Turn Eating into Ibadah (an act of worship)

In adopting the Tayyib way, we must understand and revise the circumstances when we eat. It is part of our character as much as a step towards health. All of the following tips are sourced from Quran, Hadith and respected Muslim scholarly writings. I have added scientific points where appropriate.

Only eat when sitting down, making the main task to eat. Not while walking, at meetings, or driving. Sit alert and upright, not reclined. This way gives the food due respect for making its way to us, and it triggers some of the important neurological benefits that take place when we are fully attentive to the food.

Make a du’aa, the most common one being bismillahi wa’ala barkatillah, which translates as In the name of Allah and with the blessings of Allah, I begin.

Use a smaller, brightly coloured plate. The Prophet’s crockery was full of reds and greens and so on. They frame the food, enhancing its visual appeal. Smaller plates are visually easier to fill with less food, and help us to measure out portions with more care rather than out of hunger.

Look at the food in front of you and decide roughly how much you will take. Appreciate what foods make sense to eat first, and arrange them with care on your plate. Take carefully and calmly.

Eat in a defined order, sticking to one type of food at a time if possible. The Prophet was noted to pay close attention to what part of the dish he was eating, and if they were separate dishes, to consume one part fully before moving on to another part.

Eat slowly. It should take 30 minutes, no less, to eat a meal. Pause, say bismillah between bites, let food go down. It helps start the digestive process without overloading it.

Chew a lot more than you currently do. The health guidance would suggest chewing each morsel between 30 and 40 times. Chewing breaks the food down physically, making it easier to digest in the stomach. It also releases its nutrients more evenly, slowing down your meal time.

Do not eat til ‘fullness’ as such. True fullness always takes longer than the time you eat. If you feel full whilst you actually eat, two things have probably happened, neither of which is good. First, you have eaten food rich in refined carbohydrates, which get absorbed very quickly and lead to that ‘bodily sense’ of being bloated and sedated, possibly even a bit of nausea. Secondly, you will have eaten far more than necessary. The stomach’s stretching with weight does not need to be activated to eat enough.

The rule of thirds applies. Your stomach should be one third air, one third fluid (water or drink), and one third food. When you switch to tayyib foods, the fullness comes about 40 minutes after you start eating, and it is a slow, pleasant sense of being satisfied. It doesn’t rebound into hunger like carbohydrates cause, and it doesn’t come with that heavy sedated feeling either.

Eat with others, as a family, at a given time. If people have got used to eating food on their own when they could just as well eat together, encourage them to come together to eat. It helps enforce the relatedness aspect of our wellbeing to see each other at a happy time. Where food is present, it garners more positive approaches to problems by a process of attribution: people associate the pleasure of eating with the company they keep. Waiting to eat with the family also teaches us the benefit of delaying pleasure rather than immediate gratification.

Eat without unruly or offensive habits. These vary from culture to culture, and from person to person too. All cultures respect people who eat with modesty, keeping the plate tidy. Eating is better off driven by the Heart and its rules of good conduct, rather than by the Nafs which tends to just want more food and doesn’t care for what’s going on around you.

Eat with the right hand, preferring the hand to utensils if possible. Licking the fingers is a sunnah, to keep them clean and tidy. Do so subtly and without coarse action. If it is offensive to someone, don’t expect them to just accept it. Do it in a way or place that does not draw their attention. This is the Prophet’s advice.

It may take time for you to adjust to this way, especially taking more time, and not eating til fullness. It is difficult to know what will make you feel full if you stop short of ‘feeling full’. Knowing what constitutes ‘one third’ fullness in your stomach is also a bit of an intuitive feeling than a precise measurement. Take a trial and error approach. If you have eaten tayyib food and feel hungry an hour later, you know next time have a little more. The exercise from the last chapter, noting how different foods make you feel, will speed this up. You will gain a measure of this as time goes by, until it becomes second nature. You will be rewarded by a sense of feeling ‘just right’; that’s when you know you have found the right way.