With self-isolation in full-swing and Easter on the horizon a lot of people will be overeating. While a little indulgence every now and then is no harm, when it turns into binging or emotional eating you can be left feeling bloated and fatigued. Or worse, saddled with a load of guilt and shame. Mindful eating can be the antidote to kick this harmful habit.
Mindful eating entails being truly present in the act of eating; to recognise our emotional and physical sensations during each meal. Mindfulness often entails paying attention to our body rather than our mind and to help us to separate hunger from emotional urges. This approach helps us make better food choices for both our physical and mental health.
Here are 10 ways you can improve your relationship with food and become a mindful eater.
1.Sit Down and Eat Without Distractions
Whether you eat dinner in front of the TV or have late-night snacks in your bed, eating while multitasking is never mindful. Try instead to just eat. Peel your eyes away from your smartphone, laptop or TV, and focus on the food in front of you. Give eating the undivided attention it deserves. At first, it may feel strange, however, it soon will become a welcomed break from the distracting world of work and social media. And yes, those of you who check their emails while eating lunch, I’m talking to you.
Multitasking stops you from paying attention to your body’s needs. For instance, you may have a habit of eating toast while watching your favourite show because you get peckish in the evenings. So, you dish it up every night and don’t stop to think whether this evening you are actually hungry.
2. Slow Down
It is said to take around 20 minutes for your brain to receive the satiation signal — this means you won’t notice that you are full until then. By which time, you may have done some serious overeating. Instead, take the time to chew your food more slowly and thoroughly. This can be 20 to 40 chews, depending on the food. You may find it helpful to put your utensils down between bites to help you eat at a slower pace.
3. Be Aware of Your Senses
When you are no longer shovelling food, you now have the pleasure of being able to really appreciate it. Pay attention to its colours, smells, textures, flavours and even the sound it makes as you chew down. Try to identify all the ingredients, such as the different seasonings. Even better, if you have the time to cook a meal from scratch this can really help you cherish your meals.
4. Ask Yourself Why You Are Eating
Mindful eating means being mindful of your cravings: those that are triggered by hunger and those that are triggered by emotions. You may have struggled with an eating disorder or you were brought up to finish your food on your plate, which can foster guilt around eating. If you have a habit of making a beeline to the fridge when you are angry or upset, you’re not alone. In fact, when you are stressed you release cortisol which increases your appetite, so it makes sense to get snacky (although it doesn’t help).
Identifying the emotions behind your cravings can help you deal with them in a more effective manner. Food may not be the healthiest coping mechanism for things like grief, stress, or sadness. Instead, think of 3 to 5 things you can do instead to ease each emotion. That could be a list of friends you can call, a drawn-out bath, a walk, meditation or time in nature. When the feeling hits, use these other mechanisms first.
When deciphering the reason for your eating, you can also question during meals.
As Susan Albers, PsyD recommends, stop and ask yourself between bites: Am I satisfied here? Or should I keep going?
5. Set Aside A Portion
Eating a jumbo-sized Easter egg may feel like a “treat yourself” moment, but this treat can be fleeting as you are left feeling bloated, lethargic and with a serious case of a sugar crash — which just keeps those cravings coming. If you still want to indulge, try and not eat straight outside the box, instead separate a portion onto a separate plate. This goes the same for other food, try and not eat out of Tupperware. Just because a dish is almost finished does not mean you have to finish it right now. Separating it onto a dish can help you be intentional about whether you want seconds. And hey — if you eat the whole egg and the choice is mindful and brings you joy, no harm done.
6. Plan Ahead
You by no means need to go full fitness-junkie and have your macros mapped out for the next 7 days. However, having an idea of what you are going to eat ahead of time can stop you from mindlessly grazing throughout the day. Instead of rummaging through the cupboards and eating the first thing you see, you can make more nutritious and satiating food choices. You can simplify this by having a theme for each night such as Italian on Mondays or Indian on Thursdays. Have healthy, satisfying snacks such as fruit, yogurt, nuts and seeds in plain sight so that eating high-fibre (and therefore satiating foods) is that little bit easier.
7. Keep a Food Journal
Keeping a food journal can be a great way of noticing the effects food has on your feelings and your body. Writing down how we feel after each meal or at the end of the day, can help us realise that perhaps junk food doesn’t taste so great after all, or that it leaves us feeling groggy. This can also help us identify our trigger foods — those that make it more likely for us to binge. A lot of processed foods are engineered to be addictive, so noticing these and weeding some of these out can be a huge weight lifted off your shoulders.
8. Learn to Appreciate Food
It is important to take time to appreciate the abundance and variety of food that is available to you. The religious practice of praying and giving thanks for a meal before eating, can be a great reference point for non-religious folk too. Pausing to express gratitude for our food, and the long journey it took to land on our plates, helps us to consume it more intentionally.
9. Meditate
Meditation and mindfulness are like two peas in a pod, so incorporating meditation into your routine can help you if you are struggling to be present during meals. You could try having a short 2-minute meditation to get you in a calm, mindful state before sitting down for your meal. Apps like Calm and Headspace have mini meditations specifically for this purpose. Calm even has a Mindful Eating Masterclass for those that need a serious mindset change. WellBe are also able to offer you 2 free months of their premium subscription. Click here to unlock their full library.
10. Start Small
Don’t worry, you don’t have to try all the steps at once. In fact, overhauling your eating habits can be overwhelming and stop those useful habits from sticking. Instead, try just one or two steps such as just sitting down without any distractions. You could even practice mindfulness for just one meal a day — whatever gets you into the swing of things.
Food for Thought…
Remember, the goal of mindful eating is not weight loss — though this may be a welcomed side effect — it is to live better. It is to eat with more pleasure and with less guilt. Overeating often occurs, not because food is problematic, but because our relationship to it is. Mindful eating aims to change that.
