This Functional Medicine Expert's Dessert Meditation Will Transform How You Savor Sweets

Sounds sublime, but what does "eating mindfully" even mean? Here's a quick meditation Cole loves to help enhance your eating experience—and, hey, it might even change the way you enjoy sweets. 

Comfort foods, like dessert, tend to have emotions attached to them: Say, for example, you baked cookies with your mother most weekends when you were little—your brain typically programs those patterns and associates the fond memories with the treat itself. Meaning, whenever you bite into that chocolaty goodness, you may experience those same positive brain chemicals you had when you were a child. 

In other words: You won't avoid dessert as a sort of punishment or restriction; you simply might not be as interested because you'll remember how it made you feel afterward. As Cole notes, "The allure of it is gone." 

Consider Cole's meditation a case for eating in the present. By reflecting on your emotions and how the food makes you feel, you can do one of two things: You can enjoy—like, truly appreciate—what you're eating and how it's satisfying your body, or you can remember that the dessert itself wasn't what made you feel so great, after all (perhaps it was the memories attached to the ritual than the food itself).