What is mindful eating?

I talk a lot about mindful eating and how it can help you manage your weight, reduce any disordered eating and help repair your relationship with food. Understanding what mindful eating is and how to practice it is the challenging part. Not because it is hard to do but because it takes time, inner reflection and lots of practice.

Being a mindful eater means noticing the colors, smells, flavors, and textures of your food; chewing slowly; getting rid of distractions like TV or reading; and learning to cope with guilt and anxiety about food.
Noticing these things means deliberately paying attention, being fully aware of what is happening both inside and outside yourself. In your body means in your heart and mind such as any emotions or thoughts you may be having- "I am stressed" or "I feel fat". As well as outside yourself, in your surroundings- like at your desk with emails coming in every 2 minutes or alone in the kitchen with everyone gone to bed.

Noticing how eating affects our mood and how our emotions like anxiety influence our eating is important. Mindfulness includes paying attention to the experience in our body. Where in the body do we feel hunger? (in the head or in the stomach?) What does half-full feel like, or three quarters full?

One other very important aspect of mindfulness is being aware of all these things without criticising or judging yourself. For example, you are feeling stressed at your desk at work and want to eat your lunch but it's only 10am and you are not hungry. Rather than judging yourself and thinking:"what is wrong with me? I just had breakfast! How am I supposed to get through the day if all I want to do it eat!?", try being more aware of the situation- "I am feeling stressed which usually pushes me to eat. Also, my stress is mounting with the constant chiming of emails. What I need to do is decrease my stress and food won't do that...but a small walk to the bathrooms might help me relax".

Eating mindfully can sound a bit abstract and practicing concrete activities to increase mindfulness can help you get started. Gradually start to become more mindful of when, how and what you eat as well as what influences you to eat. Start by dedicating one meal a week or a day to eating more slowly and more attentively. Try these tips:

-Set a timer to 20 minutes and take the whole time to eat a normal sized meal.
-Try eating the meal with your non dominant hand to slow you down. You can also use chopsticks to do this.
-Eat in silence for 5 minutes and think about how your food was grown, produced, prepared and cooked.
-Take small bites and chew well.
-Try to guess all the spices and herbs used in the dish.
-Notice how the crunchy food feels between your teeth or the silky food feels on your tongue.
-Is the food as good or tasty as you expected?

The next few steps to take is to become more aware of your hunger signals (Am I hungry? and if so, how hungry?), fullness signals and triggers that may influence your appetite or desire to eat.

Reading through a book, using a workbook or talking to a registered dietitian about mindful eating can be very helpful in getting started or to help maintain mindfulness. You can read more about mindful eat and intuitive eating in past blogs here, here, here  and here (you can also search my blog for posts related to mindful and intuitive eating).

Judging those who already judge themselves

Some people believe that judging people who "should" lose weight will help them to make the changes necessary to lose weight. Of course, those people are dead wrong but that is not the point of this post. The point is that judging others is useless since they often judge themselves more than can be imagined. 

This is especially true of people who suffer from binge eating disorder. Having a greater than normal concern for ones weight and shape as well as an over-evaluation of their weight and shape (meaning they feel they have more control than they actually have over their weight and shape) leads to much pain. These negative views of ones body and weight can be quite destructive as well as self-perpetuating. Having what is called a disturbed body image maintains an eating disorder and can actually predict success with therapy in resolving an eating disorder. 

As a dietitian, I rarely work directly with clients to treat a body image disturbance but I do work closely with many amazing psychologist who do just that. However, body image often comes up in nutrition sessions when clients insist they "should" or "must" lose weight. Losing weight before resolving an eating disorder (for those people who have a high BMI) is never recommended but many clients are convinced that losing weight will help increase their self-esteem. The basis for many people with an eating disorder is low self esteem or basing ones self worth on their weight, so does losing weight actually increase self-esteem? No. Surprisingly, despite the many protests from clients, losing weight does not miraculously increase their mood or self-esteem. Instead, dealing with what perpetuates negative thoughts, how to come to terms with ones body and how to enhance positive body image is what helps people feel better. 

Guess what else it helps with? You got it- weight management. Weight shaming, guilt-tripping, judging and all those other negative abuses DO NOT HELP. Loving and accepting ones body and shape helps people eat healthier, move more and just live healthier lifestyles. It may be hard to accept or change the way you think at first, but change is possible! Professional help from a registered dietitian and psychologist speed up recovery from an eating disorder and help you feel happier.

Stay AWAY from this emotion to ease weight loss

I have always been a big advocate that taking pleasure in eating is important for everyone- especially when people are trying to lose weight. At first, some clients find it sounds counter intuitive and they may try embracing the motto eat to live rather than live to eat. HOWEVER, if you are as "live to eat" kind of person, changing this personality trait is a huge task, especially when you are also changing so many other things in your life to try to lose weight. Often, my clients who "love" to eat (foodies!) or who believe they should not want their favorite foods while trying to manage their weight, end up feeling guilty when they eat certain foods (usually high calorie, high fat or high sugar foods).
Some people believe that guilt will help to motivate them not to eat certain foods, however, I have always felt that my clients who are the most guilt-ridden tend to over eat more. There has been a lot of reserach on this topic of reducing guilt to help improve eating habits- and there is another one fresh off the press!

The study found that guilt did not motivate people to change. In fact, people who reported more guilt when eating cake, felt they had less control over their over-eating. They also were less successful at losing weight! Imagine that, the very "tool" some people feel helps them (or should help others) lose weight, actually did the opposite. This is why so many dietitians advocate that "all foods can fit" into a healthy diet, even when you are trying to manage your weight.

You can read the article abstract, Chocolate Cake: Guilt or Celebration? Associations with Healthy Eating Attitudes, Perceived Behavioural Control, Intentions and Weight-loss, here.