Mindful Eating: How We Get it Wrong
Mindful eating is supposed to make us healthier, happier, and more relaxed. Instead, we end up feeling stressed and guilty about not doing it. If you hate eating mindfully, you might be doing it wrong.
Mindful eating is super trendy these days. It’s supposedly linked to all kinds of benefits, everything from healthier eating habits to weight loss to better digestion. But many of the people I’ve worked with say that they find mindful eating irritating, unpleasant, boring, or weirdly stressful.
Just like meditating and gratitude journaling and a daily yoga practice, mindful eating is supposed to make us healthier, happier, and more relaxed. Instead, we end up feeling stressed and guilty about not doing it. If you hate eating mindfully, you might be doing it wrong. Here are a few ways that we often misunderstand what mindful eating means.
Mindful Eating Mistakes
First, we mistakenly think that eating mindfully means that we should eat only in order to satisfy our physical hunger. Being aware of our hunger and satiety signals is definitely a big part of eating more mindfully. Taking a moment to assess whether or not we are (still) hungry can help us recognize when the urge to eat (or continue to eat) is due to something else…such as boredom, fatigue, or sadness. This in turn gives us the opportunity to think about whether eating is the best way to respond to those feelings or whether there might be another response that would serve us better.
On the other hand, sometimes the urge to eat is not about escaping from unpleasant feelings but about being attracted to pleasurable experiences. Even if we’re not hungry, sad, or bored, when something delicious crosses our path, we have a strong desire to enjoy it. This is not inherently bad or wrong—and eating mindfully doesn’t mean that we never get to eat something simply because we enjoy it.
Mindful eating simply means being more aware of our thoughts, feelings, and sensations and what is driving them so that we can make more conscious choices. For example, if we recognize that our urge to eat is driven more by a desire to enjoy a particular food than by actual hunger, we might decide to go ahead and enjoy that food—but in a more moderate quantity.
Researchers studying mindful eating report that when you consciously choose to allow yourself a treat, as opposed to the “eat first ask questions later” approach, you experience more pleasure and—equally important—less remorse from your indulgence.
Eating mindfully shouldn’t take the pleasure out of eating! If anything, it should make eating more pleasurable. Mindful eating involves bringing more attention to the rich sensory experience of eating: the colors, shapes, textures, flavors, and aromas of food. This can heighten our appreciation of the food we eat, making the experience more satisfying and memorable.
But when we eat more mindfully, we’re also more likely to notice when foods are not particularly enjoyable or when our enjoyment has begun to ebb. Once you begin to practice mindful eating, you’re more likely to stop eating a food that you’re not particularly enjoying rather than just polishing it off simply because it’s sitting in front of you. The end result may be that you take in fewer calories, and it will definitely mean that you get more satisfaction per calorie.
Another mindful eating mistake is to confuse awareness with judgment. Having certain thoughts, feelings, or desires relating to food does not mean that you are a good or bad person. Nor does it mean that you have to respond to those thoughts, feelings, or desires in a certain way. With mindful eating, we strive to be more aware of our thoughts and feelings without judging them. If you can approach the process of mindful eating with as much curiosity and as little judgment as possible, it will help you make the best use of the information that you gather.
Finally, eating mindfully doesn’t necessarily mean that you have to sit in a dark quiet room by yourself and shut out all distractions. There’s an important difference between mindless or distracted eating and making a conscious choice to enjoy another activity—such as reading or conversation—while you are eating.
When we sit in front of the television or computer with an open bag of chips, we can easily go on auto-pilot. Our mind is absorbed in whatever we are doing. Meanwhile, our hand keeps moving from bag to mouth until the bag is empty. Whoops. Where did all those chips go? Did we enjoy them? Were they stale? Who knows? That sort of mindless eating can lead you to consume hundreds of excess calories without even noticing, much less enjoying them.
We are also less likely to remember food that we eat on auto-pilot and this can lead us to eat more at the next meal. Interestingly, how well we remember our last meal can play a role in how hungry we feel at the next one.
That doesn’t mean that you can never do anything else while eating except stare at your plate and deeply contemplate each bite of food to the exclusion of all else. But if you do choose to read or chat or watch a screen while eating, be aware of the increased danger of losing track of what or how much you’re eating. Here are some steps you can take to avoid overeating.
Steps to Avoid Overeating
First, take an undistracted moment to decide how much you want or need to eat. If that amount is less than what’s immediately in front you, put the remainder out of reach.
Then, focus your attention on your first bite or two of food. This is when your enjoyment of that food is likely to be the most intense—so why not get the most out of it? It also gives you a chance to reevaluate whether it’s actually worth finishing. If it isn’t, put whatever you don’t intend to eat out of reach before turning your attention to your book or your companion.
If you like to read while you eat—and many of us find this pleasant and/or necessary—try alternating back and forth between the two activities. Enjoy a few bites of your meal. Then, put your fork down and pick up your book. Read for a few minutes. Then, put your book down and enjoy a few more bites of food.
Likewise, if you are having lunch or dinner with a friend, try putting your fork down every once in a while and just enjoy the conversation for a few minutes before continuing to eat. Every time you resume eating, you also have a fresh opportunity to notice your hunger level and your level of enjoyment…and you may find that checking in throughout the meal leads you eat a bit less but to enjoy it a bit more.
National Mindfulness Day on September 12th affords us the opportunity to put this habit into practice, but every day is a chance to practice mindful eating. I hope I’ve at least convinced you to give mindful eating a try (or another try). For more strategies on how to translate the benefits of mindful eating into real world living, checkout these Four Tips for More Mindful Eating.
Image of a mindful eater © Shutterstock
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About the Author
Monica Reinagel is a board-certified licensed nutritionist, author, and the creator of one of iTunes’ most highly ranked health and fitness podcasts. Her advice is regularly featured on the TODAY show, Dr. Oz, NPR, and in the nation’s leading newspapers, magazines, and websites. Do you have a nutrition question? Call the Nutrition Diva listener line at 443-961-6206. Your question could be featured on the show.
