Are you a mindful or mindless eater?
8 tips for a more mindful approach to eating well and staying satisfied.
Whether you’re a mindful or mindless eater, either way, you eat to live. I’m assuming, because food is essential. We all eat to live, and sometimes, live to eat (because it’s fun). Neither make you a good or bad person (your character does that), but falling too far down the mindless track has clear downsides like the effects of too much unintentional weight gain over time, digestive issues, anxiety, depression, and more.
Transitioning to a more mindful approach doesn’t have to be hard or in the form of restrictive diets and hours sweating it at the gym. That’s mindless too because it doesn’t take your needs, capabilities, and overall life into consideration.
Eating doesn’t have to have anything to do with weight either. Socially and culturally, we’ve married the two to nauseam. There are plenty of other reasons to eat mindfully, and a part of that comes with detaching from the idea that you have to hit a certain number or size to be worthy of life or to achieve health. Numbers are data, and can be helpful, but how you feel matters the most.
How do you know if you’re a mindless eater? Here are a few examples:
-Use food as a reward, punishment, or tool.
-Label foods as "good" or "bad" and restrict choices.
-Wait until you're starving before eating.
-Eating when not hungry.
-Eating while watching TV, using phone, or working on computer.
-Select and purchase overly-processed food when you have other options.
-Ignore fullness cues and continue eating until stuffed.
*please note that if you’re choosing certain things because that’s all that’s available to you, that’s not mindless.
On the flip side, here are some examples of mindful eating:
-Acknowledge food as nourishment
-Approach food preferences and selection without judgement
-Recognize physical hunger cues
-Connect with food while eating by disconnecting electronics
-Select and prepare food considering its origin
-Honor fullness cues and stop eating once satisfied
Making the switch from mindless to mindful can’t happen overnight, and there’s no magic pill that can do it all in one gulp, but there are things that you can try.
1. Apply the Hunger Scale
On a scale of 1-10, 10 being ravenous, and 1 being comfortably full/not hungry at all, eating at a 4-6 is ideal. You’re ready for food, but not starving. Getting to a starving 10 can trigger binging. It’s a biological and mental human reaction to overt calorie restriction.
2. Understand Hunger and Satiety
Instead of “eating until you’re full” eat until you’ve had “just enough”. “Just enough” means that you’ve eaten the right amount of nutrients and calories to support your hunger and body for about 4 hours.
3. Tracking hunger, fullness, emotions, and perceived healthfulness
Experiment with your food, and track when you feel hungry again after eating to analyze the amount that hits the spot. Accountability can be important to changing behavior.
4. Eat Slowly
Ever notice that you enjoy foods with specific textures? We get a lot of satisfaction from chewing. Experiencing changing textures and flavors helps with satiation, and it helps us get more nutrients from what we eat. The enzymes in saliva (amylase) breaks down food, allowing the mouth to begin absorbing nutrients before we swallow a morsel.
5. PAUSE!
A 30-60 second pause before making a decision can help recognize any triggers before going above and beyond what your body needs during a meal.
6. PIVOT!
If you know what you usually crave, learn how you tend to honor those cravings, or not. If you crave cookies most of the time, no shame in that or eating the cookies, but what happens when you’re craving cookies and have none? You might start noshing on anything and everything to curb that cookie need, but to no avail, so you eat and eat and eat. Instead, look up recipes for 1 quick cookie to make in an airfyer, oven, or microwave (like a cookie mug cake). Try not to “diet up” the recipe with fakey ingredients. Make the real thing. Make it the proper portion for you. Enjoy it! Eating 1 deliciously dope homemade cookie is a lot better than a 1,000 calorie binge over the kitchen sink.
7. Manage Your Expectations
As you plan your meals, think about how your food will nourish your body while you enjoy it. What will this food do for you? What do you want it to do? Does this choice meet your expectations, exceed them, or not fit in with what you need at all? Learn to manage what purpose the food has. If the purpose is not aligned with your goals, sit with that. Discover how you can tweak the situation to be more up to speed with your expectations.
8. Learn How To Cook
You don’t have to start yelling, “Yes, Chef!” in your kitchen and turn your life into an episode of “The Bear”, but learning basic cooking skills can help you become more mindful and confident around food. Touch and smell the food as you cook. Make it an experience. Make it simple. Make it your own. When you make food for yourself and others, there is a therapeutic component, especially if you cook within your means in terms of budget, time, needs, and taste.
Now that you have the facts, and my insights, it’s your turn to devise a strategy. Yes, that part is on you. Coaches can shine a light and guide you, but figuring out and experimenting a plan is on you. That’s how it works because that’s how it’ll actually work. Look over the tips above, and choose your own adventure!
I must caveat again that mindless eating can happen to anyone, regardless of weight, size, age, gender, and many other variables. The goal is not to lose or gain weight from nailing down a mindful strategy around food, although it might be a welcome side effect. It’s to eat more mindfully.
Lastly, if you are struggling with something more serious, like food addiction, that’s a whole other mental ballgame and just chalking your recovery up to “mindful” eating might not be enough. Proper treatment with a therapist that specializes in addiction will be necessary if you want to explore getting closer to recovery.
(Source: Precision Nutrition)
DISCLAIMER: Please consult with your DR before starting any general fitness, nutrition, or wellness program or tip. This newsletter is NOT a substitution for professional, medical, therapeutic, or mental health consultation, diagnosis, and/or treatment. This newsletter is for informational, educational, and entertainment purposes only. It includes science-based/general guidelines, and is NOT personalized advice or training. These are just suggestions and if you try anything, you do so at your own risk.