also have to declare your intention, go public, in other words, ask for support for this effort.

Compromise and enlisting allies is a good strategy whenever you dare a sizable goal.

What do you notice about the qualities of the meal and your eating behavior when you have nothing else upon which to focus?

What happens when you assert yourself in a way that requires change in your lifestyle and impacts others? Who complains the loudest?